Category: Uncategorized

Perhaps this will give somebody else some much needed hope when I say that I’m not a great audio-processor. Neither music nor verbal language skills come easily to me. And yet, here I am, my life hobbies and obsessions revolving around both. Paso a paso, sigo adelante. Aprendo algo nuevo cada día. It’s amusing to me that most of my Spanish contextually revolves around music, which is why when I wrote the above, song lyrics began to play in my head: Cada día más, voy a quererte cada día más, voy a quererte cada día más, mi amor, cada día más….** I haven’t heard that song in a long time, and there it was, waiting in my head.

Ever since I plunged into learning the diatonic accordion, I realized I was going to have to put my Spanish skills to use, as every beginning tutorial and music book I ordered was in Spanish. That has remained the case to this day. Thankfully, as I’ve stated before on this blog, I’m a fluent reader in Spanish. I was forced to learn that skill while having to read full-length novels in university classes. I still remember a 200-level Spanish professor giving us articles to read and telling us we weren’t allowed to stop and translate or look up words. We were reading for fluency rather than complete comprehension. As with one’s native language, most words can be understood contextually, and the ones that are incomprehensible can simply be looked up at a later time. His forcing us to do that early on was immensely valuable later, when I was taking 400/500 level classes. And to be honest, yes, there are always words I can’t contextualize or derivate…a handful. If audio-processing is not one of my skills, having an immense English vocabulary is one of my skills, and I can find the derivatives of most words in Spanish. Multisyllabic, snooty Latin-based words in English are commonplace words in Spanish. People with a poor English vocabulary are going to struggle with Spanish, which is why I despise Duolingo so much (and no, I still haven’t done my review on that app, but suffice to say they only accept very dumbed-down English as translation for the Spanish…why? Why, when English has so much Latin influence? ¡No tiene sentido!).

Lately, however, I’ve been watching video tutorials on the accordion. Unfortunately, as I’ve said, I’m a better reader than I am a listener. But sticking to skills that come naturally to us is a way to stunt our own growth as humans. Why do this? Why intentionally stunt our own growth? Very foolish. Or very boring. As it turns out, listening to Spanish is very much like reading it. If you don’t allow yourself to stop and translate (oh, I know, it’s hard), you can become a fluent listener in the same way you become a fluent reader. Words are understood through context. If you don’t catch every word the speaker is saying, who cares? Do you catch every word a speaker says in English? I don’t because…see above. I’ve found I can understand these tutorials just fine, and some of them are easier to understand than others. I’ll post a link to one of my favorite teachers below, just in case there are any other people out there who are determined to learn the diatonic Mexican style accordion and don’t know where to start.*

There are moments when I want my chosen hobbies to be easier. Why, for example, was I never taught to read music? We had a music class in elementary school, but the basic learning of FACE and Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge was never put to use by adapting it to playing an instrument. I suppose that was outside the school’s funding. And, of course, why do I have to struggle through music and Spanish at the same time? The answer to that latter question is obvious: I do it because I want to. I love the accordion and I love Spanish and, thus, I might as well combine the two and learn those skills the school system was ill-equipped to teach — she said through her tears. I’m sorry; I’m being dramatic. I should write a song about it all.

After reading fluently and listening fluently, I suppose the next step is to speak fluently. Growth, right? Cue the need to write another dramatic song.

*Start with this guy called Bigshow. He has hundreds of videos. Here is a link to his YouTube channel: BigShow Acordeón. You can also find him on Facebook.

**I decided to post a video of this song because I realized it has a simple accordion part. I think I could learn it, and maybe you could too if you’re learning the accordion.

…by accident.

Allow me to give you a brief history of my blogging. I started off with a blogspot…actually, two blogspots. I had one for writing and one for 18th C studies. I have no idea what blogspot is like now, but back then, you could build your blog yourself using a stylesheet. I enjoyed the process (I kept it simple); not to mention, I don’t usually prefer premade templates. None of them are exactly the way I picture my website looking.

When I started shopping around my novel Anna and the Dragon, my husband and brother in law promised to build me a professional website. This started with purchasing me a domain name on GoDaddy, moving me to WordPress (though I don’t know why it had to be WordPress), and hosting off of GoDaddy. This was the worst possible solution to having a professional website. My advice to anyone is to stick with WordPress as a host if you’re going to choose WordPress. I have no especial love for Blogger over WordPress; they both are what they are. But hosting somewhere else is a very bad idea.

