Skip to main content

Solicitations Most Sublime

For years, during which time we hop-scotched our way in and out of Tucson, tending to our education and jobs, we took short breaks from chores and drove toward Arizona's southern border where it meets Mexico.  Sometimes we crossed into Nogales, Sonora for special meals, and sometimes we only drove as far as Tubac, a small arts town less than an hour from home.

Sometimes, at first, and always, as we became familiar with the territory, we watched for Amado, a community just north of Tubac.  We knew nothing about the village except that we could see its longhorns from the freeway.

Yesterday we drove to Tubac, again, intending to buy a ceramic pot for our backyard, and to have lunch at Elvira's, while we were there.  This time, perhaps only for the second time in all those years, we decided to watch for, and explore, the longhorns, again.

We had not intended to go into the restaurant/bar, but it was a tad sad, nonetheless, to learn that the bar had closed, probably because there did not seem to be any other reason to turn into Amado unless you lived there.

It was about as classy an announcement about going out of business as I have ever seen.  And, seriously, since we were not giving away beer--do I look like a man who mutilates himself?--we went on to Tubac, although the first detour having proved to be so interesting, we did stop at the spice shop in Tumacacori first (Too-mah-CAH-co-ree).

The Spanish happened upon an indigenous settlement there in 1691.  This part of the Southwest has deep roots; thousands of years older than its discovery by the Spanish, but even that is long:  325 years ago!

Finally in Tubac, we found the pot we were looking for, and had a genuinely elegant lunch at Elvira's, a restaurant that pulled up its own roots in Nogales, Sonora, just across the border a few miles away, to move to Tubac:  our gain!

This morning, or this blistering mid-day--I not being of sound mind or body--I established the pot we bought in our back yard to grace the round building whose inspiration was traditional African homes.  I thought that Representative Steven King, from Iowa, who spoke so ignorantly a day or two ago about all worthwhile civilization being rooted in White Europe and America deserved a small counter-argument in our back yard.  Think of it as the only response I had at hand.

I do not mean to single out Mr. King:  he is, after all, attending the Republican National Convention, where his compatriots are howling for the imprisonment and execution of Hillary Clinton for crimes against God, against God's Whole 6-000 Year-old Creation, and against Republican Aspirations for a Righteous Kingdom of White Men.

But I am getting carried away here, mucking up a perfectly delightful day.


"Amado" means loved.  Except maybe for solicitors.  And the hopelessly ignorant.













Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there