California! Nevada!

Twenty six years ago we were camped on BLM land within sight of Whiskey Pete’s across the California-Nevada border.

The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, 1200 people strong,  left Los Angeles amid great fanfare on March 1, 1986. Eleven days later in the Mojave Desert, about ten miles west of Barstow, the founding organization declared bankruptcy and told us it was over. “Go home.” Eight hundred did just that, but four hundred of us stayed. After a surprisingly genius reorganization of people and money and some desperate fundraising, we got our feet under us (pun intended!) and started walking. We walked fifteen miles each day, our little tent village of 400 moving toward Washington, DC, step by step.

Arranging Things: My Book Tour and My Personality

Occasionally, a small bright insight illuminates our lives and helps to make sense of what is happening. That happened to me last week as I was juggling dates for the Northwest Book Tour I’m planning for May. To sort the dates was, for a while, like eating noodles with chopsticks. Just as I set one date, the rest slipped and needed to be picked up again. Now, I’ve just confirmed one appearance on May 10 in Eugene with my former daughter-in-law and forever-friend, Jane.

Transitions

When I returned to my home in Capitola, California, after six weeks in Alamos, Sonora, Mexico, I had a terrible soggy cold and looked up in the Louise Hay book some probable metaphysical causes:  “confusion, disorder, small hurts. Family and calendar beliefs.”

That rings true. I miss Alamos already. It is a small colonial puebla in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oeste in the southeast corner of the state of Sonora. The weather in winter is brisk in the mornings and warmer as the sun rises. I liked to sit on a bench in the garden to watch the shadows move away as bright light heated the patio. The air was dry and clear, and the mountains majestic.

Hello! I’m Home!

How many hundreds of times have I heard, “Hi, I’m home”? It reminds me of when sons would pour in the door from school or their father would come in from the garage after work. These days, when I return, I call out to the furniture, “Hi, I’m home!”

A couple of weeks ago, as I pulled up to the front curb, I saw Patricia Hamilton, my publisher and friend, sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch. “Hi,” she said, “You’re home!”

Continuing the Women of Alamos Writing Project

Earlier this week, I held a second memoir-writing workshop here in sunny, slow Alamos, Sonora, Mexico, a colonial puebla full of arches, gringos, and contrasting life stories.

I was excited that a dozen Mexican women wanted to attend because my current project, Women of Alamos, is taking shape. We are collecting stories for a book to be published late this year.

24 More Woman Writers in the World

Last Saturday, 24 women gathered at my little house in Alamos, Sonora, Mexico, and I encouraged them to write their stories. The goal is a collection of tales about expats and their relationships both with themselves and this small, colonial pueblo tucked into the folds of the foothills of Oeste Sierra Madre.

The workshop began with ice cream cones (I believe ice cream in the morning fosters courage). Then we launched into a series of three-minute writing exercises to prime the creative pump.

Courage

A friend recently told me about a day when her daughter, then in third grade, didn’t want to go to school because she was afraid.

Her mother listened to her daughter’s story, hugged her, and said, “I know, honey. Sometimes it takes courage to go to school.”

“What’s courage?” her daughter looked up with wide eyes.

After my friend explained, her daughter asked, “Well, how do I get it?”

“You eat ice cream for breakfast.”