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Panhandle Weather

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

After many rainless months, it decided to rain and won’t stop it.  Yesterday I wrote about a nice gentle rain, a rarity here.  Today came the deluge.  It rained over an inch in one hour.  The rain hit the west windows of my house so hard that at first I thought it was hail.  When I watched, it looked like a giant bucket of water poured on them continuously.  Then the water falls started.  When I first moved here nearly six years ago, a lot of rain brought only one giant waterfall most of the time.  More recently a lady built a house closer than I would like.  She cleared off a lot of native grass, various native bushes, and a number of juniper trees.  Even with the grass she planted, water runs off her property onto mine in a little river.  It runs so rapidly it is creating a small arroyo which gets deeper each time it rains.  Since they predict thunderstorms for the next few days, if it keeps this up we might have a chance to catch up a little on the rain.  Hopefully, next time the rain will flow more gently.  When it gushes like this afternoon and evening, rocks, dirt, debris wash onto my drive.  After the first round of rain, dirt lay more than an inch deep in some places and rocks lay scattered about.  I managed to clean off the worst of the dirt before the rain began again.

Living here in the Panhandle of Texas demands an new attitude about weather.  Expect anything.  I’ve seen it drop 50 degrees in an hour, go from 40 at night to 80 plus the next day, rain dirt, blow dust like fog, snow two feet and a couple of days later reach 55.  To an outsider, this may sound dreadful but I find numerous pluses:  the sun shines most days; it is not humid; summer days can be a bit of heaven on earth even if hot during the day–perfect evenings for lounging on the patio with food, friends, and wine; winter does not last forever and neither do the winter clouds.  Winter in the Midwest is downright gloomy.  Not here.

Now I am going to bed, hoping lightning streaks and thunder rolls do not awaken me at 3 in the morning.

Rain

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Gradually, the clouds increased and the weather forecaster predicted rain tonight and tomorrow–a 30 per cent chance and even better chances toward the weekend.  After months of rainless days and nights, dust storms, and weather extremes, I hardly believed it.  On the way home from work, I stopped to buy two guara and one rosemary to replace those that died over the winter, an unusual occurrence; both usually make it through.  After feeding Rosie, I decided to plant them in case the forecaster’s predictions held.  Not really believing rain would come, I watered them, adding root stimulator.

The sprinkles started, but only a little, what people here call a “12 inch rain”–one drop every 12 inches.  It stopped, the wind blew harder, and a brown dust fog filled the canyon.  I shut the windows.  I almost went out to start the sprinkler.  Suddenly, lightning struck somewhere near the house, thunder boomed.  The sprinkles continued to start and stop with intermittent lightning and thunder.  After having two TVs struck by lightning in the last six years even with surge protectors and turned off, I’m a little leery about lightning storms.  I left the TV and computer off and initially wrote this by hand.

Just as I started to walk outside, having given up on real rain, it started, not the crashing, thunderstorm rain we usually receive, but a gentle, steady, back East kind of rain.  I opened the windows, inhaling the rain smell.  As I write this, the rain continues; it’s now been nearly an hour with writing and interruptions from phone calls and me checking to make sure it is not raining in the windows or the French doors to the patio.  It plays a staccato tune on the green steel roof.

Three miles down the road in front of a house at the intersection of two country roads, a sign stands:  “In the name of Jesus pray for rain.”  Perhaps they have been praying hard.

Is there any privacy anymore?

/ Juliana Lightle / 5 Comments

Last month, my book of poetry, On the Rim of Wonder, was published by Uno Mundo Press, a small press in Arizona.  It is available on Amazon, coming on Kindle soon, and signed copies can be ordered from me.  Today I checked to see what happens if I put my name in the Google search, hoping the two books I have authored would show up or at least this blog would. Not only did this blog show up, but my Facebook, Twitter, photos, and much, much more.  Although I am not obsessed much with privacy–I consider myself to be quite the open book sort of person or the proverbial “you get what you see” type, I looked in shock at what I saw on the computer.  I stared in disbelief.

