Photo by Esparta; courtesy Flickr

From the Fiction Pool ~ A Story from a Faraway Mountain Village                                           

They say that blood is thicker than water.  But I’ll tell you what’s thicker than the two of them.  Mierda. That’s as thick as it gets, especially when you’re standing smack dab in the middle of it. 

 Somehow against all odds, or perhaps in perfect harmony with the macabre humor of the malevolent spirits of amor, I ended up in A Tail of Two Cities, a place that was the best of all possible worlds and at the same time, the biggest incestuous mound of excrement I had ever stepped into.   

This place, which I have come to love; this glorious spot on the map that they say is magical, built on high energy layers of crystal and breathtakingly beautiful, is equally as bizarre, codependent and dysfunctional as your worst nightmare.   It’s that frightening family next door that makes everyone walk on the opposite side of the street.  The story of those with destructive malfunctions deconstructed by a panel of shrinks on Oprah and Dr. Phil.  The decades old ick that keeps getting ickier at Hef’s Playboy Mansion, more affectionately known as Cocoon Meets Pee Wee’s Big Top.  You get my drift.  

Let me start at the beginning, as I remember it.  And since I’m still working my way through the slosh, my recollections of the cesspool may be embellished a bit, but I feel I’ve earned that dramatic license since my shoes will forever be misshapen, my step off kilter and to this day, I continue to stop and shake loose imaginary feces that I feel clinging to my soles, still.    

The New Yorker, His Wife and the Temptation of the Vine 

He and his wife were New Yorkers.  He was an artist.  Notice I use past tense although all players, to my knowledge, are still alive and well, thriving in the glorious heap beneath the searing Mexican sun. 

Every year they vacationed in this small Mexican village:  A seemingly ideal Colonial enclave of narrow cobbled streets, picturesque burros resting along curbs, melodic church bells, enticing scents and tastes.  Maybe this is where things start to go horribly wrong for gringos from cold, northern hinterlands; relentless south of the border sun, blinding light, donkey dung, nostril searing aromas of chili peppers and tropical blooms, scantily clothed bodies, and the incessant pealing of those bells, bells, bells, bells - reminding you that you are always just a step away from sinning, or stepping into a warm pile of shit. 

And this, my friends, is far too much titillation for the average gringo used to ice storms and plaid flannel sheets well past Memorial Day.  It doesn’t take long before one starts to become delusional under the weight of so much sun. 

He came to the land of perennial sunshine to paint.  His wife came to learn African dance and let her mind rest from harried days as a successful psychotherapist.  At home in New York, as well as in the Mexican paradise, they began to grow apart.  One chilly autumn eve in Manhattan after a vintage bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, one of their last meaningful conversations went like this: 

“You know, I have to be honest, and maybe it’s the wine talking but I feel the need to communicate: You have become so self absorbed, you and your paintings, your shows, your collectors and protégés that it’s difficult to be around you these days.  Between your enlarged canvases and inflated ego, this apartment is feeling unbearably cramped - I can hardly breathe.”  

 “Really,” he said, admiring the Pope’s legs. “Well you and your incessant psychobabble of 27 years are numbing and beginning to fall on deaf ears.  Frankly, I find sexual fantasies of mowing the lawn far more exciting than the actual thought of making love with you.  Notice and ruminate over the words numbing, actual, babble and thought.  All we’re missing here is a noun and a really good adjective and you just might have enough to outline a paper on tuning out and turning off - the necessity and reality of masturbation in an unhealthy marriage.” 

“You’re a narcissist and an idiot,” she sniffed. “I’m surprised you can even grip your brush anymore.  And besides, we don’t even have a lawn.” 

“My point, exactly.” 

Impressed by their banter, they laughed and shared a toast that as usual, they were in perfect equilibrium and harmony with their emotions and with that they agreed to the possibility of a marital separation and to open another bottle of Cotes du Rhone.  This one, however, they didn’t need to let breathe.  At that moment, everything in the room had done all the breathing together that ever needed to be done.  

