life

Adventure in Argentina

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

 

On March 3, I left for a two week trip to Argentina to visit my former exchange student and his family.  On March 4, Gaston met me at EZE airport in Buenos Aires.  I took the red eye from Houston to EZE, ten hours but an easy direct flight.  Little did we expect then that we would be spending a considerable amount of time in an eye clinic in Cordoba, the city where Gaston lives and attends engineering school.  We spent most of three days in Buenos Aires, then flew to Iguassu to see the famous falls. Several days later while waiting on a four hour late plane from there to Cordoba, suddenly I could not see clearly in my left eye; large pieces of black something floated all around and everything was blurry.

At nine the next morning we walked the five blocks from Gaston’s apartment to the most advanced eye clinic in Cordoba, a private clinic open on a Saturday morning. After experiencing multiple eyedrops in both eyes, seeing several doctors,  being subjected to all sorts of modern machines and tests, I found out I could not see because my left eye was quite inflamed with lots of fluid which made it nearly impossible for them to see what they needed to make a definite determination.  They gave me a prescription for the inflammation and told me to return on Monday morning and to be as quiet and calm as possible to facilitate healing.  That nixed the planned road trip Gaston’s parents and I planned to start that same Saturday.

Some blessings are unexpected.  While I would have seen more of Argentina than I did with a longer road trip–ultimately we took a shorter one, I would not have spent a relaxing, fun weekend with the whole family at La Finca, the family place in the country outside of Cordoba–photos later. I became acquainted with family members and friends, lived their typical weekend life, ate Argentinian food, all things I would have missed if we had been able to follow our original plans.

On Monday some of the inflammation had cleared so they could see that I did not have a retinal detachment–my main concern.  The doctors cleared the way for a shorter road trip and told me to come back Thursday morning.  At that time they were able to determine the exact problem and told me to make an appointment with a doctor here in the states because I would not be in Argentina when the final solution needed to occur.

Three trips to the clinic, seeing multiple doctors plus a retinal specialist twice all cost a total of 110 dollars.  Tomorrow morning my left eye receives a laser treatment and then I am told I will be fine; I visited the doctor here on Monday.  He told me exactly what they had told me.  I can only begin to imagine what my Monday trip to this doctor and the laser tomorrow will cost.  At times I wonder if it would not have been better to stay in Cordoba another week, pay the extra flight cost, and receive the laser treatment there.

Tomorrow photos of Buenos Aires and our adventures there will appear after I return from the retinal specialist’s office.

Note:  at a lecture last evening I saw a friend who is originally from Germany.  After she heard my healthcare adventure in Argentina, she informed me that she has to use very expensive eye drops.  They are so much cheaper in Europe that she and her husband, she is in her 80s and her husband 92, fly to Europe regularly to get the drops.  Even with the cost of these flights, they save several thousand dollars each time.

Day 127

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Tan grass stretches miles and miles as far as eyes can see.

The water in the indigo bird bath evaporates in one day.

Playa lakes, full last summer, surrounded then in emerald grass, lay waterless.

Thirty-five miles an hour winds create fog-like clouds of dust across the horizon.

Grit, wind hurled, buffets cars and trucks driving down the long, straight highways.

Dust-fed sunrises and sunsets clad skies in orange, hot pink, vermillion, violet, mauve.

Day 127 with no measurable precipitation.

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Note:  I wrote this ten days ago.  That evening it rained .01 inches.  None since then.  We are approaching four months with just that .01 inches, nothing more.  Every time it warms and the winds come, the weather forecast mentions high fire danger.  All counties and state parks near here have burn bans.  March is a windy month.

Crashes and Creativity

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Where have I been lately?  Haggling with two insurances companies.  Sixteen days ago, a woman ran a Stop Sign in a residential area while I was taking my grandson to middle school.  She immediately admitted it, the fire trucks were there within minutes (liquid and steam were spewing out of my car); the police showed up shortly as well.  About the time they arrived, a man ran the same sign and the police had to chase him down the street.  Makes one wonder what people are thinking, doing?  Texting perhaps.  Luckily, neither of us were hurt except grandson got a bruise from the seat belt and his glasses flew off.  He actually stepped out of the car and walked to school.

