I Get Irked when people bring up the “Law Card” when discussing the immigration issue.

You know the ones that say they are for immigration as long as it is legal. Either they aren’t very old or they are too something to remember that black people (then called Negroes in polite society) couldn’t use certain restrooms or sit down in certain places in America – by law. Or perhaps they have forgotten that in more recent times you could be arrested for being gay in America. Surely they haven’t gotten here by jumping the tremendous hurdles of current American Immigration Law.

I suppose these racial bigots and homophobes that justify their prejudice under the veil of “the law” will always exist – but it really irks me when they spout this nonsense from religious to bully pulpit. Political pundits abound on Fox News ranting with righteous indignation about how they just want the law obeyed – they aren’t against an influx of poor that have met the muster – jumped through all the hoops – and obeyed the laws (good or bad).

Have we all become so brainwashed by the “authoritative” rants of these people that we believe that because it is a law it is right? If history taught us anything we should know that this kind of lemming thinking is how Hitler got into power.

Now that we good upstanding Americans whose forefathers ethnic cleansed the American and Mexican Indians from the land that we love are here on the right side of the border we can close the door to the opportunities we have been afforded by the happenstance of birthright.

This Country now wields around its incredible military strength shouting out that we are the all knowing and all powerful – that “ours” is the truth, the light and the American way while we stand by being taxed, cheated, and lied to – to death – by the leadership of this Country. Is it any wonder that around the world the American Way is becoming a hard sell?

I have quoted before a few lines from Emma Lazurus’ poem that is inscribed on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty, but here I want to give you the entire poem to read and think about because it is what I think America should be about when it comes to the wannabes storming the American shores and borders.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus, 1883

That is what America is really about – but then there seems to be a majority of narrow minded bigots who, now that they are in America, want to close the door off to others.

As we move forward in a globalizing world people must think locally and act globally. Soon our home will be in Mexico but our hearts will be with poor people everywhere. Stay Tuned!

We arrived home about 9 PM Thursday from a whirlwind trip down to New Mexico to take our first load of things off Rancho Calypso.

Here is our little house on the corner – kind of over grown green – yes we have yard work to do there too. The house is far left – you can see a front garage to the right and just behind the truck to the left is the garage in which we were storing things.

We arrived about 7:30 PM Wednesday; our neighbors across the street and across the alley came out to greet us. I haven’t been there for two years. It has been three for Anita. It was a nice reception from people we haven’t seen for a while. We had planned on driving over to Bonita Lake and camping out – but it was late after all the catching up with the neighbors.

Our neighbor Mike insisted on our staying in his cute little guest house across the street. We enjoyed a shower and a peaceful nights sleep before heading back across the street where we first needed to get rid of a few items and clean some of the dust out of the garage. Oh and yes it needs some paint ;-0

There is a single wide mobile home along our west property line – all other lines are bordering roadway. This mobile has been vacant since we have owned the place some 8 years or so. Now there are new renters. Ted and Virginia introduced themselves and eye balled our stack of stuff removed from the garage.

I asked if they wanted any of the items. They took almost everything. What a break for us to not have to haul the stuff away or to put a free sign and move it to the curb (we have had good luck with that process).

Our fancy little restored Suzuki 4-wheeler had a half an inch of dust on it and the battery was dead. We will return with a new battery next week and give it a bath.

We banged into a big buck on the way home – but he skirted off in the opposite direction as I swerved to the left to avoid him as much as possible – we bumped but I think he survived? The look we had in each others eyes as we met for that slit second was amazing. We are hoping and thinking he survived.

We are back on the scene today to continue packing – Stay Tuned!

We are about to take our first load of STUFF off the Ranch. We have a small adobe house in New Mexico with two garages – we will drive the 400 miles south to park some of our things.

It has been unseasonably hot here over the last few days. Two things that you can count on: strange weather when we are moving something and rain. It hasn’t rained yet, but I can’t think of a time when we have loaded our open to air trailer to move something that it didn’t rain. I will report back on this.

We are planning to camp out at a camp ground near Bonita Lake just north of the town of Ruidoso. Back in the end of the 20th Century we bought some acreage to build and a small real adobe house in the town of Capitan (Home of Smokey the Bear). We started moving stuff from Arizona to New Mexico in trailer loads much as you see here.

At the same time we were looking at a second home in the Baja south of Ensenada. Neither plan came to fruition. In 2001 we purchased Rancho Calypso in Colorado and then in 2005 property in Veracruz. Confused – well I guess we were too.

As we refined our punch list of what the three of us wanted in housing we altered the plans. We strongly recommend putting plans to paper listing in degree of importance your personal criteria – include the wishes of each family member.

We bought our first Mexico property rather quickly. In fact, I agreed to purchase two properties before Anita and Julian ever saw the area – a bold move, I know. We ended up with one of the two places and don’t regret it. But the wise advice is to spend some time in an area learning about it while refining your punch list.