One website, not Google–guess I was too astonished to even remember its name–listed my age, the main road of my address, and showed (no, I am not making this up) an aerial photo of my house.  In a way this latter part seemed a bit funny because recently when I had to call the sheriff’s office (a bullet or rock shattered my passenger side car window on my way to opera practice) and they sent out two deputies, these deputies could not find my house.  They actually called me and told me to meet them at the road because they had no idea where to go.  If it had been something scary serious, something like a robbery, the thieves would have been far away while the deputies wandered up and down the road.  Often when I invite people over who have not been to my house before, they get lost, even with detailed directions. After seeing this personal information on the Internet, I feel relieved that my house is still hard to find.  On some other sites, the information appeared to be either confusing or erroneous–not sure which is worse.  I thought about looking further, but guessed it could only get more alarming.

How do I feel about all this?  What upsets me the most?  For starters, I remain horrified, insulted, and dismayed that my age would be published like that.  Guess that tells all of you something about my sensitivities.  Another concern is safety.  Is it really personally safe to have all this information out there for just anyone to find with so little searching?  Thankfully, I live behind a locked gate and Isabella, my dog, alerts me to anything unusual.  She is big, 80 pounds, and fierce looking–a mix of wolf, German shepherd, and blue heeler.  She can destroy a huge steak bone in as little as fifteen minutes.  Still, all this out there for all to see gives me pause.

 

 

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Long Life

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

If you believe in averages and want to live long, don’t live in the United States of America, a country that failed to make it to the top ten for either men or women.  Some countries appear to be better for one gender than another.  A few countries remain in the top ten for both genders:  Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Italy, and Luxembourg.  Iceland’s the place to be if you are a man, Spain for women.  Worldwide the mean for men is 68.1 and for women 72.7. Sadly, the discrepancy from country to country is immense.  Nine countries still show a life expectancy less than 55 years, all in sub-Sahara Africa.  War and AIDS take their toll.

Blue Zones remain the place to grow up and live if you desire a long healthy life.  Where are they?  Okinawa, a peninsula in Costa Rica–I’ve been close, Sardinia, Loma Linda in California–Seventh Day Adventists, to name a few.  Genetics, according to some experts, predicts only twenty per cent of longevity.  Then why do people in these places live long and healthy?  What do they have in common:

-healthy diets with lots of vegetables and fruit

-activity–the people there get a lot of exercise, e.g. climbing up and down the mountains of Sardinia

-a sense of community–people get together often

Some communities in the US plan to become Blue Zones.  Fort Worth, Texas, even has a Blue Zone project which includes encouraging restaurants to provide healthier options, a bike share program, and an initiative to combat childhood obesity.  My guess is that the United States will lag further and further behind unless the obesity epidemic can be controlled.  So far, I don’t see that happening.

What can you do to prolong your own life:

-don’t smoke

-eats lots of fruit and vegetables

-avoid sugar

-eat less meat and more fish

-eat less–Okinawans quit eating when they are 80 per cent full; they even have a saying for this

-spend time with friends and family

-find ways to increase your exercise even if it is as simple as throwing away your TV remote control

If I live the average of my parents and grandparents, I have a long way to go so I must take care of myself to stay healthy.

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Besame Mucho

/ Juliana Lightle / 3 Comments

Since I heard Besame Mucho twice in one night eight days ago, I cannot get this song out of my head.  First, a young opera singer sang it in a passionate, operatic style and later Trio Ellas sang it light heartedly.  Both sounded fine; not sure I even have a preference.  I translated for the young man I took with me, my grandson’s older brother who is Hispanic.  Students and parents in the United States seem to often ask why they need to know anything but English.  Once when I informed my students that Spanish was spoken here where we live before English and native languages before that, one student seemed shocked.  Guess he thought the natives spoke English before the English even arrived here.  He probably didn’t even think.  Thinking has become a lost art.

Here is a list of singers whose version of Besame Mucho you can find online.  I just listened to all of them; yes, it took a while.  Now what I want is a part-time boyfriend who likes to dance.

Andrea Bocelli

Pedro Infante

Consuelo Velasquez

Julio Iglesias

Julie Zorilla

Arturo Fuerte

Tino Rossi

Placido Domingo

Cesaria Evora

Il Divo

Yolanda Sanchez

 

Oh, and by the way, Besame Mucho means kiss me a lot.

