Uncategorized

What do people want?

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

As I looked at my blog statistics a few minutes ago, it dawned on me that apparently few others want what I want in life or care about what I care about.  Either that or most others like me do nor blog or read blogs.  One of my most popular posts over time had been a poem entitled “Hot Pink Toenails”.  My guess is that when individuals search and find this, they are not really looking for a poem about personal identity, the topic of this poem.  Maybe they have a foot fetish or are searching for some new type of nail color or pedicure.  My popular recipe posts I understand.  Who doesn’t want a great recipe for salmon or for tasty vegetarian dishes if you are vegetarian or entertaining vegetarian friends.  But hot pink toenails.  I would not even know what words to put in the search block to pull this up.

Sometimes to see if I can tag better to draw more traffic to my blog, I take a look at what visitors used for search terms.  Lately, “Costa Rica jungle flowers” and “what  did people wear to survive the dust bowl” showed up.  Both these make sense, the latter especially since a mini form of the dust bowl seems to have returned to this area of the country.  Yesterday and today, high winds and blowing dust like brown fog reigned.  It has become rather tiresome and scary, given that we have had no rain in so long I cannot remember when it rained at my house.  Miles of brown grass cover the landscape with the only relief being irrigated wheat fields and lawns.  I do not even want to think about what would happen if someone dropped a cigarette.  With a 45 mile per hour west wind like today, fire fighters would have an exceedingly difficult time.

For those who follow my blog and enjoy my posts about the environment, nature, etc., I won’t stop just because such topics often get fewer viewers.  These are things I passionately care about.  And for all of you who like facts, here are some to add to the fact list:

-80.000 acres of wetlands are lost annually in the US to intensifying coastal storms and sea level rise.

-The forest burn season in the western US has grown 50 per cent longer in the past 40 years.

-The once mighty Colorado River now dries up before it reaches the sea.

-Contrary to popular opinion, carbon emissions from power plants are not regulated.

-Money funneled into efforts to deny global warming and climate change, at least in the US, increasingly follow untraceable avenues.  They use pass through foundations, e.g. Donors Trust.

On a lighter note if you eat salmon and wonder what is safest to eat, here is the latest.  Canned salmon is safe because it is wild caught pink or sockeye salmon from Alaska with high Omega 3s and low mercury.  Most frozen and fresh salmon sold in the US is Atlantic farmed salmon with much higher mercury levels.  Grocery stores and packages indicate the type of salmon and whether wild caught so you can choose.

 

Poverty

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Proofs sent to the library at work–a high school–cannot legally be used on the shelves so they end up in various places.  Somehow I end up where they reside and read them.  My latest, The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert provides abundant food for hard core thinking.  The setting, a Caribbean island, reeks of political turmoil and the legacy of slavery.  Unless you are totally ignorant of Caribbean history and the various cultures there, it does not take long to figure out the setting is Haiti.  In case you want to read the book, I will give you only a cursory introduction.  The main character grows up in basically what we call here a slum.  His mom dies of malaria when he is quite young and  his dad owns a small store.  He hates it and focuses most of his life on getting out of these circumstances.  He gets a job and a place to live with a senator, meets important people, and eventually discovers an abandoned estate out in the country.  He moves there after it is bought by a wealthy foreign white woman who hires him to restore it.  He absolutely loves the place.  It is an island of beauty and peace in the middle of squalor, poverty, and strife.

The details you can read for yourself.  It’s focus is the dilemma many who grow up poor and want to better themselves face:  if you progress, are you abandoning your roots, to whom do you owe loyalty.  And, indeed, what is progress?  Civil war breaks out and the main character is torn between his desire for peace and a more elegant lifestyle in this beautiful place and the needs of the poverty stricken people who surround it and who at one point work there.  Is he a free person or just a fancier slave for the rich who own the place?  Has he deluded himself into thinking because he worked hard to get where he is that he is better?

