Second chances sometimes show up in mysterious packages. When overworked PDex driver Hector Ruedas agrees to train his on-again, off-again girlfriend Arora’s son to deliver packages to the worst residences in Roswell, New Mexico, he expects a long day, not a murder at the PDex warehouse, a missing delivery driver, and…more of Roswell’s ghosts that want to steer the investigation. With Arora begrudgingly acting as his secretary and an entire team of unqualified detectives from the local Catholic church – including a priest – Hector is pulled into a bizarre investigation that threatens everything he values. Sure, he delivers second chances to widows and orphans. But where are his?
Delivering 2nd Chances is the second book in the Delivering Hope series.
The first leg of my Road Trip America was a drive from Roswell to Denver, via Las Vegas and Raton, NM. I was heralded along the way by wild sunflowers because it’s exactly the season to find them along highways and freeways in New Mexico and Colorado. They are like bright eyes or little bursts of sun when the temps should be calming down. In New Mexico, they haven’t. Denver, however, brought the blessed relief of rain and heat in the 80s rather than 100s.
Roadside Sunflowers
The reason for choosing Denver was simple: one of my daughters lives there. She lives in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood near downtown, in walking distance of many beautiful places, such as where I attended Sunday Mass:
St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church, built in 1924.
It’s also within walking distance of numerous cafes, the public library, and the art museum.
The art museum is not only a crazy geometric building, which is itself worth exploring, but also surprised me with its collections. In the contemporary collection, you will find intriguing works by people I was unfamiliar with, such as the abstract bull below…
One of a series of bullfights by Elaine de Kooning.
…as well as well-known masters like Picasso, Goya, and Georgia O’Keefe.
On the top floor of that wing of the building, there is an eclectic blend of African art (from multiple nations), geometric art, and portraits, such as this one:
Mother by Jenny Morgan.
Unfortunately, the image above does not do justice to the luminosity of the actual painting, not to mention the expression in the woman’s eyes.
Eventually, we meandered into the European art section, where we discovered my favorite kind of paintings: striking, realistic renditions of boats and coastlines (I’m partial to artwork with classic trucks, boats, ships, and trains.) I also love grand sweeping landscapes, especially if they involve distant ruins of castles or Greek temples, or conversely, storms at sea. I am attracted to drama.
I’m not as partial to impressionist paintings, but in person, the museum’s collection of master artists that include but are not limited to Monet, Degas, Renoir, Manet, and VanGogh, was awe-inspiring.
On another day, we visited the natural history museum, where we discovered more art on display, but of dioramas of North American wildlife scenes. What I loved the most was a section in the prehistoric display on extinct dragonflies. Apparently, dragonflies used to be giant! An artist’s depiction:
You see, they really are angels, with giant wheels of eyes!
Near the end of my stay, I realized I needed a souvenir. My daughter took me downtown to the I ❤️ Denver store, where I then had to choose between an iconic shirt with a marijuana leaf (everyone seems high in Denver), a book about local ghosts, and a mug that states, Not today, Blucifer. I chose the latter, and I’m about to explain why.
This is the real Blucifer:
A 32-foot tall statue at the Denver Airport by Luis Jiménez.
Luis Jiménez is a sculptor local to me in New Mexico. He sculpted the famous dancers at UNM (my alma mater):
Fiesta Jarabe.
He also has numerous works in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell and has or had a studio in Hondo, which is down the highway from Roswell. I say had because he was famously killed by one of his statues. However, I had no idea that it was a piece from the giant blue horse he was sculpting for the Denver Airport that killed him. In fact, his family had to finish the sculpture because he was unable to. That is why Denver locals call the horse Blucifer. For obvious reasons, they view it as cursed. The light shining from his eyes should be enough. In fairness, the eyes are a nod to the artist’s origins of having grown up in his father’s neon sign studio.
While I admit that joking about a man’s death is not generally appropriate, this is more than a joke. It is part of local legend. And the artist is part of my New Mexico experience: from Albuquerque to Roswell to every trip I make from Roswell to Socorro when I pass by his old studio. For that reason, I chose the mug. It felt like a weird tie to a high city, apart from my daughter.
Her boyfriend happens to be a potter – which is a type of sculptor – from Roswell, now living and working in a local art studio in Denver. Before I left the city toward my next stop on Road Trip America, I told him, “Let this be a lesson to you.” I don’t know what kind of lesson it is. I guess only time will tell.
Do you remember summer when you were a child, and time seemed limitless? Each morning was an opportunity to complete a checklist a mile long of fun and adventure. Sometimes, that adventure turned into reading a stack of books you just borrowed from the library.