 

Prom Night

/ Juliana Lightle / 6 Comments

Tonight was prom night where I teach high school  All teachers, unless they provide a really, really good excuse, must go.  Many teachers find this a rather tiresome assignment.  Last year I did not go until time for the cleanup crew because I was singing in a big concert.  Tonight I signed up for the first half and ended up staying a bit later because it was fun.  No kidding, I was having a good time for two reasons:  dancing and dressing up.  As a girlie girl, I really like to dress up and dancing is akin to heaven so…I teach in the “country”–not exactly far from town but they think country–horses, country music, guns, four wheelers–you get the idea.  I have owned horses for years, but I am not that kind of country.  Can I dance to country music–sure, but I never listen to it.  What did they play a lot of??  You guessed it, country music.  I did not dance to that, oh,no.  Once in a while they played something else.  I danced some fast dances.  I asked one student why he wasn’t dancing and he told me he did not know how to two step so I taught him.  It took less than five minutes.  He can dance–I had already fast danced for a few minutes with him.

Can most of these students dance well?  Not exactly, except for a few.  And then there is the question of super high heels.  Most of the girls arrived with them on their feet.  One half hour later they were dancing barefoot.  In a brief chat with the new principal, we discussed how perhaps we should provide dance  and high heel etiquette classes, starting about two months before prom night.  I often wonder how these ballroom dancers spend so much time dancing in high heels. Dancing is such fabulous exercise, I think I will try it alone at home to get in shape.  If I plan to take even a little walk in about six weeks at Simien National Park in Ethiopia, I must get in better shape than I am just doing yoga.  The mountains there are over 13,000 feet high.  Now I need some sleep.

Funeral Dream

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Her mind wanders in the soot filled

dreams when she was eighteen and lost,

tried to commit suicide her first year in

college.  Far from home with a homesick

roommate and people who ate this slimy

looking white stuff –grits–she’d never

heard of or seen.  Crazy people who

thought black peoples’–they called them

colored–only use was playing loud

music to dance to.  Who could adjust to

these southern belles riding horse to

hounds, dancing to music they couldn’t

touch with people they could never love.

In isolation she played piano for hours,

wrote depressing stories no one could read

and swallowed a bottle of bitter.  Changed

her mind, vomited in the infirmary, made

volcanoes in chemistry class, flew around

Washington, D.C. during Kennedy’s

funeral to avoid her own.

Wine tastings and a few favorite things

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Arrived home from work and fed Rosie.  Looked at the dry native grass around my house and decided to water a bit of it even though I loathe wasting water.  Green is probably safer than winter brown.  The recent giant wildfire raised my concerns about the fire danger in this drought.  I cannot remember when it rained and the next ten days show no rain in sight.  As soon as I finish writing this or shortly thereafter, I get to run back to town and join probably 100 plus other people at friends’ house to taste the wine and food brought by Market Street.  These friends run a bed and breakfast with a spectacular garden complete with koi pond and just about every kind of flower you can grow in this area.  It’s cool, nearly froze last night, so I will wear the black turtle neck and slacks I wore to work.  It’s hard to believe that it was just above freezing last night and is supposed to hit 100 next Monday–the desert has now reached here apparently.

Thinking about this leads me to think about some of my favorites, especially when it comes to wine:  zinfandels, especially from Lodi, California.  The moderately priced one I buy most often is OVZ.  It frequently goes on sale here which is even better.  I also like  Seven Deadly Zins–unfortunately I have never seen it on sale.  Basically, I love red wines and almost never drink white.  A moderately priced nice blend is Apothic Red.  Market Street had a super sale so I bought several–ten percent off if you buy six at a time.  The best malbec I ever drank came directly in baggage from Argentina, a present to me from my Argentinian exchange student when he arrived.  You can’t get it here and when his mom tried to ship me some, she was not allowed.