Although the book’s setting is a particular place, the theme remains universal.  I think of individuals I personally know who could not cope with success and riches, who felt they must “save” all their relatives and then were left with nothing themselves.  The thinking is this:  if you come into money, you must share it with everyone; to keep it for yourself is morally wrong.  If this is the case, how can the cycle ever break?  This sort of thinking is very difficult for those of use who work hard and save for the future to understand.  We question why we should help them when they hit the bottom.

Yesterday my hard working, single mom, going to graduate school daughter went on a rant about people she knows who get food stamps, Medicaid, etc. while she works and goes to school and gets nothing.  They have fancier cars, better TVs, etc. than she does.  I do understand both viewpoints although I admit I am the frugal without being austere.  I remember a time several years ago when several of my poorer students–I teach at a Title 1 school–wore jeans more expensive than I would ever buy–its jeans.  We got into a discussion about this.  I informed them that all the clothing I had on except for underwear and socks came from a thrift store.  When I take things to the thrift store, I actually shop.  Thrift stores are full of “finds”.  The response of one student was echoed by others, “I would never go into a thrift store.  Someone might see me go in there.”  Because they were poor, they wanted to avoid anyone seeing them do anything they thought might confirm this.

Although fraud exists in programs for the poor, it also exists in high end banking and just about everything.  The solution is to work hard to investigate and prevent it.  I keep wondering what is the solution for the people truly in need?  Do we punish everyone to prevent the fraudulent acts of the few?  And what about the children?  What happens to the dependent young?  Obviously, the world has not found answers.  I wonder if we ever will.

Commitments, Hosting Benefits, and What We Take for Granted

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Shortness of post is necessitated by the time.  Why bother?  Nearly three weeks ago, I committed to writing daily.  Blogging seemed like a logical means to accomplish this.  I expect others and myself to follow through on commitments.  So here I am writing in the middle of the night.

Tonight I hosted a fund raiser for the Hilltop Senior Center here in Amarillo.  We tried to sell tickets in advance but not all that many sold.  The Director of the Center and I became a bit worried, but continued with planning, hoping some would show up even if at the last minute.  They did.  We had great Mexican food donated by Braceros on Sixth Avenue, wine, my wonderful well water, cheeses, fruit, and cakes.  Even the silent auction proved to be a great success.  However, nature became the real star of the event, nature and my dog Isabella.  Unlike earlier in the week when the wind shrieked to 6o miles an hour creating several days of endless dust, today the wind laid low, the sun shone, and it was hot.  This morning the heat went on and this afternoon the air conditioning as it rose to past 90.  Thirty degrees difference between night and day is rather typical here and some days, like to day, this difference increases to nearly forty.

At dark the stars seem so much brighter out here in the country.  Many of the guests walked back and forth on the patio, looking for different constellations.  People came inside for a while only to go back out and look at the stars and the crescent moon.  What I take for granted daily, became a wonder for my company.  As I write this, I think about all the things each of us take for granted, things we eat, experience, feel daily.  How often do we really take the time to appreciate these things, to realize that although they may be ordinary for us, for others they would be incomparable blessings.  So now as I finish this, get ready for bed, and snuggle into my cool sheets, I will meditate and give thanks to the universe for the wonder of the stars.

 

The Sound of Silence

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

For years I puzzled over what this phrase means.  This evening I discovered the answer.  Unlike the first part of the week, today was sunny, little wind, high 70s, what most consider a perfect day weather wise.  I ran home from work, gave Rosie, my horse, some food, let Isabella, my dog out for a bit, and then ran back to town to see my grandson perform.  He attends Wolflin Elementary School.  The physical education teacher selected a group of students called the SWAT Team who perform at different functions.  The last time I saw them, they performed at a local high school’s basketball tournament.  Today they executed four routines at their school’s annual gala, a fund raiser with games, food, a silent auction, dunking in the water, that sort of thing.  It really astonished me.  I have no idea how much they practiced, but these routines were not short and everything was perfectly choreographed.  First, the boys performed using basketballs to do various tricks and movements in unison to music.  Then  the girls did this complicated sort of dance over these long bamboo poles that other students clicked together.  The only other place where I have seen anything like this is in Thailand at the Rose Garden near Bangkok.  The third routine included both boys and girls and they used this giant circle of multicolored cloth to dance around, in and out, make the cloth into a sort of yurt like shape.  I have no idea how they kept it up like a giant circular tent one minute and flat the next.  Finally, they competed with hoola hoops to see who could keep going the longest.

