I’m posting this link because when I make Google searches on my name — yes, I really do want to see what pops up first — an ancient YouTube channel is numero uno, unfortunately. I can’t get rid of it. I don’t know the email address that was used to start it. For the past twenty years, I’ve had the same email addresses; I must have used someone else’s…which is bizarre, but not unthinkable. That channel was a collaboration with one of my children, who, I’m sure, does not wish to be named. I stopped posting content due to the turn towards mockery the videos took. My fault. I always meant to change the theme but dropped it instead. I’m pleased that only two videos were posted. Still, after all these years, it comes first in a Google search. I really wish there was a way to nuke it.
Here is my current channel: Jill Domschot YouTube . Please subscribe and like my videos, obviously. Also, if you’d like to join a livestream, let me know in the comments. Livestreams are preferable, in my opinion, unless there’s nobody there to talk to.
It’s been a long haul, but my book is now out of the editing phase and into the formatting phase. However, my book cover is not ready yet because the artist and I took it back to the drawing board after having a working cover neither of us were satisfied with. She is a busy artist, and I’m happy she is. Here is a link to her website: Clorinda Design Studio.
Once, when I was doing a Zoom meeting in front of the original Clorinda fiber art of my previous book cover, someone in the meeting commented on it. She asked me if it was possible to get a smaller version of it. I said, yes, my book! She seemed a bit stymied by this. Art is immediate and visual, and can be displayed. A book is longer and more difficult.
Oh, well. I’m not going to give up just because our culture has a collective short attention span. Reading has gone from “Grab me by the throat in the first two sentences or I’ll put your book down and never read it” to “I won’t read it, but I might have ChatGPT summarize it for me.” Considering AI can now give you the deeper themes of the book and get them dead on, you won’t even miss out on the message you’re meant to internalize.
On the other hand, maybe you won’t internalize it because the human soul grasps actual stories, not summaries, and has since they told them by rote around the communal fire. You know, back in the days when we not only had the attention span for stories but could memorize them. To be fair, in the ancient days, books were difficult to come by and most people were illiterate. Stories had to be memorized to be passed to future generations. Now, our brains are going to rot without the ability to focus on books or memorization, and our souls are going to reach for what they need like a man in a drought holding out his parched tongue to collect a few drops of morning dew.
In other words, you will rescue yourself from the brink of death if you read my books.
I hate when life feels like it’s simply getting through one day or a weekend or even a week. We should have moments to pause and enjoy the stillness. On Holy Thursday, I was the cantor at the Mass and afterward felt so unsure of myself that I scurried out the side door of the church and walked home to let go of all the accumulated stress and proceeded to finish what I hadn’t completed during the workday.
On Good Friday, I was off work and was not the cantor at the Veneration of the Cross. Therefore, I was slightly more relaxed. But I still sang with the choir, which can be exhausting. For that reason, I chose to exhale a few moments in the Daily Mass Chapel, where three strong men had carried in the cross with the form of Jesus still on it. The beauty of the silence and the vision of flickering candles surrounding the altar where the body of Christ waited in the form of bread finally allowed me to let go – of everything. It was so beautiful that I quietly took a picture of it. Not being a photographer by vision or trade, I never can quite manage capturing the beauty I see. Lost in this image is the flickering candlelight, for example.
I never want to view the Triduum as a time to “get through.” It’s there to experience the path to the Cross and then the Resurrection at the Easter Vigil. It’s the peak of the church calendar – we celebrated the birth of Christ in December – but this was how his journey on Earth ended. Death. And then new life. He gave his life that we could live forever with God. We should never forget that im the midst of our busy lives we’re desperately trying to get through until the day we die. At that moment of our death, I wonder how much we ponder having gotten through.
Oh, well, that is what singing is for. Singing helps us to truly live. It’s a joyful gift from God, and if I’m allowed to sing at Masses, I will continue to do so out of gratitude for what God has done for me. I will do this even when life is a whirlwind of one event after another. I haven’t played my accordion in three days! The accordion is also what makes life worthwhile, the instrument being a beautiful gift from God. Always and forever.
Assumption of the BVMSt. John the BaptistSt. PeterPoor Clare Monastery
These are the Catholic services and Masses for Holy Week. Assumption is also offering a Reconciliation Service at 6 PM Monday evening. There will be ten priests available to hear confessions in Spanish or English.
I highly recommend going to all three services, beginning with the Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper. There is a footwashing portion of this special Mass. In my most recent YouTube video, I discuss how crucial it is to have a personal relationship with Jesus. That is what distinguishes rote, impotent religion from pure and good religion. The Catholic church has historically made that possible with traditions such as the Triduum and praying the Stations of the Cross. Through these traditions, we are brought right in the center of the life of Christ and shown how to be Christlike.
