A Ride Home By Stuti Patel   I am standing at the bus stop headed home from the American School of Guadalajara several miles away. An SUV passes me and, through the tinted glass, I see a woman. She’s wearing sunglasses and her blonde hair is black at the roots. Her one hand holds the […]

A TOURIST IN RUSSIA(Part One) By Gabrielle Blair   I ask myself how I can sum up my impressions of a month in Russia without sounding like a travelogue. Better to focus on a few special events. One hears again and again that one shouldn’t judge the rest of this vast country by the prosperity

Bridge By The Lake By Ken Masson   The bidding on this hand was short and sweet as North-South found their way to 3 no trump but declarer took his eye off the ball so to speak and failed to make a contract that was there for the taking. The deal was played at the

The World Of Wine By Ceci Rodriguez Pairing Food With Wine   Tannins in wine come primarily from grape skins, seeds and stems. Tannins are found, to a much greater degree, in the skins of red grapes than in the skins of white grapes. They are extracted from these solids during the fermentation process. Tannins

Chop Chop By Katina Pontikeskatcpon@yahoo.com Bernard Berenson   True wisdom comes to people not at some stage of life, but in tiny little lightning bolts throughout life. Sometimes a teenager will say something that a much older person hadn’t thought of. Or a toddler will blurt out the most marvelously brilliant observation, missed by all

Creative Puns For “Educated Minds”   1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her

Profiling Tepehua By Moonyeen KingPresident of the Board for Tepehuamoonie1935@yahoo.com   Tepehua Centro Comunitario is gearing up to expand a water program for people at risk for kidney disease in Tepehua, and if possible other barrios where kidney problems are prevalent among residents.  Pundits have pondered about cause and cure, even scientific facts have differed

Dove Of Peace   To abstract the truth of things from the snarl of separate acts— to sort the approximate into what are proven facts is often impossible. How can we bear the truthfulness of acts which all too often are heartbreaking in their truthfulness? How can we search for truth in what we cannot bear

Welcome to Mexico! By Victoria Schmidt Getting the Most out of Mexico   We each have our individual reasons for coming to Mexico. Some come to visit, while others come to stay. It is not an easy thing to pull up roots and move to another country, especially when we are older; yet so many

A Balloon In Cactus By Marge Van Ostrand(From the Ojo Archives)   “The Times We Had” Or (What Comes Down Doesn’t Necessarily Go Up) In James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, people age rapidly if they leave the idyllic Tibetan civilization in Shangri-La, where people live to be very old. Ajijic could easily be confused with Shangri-la,