After I returned home, I hosed off the front entryway, planted some flowers in pots, and watered other flowers, all in preparation for a fund raiser tomorrow night at my house–to raise money for a local senior citizens center.  Rosie is shedding her winter coat and seemed miserable itching so I brushed her.  Now tufts of pale rose colored hair lay everywhere in her corral.  Finally, a bit after eight I came inside for a late dinner.  Then I noticed.  No sounds, no wind, no appliances humming, no coyotes howling, no birds singing, no dogs barking, no sounds at all.  Nothing.  The patio doors are open; I walked outside a few minutes ago.  Nothing.  I sit here before the computer and hear the sounds the keys make when I hit them.  When I stop, nothing.

Rosie

 

Rosie

 

SAM_0301

 

Isabella on the patio in winter.

SAM_0160

 

They started blooming today.

Friends

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This day, like many, has flown by in a whirl wind.  On May 3, I am hosting a benefit for a local senior citizens’ center.  We will have a silent auction, food, and drinks.  Over one hundred invitations have been sent, but only a few have actually bought tickets in spite of the fact that quite a few people have told me they plan to attend.  Customs vary in different parts of the United States.  When I lived east of the Mississippi River, people actually religiously responded to request for an RSVP.  Here in the Texas Panhandle, not so much.  At this juncture, I have no clue how many people will show up.

About two and on half hours ago, my friends showed up with the forks and spoons and plates and wine and auction items.  These items currently reside in one of the guest bedrooms and the garage.  We decided to have some wine and then I dug out cheese and crackers and some more wine and more cheese and crackers.  And we visited.

A downside of United States life for me is the pace.  Everything is done in a huge hurry.  People even gulp their food.  I especially notice the difference when I spend time with people from other cultures who take hours to eat dinner and visit.  When one of my best friends from India lived here and I invited others over, we took hours to eat and visit.  Recently, when a US friend brought his exchange student from Italy over to ride my horse and his daughter and wife showed up as well, we rode, and then fixed dinner.  We cooked, visited, and ate leisurely.  The young woman said she felt so at home because we were spending time, visiting, cooking, everything leisurely.  I frequently cook dinner very late by US standards, e.g. eight o’clock at night.  When my exchange students from South America lived with me, they thought this was normal.  People there eat late by standards here.  My daughter tells me I have become more and more like all these people from other countries with whom I spend time.  I laugh.

Tonight’s experience further validated my belief in the value of friends and time spent with them.  This was not one of those planned, elaborate events.  We just sat, drank, ate, and enjoyed the pleasure of each other’s company.  It was wonderful.

 

Volunteering at Palo Duro Canyon

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

424908_2650517636082_1731467384_n

In front of the Visitor’s Center with Eduardo and Gaston, exchange students who lived with me several years ago.

 

Occasionally, I volunteer in the gift shop at Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the United States.  If  individuals drove through Amarillo on I-40 through the endless flat prairie land and never ventured far, they would not even be able to dream up this canyon only twenty miles away.  To get there, you have to drive through more flat land, covered in wheat pasture, corn, milo, and the few remaining pastures of native grass.  You can see for miles; you can even see the taller buildings in Amarillo which are not all that tall.  Then, unexpectedly the land opens up, cliffs appear.  The first time you see it, you feel astonishment.  Nothing you see on the way there prepares you.  Years ago Battelle Memorial Institute sent me on a business trip to Amarillo.  People told me I should go see the big canyon.  I laughed to myself, thinking they must be just talking about a large arroyo.  When I finally did drive down, my mouth gaped in shock.  How could this be?

