Browsing All Posts filed under »Uncategorized«

Good Mothers

June 28, 2019

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Almost all of the immigrant Mexican mothers I talked to or interviewed wanted more for their children than they’d received growing up. In most cases that meant earning power but also respectability. A son or daughter who dropped out of school or married badly or joined a gang punctured the parents’ slowly accrued self-esteem and […]

How Did Governmental Corruption Become So Rampant in Mexico?

June 7, 2019

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As the theory that “to be efficient government should be run like a business” became more popular after World War II, concepts like “trade balance” and stock market values became national concerns. The governments of the United States and leading countries in Europe and Korea and Japan in Asia supported manufacturing and exports, sometimes to […]

Police Attack

October 16, 2018

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“It was five o’clock in the morning [June 14]. Some people started shouting — they’d gotten warning calls on their cell phones. ‘Get up! Get up! The police are coming!’ I saw flashlights snap on. Then we heard the helicopters. They came in so low their big rotors sent things flying through the air. Then […]

Mexican Justice?

February 12, 2018

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Mexico’s repression of public protest has deepened with the passage of new laws granting the armed forces unlimited powers to reprimand, curtail and incriminate whoever they please. Military personnel have been involved in nearly a dozen massacres and mass arrests during the past ten years, one of which I wrote about in Where Gringos Don’t […]

Pinche Ghost Lives

October 27, 2017

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“Mira!” Erika wagged a slim forefinger toward vendors, gawkers, and ice cream-smeared toddlers moving through the city of Oaxaca’s central plaza as she turned to face me. “You think you’re seeing people but they’re not people, they’re ghosts!” Erika had taught high school for nearly thirty years and was a member of the state teachers’ union. She had […]

Miss Sally – 4 1/2 stars

October 8, 2017

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Miss Sally by Robert Joe Stout     This is a bleak view of Texas in the 1930s offered by a young girl lost in a dust bowl of sin, confusion, and lust. Bleak may be a polite term as I am sure some readers would find Robert Joe Stout’s 1973 novel “Miss Sally” a […]

The End of ebooks?

September 9, 2017

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In its newsletter the publisher of one of my books cited the continuing popularity plunge in ebook sales and the increase (significant but not phenomenal) in paperback popularity. The newsletter also reported a decline in fiction sales and rise in nonfiction purchases. The publisher’s conclusion, similar to those of the Publishers Association, was that readers […]

Two months, twenty-three days

August 1, 2017

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During some research that I was doing about Mexican president Benito Juárez’s first years in office I came cross a notation concerning the “incredibly slow” transmission of a document sent from New York to Oaxaca, the capital of the state by the same name in the southern part of the country. The document was received […]

Miss Sally: A Review

July 23, 2017

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Miss Sally: and the Sinners That God Ignores Posted by Literary Titan Miss Sally by Robert Joe Stout is a portrait of a young girl growing up in Texas in the 1930’s. Through trial and error 13-year-old Sally Halm finds out about sex, relationships, and what it means to engage in this behavior without love. She […]

Life’s Little Adventures

November 9, 2016

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FROM GNARLED OAK With the County by Robert Joe Stout on Nov 7, 2016 Somewhat to my surprise I discovered those who worked for the county in which I used to live were not government employees but members of a private club. One joined this club by filling out an application, taking a test and […]

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