In the Last Stages!!

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.

Getting Through the Weekend

Good Friday Veneration of the Cross

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.

My two accordions.

Walking Tours at the Cemetery & Other Fun During Lent

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: a New Local Nonprofit for FREE Community Fun

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/.

The Sunny Side of Life

There is nothing like a week of rain, clouds, and fog to give me an appreciation for a sunny day. Yes, a week. That’s what it takes to drive New Mexicans to despair. The world of the Oregon coast, where cloudy skies are the default nine months of the year, is a distant memory for me.

But I didn’t come here to talk about the weather. I haven’t been around much in the Jetpack app, except to accidentally put a post in drafts, which meant I had to republish it. That almost qualifies as writing a post. I have a way of messing up everything I touch. I didn’t come here to be self-pitying, either. To be honest, I’ve come to terms with being a clutz. I have a good heart and intentions…. Sorry, I couldn’t quite manage that with a straight face.

Believe it or not, I came here to give a brief word about politics. Texas is trying to secure its border with no help from the feds. Numerous state governors have vowed to support Texas. Guess which way New Mexico’s governor has gone? Of course, she does not support Texas.

Let’s put this into perspective: New Mexico has the highest crime rate of all states in the nation. New Mexico does not value lawfulness and order; New Mexico values crime, poverty, and abortion. That is the kind of state that will not support Texas. This matters because we are a border state. For obvious reasons, our opinion matters more than a distant state that doesn’t have to cope directly with problems along the border. We have problems, big ones, but we will not support law and order.

One reason I’ve always laughed in idealists’ faces when they’ve waxed on about how we need to be a socialist country like Sweden or France is that our federal government botches everything they touch. They are one of the most inept bureaucracies in the world. Why would we want them to take further control over our welfare? This country is also much larger and more diverse than European nations and all their supposedly wonderful systems. By the way, massive immigration is destroying nations like Sweden, but don’t tell the idealists. They won’t appreciate that. Most don’t believe in borders, anyway, seeing them as arbitrary lines drawn on a map.

We have a giant country, the farthest reaches of which have no hope of getting reasonable help from the distant geriatric feds. But unfortunately, distance and incompetence are not what’s driving them in their desire for open borders. It is absolute wickedness and corruption. Biden doesn’t want law and order, just as Lujan-Grisham doesn’t want law and order.

I was talking to a recently retired border patrol officer the other day. When he first worked border patrol, the average decent men they would catch coming illegally across the border were truly looking for work. They were prideful, in fact, and didn’t want handouts. It was the policy of the border patrol to give them food and water, but these men refused it–even if they hadn’t eaten for a week–unless they could work in exchange. So, said officer would give them jobs to do to protect their dignity. He was also turned in by supposed humanitarians who would witness this and wrongly believe he was using the immigrants as unpaid labor.

Over the years, there was a shift in attitude he encountered, in which the average people coming across the border became entitled, demanding to be given free services and not just food and water. Humanitarians love entitlement; I’m not sure why. Maybe they perceive it as people standing up for themselves.

One man’s anecdote is obviously not the entire picture, but I think we can recognize that entitlement is part of the modern zeitgeist, and, in fact, is why we see so much blatant evil in political figures. They feel entitled to graft; they feel entitled to the bodies of other people’s children. It’s hard to fathom this kind of entitlement. But it’s there and glaringly obvious. It’s baked somewhere in our culture because we are the number one country that is on the receiving end of human trafficking. We are the receivers because the most entitled amongst us are demanding it.

The average Joe coming across the border these days might be entitled, but our own entitled have reached a level of wickedness that far surpasses them. We should shut down our borders to starve our own of their supply.

With all that being said, I think it’s time I made a run for the border myself. That was a swift change of subject. I was thinking about the state of Pueblo. But did you know it rains a lot there? It has an overall temperate climate, not that different from the Oregon coast….

Sometimes, leaving a toxic state of affairs instead of staying and fighting is the best possible answer. The funny thing is it’s a growing trend for Americans, and now Mexico is faced with a threat to their culture and language and… And they don’t really like it. They are getting it from both ends, though: immigrants from the south and now the north. Borders really are arbitrary unless you are willing to fight for them.

Delivering Hope Published!

Buy it HERE!

On little golden wings…

It’s been a long and crazy journey arriving at this point. I started this book on 11/11/22 and finally published on 12/21/23. At least, I’ve managed to publish the ebook. I’m still waiting on a proof of the print version; that publishing date is 01/10/24.

I really poured my heart into this book. It’s a little dark thematically, but it’s also goofy and filled with hope and second chances. I want you to walk away with warmth in your heart and tears in your eyes. I’m not joking. Of course, the book has jokes. There are comical moments that made me laugh even after reading them 10,000 times. If those parts don’t make you laugh….well, there’s no accounting for one’s sense of humor. Or lack thereof.

Life is a matter of laughing or crying. There’s no avoiding it unless you are the type to pretend humans are robots. But, gosh, people, even sci fi’s most beloved robots are almost human. That is, they toy with the idea of feelings and other intangibles, such as love, envy, or loneliness.

I used to be lonely. Now, I want to shed tears because I have a community here in Roswell of kind people who seem to see my heart more than anyone has in years. This past week–which has been exhausting–I’ve been called sunshine and sunny multiple times. Weird, considering the stress has caused my face to break out and my eyes to look a little pale and watery. It’s definitely not for my haggard appearance, in other words.

Humans need affirmation, love, and someone to truly see who they are every once in a while. No, these aren’t needs like oxygen. They are emotional and psychological needs. I hope to give that to people at my job and in my books.

January News

The print of Delivering Hope is now available: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQRNT46R. If you would like a free copy of the ebook, please let me know. I only ask one thing: if you like the book, tell someone. Word of mouth is the best marketing.

I’ve started the sequel, and it’s moving at my normal pace of 1000 words a day. Its official title is Delivering the Goods & the Bads.

The Christmas tree came down on Epiphany Sunday, after I’d written on the front door with blessed chalk: 20+C+M+B+24. Because I’m feeling particularly lazy, here is the screenshot of the snippet I wrote for the weekly bulletin I create at my job:

I glimpse into my worklife….

I continue to make YouTube videos, in which I blather about nonsense. I even developed my own theme song. It’s called El Vuelo de Las Libélulas. I know; surprising, right? I’m trying to get over my awkwardness at playing the accordion on camera.

My dogs are brats. Did I just openly admit that? They are adorable brats. But they give me love, which is hard to find in the world. God loves purely. Nobody else does. Except dogs. I mean, they love you extra if you give them bacon, so maybe that’s not pure, but at least it’s predictably simple. They also openly display their love, not to mention their joy at loving. Humans instead display their misery in love.

Maybe I should stop listening to the song Qué Agonía five times a day. It’s such a good song, though. I will post below.