Dear friends and correspondents all around the world, I'm delighted to hear that some of you are now considering writing about your own personal experiences. There is no else in the world quite like you, even if you have an identical twin. I may have commented on this before, but if so, I've now forgotten, so probably you have as well. I am still quite willing to give you my own advice as a fellow writer. However, I cannot be your full-time editor because there are just way too many of you. And my own time at age 88--both in terms of daily hours and my days still left here on planet earth--is already quite limited. I first launched the blog to communicate with my family and with so many friends all over the world, living in at least 40 countries in every time zone. It's been my good fortune to have gotten to know all of you. We have so many experiences in common, especially among all those of us who are female, especially since many are also mothers like me.
Some of you do have books to write with really interesting stories to tell. Everyone has a life so very different from every other life that has ever been lived. Some of you speak another language and have habits unique to your country--whether involving religious observances, family relations, dress, food preparation, and many other matters, so let's just hear about all that directly from you. But since English is now the universal language, any book you might write must be issued in English, perhaps in translation, regardless of whether that is your first language. You will learn to write by just putting words on paper. You will learn to write like you first learned to walk, just by actually doing it. Your own unique style will emerge.
I myself speak English and Spanish and have written in both languages. And while I am familiar with different disabilities and various health challenges, the disability that I know most about is blindness, as my late former husband of 24 years was totally blind. For all of those 24 years, I worked closely by his side, helping him achieve the success that he was certainly capable of and that was finally acknowledged by the world with his MacArthur Genius award, although when he received it, he had already separated from me and had married his second wife. I first read about his award in the Washington Post. Yet while I felt pride about his success, even from a distance, knowing that I had played an essential part, our children and I were not actual beneficiaries of his award, as he and his second wife chose not to share any of his newly acquired largesse. In fact, long before that, together they had even emptied all our pre-existing joint bank accounts, so that not even a single penny was left. Such changes in family relations can and do happen on a dime and may have happened to some readers here as well. So if misery loves company, we all know that we have plenty of company. And writing about it often helps. At that long ago time, when our family was left penniless, the children and I delivered phone books locally from a wagon (remember those big bulky phone books?), just for enough ready cash to buy our food. All those are experiences that I have written about before.
So then, back to today, right now, while I am quite willing to review your own writing projects, and to offer some personal guidance, I just cannot be your editor along every step of the way. How did you learn to walk? You just stood up and took a step. It's the same with writing; you simply learn by doing it. I will continue to do my very best to help you, but you will also need to find other mentors. Look around you now to identify those who might help you. Then go forward with your own writing project and please keep me in the loop, along with those other folks you have chosen to advise you. But you will still need to do most of the work all by yourself.
And just like the rest of you, I also have close family members with whom I am in regular, even sometimes daily, contact. I started the blog to address you all good friends living around the world, now hoping that you will understand why my time is so limited. And there are many other resources available for your own mentoring. So find them now. There are also ghost writers, but I don't recommend hiring them, as you need to write in your own unique voice.
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One of my correspondents in Honduras observes that in his country, cars are never left outside on city streets after dark. Instead, they are all locked up in underground garages or in family compounds surrounded by fences with armed guards on duty all night long. Otherwise, your car might no longer be there the next morning, after being hotwired and taken to a neighboring country. Or, at the very least, its tires or even wheels might be gone, maybe even the engine. Cars are not manufactured in Central America and even if they were, folks living there would not trust their workmanship. Thus, a motor vehicle is a precious commodity and must always be closely guarded.
The private homes of people of means are also surrounded by high fences, barbed wire, and locked gates with a guard dog stationed outside and a trusted live-in servant always on duty inside. Whenever the owners go away, the servant stays there with her own children, whom she normally sees only on Sunday, her weekly day off. Then she never leaves the premises until the owners return.
Central Americans who have visited me in the US have been amazed to see Americans leaving front doors unlocked during the day so folks can enter easily. The reason this can happen here is that there are not the same extremes of wealth and poverty now found in so many other countries.
However, I must now note that in South Sudan, even though many folks there are very poor, yet a tent or dwelling could be left unattended all day long because of a strict honor code, enforced by custom, not by any written law. Nothing in that tent would ever be touched, as I found out for myself.