That’s exactly the kind of adventure I desire at this time in my life – I want to revert back to a world in which I had the luxury to lounge around reading all day and let the to-do list slide. When you haven’t reached the old age of eighteen yet, it’s easy to tell yourself you can finish your mental list later. I’m sure I wasn’t the only child who made lists. Lists were just as reassuring then as they are now.
Construct a theme park with cardboard, tape and brads
Write the first chapter of fairy book
Organize detective agency files with hand-drawn images of the neighbors
search for clues in the mysterious world of the garage
Search the streets for pop cans that you can exchange for money
Ride bike to store, exchange pop cans, buy candy cigarettes so you can be a detective who smokes
Read the new informational book on the lyfe of pyrates
Read your favorite Phyllis A Whitney book for the 100th time
The rest you would get around to eventually.
When you visited yout grandparents in Palm Desert, lists were often turned into pages of doodles during the day because it was too hot to go outside, like 120-degree hot, where the heat hits you like a brick wall. Sometimes, you would hit the jackpot and somebody would drive you and your sister and cousins into town to go swimming or to the air-conditioned mall…where you would buy magazines and books.
And consequently, you spent the rest of your days reading inside the coolness of the cinder block house or fighting with your cousins because they cheated at the board games. That cinder block house was tiny, too small to house a crowd of restless children.
At night, wandering around the desert became the real adventure. The indigo blue sky was filled with stars because you were just far enough outside the city. The desert became its own city, with villages created in stones.
***
No, I don’t really want to be a child again, except for the luxury of reading all day instead of wondering how to market my books and how I’m going to finish the next one while juggling everything else.
I’d also love to see my grandparents again. My grandma loved to have fun. That was one of her main drives in the world. Sure, she worked hard on do-it-yourself projects until she died, but she made time for fun.
Maybe childhood isn’t the amswer. Maybe it’s a personality adjustment that’s needed.
In an era when the furor is loud over AI, sometimes it’s wonderful to sit back under the glow of a reading lamp and crack open the paperbacks you’ve been collecting. You do collect books, don’t you? Please tell me you’re a dear friend, even if it’s all a lie.
Years ago, my cousin, who happens to be a mountain man who wears a long beard and rides a banana-seat bicycle, showed me his enormous book collection. From this collection, he gave me an old version of my favorite book, Gulliver’s Travels. This Swift tome is right up there with Don Quixote de la Mancha, of which I also own a collectible version.
I can’t find my Gulliver’s Travels, so I opted for this Wiki image.A messy desk is a sign of something.I hope Miguelito found his way with the influence of this beneficial masterpiece.
My cousin began collecting print books of every variety from thrift stores, garage sales, and used bookstores many years ago because he believed Amazon and digital books were going to wipe out old originals and create a new method of censorship. This was long before the threat of AI. I haven’t seen my cousin since right before I moved to Roswell and hope he still has his giant book collection.
There is nothing about digital media and social media that can compare to buying a physical book from a bookseller, especially if that bookseller is the author. Here are some of the books I purchased this summer:
Three of these are by local authors. The first, New Mexico Monsters by John LeMay, is a delightful book that has an index you can use to look up specific monsters or areas of New Mexico where you might want to discover them. It’s a very useful tool for me, as you can imagine. I’m enjoying it. The author has written a number of other works of nonfiction, as well as some westerns inspired by local folklore. I mostly read mysteries these days, but I used to love westerns and will probably buy his other books. Now is a good time to support – not just print books – but local authors. How appropriate is it that his name sounds similar to L’Amour?
The next treasure is My Invisible Friends by Marisalena Manchego. I don’t know that she’s written other books. This particular little volume is a spiritual memoir. I used to read widely from that genre, too. I’m thankful I’ve been collecting works again from my old loves: histories, memoirs, westerns, and off-the-wall supernatural and speculative books.
In many ways, this summer I feel as if I’m returning to myself after being away on a long trip.
Putting aside that digression, I also picked up a book of poetry written by Ann Applegarth, Layers of Beauty. This is special because I now occupy Ann’s position as Catholic church secretary. There were two part-time secretaries before me, Peggy and Ann. Peggy still sits in the office for me when I have appointments or take a vacation. In fact, Peggy is partly responsible for my ability to finish both Delivering Hope and Delivering 2nd Chances because, along with a couple of other ladies, she sat in for me when I took writing staycations.
Ann is a bit older and doesn’t get out much any longer. However, I have spoken to her over the phone and via email at the office and am thrilled to own a work that she must have published right after she stopped working in the office.
Apropos to the book title, there are other layers to synchronicity between myself and Ann. For example, she used to live in Oregon, just as I did, and attended UNM later, just as I did. She also spent some years freelance editing and, of course, was a secretary for many years.
In conclusion, (because I must end this post at some point), the legacy of wordsmithing and book enjoyment must go forward. I’m not a luddite. I continue reading many books on my Kindle, but there is an incomparable satisfaction to cramming a stack of books under your pillow at night instead of a cellphone with a Kindle app.