So what happened this time? I broke a line of code when I updated all my plugins at once. That’s also a very bad idea. I wish I could’ve accessed the admin on my WordPress and just deleted the offending plugin because it wasn’t in use anyway, but I was completely locked out of my admin. That left me no choice but to go to GoDaddy to fix the line of code. The problem with GoDaddy is it’s impossible to find anything. Their hosting section is nested into files and folders within folders and is not usable to the average person who doesn’t understand the system or who doesn’t have a CS degree, which I refuse to get just to keep an author website presence. Somehow, mounting frustration made me act rashly, and with the touch of a button, my eleven years of blogging had vanished….

Enough is enough. Authors can’t be their own editors, proofers, formatters, marketers, website creators, admins…but this is exactly what’s expected of authors. It’s not just necessary for self-pubbers such as myself (yes, I gave up on shopping to the trad market), but it became a necessity for trad-pubbed authors as well. Long gone are the days when publishing companies would lift a finger for an author, unless that author already happened to be a bestseller making them untold millions of dollars.

And what good has all this hassle done for me, being this jack of all trades? Well, let me see: I just lost years’ worth of my blog posts (I had only two years archived) and have sold precisely four copies of my latest book. Four. Four copies. My worst sales record yet. Because I can’t be everything. And the hardest part for me is marketing, when that should be my primary skill.*

However, writing has always been a way I could communicate with the world in a way I couldn’t otherwise. That’s why I do it. That’s the point. I want to share my vision with people. If I knew how to reach people any other way, such as selling products, I would do that instead. But the truth is I don’t know how to reach people.

I didn’t mean for this post to be a whine fest. I apologize and will cut this short. In conclusion, I don’t recommend GoDaddy for hosting services unless you know how to use their system. I still don’t understand why I had to be hosted off their service; I have no idea why I kept that hosting service just because well-meaning people in my life decided I should be there. Nothing makes sense to me anymore, though. Actually, I do know why I kept GoDaddy. It was easier to use in those early years (from what I remember), and all my priorities changed when we moved to Roswell — like keeping my head above water and not drowning or drifting away into a sea that doesn’t exist where the grassland meets the desert…. I had no space in my head for considering my site host, in other words. Life is never easy, nor should it be. When it gets very difficult, though, I find myself cheering for the little things I’ve managed, like publishing any books at all. And I’ve published two since I’ve been here. That’s at least a feat to celebrate.

*The first clue I’m not great at marketing is revealing my low sales volume. You’re not supposed to do that. You’re never supposed to be negative or denigrate your work or successes. My books are great. I believe in my books. See how I bolded and italicized that for emphasis? But honestly, it’s kind of laughable how bad my sales are this time around because it means all my sales were coming from Twitter or Facebook previously, and I refuse to be on either these days. So, in addition to being a poor marketer, I have principles I won’t budge on.

Yes, but only mentally… My husband’s long-time best friend and his wife, both from Oregon, visited us last weekend. They brought fancy brewed beverages, naturally, and we made them a wonderful New Mexican dinner. I’ll write more on that later. Perhaps I won’t do a long-winded recipe post, but there is an aesthetic to New Mexican cuisine that is often corrupted by… I wasn’t going to write about that.

I was apologetic to my guests because I’d forgotten to buy good coffee for them. Oregonians are used to good coffee. I had a bag of not entirely fresh Starbucks’ French roast and Kuerig pods. Shocking, I know. Yes, I drink Keurig coffee. I’m generally the only person in my house/office, and I don’t want to make a French press just for myself that will quickly lose its heat. Thus, I do the unthinkable: I get up from my desk and brew a single cup from a pre-ground and measured pod whenever I want a fresh hot beverage. Again, shocking!

Friend’s wife, whom I wish I knew better, said she wasn’t a coffee snob like some Oregonians. This led us down a memory-road toward what Oregon used to be like. I’ve written about this before in my coffee memoirs, but it bears repeating, especially in these times when Portland has become a cesspool of homeless camps and rioting.