When I was in the thick of editing as a side freelance job while writing the book that became The Minäverse, I did a few work stints in the Roswell Mall. Like many small town malls, it persists with a few anchor stores that are hanging on. This one has a Bealls and a JCPenney and a couple of shoe stores, a GNC…. You get the idea.
It’s small and cozy, with one main wing and a few short side halls. Being from the 80’s era, it is filled with natural lighting from the skylights and high ceilings; the light falls on the neutral tones of the tile work on the floor. The benches are pale wood as part of the aesthetic of being in nature while indoors and spaced throughout for the malcontents who no longer wish to be shopping while their significant other is in the thick of buying the perfect shoes for whatever. The only element lacking is the potted plants, which I’m sure used to exist at one time. Sans the synthetic fragrances, the mall is a peaceful and relaxing place to be. It can even be a healthful place if you go on the mall walking tour. I’m not sure how many times up and down the main hall makes a mile, and the intrigue won’t be there as it certainly will be at the cemetery, but many people do indeed keep their step count up at the Roswell Mall.
I spent a good chunk of my Saturday here this week trying to sell raffle tickets for the nonprofit, Roswell Night Skies. The mall manager is on the board, and she set up a table for us near the main entrance for selling as many tickets as we could manage on a busy Saturday. Unfortunately, it was not a busy Saturday by any measure, and the usual crowd that would be buying pictures of their kids with the Easter bunny were off doing other Roswell activities.
That is one reason, of course, for needing to stay on top of the local community calendar. While my interests tend towards cemetery walks and norteño concerts, actual family events should be on my radar. As it turned out, there were a few other fundraisers and an Easter egg hunt at the military institute. And who knows what else? Saturday is the one day of the week this mall is usually busy. Mala suerte that today wasn’t.
Overall, it hasn’t been a bad day. I’ve enjoyed myself, if nothing else. Next week is Holy Week, one of the busiest weeks of the year for the Catholic church. The office will be busy, and I will be singing first at a funeral, and then for the Masses and Good Friday Veneration of the Cross of the Triduum. I love the Triduum, and I have no fewer than two blog posts in drafts I wrote about this important three days of the church calendar. Somehow, I never managed to publish them. Maybe I’ll publish something next week.
Meanwhile, I’m now soaking up the relaxation at the Sunshine laundromat. I’ve used this same location to wash my clothe on and off since moving to Roswell, when I had no washer and dryer at my disposal. I don’t recommend a laundry tour of Roswell — there’s one that’s scabby, where you will find meth heads that manage a load every now and again; there’s one that’s in-between in its cleanliness, and then there’s Sunshine. Well, there’s no other choice. Honestly, I like the sound and feel of laundry running. And unlike the mall, there are potted plants filling one entire corner of the shop. Water, soap, sunshine*, and plants are balms for the soul.
I’ve also spent some time editing and writing books here while the washers or dryers are running. Maybe I could come up with a writing tour of Roswell: Places I’ve Carried My Current Writing/Editing Tool: the mall, Sunshine Laundry, Stellar Coffee, Denny’s, Starbucks, the Roswell Library, Assumption Church (while waiting for choir practice or other events), Gateway gym, Christ’s Church…. That’s all I can think of right now.
I hate to admit I’ve used AI to do anything when there are authors who are using AI to write entire books. I can guarantee you I have way too much ego to do that. By that, I mean that I value my own writing voice too much to sanitize it with a whitewashed tone. I will also continue hiring a real artist to create my book covers, my friend Clorinda Fresquez-Tria. I also will continue to hire an editor who has a human brain and can make sense or not make sense of writing that comes from a real human mind. In the future, I plan to hire real voice actors to narrate my books for audio. Right now, I can’t afford it. Someday, I will be able to and until that time, I refuse to cut corners and create AI audiobooks. I hate AI vocal timbers. The closer they come to real human voices, the worse they are. You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure, because companies are using AI voices for their ads on YouTube videos and they are as annoying as heck.
However, AI is really great at scanning my own human-written 120,000 work novel and summarizing it. You can read the blurb it came up with here. Last week, I was equally inspired to use AI to create my characters. This is where my misadventures with AI came in.
As I created images, the AI program learned to develop blocks that wouldn’t allow me to ask for certain parameters. For example, I was allowed initially to specify ethnicities such as “Polish priest” or “Mexican delivery driver.” I even got away with asking AI to make my Mexican character look more indigenous Mexican rather than Spanish. Oh, boy. Then, it gave me a speech about not using ethnic stereotypes in images when I asked it to create the Irish secretary. It was the word “Irish” it didn’t like. Okay. It suggested, instead, that I use descriptors like “red hair and freckles.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that an Irish stereotype? Once that block appeared, I couldn’t get away with using any ethnic descriptors and had to get really cagey with how I was asking it to create people: “maintenance man from the Southwest” or “electrical engineer at a norteño party in the Southwest.”
