My Life As A Clown

by Steven R. Shapiro

I just began the book ‘Life is a Trip’ by Judith Fein. What an inspiration. Stories with heart, just begging the questions: Could I write about a few of my recent experiences?  Do I really want to try?  And would anyone really care? 

My introduction to writing began with a Spiritual Writing Workshop in the Yucatan several years ago, led by none other than Judith Fein. To be honest, I hated writing.  But that trip gave me something to write about. Judie actually encouraged us and made writing fun. Is that possible? I actually began to enjoy trying to piece together my thoughts into a cohesive, semi-understandable story. And so, with that crude introduction, I continue.

photo by Stephen Poff via Flickr (common license)I have begun a mid-life journey, unexpectedly. For many years, I have taught children who struggle in school, offered workshops on learning disabilities, was even on national TV and radio, had a wife of 30+ years, raised a wonderful family, bought several homes in the suburbs. You would think I was leading a fulfilling life.  I did all the proverbial right things. Yet, I was bored, frustrated and angry.  Something was missing. I realized that I found the way Americans interact and connect shallow and I began to question who I was. What do I have to offer? What were my gifts and skills? And what do I really want to experience out of life and people? I wanted something real and authentic.

And then Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, came into my life. Originally it was just a trip, a getaway to a beach paradise. But something in me yearned to find something real. I hunted the Internet and happened to find a children’s daycare center there and a boy’s orphanage, and in-between playing volleyball, getting exceedingly drunk on the beach, wondering what I was doing at a posh Cabo resort, where people seemed like shadows passing each other, I became a clown. Just like that. I wanted to visit the daycare center and orphanage but didn’t just want to walk in and say:  “Hey kids, I’m here." So I pondered: How could I relate? How

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The Lost Maya City

words + photos by John Lamkin

Cora Amalia, the president of the municipality, affirmed the stories I’d heard for a while. There was a “lost” Maya city in the nearby jungle that rivals Tikal in Guatemala and has a pyramid larger than the one at Palenque in the state of Campeche.

“When can I go there?" I asked the government tourism officials. “Only when you get permission from INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia),” was the answer, “And you can’t go now because the jungle roads are too muddy. You must wait for the dry season.”

Well, the dry season came. We applied for and got the INAH permit and set off on the adventure – seven of us in Luis’ Suburban.

Our crew consisted of Luis Tellez, professional guide and photographer and his wife Leti, myself and my significant other Susy, two expats that lived locally and had done some research on the city, and don Millon a 90-year-old farmer who had worked in the area as a chiclero, one of the men that harvested the chicle for making chewing gum, and who had visited the ruins in his youth.

We located the turn-off from the paved road that led to a small Maya community of a few traditional thatched huts. We presented our permit to a Maya woman who was the designated caretaker. She read the permit and then herded her family out to be photographed by us.

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New Life in the Yucatan

words + photos by Suzanne Marriott

When my husband, Michael, died on January 1^st, 2006, I felt as if I had died, too. The light went out of my life. It was as if I were a candle and he were the flame, and his last breath had blown out that flame and left me alone in the dark. 

Yet, for some reason unfathomable to me, my life went on, though I saw no reason why it should. No longer able to make sense of my world, I began to rely more and more on my intuition.

A little over a year after his death, in March of 2007, I was sitting on my living room couch, reading my copy of Spirituality&Health magazine. Suddenly, an announcement for a workshop on travel writing jumped off the page. I’d always loved to write and to travel, and here was a way I could do both. The workshop was to be held in the beautiful but “undiscovered” southern Yucatan peninsula in Mexico near Belize. There was no reason in the world why I shouldn’t go, I thought to myself. Did I dare? Did I have the energy? Probably not, I decided. This was crazy.

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No, I Don't Speak Spanish

by Sallie Bingham

No, I don't speak Spanish. Yes, I tried - a class, some CD's, but somehow it never “took” although I live in New Mexico where perhaps half the population speaks Spanish, and my daughter-in-law and granddaughters speak Spanish, too. But somehow it never came home to me until we were taking a family Christmas vacation at one of the huge resort hotels that wall the beach in Los Cabos at the tip of the Baja Peninsula - or “Baja” as we tourists call it. Everyone who worked in the hotel spoke Spanish but none of the guests did.

The symbol of this linguistic divide, for me, was the rope that was strung across the beach, about half way between the oceans and the throng of lounge chairs under thatched roofs. Perhaps the rope was taken down each night and put up again in the morning, but whenever I was on the beach, the rope was there. On one side, the tourists sat or lay in their lounge chairs surrounded with the usual sunbathing paraphernalia. I was one of them. On the other side, local men and women held trays of jewelry or bundles of brightly-colored serapes and looked at us. Occasionally, one would softly call out to us, but I sensed that this was probably forbidden.

They stood all day on their side the rope, or sometimes walked up and down the beach and chatted with each other. Meanwhile, we sunbathed, read, drank water, gossiped, talked on cell phones, and avoided making eye contact across the rope. During the week we were there, I never saw any tourist approach a vendor or speak to him or her or make a purchase. Yet the local vendors were there, day after day, even on Sunday.

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They paved paradise and put up an all-inclusive resort

by Allen Cox

When a mangrove falls and there's no one there to hear, does it make a splash? You'd think the answer would be a resounding “yes.” But when nearly an entire coastline of mangroves fell along the Mexican Caribbean from north of Cancun to Tulum, business interests turned a deaf ear and environmentalists wept.

Of course, the trees didn't fall all at once with a single tsunami-inducing splash. Instead, it was one little splash after another over the course of four decades. One tree after another. Splash. One grove after another. These mangroves, as well as the dune plants and the jungle beyond, were standing in the way of progress. Now, they are not standing at all.

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Boycott Mexico? No, boycott American stupidity

by Eric Lucas

The market vendor handed me the sack of fresh-made potato chips she’d just hauled out of the fryer, and motioned that I should add a bit of salt and lime juice. I told her thanks in my serviceable Spanish (mil gracias, senora) and did as instructed. Then I gently lifted one chip from the sack and took an experimental bite. I’d never tasted made-on-the-spot potato chips until my wife and I wandered by this food cart in the market in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico.

It was the best potato chip ever.

Too bad that one potato chip had more mental acuity than some of our own countrymen. Don’t go to Mexico and spend your money, urge the Americans United to Halt Tourism in Mexico, on the novel theory that the way to discourage Mexican immigrants from coming here to earn money is for us to not go there and spend money.

“Do not give your tourist dollars to Mexico!” AUHTIM fliers growl.

Americans are infamous for witless ignorance (name another country that ever had a political party called the “Know-Nothings”), but this is a particularly egregious example of mush-for-brains activity. Campaigning to collapse one of the healthiest parts of the Mexican economy might not be the best way to discourage its citizens from seeking work elsewhere. Mexico gets 22 million visitors from the United States every year. Tourism is 8 percent of the country’s GDP. It amounts to more than $10 billion a year.

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