In my dad’s generation, Oregon — yes, including Portland — was a land of lumberjacks and fishermen. These were rednecks and hillbillies, often transplanted from the Appalachian mountains and the Ozarks. They didn’t go in for gourmet espresso shops and high-end cuisine. Their local diners served roast beef and mashed potatoes with sludgy gravy. Exotic meant a Chinese restaurant, the old-fashioned American variety with chop suey and bland broccoli beef.

In my youth, Portland was transitioning to the land of gourmet coffee and “unique identities”. I don’t exactly know why it transitioned. The locals liked to blame Californians moving in. Californians, sure. For example, environmentalists from Berkeley. Also: hippies looking for gorgeous forests that would shelter their illicit weed-smoking or magic-mushroom hunting and traveling bands like the Grateful Dead who just loved stopping in Eugene. After it was all said and done, these new people managed to shut down the lumber and fishing industries, to drive small Oregon towns into abject poverty and hopelessness, and then to gloat about it to this day

After these hippies squelched the native lifestyle, they quite promptly determined themselves to be Oregonians, true native children of the Pac NW. They claimed it and changed its identity like colonists always do. Of course, one could call the lumberjacks and fishermen colonists as well, and there would be truth in that, but at least they were following an unpretentious lifestyle like the natives had before them. Colonization has layers, see? From small native tribes hunting and fishing to what exists now: postmodern art, fancy restaurants, and roving bands of rioting communist youths who tear down statues…even the famous one of the elk. What did the elk do to them? One may never know.

There has been a push, of course, for the old lifestyle to be renewed. But there’s a far cry from hipsters donning lumberjack costumes and restaurants serving high-end “artisan” cuisine that misses the mark entirely because that roast beef and gravy dinner from my dad’s childhood wasn’t meant to be sourced from an organic cow and $10/lb organic, heritage potatoes. It was meant to fill the bellies of poor people who did hard, unforgiving physical labor that young, overfed communists will never know of, despite their romanticization of rescuing themselves from the shackles of capitalism.

I’m going to be honest; I’d rather have kept the instant coffee my parents drank than imbibe the enemies’ much better brews. Gourmet coffee is little solace to those who have been victims of cultural suicide and destruction.

I hate to admit it, but Roswell has grown on me during the pandemic. There are still many aspects of the culture here I dislike — and yet there are many heartening aspects to it, as well. Take the local state fair as an example. The governor had mandated that all visitors or vendors at the larger state fair in Albuquerque be fully vaccinated. In addition, they were required to wear masks. It’s no secret that the state fair is a big money-making venture…normally. I doubt it was this year, and that was after it was cancelled the year before, leaving the future farmers of America in the lurch with nowhere to sell the animals they’d poured thousands of dollars into raising.

But the Eastern NM State Fair here in Roswell — nah, the cops there were merely crowd and traffic control to the hundreds of people who poured in with no masks and no vaccine passes. My husband and I went on the last night, this past Saturday. Whoa! Another date! My children had already gone with their friends, leaving us to enjoy the displays and live music on our own. And it was fun! The proceeding blogpost will give you three reasons why (was that campy enough? Like a junior high why we should have summer break all year round persuasive essay?).

There’s something about childhood dreams that will always enliven the heart, no matter how old you are. Apart from all the good things that fairs have, such as local canning, quilting, baking, artwork, and flower arranging efforts, this one had a model train display filling an entire room in one of the buildings. Oh, cry my heart! I wanted an electric train so very badly as a child. I still want one, though I don’t know if I’m willing at this point to put the money and time into the hobby. I don’t think my parents were either; that’s why Santa ignored that item on my wish list.

Model trains are visual storytelling. I think that’s why they appeal to me. The tracks circle under, over, through, and around mountains, tunnels, villages and cities. There are peaceful farms and forests; cities with dire emergencies such as fires; villages where a handful of cars sit outside the local diner. Not to mention I’ve always lived somewhere near train tracks, such that train whistles are a nostalgic and comforting sound. That’s what you get with a model train. And the best part is they can be controlled these days with apps on the phone — or, at least, the guy running this one was controlling his that way.