Be that as it may – today’s mission is to finish loading up and head down to New Mexico. Stay Tuned!

We are short timers now with less than sixty days before we leave Colorado for good. Are you reading Paul & Nancy’s “Count Down to Mexico” Blog? We are running close to parallel on our joint moves to Mexico – theirs to the West Coast of Mexico and ours to the East Coast – to new houses and lives.

Sunday we will meet our son Julian in Loveland, Colorado – I haven’t seen the boy since a year ago April. It will be great to see him. We will take a few of his things for him to take back to Hollywood. Then we will begin the final assault on getting packed up.

In the header of my Blog you see an Olmec head that I photographed in Antigua, Veracruz. Right about now I feel like the weight of one of those Olmec heads is on our shoulders to get packed up and moved.

Long before Cortes those tropical lowlands were the domain of the Olmec, Mesoamerica’s oldest civilization, which rose to prominence more than 3,000 years ago, developing religious ideas, mathematical concepts and a calendar system that would be adopted later by the Maya and Aztec.

Master carvers, the Olmec disappeared mysteriously around 400 B.C., leaving behind huge basalt heads believed to represent their rulers. Most of the heads are on display in Mexico’s museums, including the fabulous Museum of Anthropology in Xalapa.

The Olmec head in my photo was outside somewhere near the Church and park in the central area of Antigua (a small town just south of the city of Veracruz). Here is the uncropped original photo:

We will start out living at our two locations in Xico a small town some 12 miles southwest of Xalapa the capitol of Veracruz. In essence we will be full time residence of Mexico. Our part of Veracruz is a world of back-road virtues, where tradition reigns. Herman Cortes dropped anchor in Veracruz in 1519, opening a portal for trade. We will drop anchor there sometime in September.

OK so I am going to put on some Santana and then maybe Victor Garcia, the Mexican singer out of ‘La Academia’ (The Academy), Mexico’s version of American Idol, and pack some stuff. Get in a Mexican mood with music.

Someone said that all that is good in Mexico starts in Veracruz – I believe that is true. Xalapa has the finest symphony orchestra in Mexico as well as some magnificent Mariachi bands and many street musicians.

Our new Mexico lives will be a dance to a different drummer; a dance to different yet familiar music.

In Veracruz there are many forms of music. Of all the cosmopolitan influences – food laced with Italian spices, healing practices from Africa, sensual dances from Cuba – it is the music that speaks to the souls of the 7 million people of Veracruz – Music got me there and likely may keep me there – after all music is the highest thing. Stay Tuned!

Anita and I are Baby Boomers – I am a member of the first year of so titled Americans and Anita belongs to those in the last year of the Boomers.

Of course this is nothing more than a group of people born between 1946 and 1960. Actually more recently it seems they have moved the last year up to 1964 – 14 years or 18 years – I don’t know – but I do know 1946 is always the first year and there I am and Anita qualifies in either case as well. I have to wonder if they added those four years to make the numbers look still worse?

OK so we have done the math and we fit; now to my complaint.

These days when you hear about Baby Boomers it mostly relates to the fact that the first Boomers will start collecting (possibly) social security funds come 2008. Usually it is coupled with how this group is going to break the bank; how as few as two current wage earners will soon be paying the freight for the cost of ONE Boomer – grrrr.

This REALLY is starting to grate on me and I am here to tell you about it. We are to feel guilty that the work force must now carry the burden of supporting us in the minimal style we were promised when they started holding back funds for such a day. The younger generations are now resenting this excess baggage that has become a large part of the whole population.

The first thing that comes to my old beleaguered mind is what happen to all the money they took from us – weren’t they supposed to be investing it in America in a sense whereby we would benefit from the forced savings?

Then I have to ask who was doing the numbers way back in the sixties when they started collecting this money from me – even before the full compliment of Boomers had been produced? Shouldn’t there be some accountability by those who accounted all this so poorly. Is there a reasonable explanation for their lack of foresight? And should I feel guilty for their lack of planning?

Is it OK for the younger generation to dislike we older folks because unbeknownst to us someone didn’t do the math correctly?

Here are a couple suggestions. Most of you probably know, although we don’t hear about their program, that the people that were responsible for making these decisions and promises (the Government) have a separate retirement program that eliminates their having to be affected one way or the other by the solvency, or not, of social security – perhaps they need to pony up some dough from that retirement program – after all that program was also funded by us too.

Then I have to wonder if the half a trillion PLUS dollars being spent on supposedly helping out the freedom riders of Iraq might be better spent funding the promise of social security to those of us who fought their wars and worked within their system?

It should be noted that there are millions of dollars collected on behalf of social security from illegal immigrants working in this country – dollars they will never see and maybe we will?