The glow of the reading lamp is highlighting my proof copy of Delivering 2nd Chances.
By the way, you should buy my book in print or Kindle. You decide. If you live in Roswell, I’ll scribble something sentimental or sweet inside for you, like…
…This book will make your heart swell, but in a good way. Bendiciones, Jill Domschot.
Triple degree temps – and the kids are back in school. The air-conditioning went out in the church, and a child fainted during the first school Mass. When I say the air went out, the truth is, the underground unit caved in, creating a situation that required renting a crane and quite a few men to fix. I didn’t mean to say we were renting men. I guess we kind of are, though.
We had eight weeks of Movies in the Park, but only made it through two movies due to the storms that blew through every Friday night. It was truly bizarre. I hate to focus on weather, but it isn’t such small talk when it looms large in the world around you. For example, the rain beat down so hard and fast the other night that my home flooded. It came in through the front door and windows and crept under the wall into the bedroom where my accordions were being stored. Thankfully, two out of three are in hard cases. The third – the Hohner – is stored in a soft gig bag that is light and easy to carry. The bag was instantly saturated. I air-dried the accordion immediately; the bellows had been tightly closed and absorbed no water, thankfully. The accordion has “legs” on the bass side Thankfully, the bass reeds are set back from the outer box of the accordion, and there are mesh-covered openings that allow for airflow. The accordion survived and sounds perfectly fine.
At work, gnats and horseflies are everywhere, like a sign of pestilence. (I reserve the right to be dramatic.) And yet, through it all, I published a book, visited my children in Albuquerque – where we went to Cochiti Lake. I spent time at a local carshow, at Roswell’s Galacticon, and listening to the army brass band at the 4th of July celebration. The dragonflies this year are like the weather, enormous!
It has been a crazy, stormy summer!
Cochiti LakeMovie in the Park With Sunset PeaceClassic Chevy SightingGorgeous Gold ImpalaGorgeous Blue ImpalaTrain at the Alien Fest
Galacticon
Army Band
Coming up, I’m going to give you a glimpse of some local books I purchased, memories of a past event, and exciting future events!
There are a myriad of reasons why I dropped social media as quickly as I picked it up again. The number one reason is a lack of energy. I’m currently taking iron, so I’m sure I’ll be fine someday regarding that. I also haven’t been to the laundromat in weeks. I didn’t have anything else to do while waiting for my laundry to wash and dry but tap out words on my phone, hence the uptick of blogposts. But the laundromat is an expensive luxury, and I try to find other ways of doing laundry. I still remember the days when I washed clothes in my bathtub and hung them to dry. That was years ago–thankfully, I haven’t had to resort to such drastic measures recently.
Anyway, I digress. The entire point of updating my Roswell Journals is to give you a link to my new book. The cover is beautiful, hits straight to the heart like the Los Tigres song Golpes en el Corazón, but it doesn’t wound unless beauty itself is painful.
The cover hits two out of three of my trifecta of beauty: classic trucks, dragonflies, and accordions. In this series, amateur detective Hector Ruedas drives a 78 Chevy Silverado. Yes, I do live vicariously through my characters. I want his truck in my fantasy world, but in reality drive a practical Suburu. Otherwise, I play my beautiful accordions and have therefore already reached the fantasy 4th dimension. That, and I regularly speak to dragonflies. Oh, my, they are large creatures this year! It’s the height of their season, and they hum through the air on glistening wings. No, they don’t speak back. I’m not actually crazy. I simply believe it’s best to speak to the natural world in a friendly or awe-filled voice, like the people who for no reason at all say thank-you to AI. Except not because God imbued his fingerprint in nature. By contrast, AI is an extension of man, who can only create by pale imitation of his creator.
I linked to the song above, and Spotify has continued to unroll for me my favorite songs to play on the accordion. I’m in rapture! I’ve reached the 4th dimension! Amen and amen!
The weekend began with a storm. It was the first of Roswell Night Skies’* Movie in the Park; we were showing Lilo & Stitch, and when I arrived on scene, the crew that had been enlisted to set up the screen were battling heavy winds. They were determined, however, and the nonprofit board’s president did not want to cancel the first event of the season. We made it about halfway through before the wind and slanting rain drove our audience away. It was fun while it lasted. To the positive, the venue this year is Roswell’s Cielo Grande Events Area, which has a natural slope that is perfect for an audience. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate this Friday, when we will be showing The Iron Giant. Be there at dusk and bring a blanket or lawn chairs. There will be concessions.
