Columns

Maybe it is due to the springtime heat wave that’s kicking in, or some weird alignment of the planets, but for some reason a lot of my fellow expats have become extremely cranky of late. 

It seems to me that climate change is devastating the USA … and I’m not talking about environmental matters. It’s the scorched earth condition of the nation’s political landscape that’s given me a rampant case of patriotic blues. 

Whew! The Easter holiday rush is over and I’m still here to tell the story, a survivor of some of the hairiest roadway antics I’ve ever witnessed. 

What do colored eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow chicks and a gift-bearing cotton tail have to do with Easter? Well, as far as popular customs in Mexico go, nothing at all.

Joni Mitchell’s catchy tune keeps running through my head: 

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot, with a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore --

While I nodded, nearly napping,

Suddenly I was being eaten alive by a swarm of ants.

This is all true. Tiny, tiny ants no larger than electrons started eating my foot.It was a horror show. So horrible that it is fitting to steal the words from Edgar Allan Poe to set the stage. Poe, as you all know, wrote “The Raven,” a tragicpoem that concludes with the raven eating Poe’s foot. (At least I think that’s how it ends. Poe never ends anything with big laughs.)