Columns

Let me say first-off that in most respects, my retirement brain has been a loyal and reliable servant, at least when it comes to my personal safety going up and down stairs after too many margaritas, or trying to convert grams to ounces when preparing margaritas. Or, even just remembering where I leave my margaritas when I go off to take my Krill Oil. 

For some emigres here at Lakeside, the recent peso decline has turned to a worry about a future foraging for food and ferreting out a secret home in someone’s tool shed, and taking placebos for medical conditions, seeing as they do only slightly worse than their regular meds and are much cheaper. (Some even freshen your breath.)

“In five years’ time Facebook will be definitely mobile, it will be probably be all video,’” said Nicola Mendelsohn, an executive at Facebook, at a conference in London this past September. Mendelsohn went further, suggesting that statistics have shown the written word becoming all but obsolete, replaced by still and moving images and speech. 

For my neighbor Carlos, Father’s Day (El Día del Padre) is not only about a reunion with his three daughters, their spouses and his grandchildren, but also about taking a quiet moment to remember his own deceased father.

The Mexico City subway system is the second largest in the Americas, second only to New York. It serves 4.5 million users per day, with 12 lines serving 95 stations over 141 miles. It is a cultural treasury as well, incorporating art in the form of unique designs, historical and literary murals, as well as musicians playing classical, ranchera, and traditional music in the acoustical tunnels. The Mexican subway system is the great leveler, carrying doctors and lawyers as well as housemaids and store clerks to work each day.

In 1863, when the Civil War was raging in the United States, Emperor Maximilian, backed by the French Army, had taken Mexico City.