Opinion

I am an accidental migrant. I never wanted or needed to leave home. Not at 18 when I left to pursue higher education nor at 34 when I married Brad.  I miss the life I left behind and the incredible richness of my culture on most good days and definitely on every hard day. Far […]

The plague has come upon us. We must wonder who will croak. My fascination with death began in childhood. When I was four or five years old, a feral female cat named Gee was living in our woodpile. She soon gave birth to three calico kittens, each with its own distinctive pattern. We named them […]

Support the Wine Industry As one of the Co-Founders of the Arizona Vignerons Alliance and co-owner of Callaghan Vineyards, I am in support of HB 2876, which would raise production caps on farm wineries like mine in order to allow my business to grow and compete. I am grateful for the diverse and bipartisan support […]

Livestock animals eat a lot. In the grasslands around the Sonoita area the conversion is about 42 acres of pasture needed for a cow per year and 75–120 acres per horse. Because of their teeth and digestive system, horses are much tougher on range land than are cattle. Supplemental feeding on smaller acreage is a […]

The problem with mindsets is that, once we adopt one, or a label – e.g., conservative, liberal, doctor, pastor, whatever – we tend to seek out mindsets similar to our own. We seek out information that supports our mindset. That makes us extremely manipulable. We tend to not like information that contradicts our mindset, so […]

I do most of my reading at night, in bed with the help of my bedside lamp. Usually I read novels, sometimes the newspaper and, regrettably, often I just read what’s given to me via Facebook and Instagram from my smart phone. Thanks to social media we now know exactly what we should be up […]

“Both versions of the story are true,” said Shaykh Ebrahim Schuitema, my Sufi teacher from South Africa. Shaykh Ebrahim has a majestic presence, tall, commanding, strong and yet humble with an unexpected high-pitched laugh. He doesn’t prepare his talks. He is concise and sticks to one theme most of the time.  What he shared that […]

This rap may sound elitist. Well, too bad. Apparently, my already overdeveloped sense of cultural alienation hasn’t stopped growing. Mainstream or Pop Culture in this country has always seemed woefully crass. I understand why so many good artists and writers expatriated to Europe in the old days.  I watched the Super Bowl with friends. Although […]

2020 brought with it quite a few surprising changes that have preoccupied our minds and our lives as we try to focus in this rapidly changing world. We came close to World War III, Australia caught fire, Coronavirus has made its way out of China. One event that probably didn’t change your day much, but […]

Local Fire Safety Project a Success It started with a newspaper article about Nogales Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) joining with the American Red Cross (ARC) to install smoke alarms in residents’ homes. The Patagonia CERT decided to do the same in Patagonia. Patagonia CERT and Red Cross teams installed 111 smoke alarms in 62 […]