March 2017

Front Row Center By Michael Warren BRAVO! BRAVO!   Over the last few weeks I have seen two excellent performances at the Bravo!  Theater. At the end of January there was a rerun of Visiting Mr. Green by Jeff Baron, a play which has had over 400 productions in 45 countries and has been translated […]

MEXICAN PLUMBING: It’s Come a Long Way By Margaret Van Every     Availability of indoor plumbing is a basic criterion used to measure a country’s standard of living, with implications for related standards like infant mortality and disease due to unsanitary drainage and waste treatment. In this brief history of the progress of plumbing

Wordwise With Pithy Wit By Tom Clarkson   This morning, my pal F.T. – who shared the Iraq experience with me during my third trek there – forwarded some James Thurber quotes. They gave me pause to relish the deep and sometimes droll mentality of this great man who “set the standard for sophisticated humor

Pixie Sticks and Special K By Kathy Koches   Ah, “Pixie Sticks!”—those paper straws filled with flavored sugar, that we sucked up in our youth, much to the delight of many dentists I am sure.  Just thinking about them I can taste the tiny sugar crystals as they dissolved on my tongue.  My great granddaughter

LAKESIDE LIVING Sandy Olson Phone: 331-283-8529 Email: sandyzihua@hotmail.com   March 2017     OPEN CIRCLE Sunday morning finds many Lakeside residents at the Lake Chapala Society and Open Circle, a forum on a variety of stimulating topics. A social hour with coffee and snacks at 10:00 a.m. is followed by an interesting lecture and discussion

Welcome to Mexico! By Victoria Schmidt He’s Bored!   While packing to move to Mexico, I had visions of all the time I would have on my hands. I’d finally get to finish those scrapbooks started so many years ago. I envisioned myself stretched out on a chase lounge sipping exotic fruit drinks, soaking up

Conchita at Lakeside     Every day she pushes two hand-trucks loaded with tapetes and blankets and bolsas, one at a time down the cobblestone street to a grove of trees by the lake. She unties the huge plastic bundles and strings those ropes as clotheslines from tree to tree in the grove, using only

Focus on Art By Rob Mohr Cathy Chalvignac — The Preservation of Cultures   “What sets the world in motion is the interplay of differences… by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, we weaken life in favor of death.” Octavio Paz (1914-1998) Cathy Chalvignac, who has practiced her creative magic in Ajijic for the past twenty

Some Ruminations On Proust By Jim Tuck   Magnicide is defined as the killing of a prominent person, usually, though not always, by an obscure someone anxious to have his or her brief fling with fame. In literature, we have the spectacle of a magnicide that kills not persons but reputations. Tolstoy claimed Shakespeare was