When I wanted my electrical engineer to be in his backyard holding his child to denote that he works from home and has children, it eventually developed a block that wouldn’t allow me to request an adult and a child in an image together, even though I was asking only for innocent images. It told me I could have a picture of a child alone in a yard or an adult alone in a yard, but not both together. Naturally, I asked it if it thought it was better for a child to be left unsupervised in a yard, and it told me it could not make moral statements about leaving children alone, only that it couldn’t get around the block that didn’t allow it to create an image of an adult with a child in the same image.
The next block I came across was regarding age. It had made my nineteen-year-old character look about thirty, so I asked it to make him a few years younger. My character suddenly became ten. I asked it to make him look nineteen again, and it developed a block that claimed that it couldn’t assume traits or features based on age, despite that there is actual science behind age progression. Sigh. AI is a hassle, but it became a weird obsession for me last week. See what you think of how I did getting around the blocks and describing my characters.
Like it or not, my job involves death because I’m a church secretary. It has been a challenge for me to experience the passing of people I’ve grown to love or to comfort the bereaved by helping them plan funerals. If that weren’t difficult enough, I also sell burial niches to the living. There is nothing like selling burial plots to remind you of your own mortality. Not that I’ve purchased one for myself. But many people around my age are proactive about this because they are good to their children. I suppose I should be good to my children, too.
The other day when I sold several burial niches to a parishioner, we got to talking in a roundabout way about historical figures buried at the local South Park Cemetery. It turns out, she informed me, that South Park Cemetery offers historical walking tours. They are self-guided, but they have a map that will take you to the oldest marked graves. This is the land of the Lincoln County War. Who knows whose grave you might find? Friends or relatives of Billy the Kid or Pat Garrett?
I haven’t made this walking tour, but I’m considering it for a Saturday morning, maybe after the busyness of Lent and Holy Week have passed. Every day I tell myself I’m going to experience something new and exciting. Does a tromp through a cemetery count? According to the City of Roswell Community Calendar, this walking tour can be made from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and takes two hours to complete. Well, who knew? Of course, you might end up alone because from what I know — and, no, I don’t spend much time at the cemetery, but I speak with the funeral homes frequently enough — they close the gates early, especially on Saturdays. No friendly burials around if you stay too late, in other words.
Speaking of doing new and exciting activities, I tried to go to the Los Rieleros concert the other night. I bought a ticket from the only vendor available, Ticketón. About the time my priest was admonishing me for going to a concert on a Friday night during Lent, this company sent me threatening messages that I was suspected of fraud, and they would pull my ticket from my phone if I didn’t send them images of my driver’s license and credit card through…email. I looked it up; this is a legitimate company, and I’m not the only one they’ve falsely accused of fraud with threatening texts. It was bizarre. I argued with them, but they were having none of it. Eventually, I gave up and gave in and decided not to go to the concert during Lent. There’s a longer story to that, but I’m not going to tell it. I thought about filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau because no company should be operating this way, but I’m honestly too busy and am experiencing a fatalistic attitude towards Los Rieleros. I’ve missed every concert they’ve had in Roswell since I moved here, and I moved here listening to one of their albums on repeat — you know, the kind of CD that gets stuck in the CD player in your car, or used to when CDs were still things you played.
WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE??? I went to the Ramón Ayala concert at the end of January, and it was good. He’s eighty and still pulls out his accordion and plays on stage for enthused crowds. I love him, but I’ve seen him live before. Oh, well. What else is new to do? The more you do, the more you do the same. Or something profound like that.
And so, maybe someday I will make it to Los Rieleros or go for a walking tour in the cemetery.
Roswell Night Skies is the brainchild of local resident Mark Salas. Resident is a mundane word to describe Mark, who is also a local musician, band teacher, photographer, marketer, etc. He’s also a kind man who cares about people and his lifelong community here in Roswell. I interviewed him a couple of years ago for my vlog, if you want to know more about him.
A year ago, this nonprofit opened its doors. Since then, the small crew of board members and volunteers managed to bring TEN free summer movies to the Russ DeKay Park, complete with food trucks. This feat was managed through fundraisers and hitting the pavement to find sponsors. Movies are not free to stream to audiences, even by nonprofits. The equipment also cost a fair chunk of change.
For the Christmas season, they worked with Main Street Roswell to bring a Christmas film to the Christmas Market. They also brought their very own fun Christmas Lights Competition, using the entry fee to help offset the cost of prizes. At the same time, this competition also required more fundraising and sponsorships.
Full disclosure, I’m on the board of this nonprofit, and I performed a fraction of the work compared to Mark. But it’s still exhausting, and yet very rewarding to work through the difficulties with equipment, location, etc. and accomplish a free gift to a town we all love.
This is why they (we) are now running a 3-2-1 raffle that has high potential winnings with a first prize of $2000. We are trying to get a jump on our summer movie costs. You can support this effort by buying a ticket here for $50: https://roswellnightskies.org/.
Jill Domschot 