After the storm, my weekend never lost its turbulence. I had numerous stacked events on my schedule, including the Corpus Christi procession on Sunday. Corpus Christi is generally at the start of June, which is the hottest month in Roswell. The internet says it’s July, but the average high is the same. In my experience, it can top 100 on multiple days in June, but what do I know? The point being the Corpus Christi procession is a hot one, done at fake high noon**.
There are much longer and more elaborate processions around the world than ours; we have four altars to place the monstrance on around the parish campus, each with its own Bible reading and prayer. The choir chants, and the various groups carry their banners and wear their matching uniforms, and the altar servers carry the cross and incense. The priest carries Christ’s eucharistic presence in the monstrance.
As an Altar and Rosary member, I helped carry flowers from altar to altar. A few years ago, a priest that used to be with our parish asked us to scatter flower petals along the path; apparently that was what they did in his native land of Nigeria. The bookkeeper balked at the price of petals from the flowershop and asked why I didn’t pluck them from the rosebushes out front. For my part, I questioned if stripping the church roses of petals was part of my secretarial duties. Calling a flowershop, yes. I can pick up a phone. Making the elderly people cry over decimated rosebushes–not really part of my job description. Since then, we have carried red and white bouquets and skipped the petals.
How ever we decorate the altars, we have a fairly big campus and have never yet sought city approval to process up the street chanting, let alone scatrering petals–although, when I went to the grocery store near the a parish after this year’s procession, I could smell the incense that had drifted there on the wind. We didn’t get approval for that either!
My weekend ended with dessert and lemonade shared with a friend indoors, which was pleasant and cool. Thank God for these summer relief strategies.
Now that it’s Monday again, I’m wondering why life is so difficult. Not my job per se, although I do plan funerals as a regular course of events and sometimes step in to sing a capella in funerals, quinceañeras, or weddings when there are no musicians. Well, that is not quite true. Every time I’ve been asked to sing at these Masses a capella, I’ve found other people to sing with me. But, no, it’s not the difficulties of my job or the increasing busyness of the office that makes everything a tangle of problems, despite that I’m exhausted.
My friend was telling me yesterday, after we’d been talking for a few hours, that she had nothing to speak about except negative subjects. She’s experienced more than her fair share of trauma and recently went through a breakup, which has forced her to start life over.
Regarding having nothing else to speak about, I both agreed and disagreed with her. Trauma can put people in that position, where the nervous system is on edge. Talking through the negatives can help us heal. Sometimes, we need to talk through the negatives. Forcing positivity can be counterproductive to the nervous system just as ignoring clunking sounds in your car’s engine can cause further damage. There is no sense in whistling while your house is burning down, either. On the other hand, making small steps forward and acknowledging successes are also part of the process of healing, and there is always something to be proud of or grateful for, no matter how small. For my friend, she has a new place to live, a new job, and she loves artwork: creating it and looking at it. All positives.
My positives would include dragonflies and accordions, of course.
But no worries if your sight is clouded temporarily by how bad everything is. The storm we experienced while trying to run the movie on Friday seemed to dissipate after we’d packed up the equipment. We couldn’t see that while our screen was blowing down or the rain pelting the sound mixer. Nor was it wise to continue with the movie, not knowing what Roswell would throw at us next.
A last relevant point: in the Corpus Christi homily, our priest spoke about following Christ, how his presence has been given to us in the Eucharist–it is very real and personal. And the procession is an embodiment of this concept. When life gets difficult, sometimes all we have is the presence of Christ. That is no small thing. It is the biggest thing. It is vital.
*Roswell Night Skies is not a Catholic organization, despite that I talk about Catholicism in this post. I’m just writing about my life in Roswell.
**Under daylight savings time, high noon is actually 1 p.m. We’ve been distorted by a false sense of time!
I originally posted this on Facebook and did not get any non-comedic feedback. The truth is I don’t know how to finish the last line. No, really. It’s sad but true.
Help me finish the last line of my back cover copy:
When overworked PDex driver Hector Ruedas agrees to train his maybe girlfriend Arora’s son to deliver packages to the worst residences in Roswell, New Mexico, he expects a long day, not a murder at the PDex warehouse and a missing delivery driver. The long day turns into a long week of hacked security footage, a haunted meat factory, and a gang of breakdancers in the business of black-market gadgets. With Arora acting as his secretary and an entire team of unqualified detectives from the local Catholic church – including a priest – Hector is pulled into a bizarre investigation in which the clues are heralded by local ghosts and spiritual manifestations. Funny, fast-paced, and delightfully offbeat, Delivering 2nd Chances…
…delivers up a very special workplace comedy?
…will make you sing for joy?
…will love you better than a meth prostitute?
…gives our beloved delivery driver yet another opportunity to fix Roswell’s deep problems, even if he has to get beaten up in the process?
P.S. The book will be published as soon as the book cover is done.
Jill Domschot 