The students at school  kept commenting on my black attire today.  They asked if I was going to a funeral or something.  I laughed.  I like black; I look good in black.  It also shows off my turquoise jewelry.  My most favorite color is orange. Turquoise looks good with it too.  Red and green are ok.  Finally after decades I have learned to like hot pink, but really I am not a pink person–see my poem about Hot Pink Toenails–on an old blog.  It remains one of my blog posts that people look at most–I have no clue why.  The one color I really do not like is blue, especially pale blue. Perhaps tomorrow I will post about favorite books.  I really would like readers to comment about their favorites.  It fascinates me what people perceive and feel about this and that.  Often I am the only person I know who reads what I read.

Off to taste some new wines and maybe find a new favorite.

Solar Power and Utility Companies

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

 

 

 

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Sixteen solar panels reside on the top of my barn.  Inside an inverter transforms them into energy acceptable to the grid.  I net meter.  On a sunny day, and most are, this time of year my system generates 20 Kw per day.  Recently, I was considering getting more panels since my barn roof could accommodate at least twice as many and maybe more.  After reading about what has occurred in a number of other states, I might just wait and see what happens.

The giant utilities have begun a huge campaign against net metering.  In 2013 Xcel, the company here in the Panhandle of Texas, overtly attacked net metering in Colorado.  After the utility commission there received more that 30,000 comments and 200 protesters marched on Xcel’s Denver office, they backed off.  A poll indicated that more than three quarters of the people in Colorado support net metering.  The commission agreed to preserve net metering.  In Hawaii, a state leading the way with solar, the utility is fighting back, refusing to approve new systems.  Why?  One in ten houses there have solar on rooftops and this individually produced electricity is cutting into the Hawaiian Electric Company’s profits.  Arizona citizens can be added to this list.  Solar makes sense in Arizona with something like 95% of days sunny.  For the 2 per cent of the electric utility customers there with solar, it cuts their bills about 70 per cent.  Last summer the utility company launched a campaign against solar growth and net metering.  What they wanted was to charge customers retail rates while paying solar customers wholesale rates and charge them a monthly fee per Kw hour generated which would, of course, in most cases defeat the purpose of having solar in the first place.  They ran ads telling non solar customers that they had to pay more because of the solar generated by individuals with solar.  These ads were run by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an anti-renewable energy non-profit funded largely by the Koch brothers who own immense oil and gas interests.

I meet more and more people who decide to get off the grid partly for the independence and partly to avoid paying these money hungry utility companies.  Here in the Panhandle, electricity remains relatively cheap.  Even with a large all electric house and weather extremes, my electric bills average less than 350 per month.  If I spend a lot of money on more panels and the rules change here in Texas, it might not be worth the cost.  As I write this, I keep asking myself just how much would total independence from the electric company be worth?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Late at night

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Depending on where you are in the world, this may be the morning–like all my friends in Southeast Asia.  Or even a totally different day.  This commitment to write and then blog daily means that sometimes I may be a little less than perfectly coherent, e.g. now.  Just came home from a dinner party for some of us who are connected in some way or another with the Amarillo Opera.  Tomorrow night Amarillo Opera presents the annual Musica Variada performance featuring local Hispanic opera singers, all of whom are studying music at West Texas A & M University and Trio Ellas from Los Angeles–three young women who play traditional Mexican music, e.g. Mariachi and boleros (though I think actually the original boleros are from Cuba) and lots of other things.  The food, catered by a local Mexican restaurant, was not the typical TexMex food.  We imbibed Spanish wine, ate beef to melt in your mouth–coming from someone who rarely cooks beef, imbibed salad with chorizo in the Spanish style–harder and smokier than what one usually gets here in the Panhandle of Texas (part of El Norte).  And more Spanish wine.

Perhaps out of choice or some other reason I do not know, I am always surrounded, except at work, by people from all over the world.  At dinner I sat with friends from Columbia and Peru and my friends from here.  Across the way were my friends with the exquisite garden.  He is from Jordan.  Another young man with whom I spoke chatted about this and that in Spanish and English.  I ascertained he was Cuban; he confirmed.  I also visited with my friend who spends so much time traveling all over this part of the United States with an energy company that I rarely see her.  Tomorrow night I will go to the opera and wish dancing in the aisles was acceptable behavior.  If you want to hear some wonderful music watch videos of Trio Ellas.  You will be dancing in your house.  I promise.