Now should I write another book about some of my observations around the world, whether in South Sudan or elsewhere, places where I've always traveled alone, making friends along the way, never in any organized group? Or is just expressing myself now here on the blog enough?
If a future historian should want to read about a life in today's times, he or she might find my blog enlightening, provided that it still remains. But a blog is not like a physical book that can even last for centuries, so I don't know how long a blog might last. Maybe I need to write another book and have it printed on physical paper, which may then last well beyond my own life. We still have books and manuscripts written centuries ago.
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Returning to the blog now and to the present day, one of my Dominican correspondents asks why are so many Haitians currently flooding into the Dominican Republic? Haiti and the DR do share a single large island, with a rather porous border between them (see the map).
¿Cómo tantos haitianos siguen entrando tan fácil a la RD?
Well, that is the question now coming from my Dominican friend, noting the sudden flood of Haitians into his country. No doubt, one reason that so many Haitians are arriving in the DR right now is because they are being deported en masse by the Trump administration, and are finding the DR to be a tad safer than staying in gang-ridden Haiti on the island that the 2 nations share. Anyway, that's just my guess, having often visited both countries years ago.
Another friend in Guatemala, also a country quite familiar to me, is asking why his country is now being flooded with returnees from both the US and Mexico? The reason is that they are now being deported from both countries. Mexico, which until recently seemed fairly tolerant of Central Americans seeking to enter the US, has found that they are all now being stopped at the US border, so have been crowding up that area. So even Mexico has been undertaking deportations back to Guatemala.
In some places, the US current border wall is a very high fence, impossible to even climb.
Still, we might reconsider preventing this young woman and her kids from entering our country now, as Americans are no longer having enough children to keep our population from shrinking. And we are already becoming top-heavy with elders like me. Many Americans may expect to have children "some day," but just never get around to it or else they start too late.
Readers already know that I oppose Trump's aggressive deportation campaign because we really should be keeping most deported folks right here, right now, just to carry out the many tasks still needing to be done. We simply don't have enough working-age people in our country anymore, so our president is just not doing the math. He is deporting folks that we really should be keeping here, mostly of working age. We are no longer have enough babies, enough children, or even a sufficient number of working-age people, though our country still has plenty of retired old folks just like me. And most Americans have not been willing to do many of the jobs these newcomers have been doing, jobs like childcare, picking crops, and cleaning hotel rooms. Native-born Americans just don't want to perform those tasks anymore.
American women and men now know how to stop producing babies while also enjoying sex, so that's what many have been doing. Our child count is going down. down, down, in every demographic here under age 50.
American voters, you may now realize you've made a really serious mistake in choosing Donald Trump as our president, having so many unfortunate repercussions all over the world. Kamala is just that much smarter, so very much more thoughtful and farseeing. She doesn't just act on impulse like Donald Trump always does. She would never have made the egregious errors in judgment that Trump continues making to this day, as his mind slowly but inexorably sinks further into senile dementia, a matter quite out of his personal control.
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A young Marine has died in the Iraq war, His mother now asks, "What was it for?"
We might ask the same question about any war at all.
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Google Maps changes Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ in US searches
That name can be changed back as soon a Trump leaves office, which cannot happen soon enough as far as I am concerned.
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Now for a personal note about my late older son Andrew, whose birthday is currently pending. He died at age 37 after a work accident, far too young. My son Jonathan, with whom I live now, named his first son Andrew after his lost brother. We've brought my son's gravestone here from Washington, DC, where it had been kept in my backyard there. We also brought the statue of a girl who still guards his grave now.
In this day and age in our country now, we expect to lose our parents, even a sibling. I have already lost my own younger brother, Bob Currie. But I had never expected to lose my son Andrew and even after these many years, I still feel his loss. And his birthday is coming up now on September 4. If he were still alive today, he would be 59 years old. Dearest Andrew, we still miss you.
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A former DC neighbor, a wonderful cook, is displaying this dessert which we can taste now only with our eyes. When I lived back on Capitol Hill, I often got to actually eat some of her homemade dishes, all very scrumptious and delicious.
My own older daughter, living now in Florida, is also a fabulous cook. But her recent efforts to mail me some of her own tasty concoctions have ended up just creating quite a huge mess. Here below are some items that I had sampled back in May while visiting her. Her company is called Goodness, but I don't recommend ordering unless you actually live in Florida.