One harsh reality I have learned in life is that we are often involved in agreements (verbal or otherwise contracts) wherein the other party(ies) do NOT meet their agreed commitment.

Is this where we are going with social security? Are we being setup with a lot of negative press about the plight of having to support the Baby Boomers so that when the bank is bust they will be able to say they warned us? I don’t know but I sure am fed up with having to look bad for being part of a group that met our end of the agreement.

If they are now seeing that failing to meet their commitment is a possibility – shouldn’t they stop sending our tax dollars to other countries and fighting wars for the freedom of other people until they are certain that they can compensate their own people as promised when they forced us to pay into that process?

If you are young and mad at me because I am not, and come 2008 a couple of you will be paying my paltry social security please understand I met my commitment in oh so many ways – ways that got you here; and understand that you will be in my shoes sooner than you think. Stay Tuned!

I go through waves of feeling like we are going to get everything out of here on time and then not – today is a not. We have to be out by September 15th. I have had some slow sales on our stuff – the value of guns has gone nowhere. I have a number of collectible type items that simply did not make the value jump they were touted to do.

My advice is stay away from collectibles – I mean we still have a couple Beanie Babies and boxes of Hot Wheels, not to mention sports cards, lithographs and antiquarian books.

Tomorrow we are supposed to hear from the antique furniture guy and one of my friends will call about the guns he looked at (no way is he buying anything…we haven’t reached the point of 5 cents on the dollars yet – but stay tuned).

So far we have sold $11,500.00 worth of stuff – this from a list of potentially $21,000. We are a little better than half way. We have donated at least $3000.00 worth of items that we have donation receipts for. We will give these to Julian who needs deductions. We on the other hand need money;-0

The focus now will be on BIG things. I have three large LP conga drums, a brand new mud pump, a papercrete tow mixer, an espresso cart, a huge Onan generator in a cabinet, a green sofa, several sound systems, a tile wet saw, DeWalt compound miter saw – man I am going to stop now…I think you get the idea.

Come on what do you need – we probably have one or two. Stay Tuned!

Live Earth, a seven continent concert series that took place yesterday 7/7/07 to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis. I will watch anytime I get to see and hear Sheryl Crow, Dave Mathews, Linkin Park, John Mayer, and Shakira (she was in Hamburg).

The lovely and talented singer Alicia Keys sang three excellent songs although prior to her solo performance she joined Keith Urban in a poorly done rendition of the Stones classic “Gimme Shelter”.

Dylan wrote in his terrific most recent and 44th album  “Modern Times”, “I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee, I feel lucky”. Some have suggested and probably rightly so that Dylan was hitting on the foxy young lady. She was in New York yesterday Bob.

I thought the New York stage back drop  made up of recycled tires was cool. (Viva Earthships!)

Genisis, Pink Floyd, and The Police were a few of the oldies groups – even Madonna, Duran Duran and John Bon Jovi made appearances for the older set.

There were some good message points about energy conservation, global warming and the greening of America. Ann Curry interviewed Sting and his wife about the disaster in Ecuador perpetrated by Exxon’s toxic contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon (grrrr).

Sadly I think at the end of the day it will have about as much real success as that of Farm Aid concerts. You know those Willie Nelson bashes that have been happening annually since 1985 – Farm Aids mission is to keep family farmers on their land, they want to bring together family farmers and citizens to guarantee family farm food is available to you and me.

The Farm Aid Music Festival has been going on annually since 1985 with little help to the real plight of farmers or getting family farm food to Pueblo.

Sting, Ed Bagley and a host of others including yours truly have been harping on environmental issues for more than 20 years with little success. Now there’s Al Gore – let’s not even go there.

Any excuse to have a party I guess. Here I am sounding quite jaded and after all I enjoyed much of the entertainment. They had a segment with Ed Bagley who has been an environmentalist since about the inception of Farm Aid – I enjoyed it – but it really was about the music.

OK so if this is going to get the attention of the youth’s of the world I am all for it. But when Julian called last night and I asked him if he had been watching any Live Earth Concerts – “What’s that?”

Perhaps the Live Earth Concert’s best was by another favorite of mine Sting; at the finale of all the partying Sting and the Police first played “Driven to Tears.” The lyrics are as follows:

How can you say that you’re not responsible?
What does it have to do with me?
What is my reaction, what should it be?
Confronted by this latest atrocity

Driven to tears

Actually Sting wrote this song in 1979 after seeing television reports of starving children. It was written in a motel while The Police were on their second American tour. Sting has been quoted as saying, “This is the only song he ever wrote on the road. Sting played this at Live Aid in 1985. That concert was a benefit organized to help starving children in Africa. This was a very appropriate song for that occasion, and again for this SOS Live Earth event 22 years later.

The Police next sang their standard “Roxanne” and they ended their set with “Message in a Bottle” keying on the line, “Sending out an SOS”; this being part of the Live Earth theme – send out an SOS…global warming needs our attention now.

