Longtime lakeside resident Pete Johanson first installed a dozen solar panels on his home some 15 years ago. He continued adding panels in subsequent years, and each solar array was connected to its own inverter and eight large car-battery-sized storage units to back up his solar-generated power. 

Sweltering May weather got you down? With thermometers measuring afternoon temperatures at  30°C and up, it’s the time of year when we tend to crank up fans and AC units, strip down to minimal lightweight clothing, and wait it out until sunset brings the relief of evening breezes. The steady buzzing and chirping of cicadas, those hot-season insects often referred to as “rain birds,” tell us that the rainy season is still five or six weeks away.

Guadalajara’s water crisis is often described as a shortage. But according to water expert Arturo Gleason, the reality is more complicated — and more troubling.

“In Guadalajara, up to 60 percent of the rainwater is lost,” he said in a recent interview with the Reporter.

That contradiction — heavy rains and flooding on one hand, water shortages on the other — points to a deeper problem: not just how much water the city has, but how it manages it.

Long before the 40‑hour work week became a constitutional fact and Mexican workers earned the right to ignore a boss’s late‑night email (see box right), a major confrontation took place in a dusty Sonoran mining town called Cananea. There, on a June morning in 1906, more than 5,000 men put down their picks and issued a demand that seems modest by today’s standards: pay us the same as our U.S. coworkers. The army’s reply was gunfire. That massacre did not end the fight, but started a century‑long struggle for workers’ rights, which continues today.

The energy at the March 28 “No Kings” rallies across Mexico was unmistakable — from Mexico City and Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta and Ajijic, where organizers say the turnout and spirit exceeded expectations.

“The energy … was palpable,” said Janet Payne, head of the Democrats Abroad Lake Chapala chapter, describing a rally filled with “energetic speakers and talented singers” that left participants feeling part of something much larger — one of more than 3,300 events held worldwide that day.

I ordered “Andre, As I Knew Him” mostly to support a fellow writer and old friend, Dorit (Doris to me) Edut, never dreaming I would find this biographical sketch and memoir as engaging, poignant — and in parts even fascinating — as I did. 

I’d known Doris for years, long before she temporarily left her home and Israeli husband in Detroit for four years to study to become a rabbi in New York City. When she wrote me in February that she’d “finally” finished the book, 18 years after the events in its final pages, I knew that “Andre” must contain something compelling enough to merit such determination. Maybe it was the surprising coincidence revealed to Edut by Andre’s sister after his death — that the young, Bolivian-born, undocumented superintendent of her New York apartment building, whom she first met as he almost passed her on his bicycle on a busy New York street, was Jewish too.

The book is peppered with moments like this, with Edut at times noting something compelling her to ask questions and make remarks to Andre that piqued his revelations and earned his trust. She writes of her experience counseling troubled urban families, including gang members, yet Andre seems very different. As Andre’s tenant, Edut relied on him for fixing her faucet. And as his burgeoning non-romantic friend, she leaned on him for a fun introduction to New York, which grew into a bond so deep that it ended with her arranging for the headstone of his grave in an interfaith cemetery in Queens.

Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.