Not much happening here. . .

News from Rio Chico:

33 °F., 98% humidity, winds WSW at 38 mph, misty, and low cloud cover. That’s the only news today in Rio Chico and it hasn’t changed much for a week. Also, for the last week nobody died or got hurt, the two kids that missed school were actually sick, and the two chickens reported missing by Sra. Inés, were found in doña María’s lean-to. The two gals don’t get along too well since a pig went into the other’s garden in springtime and messed up the rows of spinach. No one remembers whose pig it was, or who owned the garden, because it happened so long ago—in their grandfather’s time, in fact. Gardening is a serious business in Tierra del Fuego: the seasons may be short, but the memories are long, as well as inherited, much like a prized family heirloom. It still took the two rooky policemen staying in the town’s two room police station to personally go there and resolve the issue.

“They didn’t resolve anything. All they did was come over and drink my coffee,” complained one of the gals. “When they got tired of my coffee, they went to her house. Who knows what goes On over There?”

Not the most neighborly account, but what got reported in the weekly four page flyer that does for a newspaper in this town, along with a small picture of the two hero cops, (unnecessary I figured, since everybody knows them on sight).

For the last two months, I’ve been sending a letter to the newspaper office, essentially, another lean-to behind the town’s biggest coffee shop, called Darwin’s. As one might imagine, there’s no competition and it always gets published.

My last letter had a tribute to the Spanish language, mainly because it doesn’t have a word like “presumptive,” and . . . well, really it does, and they are “presunto” or “supuesto,” only by the grace of God, they don’t get used as much. I don’t have to say it didn’t go over well, meaning nobody got my point, since in Rio Chico, they are not tired of “presumptive,” like I am, having listened to the news from the States for the last interminable year, or so.

Lately I’ve been looking at seagulls, or gulls and if you are a “birder.,” this is the place to be. They are fascinating, by the way, and I’ll report on them next week. For now, I remain yours truly,

mt