Now it was time to exhale – and what they didn’t know, and all the other future players didn’t know, was that the collected exhalation beginning with wine soaked breaths from a townhouse in Soho and rippling its way thousands of miles southward, sneaking across the border in a vaporous wave and over the heads of border guards and citizen vigilantes, would cause the desert winds to blow in all directions – a virtual tempest of dry, cutting heat, and as strong winds don’t mix well with Montezuma’s Revenge, the reek of unfaithful and interconnecting lives spread across the land like floods across barren desert soil. 

And there is nothing quite as charming or mesmerizing as an ethereal village on a hill, built on smooth crystalline layers that behind the scenes, is a virtual caldron of bubbling adios that in the dead of night, begins to snake its way through the antiquated gutters of a seemingly idyllic 16^th century town and starts to pool and spat on warm door steps. 

The Married New Yorker, the Divorced French Woman with Three Children and Lips of Claret  

Their last trip together to this mystical Mexican village is where he met her.  She was French as only a French woman can be, and had lips as plump and as deliciously scarlet as the French clarets that touched his palate and ran rivers through his veins each night.  

She had lived in the village for many years and had three small children from a past husband, two boys and a girl.  His were grown now and he had been glad, but suddenly the idea of young children seemed tantalizing.  Or maybe it had nothing to do with offspring so much as they were tiny extensions of this full bodied femme fatale and anything that could have sprung from her loins had to be blessed – much like the case of vintage burgundy he longed to own but was always just out of his grasp. 

But I’m jumping ahead of myself. The French-wine-loving New Yorker and the provocative woman from St. Remy, a place where he once painted beneath the white light of the Provencal sun and felt only the benign beginnings of the Mistral, met along the cobbles when the spirits intervened.  And even though he was still married he forgot this part of his past and present, and without his brain’s approval, his body swung into action, full tilt boogie right there on the street, on those ancient, uneven and holy cobbles where balance is off at the best of times, but when you’re suddenly hobbled by the tipping weight of an unexpected appendage, not only did he have to steady himself inside a door jam, but he no longer wished to mow lawns or whack weeds, and she no longer wished to drink alone. 

And thus, the winds of change began to howl.  And these winds, this evil tempest brewing south of the border in a high mountain village in Colonial Mexico, would make the infamous Provencal Mistral feel like a gentle fucking breeze.  

In a Wine Glass, a Doggy Bag, a Warm Tortilla, or a Nutshell  

So the tempestuous affair ensued for a few glorious sweat and wine-soaked weeks.  It ended only because he and his wife had to return to New York.  But, he couldn’t shake loose those full bodied lips that tasted of vine-ripened currents, pan-fried huckleberries and a hint of freshly dug truffles; and his wife, too, had seen a vision, much like the Shroud of Turin, in the movements of one impossibly lithe and limber dance instructor from Burkina Faso and now found it hard to concentrate while operating heavy machinery.   

 Soon after they split, and he made plans to move to the magical mountain village where in his romantic, artistic broad-stroked-brush-of-happily-ever-after-sunshine-yellow, he and the French woman from St. Remy and her three precious children would live happily ever after.  He was, in fact, in love with her.    

But before he could get there, and he could only move so fast, after all, he had a life in New York and things to tend to and paths to clear before moving south of the border, she found another.  Someone who promised her the heavens and she married him, lock, stock and wine barrel on a night of full moon, La Loca Luna, where the hundreds of unwanted street dogs howled in unison and deposited their ample wedding gifts throughout the neighborhood. 

The French Woman, Her New Husband, More Kids than a Barrel of Monkeys, and How the Wind Began to Change 

The woman’s new husband was divorced.  He was a Canadian living in Mexico.  His ex-wife and his four teenage sons lived in Toronto.  Not wanting to be absent from his children in the hinterlands, they agreed to a rather unconventional living arrangement: He would live half the year in Mexico with his new French wife and her three young children, the other half in Toronto where he could be near his frigid, hormonal offspring. 