The train was obviously number one. Number two: there were pirates. They were like one part of a circus act brought to the fair, a high wire and a giant hamster wheel as props on the fabricated pirate ship. Their routine was weird but impressive. You get the idea, I’m sure. Pirates did swashbuckling along the high wire and then chased each other on the giant hamster wheel. I don’t know why I wanted to be a pirate as a child, but there it is. Another childhood dream manifested in a cheesy fair act. I was, in fact, obsessed with pirates as a child. I read pirate adventure books. I read history books about them. I think it was their lawlessness that appealed to me. Unless they were paid by one of the world powers at the time, the heyday of pirates meant paying allegiance to no crown and setting up one’s own economy by, um, acquiring resources. Of course, as a young girl, I didn’t understand that females on pirate ships were generally captives who were raped and maltreated. But fantasies exist in a nether world, not this world.

You’ve probably already guessed that the third reason I loved the fair was the Mexican music. Yes, our local state fair either features Mexican bands or country bands due to the demographics. There was one particularly good band on Saturday night. They weren’t listed on the ads, so I think they were a last-minute replacement. They were called something like Nueva Generación (It might have been spelled with a “z”), but don’t go putting that in your Google search because you will probably only find news articles about the Mexican drug cartel of the same name. This was a young band; they appeared to be high school students or recent graduates. They were so good! They were a traditional norteño band with an accordion as well as a saxophone (though the accordionist played both these instruments, so, alas, they weren’t played at the same time). By contrast, the other two bands had either subpar vocals or timing and lost my interest fairly quickly. The first band, in fact, slaughtered one of my favorite songs, Se Me Olvido Otra Vez. Like, slow it down, dudes. Nobody can dance or sing that fast. Or they shouldn’t. I see good things on the horizon for the “New Generation” musicians, though, if they keep going.

The obvious question that arises is how does Mexican music fit into your childhood dreams? Bah, wrong question. I’ve been obsessed with all things Mexico since I was fourteen, when I took my first Spanish class. Also, I’ve always found radio play pop music to be pap, with only a few exceptions. I’ve been searching for better music since I was twelve and was much happier as an adolescent listening to my parents’ music, which included Vivaldi, Handel, John Michael Talbot (classical guitar and vocal style), and classic rock. But it always seemed that once past the era of the 1950s, the likelihood of finding complex and/or interesting instrumentation plus stellar vocals in the same song goes down precipitously (fifties’ rock still had it*, with brass sections influenced by the jazz and swing era, and vocalists such as Neil Sedaka). I found everything I was looking for in Mexican music, though I admit that many songs on Mexican radio are phoned-in and boring, just like with all popular music.

*Apparently, what I’d interpreted as fifties’ rock was often sixties’. Okay, so I wasn’t born until the seventies.

An actual good version of Se Me Olvido Otra Vez:

And just because I’m sitting here listening to him, I’m going to share my favorite singer, El Coyote:

It had already been a long day up in the mountains, where my son had a cross-country meet. I was ready to collapse, but my husband had another idea: “Let’s go see a movie!” To be honest, I hadn’t been in a theater since they were recently reopened. My children and husband had gone, but I hadn’t, and it had nothing to do with Covid or being in crowds. The truth is, most movies are a hard sell for me.

I got burned out on superhero movies a long time ago, after the one-upmanship on godawful CG just made watching such films a miserable experience. That applies to all action movies. Look, honestly, endless car chases with no evident plot were bad enough in Jason Bourne style films, but now that those cars defy physics because some dude creating CG never mentally matured past age twelve, I have no patience any longer. Add to that mix the general Hollywood repugnance of naked people and sex and wokeness, and I’m done. The film industry can just burn, in my opinion, as there is little art and storytelling left to rescue it from its filth and tawdriness.

But…but my husband was being spontaneous, and he wanted to go watch a movie with me. The children were gone; it was just us. It was a date! Those don’t happen as often as they used to, sadly. We ditched the dinner we were eating and gathered ourselves together in five minutes and raced to the theater, barely able to adjust our seats before Cry Macho began. For the record, my husband had searched the movie titles on his phone and chosen this one because it was filmed in Socorro County, the place we consider our true home. So that was a draw for me, even if the film turned out to be terrible. You know how it goes: Oh my gosh, I recognize that shrub. Isn’t that the one where you turn up [redacted], right before you get to the old [redacted]?

I actually really enjoyed Cry Macho. It might not have restored my faith in the industry, but it’s one film where just about everything was done right. It stars Clint Eastwood and was, in fact, directed by him. Clint Eastwood is old Hollywood, hearkening from a time when the industry still knew how to tell a good story. Don’t mistake me — the industry was always morally repugnant. But it had that one key element, storytelling, in its favor. That’s what Clint Eastwood brings to this film. It also happens to be heart-warming and morally sound.