Palo Duro Canyon is still being created by water erosion.  The Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River (no I did not make this name up) runs through it.  Barely a running stream now with the drought, when a big summer thunderstorm blasts it fury, this river can rise ten feet almost immediately.  When it does this, campers remain stranded inside the park until the river calms down because to get into the park, depending how far in you go,  you have to literally cross the river repeatedly.  Because of this, they have decided to build bridges across the five water crossings.  Some of us who love driving through the water find this innovation unacceptable.

Today, I volunteered from 1-5.  People came in from Indiana, Minnesota, Ecuador, south Florida–on a trip to Californian and back, Ohio, Germany–a young woman working as a nanny here.  Usually, I meet even more people from other countries, especially European countries.  When I ask the Germans in particular how they know about this place, they tell me Palo Duro Canyon and its history is featured on the Internet there.  Here come all these people from far away and I have students who live a mere 25 miles away and have never seen it.  The family from Indiana came because their daughter wants to attend West Texas A & M University in Canyon, Texas–named after the canyon of course.  She told me she wants to bring her horse and WT is one of the few universities in the country where you can major in agriculture and participate in an extensive horse program.  She exuded excitement and enthusiasm.

In the midst of chatting with all these visitors, I noticed the unusual behavior of one woman in particular.  She had medium grey hair pulled back in a ponytail with hair a lighter shade of grey framing her face. All her clothes were dark grey.  She walked to the book area–we sell a lot of books, and started flipping slowly through several of them.  She picked them up as if they were delicate flowers or fragile glass.  She held them as if she thought they might break if she held them tight.  When she put one up to look at another, it appeared as if she barely touched them.   She never smiled, just looked and looked and looked.  She did not buy a book.

Water, Water, Where?

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Today, I drove about fifty miles to watch a play especially produced by my friend, King Hill, for the Gem Theatre in Claude.  I almost did not go because of high winds and blowing dust.  Between 8 and 10 this morning visibility was so low  it was impossible to see the horizon.  High wind and blowing dust warnings started yesterday.   Now, as I write this, these warnings have continued for more than 24 hours.  Red flag warnings flash across the TV screen. Thankfully, not quite the dust bowl extremes, not yet anyway.

Originally, a green sea of grass covered all the land where I live in the Panhandle of Texas, the Llano Estacado. Immense herds of buffalo roamed free.  This prairie grass protected the land from erosion.  Rivers and an occasional canyon interrupted this endless sea, including the Canadian River, Palo Duro Canyon and the network of canyons running into it.  Once the Spanish brought horses, Kiowa and Comanche ruled this sea for more than a hundred years.  Under a full moon, the Comanche reigned by night raids from Nebraska to Mexico.

What happened?  Plows brought by people from the East dug up the grass.  These people planted the crops they knew, wheat, corn.  They settled in towns and homesteaded the country. They brought cattle and in some areas developed gigantic ranches.  Hunters killed all the buffalo except a few the famous rancher Charlie Goodnight and his wife managed to save.  Remnants of this southern herd now live at Caprock Canyons State Park near the tiny town of Quitaque, Texas.  Those who farmed dry land farmed.  In a normal year crops grew, the people prospered.  In dry years dust blew because there was no grass to hold the dirt.

Today, giant pumps pull water from the aquifers, the Ogallala, the Santa Rosa. My well is 400 feet deep, some are nearly 900.  More and more people move here from other parts of the United States.  They want lawns like the ones they had where it rains forty inches a year.  It does not rain much here, twenty in a good year, ten in a bad year.  These aquifers lose much more water to irrigation in a year than are replenished by rain.  Farmers grow corn,wheat, cotton, and milo, all irrigated.  In some places where  the water became to saline for crops, the pumps sit abandoned.