If the New Yorker thought that his angst was fleeting and all was coming up roses now that his path was cleared and his lawn forever mown, he was sorely mistaken.  He stepped off the plane into that intoxicating, high altitude Mexican heat and drove toward his new village home where he hoped to hold the hand of his claret-lipped lover so she would never again trip on those dangerous, crap-covered cobbles. 

But when he heard she had wed, he fell into a deep depression:  A darkness that changed his mood and paintings and once vibrant color scheme.  His paintings now were not of colors that bloomed and propagated in such a warm paradise, but of tough luck and hard, rigid lines of black, somber shades of violet and cobalt.  He swore he would never buy another tube of Crimson Yellow and if forced, perhaps only by water boarding, to use some tone of that hideous, hopeful color, would only agree to Burnt Ochre.  But even that was too optimistic.  And in that mindset, water boarding actually sounded preferable to facing the lying tints of hope.  

Yet somehow they remained friends, but his heart could never fully separate from her, it was as if he was tethered to this woman, heart and soul, and he never gave up hope, even years later, that someday she would leave her husband and they would live the life he had always dreamed of.  For his own peace of mind he called himself single, even thought he felt happy once again and ready to move on, accepting the platonic friendship as better than nothing. But everyone knows that being friends following being lovers is bullshit, and this is where even more of it hit the fan. 

The Documentary Filmmaker from Chicago Bumps into Blue Artist on Cobbled Streets While Scraping Dog Dung from her Dansko Clogs 

She was there to film a documentary for her local PBS station about the street dogs.  She was maneuvering her way across the cobbles while fumbling with a heavy camera bag, a small boom, a water bottle, a bag of kibble, and a packet of warm tortillas that she bought from an old woman on the street even though she didn’t want them and was already late for the shoot. 

He had just bought a bottle of Rosé from the Loire and was eager to sit on the terrace, alone.  Looking down to scrape her clog, she ran head on and into him, and he barely held onto his sunset in a bottle, and her boom landed smack between his legs with a rather unexpected jolt, and he wasn’t sure if he was permanently maimed or had been born again, because when he looked up from his boomed crotch, he saw the Virgin of Guadalupe tiled on the wall next to him, and in front, an angel with a bag of kibble.  And again, more worlds collided causing yet another shift in the prevailing waft. 

They connected and commiserated about the unfairness of life, thus becoming fast friends.  She listened to his woes about his lost love.  She told him secrets about her love starved marriage and years of her husband’s infidelity while she gave birth to their five children.  She shot her footage of Dogs Gone Wild and flew home to The Windy City.  She divorced.  Little did she know just how temperate these small blows would come to feel.  

She flew back.  They made love.  She fell in love, he could not.  But still, she dreamed of a future with the blue New Yorker.   But his heart was still in France, right there in Mexico.  Another year came and went, nothing much changed, and the smell was so familiar that everyone seemed to either not notice or had gotten used to the subtle stench.  

The Windy City woman continued to come and go and they maintained some form of a relationship even though he couldn’t fully open to her.  And for half the year and nearly every afternoon, he still saw his true love for a late déjeuner. The five of them would sit around the kitchen table for an hour and enjoy a large family style meal usually of roast chicken and garlic, a wedge of Manchego and tortillas for the kids, Brie and baguette for her, slices of ripe avocado and mango.  A bottle of wine.  He would then walk home, half of his heart on his sleeve, the other half left on the kitchen table alongside the leftover chicken bones and bread crumbs.  She would call her husband in Toronto.  

The lover in Chicago finished her film about the street dogs of Mexico and dreamed of the day when he would finally be there for her – his full corazón, untethered.  She too, never gave up hope.  And so everyone kept hoping – for something different – so out of sync it would make a dubbed Japanese horror film look and sound perfectly simpático.  As if everyone’s lips were moving in time with their words, but everyone spoke a different language and no one understood the other and they so wished they knew sign language because at this point, communication was left to the dogs.  

