Mike Booth: The Gringo Chronicles

We All Want the Same Thing

When I was a child at school we were taught the importance of individuality, how different we all were from one another. Now that I’m an old codger I feel more and more like everybody else. All of us old codgers want the same thing: for our kids and grandkids to be healthy and happy. So please bear with me while I give you a quick rundown on ours.

Our son Dean (45) and his wife Lola finally managed to purchase the acre of woodland adjacent to their garden, so Dean now has space to plant a vegetable garden, harvest firewood and continue his never-ending rustic building projects. Their 12-year-old twins, Dean and Alex, are growing big and blond and beautiful, and seeing them side by side only doubles the impression. Their little love-child sister, four-year-old Celia, doesn’t weigh 25 pounds yet, but she lays down the law in that house.

Our youngest, Bill (almost 38), and his wife Victoria are still pending delivery of a child in adoption from Madagascar. In the meantime Bill works as a geology professor at the University of Granada and spends his spare time photographing insects and tending his olive grove. From his childhood we wondered if he would become a biologist or a geologist. Turns out he’s both, and an olive farmer, as well.

Tanya, the eldest at 47, and her husband Javier, sold their farm and Spanish mastiff breeding operation near Montefrío in Granada and moved to Burgo de Osma, a beautiful little historic town in the province of Soria, Spain’s coldest. Javier is having his second novel published this month and working on his third book, a non-fiction work about Iceland, the richest country in the world for 15 minutes. They have spent time in Iceland and actually bought a little house in a fishing village on the north side of othe island.

Tanya’s three kids; Leo (26), Lucía (24), and Elisa (21); are all in good shape and about to finish university in physics, agricultural engineering and fine arts, respectively. Last fall Leo climbed up a tree and sat there for two hours till he shot a wild boar with his bow and arrow. They’re all driving up to Burgo de Osma together to spend Christmas with Tanya and Javier.

Maureen remains everybody’s favorite person, and she works hard to deserve it. She’s what Kurt Vonnegut called a “wampeteer,” a person who brings other people together. She’s also a fairy godmother: just ask Kristina. Aside from that, she makes art. She’s had two exhibits this month, one at the Delagua Gallery in Úbeda (Jaén) and the other here at home. The open-studio show here worked better. The sights and smells of an artist’s studio exercise a powerful influence on art buyers.

We lost two of our old home-bred dogs this year, Gusi and Chuf Chuf, but were given a new puppy by our friend, Miguel Ángel Arcas, as she was finding increasingly creative ways of punishing him for leaving her home alone, like peeing on his pillow. She’s a delightful little bob-tailed white Shi Tzu cross called “Cuca” and her rugged character reminds us of Piki China, a Pekinese we used to have. Though she’s docile and playful, she doesn’t stand any nonsense from anyone, particularly the neighborhood tomcats.

That leaves me. The good news is that after two years with tendonitis in my shoulder which kept me from swimming, I’m now fully recovered and back in the water four times a week. The secret? Google. After trying acupuncture, physiotherapy, massage, osteopathy and like that, I looked up “tendonitis” in our favorite search engine and it said, “Don’t do anything that hurts.” Six months later I was almost new.

My book (which turned out to be two books) is on the back burner, as it was running over bumps and I had to get back to work and didn’t have time to fix it. I must say, it gets depressing when you’re revising your own manuscript and start finding it too boring to go on. Now I’m reading a book about plots, which I should have read before. As soon as I get some free time, I know what I have to do, I think.

It has been my good luck this year to discover some remarkable people on the World Wide Web, people to enjoy listening to and reading, to learn from, and yes, to admire.  Paul Jay, the Canadian television journalist and film maker, is the man behind The Real News, an indispensable information source for those of us who distrust the mainstream media. I find it hard to believe that the best people to consult on the news of the United States are the members of a Canadian news organization, but that’s the way it is.  I also want to mention Naomi Klein and Leila Fadel (here in an interview from Bill Moyers’ Journal), the former a writer and activist, the latter a reporter in Iraq. Both of these young women seem to me to be people capable of changing the world for the better. Who else can we say that about these days?

So, all in all, it’s been a very good year for us, though not so much for other folks around the world. Now that the New American Century is taking off with such impressive results, however, I think there is some hope for many of those unfortunate people who are weary of having their savings filched, their oil fields occupied and their weddings bombed. Time will tell, of course, but I’m optimistic.

So, here’s wishing you all a very merry winter solstice, and new year full of prosperity and solidarity. Do drop us a line if you get time. I promise to answer.

Kind regards,

Mike, Maureen & Family