“It reminds me of the Ona people,” I continued, “your wife’s ancestors. In fact, it reminds me of all the native people everywhere, before white man got there. Same here as in Australia, or Mexico, and North America including the Caribbean. Native people failed to realize there were a lot of things of which they […]
“You know,” said Diego, “I’ve been reading about one of the biggest environmental catastrophes of our time, in Chernobyl. That’s in Russia. After twenty five years of being left alone, I mean really alone, from humans anyway, the environment has shown an amazing ability to recover. It’s not back to where humans can go in […]
“Looking out to the Strait and all of the many canals and watercourses around me, I often wondered what it would be like to be out there, floating on that freezing water, moving up and down with the relentless motion, with only a bark canoe between me and the dark void below. The truth is, […]
As always, when Antonio asked a question, it wasn’t so much the question as the intent. His questions were like verbal shovels, not only designed to scrape the surface, but intended to dig deeper. “Cris you say, is now a reporter?” When my son Cris heard we were going to have a newspaper, he could […]
” On the way, I detoured to a place I had wanted to see from up close for a long time. Picture a rock butte standing straight up a thousand feet above everything around it, with vertical walls of crumbling granite and an acre of ground on top. No way to go up, unless you […]
“Another revelation was the ease with which don Antonio moved around and did things. This was evident to all of us who went to help with the sheep. He opened a small gate by flicking the neat homemade wooden hasp with a flip of his wrist. The last guy through could not close it. He […]
I knew that inner strength comes from devotion to an ideal, only I had none. Or maybe I did, but I never thought about it. Antonio on the other hand was devoted to an ideal, I was sure of that—his type always are. I wasn’t sure what it was, and perhaps there was more than […]
“. . . modern man didn’t drag women to a cave or trade goats for her anymore, which, all things considered, was probably for the better, but that’s not to say we didn’t have any tools or weapons at our disposal to convince a bride or persuade a future mother in-law. What we have today […]
Abruptly, he changed the subject. “Remember me telling you about agriculture, and what a bad idea it was?” I nodded, wandering what came next. “Well, a good idea that gets no praise at all is the one-eyed needle.” His eyes were twinkling again. “To me, it changed the course of human history every bit as […]
For Dale, this was an adventure, and every single time he went out with Joaquín on one of his “night runs,” it was a revelation to him. Joaquín had a lot of irons in the fire and never the same irons. It did not pass unnoticed that when Joaquín was out working, there was no […]