Today, I drove by miles and miles of dry, thirsty grass, perfect fuel for the wind driven wildfires which sometimes start this time of year.  In other places irrigation pivots rained water on immense emerald fields of wheat.  I could not help but wonder how much of this water evaporated in the sixty mile an hour wind.  As I finish writing this with the TV on  weather watching, I see Fire Weather Watch, High Wind Warning, Red Flag Warning flash across the screen. I hear the wind roar and heavy outdoor furniture slide across the patio.  I’ve seen wildfires, had a half mile of cedar post fence burned down.  All it takes is a tiny piece of cigarette thrown from a truck or car, a flash of dry lightning.  They predict three more days of this.

I love the space, the vermillion sunsets, the intense blue of the sky.  I watch my neighbors water, water, water their new houses in the country.  I think about those pivots irrigating in the wind, and I wonder what will happen when all the water’s gone.

 

SAM_1369

 

 

 

 

Dinner Parties and Commitments

/ Juliana Lightle / 3 Comments

When I committed to writing daily and then blogging, it never occurred to me that this might entail writing in the middle of the night after hosting a dinner party and then cleaning up.  Some people just go to bed and clean up in the morning.  Yuck!!!  Who wants to wake up to a big mess with bits of food solidified to plates and remnants of red wine looking like dried blood in the bottom of wine glasses.  No me.  So here I am fulfilling my commitment to write daily.

Usually, I invite a lot of people over and work like crazy or give up and do potluck. This time I decided on something simple for six friends (three couples).  One friend is a vegetarian so everyone ate vegetarian.  The menu included homemade refried black bean casserole–the favorite of two of these friends.  The recipe for this dish is on a previous blog post.  In honor of my former exchange student son, Gaston Luis Zulaica del Sueldo, I made one of my best salads ever.  When he lived with me, he made salad almost every night, spectacular, colorful salads.  I made a mixture of Jasmine and several other kinds of rice and the following casserole which has no name so guess I will need to invent one.

Vegetarian Casserole with Soyrizo

Pour enough olive oil into the bottom of a heavy casserole dish to cover it.  Thinly slice purple potatoes (I think they are called blue, but they look purple to me), and cover the bottom with a layer of these.  Cover the potatoes with a layer of chopped onions, then a layer of coarsely chopped poblano peppers–I added a few halved and seeded jalapeños.  The next layer is soyrizo crumbled to completely cover the previous layers.  If you are not vegetarian, use chorizo.  Repeat the previous layers.  Combine 3 T of flour and 1 cup milk.  Pour over the top of the casserole.  Bake until the potatoes are done.  You can make all this several hours in advance and pour the milk mixture over it just before it goes in the oven.  I actually used the grill outside on low to bake it this time–warm day and did not want to heat up the house.  We finished off dinner with chocolate chip mint ice cream with Chambord poured over the top.  We also enjoyed a while dessert wine called Electra.

SAM_1497

 

Salad a la Gaston

 

SAM_1498

 

Good friends.

 

SAM_1499

 

Pretty ladies

Myanmar Then and Now-Part Two

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Something happened to my camera while in Burma when it was Burma years ago.  For this essay, I tried downloading current photos and found the panoramic view of the Shwedagon Pagoda above and the close up below.

 

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I looked at current photos of the Inya Lake Hotel and stared in astonishment.  The current luxurious resort bears no resemblance to the hotel I stayed in all those years ago.  Only the garden photos seem familiar.

As Myanmar attempts modernization, downsides exist.  One concern is deforestation and the consequences for the abundant rare and endangered wildlife there.  Much of Myanmar is rainforest and remains one of the most biodiverse areas in the world.  Fifty years of isolation and limited development have protected wildlife.  Foreign development and investment endanger wildlife.  New laws and polices are created daily.  The Irrawaddy dolphin, a close relative to the killer whales, live in both the Mekong and Irrawaddy Rivers.  Rare Indochinese tigers, Asian elephants, gibbons, and langurs thrive in the remote forests.  Between 1990 and 2011 the amount of forests dropped from 60 per cent to 48 per cent.  So much of the country is relatively unexplored that it is difficult for scientists to even know exactly what species live there.  Many questions arise:  how can Myanmar successfully development economically and simultaneously save their rich wild heritage, how can they merge the old and new, how can they build the proposed new highway between Bankok, Thailand and Dawei, Myanmar without destroying precious natural resources.  Hopefully, they will find a way to prosper and save their natural heritage at the same time.

