It’s a Conspiracy

 

It’s a Conspiracy 

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Hurricane Estelle blew in lugging a heavy cloud blanket behind her until the sky looked like cry me a river.

Day after day after day darkness reigned and time warped, smudged and dripped down the mountain walls like Dali-esque clocks.

If one took the sky and flattened it out like a topographical map, it would be criss-crossed by rivers cascading off the edges in waterfalls. (Flat sky, flat earth, what’s the difference!)

Under cover of day as dark as nightfall, somebody sneaked in and stole the sun.

I heard rumors that “they” took the sun to Montana where, doubled up, it reigns supreme forcing temperatures into the triple digit extremes.

Meanwhile, life as usual in central Mexico, right?

Wrong. While in town for dental work, I saw my neighbor Ariel and we had a ten minute chat. Next day, he felt sick, tested positive for Covid. We all who summer here are fully jabbed with needle marks to prove it. Life is not fair, right, Ariel?

So I self-quarantined for a week. Not that isolation is unusual this time of year, with hardly anybody about. But I have vulnerable friends, so would rather err on the side of caution.

With that modicum of extra time on my hands, I got an idea. Not a lightbulb idea. It coalesced slowly. With numbers of Covid cases and deaths on the rise everywhere, despite Covid being a left/right wing conspiracy, I figured I’d probably not grow wings and fly north for yet another year. Sigh of Disappointment.

So I consulted with my team, Leo and Josue, and asked if a bathroom could be made in the tool tunnel on the back side of the bodega, which is minimally used, most tools and manly gear residing in the other tunnel to the left side of the bodega.

Team took measurements, said it is do-able, and gave me a price less than I’d spend on a northern trip. So once a doorway is knocked through, my travel money will be flushed down the toilet, or rather, will go to build a toilet, sink and shower in a wee-tiny strip of space, but will make my bodega bedroom with en-suite much more attractive to any friends lined up for trips south to visit me.

So, if you haven’t got your passport yet, get that application filled out, please.

The destruction/construction area is covered by a roof, so take that, Hurricane Estelle. Pttttt!

The other conspiracy I can only partially blame on Estelle. The synthetics fabrics industries have rendered natural fibers such as cotton, linen and wool, very hard to find and expensive. In town there are no cotton fabrics suitable for clothing. None. Synthetics make my skin hurt. Truth.

In Guadalajara, there is a wonderful huge fabrics store with acres of cotton fabrics for dressmaking. For the past month, Michelle, Ana and I have intended a trip to the City. Every week, our plans were blown out of the water (Like that one?) by one and another Hurricane, stacked off the coast, one after the other, just to foil our plans, of course. I call this the clipped-wings conspiracy.

Guadalajara is an ancient city, grown to over six million people, built over literally thousands of years. Parts of the city are ancient with little drainage and are vulnerable to storms. Streets flood with regularity. If Guadalajara is rainy, we don’t go. It’s that simple. We are wary, having watched videos of cars washed sideways down flooded streets, smashing into everything along the way.

Not to be outdone by mere weather or the oil industry, I have now made a new nighty from bedsheets, and three blouses from cotton beach wraps.

I’ll not thumb my nose at hurricanes or major or minor conspiracies. We plan to go to Guad next week. Will we make it? Maybe so, maybe no.

Will my en-suite be finished in time for your visit? Maybe so, maybe no.

Will the sun escape the chain of clouds and again grace our sky? See above.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July third week

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Martians, Killer Bees, Mutant Pigs and Hurricanes

 

Martians, Killer Bees, Mutant Pigs and Hurricanes

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Not many of us will remember, well, because not many of us were around, in 1938 in New Jersey when Orson Welles adapted the H. G. Wells classic, “The War of the Worlds” for a special Halloween radio broadcast over the “Mercury Theatre on the Air”.

Since the story of Martians invading earth seemed too silly and too improbable, more suitable for comic books, Welles asked his writers to gussy it up a bit, give it some bells and whistles. What they came up with was a minute-by-minute, recorded at the scene, rendition of a fake-news bulletin, the best part being the sound effects.

And panic ensued. The radio station, the police, hospitals, the mayor, the governor were deluged with phone calls. Otherwise sensible citizens armed themselves and set up bunkers, in fear of being zapped to dust.

I’m certain that we, being more knowledgeable and more sophisticated, would never be taken in by such hogwash today. Right?

Really? Martians armed with heat rays land on earth and conquer the whole planet. Well.

The only logical thing to come from this story, seems to me, is evidence that fear is a marvelous tool, easily manipulated.

Hot on my musings of this bit of history, an email from one of my Canadian friends hit my inbox.

He sent me an article stating “researchers” announce that mutant wild pigs are invading the cities of Alberta, (Just north of Montana, folks. Get prepared!) thus announcement motivating hordes of otherwise staunch and stolid Canadians to rush to the gun stores to arm themselves.

Two thoughts came to me in quick succession. First I couldn’t remember the name of Wells’ novel nor the year of the radio broadcast—was it in the 30s or the 40s? Secondly, I remembered a few years ago when researchers announced that “killer bees” were moving north wiping out everything in their path? Logically, I did some research.