Kudos to my insurance agent, Lacie White of Farmers in Canyon, Texas.  I have never had an accident since I arrived in Texas 26 1/2 years ago so I called her.  She actually drove to the accident site, called the woman’s insurance company, etc.  Then she not only took me to the rental car place, but also to my daughter’s so I could unload luggage and such because we were planning to go to Dallas a few hours later.

The woman who caused the disaster received a citation.  Yesterday, I received a letter from her insurance company, Travelers, saying she might not be at fault.  Really?  She also did not have sufficient insurance to cover the value of my nearly new car, a 2017 which I bought last July.  Now I am haggling with my insurance company over its value.  This all has taken an inordinate amount of my time and energy.  Meanwhile, I have to find another car.

On the bright side, my grandson and I are fine.  I can still go to work, feed horses, and do what I always do.  However, it has delayed creativity, e.g. writing blog posts, working on my next book–already started, and starting my new handiwork project.  My last crochet project is illustrated below.  It is the blanket I made for my grandson.  For those who crochet, here is how I make it.

It is rather a creative, make it up as you go blanket, using some of his favorite colors, black, red, with a bit of grey for contrast.  As you can see I alternated colors to make each stand out.  The stitches used include single, half-double, and double crochet, made into different patterns such as shells, and a pattern where I alternated double and single crochet stitches.  My original inspiration came from patterns I found on Pinterest using many, many colors which I knew he would not like.  The beginning chain was multiples of four. The only downside of this type of pattern of alternating types of stitches is that the edges do not come out totally even and in the end I had to create a border around all four sides.  Probably blocking it would have also helped, but he wanted his blanket right after I finished it so I did not block it.  Ready to start my next project which I think will be making a sweater out of black and white granny squares, with maybe a bit of grey or red thrown in, colors left over from his blanket.

 

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Blood Quantum: A Poem for Our Time

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My grandson cuts himself into 16 equal pieces:

4/16 Urhobo from Africa

3/16 Spanish from Spain

4/16 European–two Swiss German great, great-grandfathers

(Werth and Kaiser), Irish, English and who knows what

3/16 Mexican–whatever mixtures that may be

2/16 Navaho

 

Who am I? What am I?

Who are you? What are you?

Do we really know?

Who sets the rules?

white men

black

Indian

Native American

Irish

English

German

from where and for whom?

 

He looks Navaho:

-blue black straight hair

-pale brown skin

-obsidian eyes.

One four year old girl asks him,

“Are you American Indian?”

His six year old self says nothing.

She repeats,

“Are you American Indian?”

He says, “It’s complicated.”

 

The Navaho won’t claim him, too little blood.

He needs 1/4, not 1/8.

Caddy and Fort Sill Apache allow 1/16, not Navahos.

1/4 blood is for

-Sioux

-Cheyenne

-Kiowa

-Navaho

1/8 works for Comanche and Pawnee.

Some Cherokees only want a Cherokee ancestor.

 

But he is none of those.

Is he Navaho?

Is he white?

The old South goes by the one drop rule:

one drop of Negro…

Is a person with 99/100 per cent white

and 1/100 black, black?

Who says?

Kids at school ask, “What are you?”

He tells them.

They say, “You’re lying.”

 

I only know specifically about two ancestors,

the Swiss Germans.

Another great grandfather disappeared during the Civil War.

I don’t even know his name.

Who am I?

Who are you?

I think I’ll get a DNA test.

Then I’ll know how many pieces I need to cut myself into.

 

Note:  This was originally published in my book “On the Rim of Wonder”.  I had a cousin send me 75 pages of ancestry information.  I looked up more myself.  That one great grandfather remains a mystery.  I had my DNA done.  It did not match what I expected from the ancestry work.