The English Professor from Dartmouth who came to the Village of Magic with Cold Hands and Warm Heart, a Bullfighter, and the New Yorker from Blue to Red to Purple   

A widow, she had survived her husband’s painful and drawn out death from colon cancer, and a subsequent relationship with a certified sociopath, and now a few years later, did a solo journey to this mountainous village to bask in its healing powers, escape the wrath of winter, and to finish her book, Your Intestines and You: The Power of Colonics and How There Can be a Silver Lining for Any and All Intestinal Wall.   

They met at the reception for his latest art show.  The space was cramped, far too small for the tightly clustered knots of overly dressed people clad in magnificently bulbous stone baubles, the sea of wineglasses, and the massive canvases that seemed to suck the very life out of the ancient interior, tossing out and onto the cobbles the resident, and now, pissed off spirits.  

She snaked her way through and collected her glass of inferior red wine and wondered how anyone could create such haunting paintings while surrounded by perennial sunshine and vibrant explosions of color.  She felt it hard to catch her breath, suffocated by the looming daggers of gray and violet, shards and slashes of cobalt, and one particularly bleak canvas that took up an entire wall that was nothing more than solid black and nearly indiscernible to the naked eye, a tiny red tear stain, or was it a drop of blood, in the bottom right hand corner. 

Just then, a diminutive woman wearing a turquoise pinky ring the size of a golf ball, bumped into her and jammed the weapon into her ribcage, and it smarted, and that coupled with the gut wrenching death blow of paintings by such a disturbed mind, made her want to suck down a rather enormous pitcher of mango margaritas. 

Fumbling her way toward the door she bumped into what had to be the devil himself clad head to toe in black, spilling her wine across his sleeve.  Before words formed, their eyes locked and the blue New Yorker whose canvases depicted a life without meaning, and the English professor from Dartmouth who knew colons inside and out, felt that destiny had intervened, but to what length and end, only the irritated spirits knew for sure.  

She fled onto the uneven streets and tripped her way through a group of inebriated tourists singing La Negra Noche alongside less than impressed Mariachis, disappearing into a swirl of darkness, a handful of leg humping street dogs hunkering close behind.  He stood in the gallery, his half heart pumping so wildly for the first time in years that he deliberately splashed his glass of wine across the remaining dry sleeve, dousing the throbbing organ in attempts to calm down the very madness of its beating.   

For the next few days and unexpectedly, their paths would cross.  They’d wave or yell “hola!” from opposite sides of the street until they could no longer bear it and agreed to meet on the same side of the cobbles.  But the attraction was so powerful, so palpable, they could barely articulate.  “I’m unavailable,” he blurted before they managed hello.  “I have the overwhelming urge to kiss you but I warn you now, you might very well want to keep your lips to yourself or on the edge of your wineglass or wherever else you may want to put them.  My heart is not free – it’s trapped with another and so I cannot fully be there for you.”   

To say the Dartmouth professor was puzzled would have been an understatement.  This was the first time they had been in close proximity to one another since the art opening, and here they were on the cobbles having no history of previous conversation, and she wasn’t holding a wineglass and they hadn’t yet exchanged names and so this ominous, if not psychopathic, verbal outing made her shoes feel funny as if she were standing in a warm puddle of something unpleasantly familiar.  Granted, his paintings were dark and foreboding, but this personality glitch and the fact that he was hermetically sealed in Mars Black beneath the searing Mexican sun, smacked of borderline whack job. 

But she ignored his warnings and he only listened to half a heart, and they took turns locking their lips not only on their wineglasses but each other, although their guts told them they were making a grave mistake, much like the initial moments following eating fish tacos from a street vendor, but the chemical attraction was far too great for their combined intellects, and the fireworks of pheromones became the only language they understood and thus the cloud got thicker and thicker and God forbid anyone light a match.  

Meanwhile, a bullfighter clad in full matador costume and swaggering in his usual bravado slipped into the corner tienda for a bag of pork rinds.