Myanmar Then and Now-Part One

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

More than twenty years ago, I went to Myanmar when it was still called Burma.  I flew there from Katmandu.  Compared to the cool, crystalline mountain air of Nepal, the hot, moist, Burmese air felt stifling, thick.  Day one, we left the Inya Lake Hotel and traveled to downtown Yangon to purchase tickets to Pagan.  We never left Yangon because the first of many revolts against the military government started.  Everyone strongly opposed going there by the night train and the last plane headed that way had been shot down.  Personally, I was willing to take the risk but could find no one else willing to go with me.  Everyone was under a 6 pm to 6 am curfew.  Unexpectedly, hundreds of hotel guests were confined to the hotel and its grounds, thankfully rather expansive.  This unusual circumstances provided unexpected opportunities.   To accommodate feeding everyone dinner, the hotel staff asked guests to share tables.  I shared a table with a man from South Korea there to build a sport shoe factory, two women from Germany headed to a medication retreat, and a gentleman with an English accent.  We shared life stories except the “Englishman”.  His sharing seemed a little “off”.  Later, when the rest of us chatted and put together what little he shared, we decided perhaps he was an arms dealer.  One evening guests experienced the privilege of watching the guests for an elaborate Burmese wedding, complete with traditional wedding clothing.

Although clean and orderly, this “one of the best hotels in Burma” looked more like photos of Russian army barracks than the hotels to which most of the guests were accustomed and absolutely nothing like anything else near Yangon.  Few cars roamed the streets.  The most common vehicles were small pickup trucks in which the bed had been transformed into an open air van complete with seats and a cloth roof.  The populace exuded an air of dejection.  Those who bothered to save money saw it devalued to nearly nothing.  The once elegant, ornate buildings showed signs of disrepair and decay.  A country which was once the world’s largest exporter of rice was rationing it as well as gasoline.

Unless you sleep twelve hours a day, curfews present challenges.  What do you do with yourself for all those evening hours after 6 pm hits besides eat a leisurely dinner.  I walked the glorious hotel gardens repeatedly and became acquainted with the hotel gardener who spoke perfect English and whose father had attended Columbia University.  His roses were as tall as I am.  He asked me repeatedly, ” How does my garden measure up to modern standards?”  When I offered tp send him horticulture magazines, he told me they would be confiscated as evil, foreign influences.  Paddle boats lined the lake’s edges.  Guests could use them free but  guests were told not to go far out because we might get shot at.  The luxurious villas of the ruling military elite lay readily visible on the distant opposite shoreline.

During the day, everyone rushed out to make the most possible out of the 12 free hours.  Mainly, I recall an overwhelming sense of gold, glitter, and glass tiles reflecting the tropical light.  At first, it induced a feeling of slight nausea, so much sensory input I felt slightly sick.  But I adjusted.  As if scattered, glittery golden temples were not enough, there rose the Shwedagon Pagoda, 99 meters covered in gold, real gold.  I spent an entire day there, wandering its environs and still missed some of it. Saffron clad monks, vendors selling “sacred” items and snacks, nearly a city within itself,  old, originally  built in 1372 and 344 feet high, repeatedly rebuilt after earthquakes and foreign raids.  Impressive is an understatement.

If Burmese history and culture interest you, I recommend three fascinating novels:

–To Save Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan

–The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

–The Glass Palace by Amitov Ghosh

All three focus on one or more of the ethnic groups that inhabit Myanmar and on their relationships with each other.  The latter two are historical novels and in particular Ghosh’s book provides a fascinating history of that part of Asia.