Sunday Morning Essays

A Subaru Called Betsy and a Box of Face Masks The Motel Blue Swallow in Tucumcari My travel companion and I had to close our yoga studio a few months ago. Apparently this year we are having a particularly severe flu season and only essential businesses, s uch as nail salons, car washes, liquor stores, and access to CBD, are allowed to remain open. Schools are still in question. Yoga studios are definitely not essential.. At least in the eyes of our county government leaders, much like the rest of the country.  Counties in my home state of Texas are run by the county judge and a group of two to four commissioners. I looked up the bio of one of our commissioner team members. “With her professional background and training in commercial interior construction & design, Commissioner [..]”  While impressive, it didn’t build my confidence that she understood the intricacies of epidemiology and which businesses would cause an uncontrollable wild fire of viral co...

 What the Heck ARE These Things? As I have mentioned before, I moved to Texas from California and purchased a modest house north of Dallas with my travel companion.  When people here in Texas ask me where I am from I smile back at them in my beanie, my multiple mala bead bracelets, and my bicep ink and I tell them very softly, "California." I don't want too many people to hear. Dallas is very weary of California immigrants. They like their Red State with its low taxes and even lower homelessness. Sure, Texas doesn't have the mountains or the Pacific Ocean but it also doesn't have a Coastal Commission or even a Highway Patrol for that mater and they like it that way. Many times on answering the question I'll get a dirty look and a finger in my chest warning me not to change their state. I rarely leave the house wearing a beanie without my Shepard Malinois mix (Chief).  The Russian mafia movers delivered my furniture and surprisingly left all my fingers still c...

  Canadian geese and swans mate for life. Both are part of the   Anatidae   family. As birds they are not very religious and so this might cause some   people to scratch their collective heads in wonder -- certainly in California.   But I believe after some careful research that there was a period in their evolution, long before man kept records of such things outside of a few still   undiscovered cave walls, where there were just too many geese divorce lawyers and the birds just had had enough.   No goose would mate with another goose practicing law -- gander and goose alike -- and soon the subspecies, or gaggle, died out. The swans saw   the geese euphoria and followed suit. In two generations both entire species were devoid of expensive family-law firms and there was no longer   reason to be anything but monogamy once you found a mate. It ended up being much better for the goslings as well (geese are very fond of their   offspring) an...