At some point as I watched I saw a line scroll across the screen that read, “Green is the new black.” Now I am not totally sure what this means – perhaps that a while back all the kids were into wearing and everything black and now they are into green? I can only hope!

Peace – Think Green (environmentally speaking) – and STAY TUNED!

This photo was taken in our upper level room. There is a small niche (I love those spots). I have used the ‘hole’ in the wall display area as a photo spot to check my cameras and lenses. The interesting thing is while testing a new lens yesterday, as I looked at the results I realized that the little art pieces symbolized where I am at right now – living between two countries.

We have a wonderful spot we share with nature here at Rancho Calypso – then there is our life in Mexico – we have been on a fence between the two countries. Now we are packing up and heading out from Rancho Calypso. Soon we will turn over the keys to our earthship and leave the land we love so much.

OK I am in Heaven right now with my new camera lens. My amiga Billie suggested some lenses that she thought would be appropriate for my new Canon 400D camera. Unlike Billie I am not a photographer, but I wanted a good camera to have in Mexico.

John Paul from ChiTown also came up with a list.

Both lists included a 17mm-85mm auto focusing, image stabilizing Canon lens. This is not a $2000.00 fast lens but with the image stabilization one can shoot at very slow shutter speeds which makes up in part for a not so fast lens – too technical? If you want technical go to Billie or John Paul’s sites.

So above is a photo of one of the several niches we have in our earthship on Rancho Calypso (soon to be Colleen and John’s).

Yesterday the antique buyer came over to checkout some of our antique furniture and some of Anita’s stuff. I took this photo at 1/5 second, hand held in our living room of our goose head armed barber’s chair. I am very pleased with the true to life colors and the sharpness – especially when it was shot at 1/5 second.

OK so now that I have bored you with my camera…I am going to take pictures of our beloved Ranch before we turn it over to the buyers.

Have a GREAT Fourth of July. PEACE & STAY TUNED!

“The most amazing thing about the pyramids of Egypt. ” said Henry David Thoreau, “is that enough people could be found degraded enough to build them, when they should have taken that ambitious booby, the Pharaoh, and drowned him in the Nile.”

I agree with Thoreau.

Edward Abbey one of my favorite writers wrote this to which I also agree: ” I believe in democracy – real democracy. Rule by the people. And I think we ought to try it sometime. I believe in community sovereignty as an ideal to work toward. I believe in decentralized power. Decentralization of power in every form: military, political, economic and even moral and intellectual.”

How ridiculous is it to claim that the U.S. is a democracy, a country run of the people, by the people and for the people. How does this shake out when at least 7 out of 10 want the country out of the civil war in Iraq? Why is the middle class disappearing and why are the rich getting richer than ever while the poor are suffering?

These days in my way of thinking politics has a diminishing presence as a force or value in our midst. For many months now I have been watching the drama in the hallowed halls of Congress and the upset and controversy for the common man – all the fuss over illegal immigration reform.

It came to head this past week, or actually not. Thousands of pages, many hundreds of thousands of words poured into a 700 page bill with more than 20 attached amendments (just one was over 400 pages). This thing was more confusing than a calculus final. The untold costs of all this boggles the mind. From as much as I could glean from watching the Senate channel the bill was not going to be good. This feeling has been supported by people that looked into the details to a greater extent than me – people whose judgment I trust like David’s outfit: American Families United (http://americanfamiliesunited.org/ )

The reality is U.S. politics has become dysfunctional. In an unrelated situation in the past ten years or so I have been witness to a number of ballot issues where millions of dollars were spent promoting or not a measure only to have it deemed illegal Constitutionally after the election – here I am thinking WHY couldn’t they have established the legality of the measure BEFORE all that money and energy was spent?

There was a lot of debate as to why the existing laws have not been enforced? Part of the bill included building 300 some miles of wall while the 700 plus mile wall initiative has been passed and is on the books. Does the saying one hand doesn’t know what the others doing fit here? This is a show at a tremendous cost to the people with absolutely NO results.

The bottom line is these government people are wasting their time and our money. To quote Tolstoy, “The hero of my work, in all his unadorned glory and beauty is truth. Truth is always the enemy of power. The truth is they have been spinning their wheels here, and ask my wife, I predicted when this all started that at the end nothing will have been accomplished and we will go back to business as usual. Sometimes I hate it when I am right.

We still have friends that have husbands or wives that cannot get to one side or the other. The United States and Mexico have a convoluted set of laws. The U.S. red tapers are so confused that they had to put on hold the passport requirement to fly in or out of the U.S. to Canada and Mexico because they are overloaded with processing passport applications. What a debacle and at the end of this all the hassle and resultant problems rests in the laps of the people.

As Moses beckoned to the Pharaoh – Let My People go! Stay Tuned!