It was only Leiden’s second or third song of the night, a ranchera – the music of love, passion, heartbreak, powerful emotions. Powerful music. In fact, it was the first ranchera she’d ever written.
“My father said to me,” recalled the Mexico City-based singer, “if you are going to sing rancheras, you have to suffer to feel it.” She paused and smiled slyly. “Now I have a degree in suffering.”
(And she does, a degree in sociology.)
“I not only can sing rancheras, I can create rancheras!”
Big guns, tiny hands, but that should suffice, Look at me, Momma, I’m a captain in ICE! I was no fool, loved skipping school But some B&E’s and cops said “not so cool!”
Army wouldn’t have me, nor would the cops Neck and face tattoos kept me out of the business opps So I played my video games and smoked crack Took to cosplaying GI Joe — thinking I was so jacked.
Saw the posters recruiting for the new breed of ICE Realized I could leap that low entry bar at least by twice They gave me a flak jacket, face mask, and my choice of a gun “Don’t worry about training, boy, go out and have fun!”
“Round up tan and brown folks, bust in a door Make sure your iPhone is set to ‘record.’ Your memes are worth money on the ICE home page Ain’t about justice; it’s about stoking the rage.”
With its $75 billion, ICE is recruiting society’s dregs Building a private army of loyal zombies and bad eggs. When the time comes, they will march into key cities and towns And arrest all those obstructing liberal clowns.
The current horror show is just a diversion While they plan for liberty’s ultimate perversion. Don’t be fooled by tiny hands and big dick energy (BDE) today The real goon squad is training for another January 6 foray.
Some invitations are just too irresistible, like this one: Come join us out in the campo as we sterilize about 50 dogs and cats in the little community of San Antonio del Varal.
How could I say no to that?
The invitation came from Donna Lynes-Miller, the lifeforce behind Rosey’s Wish, a mobile veterinarian clinic on the front lines of the effort to reduce the number of abandoned and feral dogs and cats in San Miguel de Allende.
San Antonio Del Varal is a bit more than a half-hour away from, and a pleasant century or two behind, the city of San Miguel de Allende. An easy drive down the highway toward Queretero, and a sharp left onto a hard-packed dusty road that ends at the rancheria.
“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” — Oscar Wilde in an 1889 essay.
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In the avalanche of outrage and imagery pouring out of Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, one scene stood out to me, but not for reasons related to Good’s horrific shooting.
A video shows dozens of Minneapolis citizens sliding down an icy slope to join scores of other protestors on the far side of a wintry landscape.
Where had I seen this before?
I snagged a freeze-frame, and it took only minutes to recall.
Showing up late for a party stoned and tipsy wasn’t very original in late-1969, though I was getting damned good at it — and tired of it all — a rudderless college drop-out, dodging the draft, hiding out in Washington D.C. in the shadow of the Selective Service.
I was fast becoming a mess.
Nobody at John and Linda’s party noticed – even when I stumbled back against the bookshelf and slid to the floor while Jenny from West Virginia badgered me with her latest career dilemma: Airline stewardess? Or a psychologist?
Behind me, fresh rainwater surged down Calle Terraplen like a full-blown arroyo wash. The rain beats a staccato rhythm on the roofs of curbed cars. I was inside Hotel Hacienda El Santuario’s nearly empty dining room, chilly but dry.
On the small table before me was a hot cup of black coffee and a curious but tasty postre of cornbread topped with ice cream, caramel sauce, and chopped nuts.
Not more than 20 feet away, through the archway into the open-air courtyard, pianist Javier Garcia-Lascurian and cellist Guillermo Sanchez Romero were working their way through a heart-rendering version of Saint-Saëns’s “Le Cygnet” (The Swan). Huddled along the barely sheltered walls of the courtyard sat the hardiest classical music audience I’ve ever seen. Some had umbrellas up to supplement the scant coverage of the eaves.
My cousin Maura Manley passed away on Friday. She was seven years younger than me, but the first of our adult cousins to go.
About the same time, this post popped up on Facebook. And a picture of my mother in a hospital bed in Florida. She and I spent her last Thanksgiving together, although I had to eat alone in the cafeteria and she had the institutional fare in her room. Still, we spent the day together. One of our last.
I got to spend time with Maura this summer, when she was happy, healthy, and reveling in all the family gathered for a reunion in Pennsylvania. There were a lot of us.
I’m posting this here because, well, because it keeps family from disappearing, as a time when family is starting to do just that.
In the picture above: Yes, I’m the one who looks like a butterball turkey on my grandfather’s lap. Eight months old. My older brother, Jim, is to the right. He was an old hand at this Thanksgiving thing, a veteran. You can tell by how jaded he looks.
Our folks, Bob and Pat, are at left. At right, my dad’s siblings Don and Mary Lou. Clearly hadn’t met their forever partners yet, but soon. All three of the kids were married for life. They did that in those days. Don and Janet had five sons. Mary Lou and Bill had six daughters and two sons. Jim and I ended up with six more brothers and a sister.
PENNSYLVANIA — A gaggle of geese threads its way slowly up the Clarion River, paddling against a lazy and shallow, but persistent, mid-summer current. There are 10 geese, all mature. Long, elegant black necks, white wings. No fuzzy goslings.
They zig and zag, snatching bugs from the air and small fish from the river. Between the feasting and the faffing and the current, their progress is slow.
One by one, they follow the leader into the leeward side of a small rock outcropping. In the calm, they gather strength for the arduous upstream paddle ahead. Deeper, faster water awaits the geese.
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 