Open Thread

Oh, yeah. I’ve meant to mention many times that I don’t go long form with my comments because I’m limited to using an iPhone, so I’m forced to keep it short if not pithy. Otherwise I’d be blasting it out. Everyone’s the better for it no doubt.

Great posts by mago, thank you. I don’t know if “everyone’s the better for it.” But I have a problem being concise (Moon in Gemini) so maybe could learn the discipline.

Just chilling here on a Saturday in the precincts near Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. Most things much cheaper here. Got the problem with my main Visa card supposedly solved, but dude at my NorCal Credit Union said that it’ll take 10 days minimum for a new card to arrive. If I didn’t have my backup AmEx I would’ve been jodido (fucked). Fortunately have a professional and my sis to send me money if things went entirely off the rails.

Set 2 records coming here: 1. Me & my buddy had to pass over Pico de Orizaba, the 3rd highest mountain in all of North and South America, luckily my 2013 Toyota Corolla is a Beast, had no problems. If you don’t know about Pico de Orizaba, see the Wiki here– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_de_Orizaba

Snow-capped year round, evidently. Most surprising, there’s a permanent village about 80% of the way up, they must be hardy people living up that high, air thinner, stronger lungs. Even the year I spent in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I noticed my lungs got stronger. When I was flying across country thru O’Hare airport, in 2021, 1 long flight of stairs got me winded. I’m 5 years older, but lungs seem stronger now. Nietzche’s dictum. We could see the village widely spread out as we were slowly descending behind the big semi-trucks, very carefully, but would’ve had to go miles out of our way to get there.

2nd record– The Merida area is the 2nd safest place in all of North and South America. Few if any gangs here, streets safe. I’m in my hotel until tomorrow, maybe longer if a room opens up.

Don’t even have a “Mexico” stamp in my new passport yet, just assumed to be tourists, I seem to be an anodyne character mostly, despite being 6 feet tall and towering over most of the locals.

I’ll close with a minor queja, complaint. We all code racially, like it or not. Until I was 48, my skin was very dark, when in Mexico or elsewhere I passed. Not now in my 60s. La gente indigena know I’m not one of them. (My 1% Mongolian/Asian blood shows a bit in my blunt facial features, pretty subtle though.)

Many of the hotel staff try to start with English with me, if they speak it. I immediately ask politely that we use Spanish. Just took an elevator ride with a dude who looked like a Mexican to me, shorter and darker. Nope. He said something in English, I replied defensively and said in Spanish, “I’ve spoken Spanish since 1984.” He said “English please,” I switched, turns out he’s from Virginia!! It’s a small world.

Some song quotes apply: Joe Strummer of The Clash bragged decades back of his “safe European home”, but those days are over!! Santa Fe had lots of property crime, Texas lots of violence. Going to stay in Mexico for my golden years, get my sanity back and not feel paranoid of endless small corporate rip-offs and government dysfunction. Great comments by all on the Fundamenttal Political Question of Production & Distribution thread, sorry I missed it, too late to meaningfully comment now. I have researched getting citizenship here, can do it in a couple of years. Kafka’s “Amerikka” will plague me less and less and things move forward, so glad it’s in the rear-view mirror.

So I wouldn’t be dog gone, I’d be long gone, and it seems there’s no one here but me, and all my many dog friends are long gone leaving me all alone.
Worst thing is to die before your dog and leave him bereft and all alone.

Header: Garden Update

I planted a couple more waves of the potatoes I had over time. Most recently I planted a last few redskin potatoes I still had from last fall. They had begun sprouting and ranged from semi-firm to semi-limp. I planted them in earliest August in three empty cornholes where no corn ever came up. And some of them are now visibly growing.

Of the ten or so okra plants which started growing , 2 are beginning to grow fast and one is growing semi-fast. If any of them have produced viable re-plantable seed by Fall killfreeze, they may well be ‘selected’ for doing okay, especially if planted on time.

I let my Plum Market hot garlic mostly drown in a sea of weeds. When I dig up that area I will see if I have any replantable little ones. Of my feral garlic which regrows in place year after year, I picked off the immature little bulbils from the stalk-top bulbil-head and the ones whose vestigial flowers responded best and produced a semi-ornamental quality bloom are being saved for separate replanting, to see if I get a more flowerscape-worth ornamental garlic ( with the edible cloves of course.)

Semi-soon it will be time to dig up the first waves of potatoes whose plants have all died down, and see what I have.

File this under “even with the end of Trump things are unlikely to be much different”: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/19/trump-backed-down-from-50-percent-tariffs-on-canada-its-not-a-taco-01042377