Blood quantum is the term the US government used to determine whether a person would be qualified as an Indian.  Now many Indian Nations use it to decide who can be on the tribal rolls and who cannot.

 

 

Sunday Poem–Last Day of 2017

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It’s cold outside, 14.

Horse waterers frozen.

Heat water, hike to barn.

Hope horses drink it fast before it freezes.

Back inside, build a fire,

write, read a novel set in Venice,

drink tea from Ceylon,

message friends in Asia, Africa, South America,

feel grateful for modern technology.

Glad I did not live in those “good ole days”.

Look forward to another year filled with joy and wonder–

my choice.

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Sunday Poem–Gifts

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

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For many Christmas means gifts.

What are gifts?

Material things–the new toy, new technology,

perfume, clothes.

People spend hours and money

many lack to give gifts.

Yet the most wonderful gifts remain:

joy

love

beauty

birdsong

touch

wonder

peace

 

 

Jen Payne’s New Book

/ Juliana Lightle / 3 Comments

Evidence of Flossing, WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND provides an unexpected metaphor for individual life, culture, and so much more. Nearly all the poems are accompanied with a photograph, often of trash in which lays a dental flosser (yes, one of those instruments with which you floss your teeth) with date and location.  Flossing is supposed to prevent anything from being left behind.  Hence, the title brings up an unusual play on words.

The first section Damage contains more than 20 poems which are a lament about much of modern life–mass shootings, the demise of wildlife, unpleasant changes.  One poem asks the question:  “Would God floss?”  In the second section, Contact, the poems focus on the natural world, walks in the city, the woods, beaches.  The third section, Connection, emphasizes the interconnectedness of everything, especially the relationships between humans and animals and nature.  There are poems about frogs, storms, birds.  One called Evidence of Fairies makes the reader feel the magic of old growth forests with moss and ancient trees.  In the footnote to another poem she discusses the fact that wolf spiders actually create songs to lure lovers. Then, toward the end, the Alice poems appear,  Alice as in “Alice in Wonderland”.  In my favorite poem Payne relates her encounter with a stranger picking oyster mushrooms near a path in the woods.

After reading the poems and comments in this book, I will never view flossing the same way again.  Will I find dental flossers now, something I never even previously thought about?  I use those long strings of floss not flossers.  Apparently the poems and flosser photos affected enough people that some sent Payne photos of flossers they saw here and there on the ground, some of which she has included in the book.

Even if I find no flossers, now I will certainly give a lot more thought to what I and others leave behind.

 

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About the author:  Jennifer Payne is the owner of Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company in Connecticut. She belongs to the Arts Council of Greater New Haven as well as several other arts and poetry organizations.  Her work has been featured in various publications, including The Aurorean, Six Sentences, and the Story Circle Network.  You can read some of her writing on her blog Random Acts of Writing.

 

 

Sunday Poem-Puma I

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“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.”  Martin Buber

 

My neighbor walked out her door

found a puma lying on the lawn.

Puma rose, stretched, disappeared.

 

At night when I open my gate

I wonder if she lurks

behind the cedar trees,

pounce ready.

 

My daughter dreams puma dreams:

a puma chases her up a tree.

There are no trees here big enough to climb.

 

A Zuni puma fetish guards my sleep.

I run with puma

Night wild

Free.

 

I scream and howl

Moonstruck

Bloodborn.

 

I hike the canyon

stroll around my house

look for puma tracks.

I see none.

 

I would rather die by puma

than in a car wreck.

 

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Note:  This is the first in a series of Puma Poems in my book “On the Rim of Wonder”.

Sunday Poem–“Hair”

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

No females in my family had long hair.

Dad did not like it,

said it showed male domination

over women.

Once when grown and gone

from home, I began to grow mine

out, experiment.

When he saw it, he told me

he thought it unbecoming.

I cut it.

Mom said she had long hair

when she was young.

Her dad forbade her to cut it.

In her twenties she chopped her golden locks

off, flapper style, then hid her head

in a scarf, afraid.

 

Note:  This poem is from the family section of my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.