The basic plot is of an old, washed-up cowboy named Mike Milo (played by Eastwood) who’s hired by his morally suspect boss to travel down to Mexico to find his teenage son and bring him back to Texas, away from his abusive and alcoholic mother. While I was watching the story unfold, I laughed quite a bit and thought to myself, “No actual Mexicans were used in the filming of this story” and “neither was any part of Mexico used in the filming of this story.” Seriously, though, as I said earlier, it was filmed in Socorro County, New Mexico. Even the border to Mexico made me laugh because it was quite literally filmed in my old backyard, which is several hours from the border. I really did recognize those shrubs because I used to see them daily. There were, however, actual Mexicans who acted in the film — such as the teenage son, played by Eduardo Minett. But they didn’t feel Mexican. Is that an odd way to word it? More on that in the next paragraph.

The film is composed of old-fashioned set designs that are supposed to evoke the ideal of Mexico from old cowboy westerns. Old buildings, stacked crates, burros, and people wearing ponchos work together to create this atmosphere. In order for this to be plausible at all, the movie had to be set in the late seventies, when there still might have been people wearing ponchos in Mexico as they pulled their burros into town. To go along with this old-timey-ness, the actors effected over-the-top Spanish accents, like Antonio Banderas in Spy Kids (also a real Spanish speaker, but with an overdone accent used for effect). That was why nobody seemed like Mexicans; it was a hyperreal Mexico that could only exist in a romanticized past.

These simple sets worked for the story because they allowed it to go forward unimpeded by special effects or distractions…. Well, most people wouldn’t have the same distractions I had, which was recognizing New Mexican places, like the old buildings on the highway in Polvadera. So, what shines through in the final story is an old man who finds new meaning in life by helping out a wayward teenager. That’s why it’s heart-warming. It’s simple, with a focus on character transformation and hope. Is it cutting-edge and mind-blowingly great? No, absolutely not. But the story is solidly good, which is something that Hollywood never seems able to create these days.

I’m glad I didn’t resist my husband’s spontaneity this time; this movie made for a satisfying Saturday night. I hope Clint Eastwood makes more films like Cry Macho.

…especially when it’s a literal pit. No, I suppose you shouldn’t fall into a pit of despair or the kind the enemy lays for you when he wants to cause you to sin, either. But there are real ones covering this topographic earth. And sometimes, the pits that harm the physical body might cause the figurative ones to surface, as well.

My life is composed of blocks that can be shifted as I go about my week. This is the life of a contract and freelance laborer. I go where the work is when it’s presented to me. At the same time, I have a list of important life goals I’ve given myself: I must exercise, study languages (mostly Spanish), play the accordion, write and edit books. I have short blocks in the day dedicated to these activities that I move around my other work. This forces me to be flexible and to never stop moving — stagnation is the dirtiest of all dirty words.

However, you can imagine that doing activities by rote in a prescribed time frame can cause stagnation. You see, I’m happy merely to get my activities done and mark it off the checklist. That is its own kind of stagnation, which doesn’t inspire me. I want — nay, need — creativity and purpose in my existence. Don’t we all? I have to admit that I’ve lost a certain amount of joy in my accordion playing due to forcing it into its prescribed box each day. There is definitely a balance that has to be achieved regarding creative work. Without the daily effort, creativity has no defined parameters. With the daily effort, it often ceases to be creative.

Yesterday, after finishing my last tutoring session at six, I came home and strapped on the accordion and duly tried to play one of my favorite songs, Mi Cómplice by Cardenales de Nuevo León. I hit wrong notes. I stopped and backed up. I played it from the beginning chords over and over. It was getting frustrating. And then, just when it began to flow better, my timer went off. My accordion time was over, and I still had to walk the dog and serve dinner — I had put in a crockpot pork tenderloin earlier, but I knew my family would wait for me to call them to dinner before they started eating.

With much frustration in my heart, I put the leash on my elderly dog, while apologizing profusely to the puppies. I’m simply not capable of taking all three for a walk at one time. The puppies only get walks when I have at least one other person to help me. But even when I have an extra person around to take hold of the elderly dog’s leash, walking both of them at one time is like being pulled by a hundred pounds of pure puppy muscle; it’s not easy. It’s a great workout for the core stability muscles, though. Alas, a great workout was not going to happen that day, as there was no one available to help.