Near as I can figure, after five minutes on each topic with Google, (See above; see below.) the Killer Bee craze started from a television show presented as a fake “eco-documentary” I kid you not. That generated a series of ultra-silly movies in the 70s and 80s, including a really dumb movie whereby the bees were sprayed with “eco-friendly poison” (I lifted those words from a quote.), proving that dumb has always been with us.

Then in the 90s, killer bee fear ramped up again, said bees still coming from South America by way of Africa—don’t ask me. So we rushed to empty the store shelves of Raid and other poisons. I don’t know why we didn’t think of scatter shot.

Gather around, my friends, I have a solution.

TURN OFF THE RADIO!

(“Radio” used here to cover multiple forms of media.)

That was my foray into “scientific research” and I promise to stay out of the research field forevermore.

Since I generally talk about things requiring no research, I’ll conclude with weather observations, being obsessed like any good Montana transplant, with weather.

Hurricane Agatha, our first of the season, kind of sneaked up on us. She grew up, matured, from vague clouds in the morning to tropical storm in the evening to earning her name overnight.

I confess to ugly and utter selfishness here. When I see a hurricane that close to the coast, I get excited. It means we will probably get peripheral rains in a few days. Not cyclone rains. Just rains. Which we need badly.

What I overlook (selfishly) is the devastation wrought upon the coastal towns, the people who live there battling high winds and floods, who lose houses, jobs, and often lives. None of those people in the path of Agatha are saying, “Oh, good, a hurricane.”

Other than a sincere Mea Culpa, that’s Latin for I’m really sorry, I don’t know how to change my brain. I could say, “Oh, look, horrors. A hurricane!” And with my grandiose superpowers, based on mutations of the Martians’ heat rays, try to zap the hurricane out of existence before it wreaked havoc.

But I’d be lying. I’d really be thinking, “Oh, look, a hurricane! Good, we’ll get rain.” I’m human. And human isn’t always pretty.

Agatha hit landfall early, saving me from an overload of guilt, may or may not bring us a smattering of moisture. Meanwhile, I check the NOAA hurricane site daily.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 2, 2022

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A Simple Can of Tuna Fish

A Simple Can of Tuna Fish

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            Are you safe? Are you in the earthquake zone? Did you feel the quakes? Is there flooding in your area? What about the hurricanes—do they reach you? The volcano?

            What has reached me are the concerns of many friends. Yes, I am safe. I didn’t feel the earth move. We’ve plenty rain but the elaborate system of canals, I am told, diverts run-off water quickly into the lakes and lagoons with which this area abounds. No active volcanoes live in this valley. Hurricanes? No, we are surrounded by mountains so what we get are the rains that tropical storms push over the peaks.

            Yes, I am safe. But not smugly so. Disasters pay no attention to boundaries, to known predictions of invulnerability.

What concerns me is the grief of the friends and families of the hundreds of people who lost their lives in the earthquakes and tropical storms in Chiapas and Oaxaca south of us, the quakes in Mexico City and surrounding area to the southeast. What concerns me is the fear, frustrations, the despair of thousands who lost their homes and their livelihood.

            Add to that the hurricane damage in the Caribbean Islands, Florida, Texas, and the Gulf Coast.

How do people have the courage to pick up and rebuild their lives? It seems a dark cloud of despair has loomed over North America the whole month of September.

            What heartens me is the courage of the People. I’ll give you a small local example. Two days after the earthquake to the south of us, Leo came to me to see if I wanted to donate food. Canned goods such as tuna and corn, easy to eat, things that don’t require cooking are especially desired. Rice and beans and maseca to make tortillas are also needed. Add essentials such as water, bathroom tissue and baby diapers.

            “It is put on my heart to give food. I’m getting donations from everyone I know,” Leo told me. “The city is asking for foods. They are filling trucks which go to Guadalajara and from there down to the quake areas.”

            I emptied my pantry and bodega of canned tuna and chicken, beans and rice and other food stuffs. I added a donation in pesos.

            “They don’t want money,” Leo said. “Just food. I’m going to buy canned food, tuna, baby formula, that kind of thing with my donation.”

            I knew what he meant. Even the local government admits the money will never make it to the intended destination. Mexican people are practical.

            “Leo, please go to the store for me and add whatever you think best to my small pile of food.”

            How do people who have lost all pick up and go forward? I don’t know. What I do know is that small actions mean a lot.

            Maybe a can of tuna equates with hope. Maybe that can of tuna, small though it be, is shared with children or with a neighbor.

            Yesterday five of us went to lunch at an isolated thatched roof hut alongside the lagoon out by San Juanito Escobedo, a few miles from Etzatlan. I walked out to the edge of the yard where the waters lapped against my shoes.  Summer rains have filled the lagoon. Hundreds of white pelicans dotted the surface, scooping for fish.

            I thought about the on-going food drives of our little town, by no means a place of wealth. I thought about the cars and vans filled with my neighbors, going to disaster areas to help with clean-up, to help in any way they can. 

            I thought of that can of tuna with tears in my eyes. That magical can of tuna.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 28, 2017

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