CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES By Scott Richards   With the sound of distant thunder the heavy iron door’s lock sang home, solid, indestructible, permanent. The echoing clang resonated for what seemed like hours deep within his psyche, as his eyes slowly grew accustomed to the cave-like confines of the jail. This was the pit, the end. Men […]

Glitter Gulch By Margie Harrell   Over the years, many catch-names have been given to the town I now call home. Of them all, Sin City seems to be the one that has stuck. My favorite has always been “Lost Wages” which seems to say it all. As the city grows by leaps and bounds,

Born To Be Served? By Bernie Suttle   As Elizabeth Regina II and her younger sister Princes Margaret grew from birth through childhood into adulthood they never returned a cup, plate, glass, or any cutlery to the kitchen. Nor did they ever make a meal, put away their clothes, do a wash, rinse something out

AS THE TACO TURNS(And takes the world with it) By Beth Berube Come on Baby, Light My Fire   The word Mexico is derived from an ancient Mayan word meaning “all night celebration using explosives.” I happen to be a foreigner who loves Mexican firework festivals. There is a wonderful shindig each year in the

MAX BIRD—My Life Translated by Janice Kimball   Robbed from our poacher for just a few pesos, we were in shock. My siblings and I had not even had a chance to utter a single squawk. Incarcerated in a strange man’s back seat, that reeked of havoc, along with a multitude of other feathered creatures

SUMMER IN SAN BLAS By William Haydon   Was I prepared for my first summer in Mexico? As the season draws to a close, I think I can reasonably conclude that the answer to that question is probably no. I can only blame myself for this, because in retrospect I can see that the clues

LETTER TO THE EDITOR   Dear Sir: Some Americans, especially Democrats, may have thought that the hypocrisy of the Bush administration—epitomized by the famous “Mission Accomplished” banner before the fighting in Iraq intensified—could not be surpassed. But Obama has done it! By reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to “only” 50,000 and relabeling them “non-combat” (they

MEXICAN DAZE:Sennacherib, the Alpha Humming-bird. By Iris Slocombe   Alpha humming-bird? Do humming-birds have a ‘pecking order’? We would have thought not before we encountered the bird we named “Sennacherib” after the vicious king of Assyria who “swept down like a wolf” on the Israelites, as recorded in the second book of Kings in the

Elizabeth Has An Adventure By Lady Tad FlemmingReviewed by Pat Percival   This is a children’s fantasy story about a young girl with time on her hands. Written and illustrated by Lady Flemming in both English and Spanish, it is an ideal gift for a child of any age, especially those between 4 and 12.

Pancho Villa’s Granddaughter Fiction by James Tipton   Immediately after Ethel Chestnut chucked her old resources administrator job in Chicago, she began to sell almost everything. A few short weeks later she jumped on a plane and headed to the tropical mountains of southern Mexico, to Chapala, near Mexico’s largest lake, Lago de Chapala. Ethel