And that last bit went way off the subject… Point being, I have to give at least my elderly darling her walk, or she will sulk. To regain the magic of accordion, I played Mi Cómplice on my phone. It’s always good to remind myself of what inspired me to want to play the accordion in the first place. I set off, marching to the beat* and thinking only of the finish line. I didn’t want to go for my relaxing walk; I just wanted to check it off my list and please my dog.

That’s when I fell in the pit…the literal pit in the park I like to walk in. I already know the poorly maintained parks of Roswell have holes, but with the darkening air and my preoccupation, I fell right in one, my ankle twisted, my glasses, phone, and dog suddenly scattered across the park. After the shock wore off, I said a few choice words and gathered myself together again. My phone had jumped to a Ramón Ayala song after landing with a thud — ah, my original inspiration for the accordion. I might have felt more pain if I hadn’t instead felt completely ridiculous.

I think the message in this post is — Jill scratches her head — to pay attention to the current moment? Or perhaps it’s to not treat life as a checklist because true enjoyment, like falling into holes, is around every sunset corner you round. Oh, yeah, it had something to do with the snares of sin and mumbling choice words when I fall, not to mention despairing over the long walk home. Whatever way you look at it, my ankle is throbbing today, though it didn’t prevent me from trying to fill my exercise block. And I already filled the Mi Cómplice spot and perhaps played it a little better than yesterday.

*If you want to see what marching to the beat means, you’ll have to watch the video and mira al hombre que está bailando con un palito. Seriously, though, the first time I watched this video I laughed so hard with pure delight that ese hombre does nothing but dance on beat with a stick. Apparently, that was his role in the band. I love his smile. Infectious.

Yesterday was Parade Day, the best day of the year, when school is cancelled and the town is shut down for miles. Make way for the parade! the sirens scream.

Yes, the fair parade is a big deal in Roswell. Shutting it down in 2020 was just another way to demoralize an already demoralized community. When the furor settles, Roswell is a rural and agricultural community that has been hit hard by the shutdowns. Farming was supposed to have been “essential” but, sadly, when our distant bureaucrats determine that some businesses are essential and others aren’t, they unwittingly (or wittingly — I don’t put anything past politicians) disrupt supply chains that eventually cause farms to go out of business.

This year’s fair parade was a moment of hope, though, when the town rallied together, and the only person wearing a mask in the crowds or in the parade was the alien overlord of diabetes — oops, I meant to say Dunkin Donuts.

Even though I’m not a community-oriented person, I still find it heartening that a small town in the middle of nowhere gets together to celebrate what is important to them: schools, sports, local businesses, and the agricultural world the fair represents. I even find it heartening to see misbehaving boys riding their skateboards against the flow of the parade. And then there were the children who decided they would lead the parade on their bicycles; there they were, right in front of the blaring police and fire vehicles, as though they’d self-determined themselves to be the real marshalls of the event.

As much as the world changes, it stays the same. That’s why I kept this parade as the precursor to a major turning point in my latest book, Order of the PenTriagon. To the heroine, the normalcy of sparkly cheerleaders tumbling down the road is something to envy. But, despite the world coming apart for her, there the parade is — in a distant future when aliens have left the human population in disrepair.

When I started writing this book, I couldn’t have imagined how the world would shortly change; I get a strange shiver when I consider the so-called “pure bloods” of people in my book world who haven’t been vaccinated. No, I don’t consider vaccinated people to be impure; that would be the current meme world calling them that. To be honest, though, I wanted to throw in everything I’d read or heard over the years from men like Alex Jones or David Icke … and these men, I’m afraid, turned out to be actual truth bearers in many ways. David Icke might be slightly insane (I would call Jones “obsessed” and not necessarily mentally ill), but he still had a sense of reality the rest of us normal people have lacked.

I’ll finish this post by encouraging you to read my book, and also to post a picture of the Shriners in the parade, as they have a role to play in my story. Obviously, the men in the photo below are real people, not book characters. I impute no evil or good intentions to them; it’s really just an illustrative image, as it shows what Shriners look like with their hats and bikes.