She was buying six bottles of water, one for herself and the others for her sunstroked children.  Suddenly, her red faced five-pack began to jump up and down on the hard tiled floor shouting at the tops of their lungs, “Look mom, a real live bullfighter!”  She collected her change and looked up and into the flat out dumbest, most exquisitely handsome face she had ever seen.  He flashed a movie star smile of straight and gleaming pearly whites, simultaneously winking and as if in slow motion, parted his beautifully positioned, moist plump lips and said, “Olé!” as if it were covered in chocolate.  

Normally such a despicable display would make her respond in a very straightforward manner such as “you’ve got to be kidding me,” or “fuck off cocksucker,” but she was fairly certain he wouldn’t catch her drift and before her brain clicked on and her eyes could focus on the unbelievable display of embroidery and sequins, the small vessel-like shape resting atop his head and the unnaturally tight fitting pants, her mouth fully disengaged from her body, floated into the middle of the tienda and hanging in mid air whispered, “Olé right back atcha!” 

Her children giggled and clapped and screamed “Olé!” and ten tiny hands began to touch his outfit, pulling at his vest, tapping his sequins all the while squealing, “do you really kill bulls, mister?! Do you really kill bulls?! Look at his funny hat, mom!  It’s shaped like a taco! Where’s your sword, anyway?  Ma?”  He didn’t seem to mind the attention. 

 She had discovered the unnaturally tight fitting pants.  

Orange Cones, El Dandy, and a New Shrink in Town

It was the most exciting, mind-numbing sex either of them had had in a very long time.  And yet, the professor from Dartmouth still seemed to manage conversation.  The now not-so-blue New Yorker had always been with women who used far too many words, and while he was all for stimulating conversation and soul searching exploration, the professor took verbosity to a new art form.  And though he toiled with what colors he would use to paint this exotic lovemaking verbiage, he knew he had never seen anything quite so quirky in a tube.

Thank God, he thought, their week had an abundance of carnal stimulation, but she managed, still, to incessantly chat during lovemaking, sometimes carrying on full blown conversation, often without response, yet she didn’t seem to notice. At the brink of orgasm, while others might moan or pant hoot, scream or yodel, she would often mumble, “flaxseeds are God’s gift to the colon,” or “how ‘bout them Red Sox?” This, he never fully understood but he was fairly certain she had no idea she was mouthing such drivel and he let it go as some bizarre form of climactic disengagement, lack of oxygen to the brain when her body swooned and her mind turned into one of her blender recipes for a colon cleansing smoothie.   How the Sox fit in was a tad more baffling.  He was smitten. 

Meanwhile, the documentary filmmaker, realizing her affair with the blue New Yorker was on the skids, couldn’t seem to shake the vision of one glorious bullfighter and the way he sported his magnificent red muleta.  This unsettled her, and for many reasons. 

Granted, they didn’t understand a word each other said, but that was of no importance.  The uncomfortable poking and prodding was what he did for a living – he was a slayer of bulls – and she, a lifelong, card carrying member of PETA.  Yet the vision of his firmness in those ill-fitting pants and his cocoa covered “olé!” switched her brain off, and motorized her feet to glide down the cobbled street and stand in front of his casita, her hand clutching the brass knocker in the shape of a tiny bull’s head.  

His bedroom walls were painted oxblood red, the bed linens, red silk.  A black leather beanbag chair squatted in a corner.  The walls were blank except for the wall behind the thick wooden headboard.  Above the bed was a huge framed poster of one famous matador, El Dandy, a legend in Mexico, and an obvious stimulus check or love worship for one randy bullfighter.   

Things, however, were not going at all well in this magical Mexican village.   The English professor from Dartmouth and the not-so-blue New Yorker found themselves in a real pickle.  She thought she may be falling in love.  He was feeling twinges with only half a heart.  But in truth, it was less than half; the larger half still lay beating on someone else’s kitchen table.   And if nothing more he was brutally honest, and he quickly pointed out that a divided organ made it nearly impossible to fulfill any one woman.  And she knew she could never fully trust a half-hearted endeavor and thus, the battle of broken and fragmented hearts and parts still tethered turned into shades of gray and violet and an abyss of cobalt, and the finality of their words pierced deep like a matadors sword ~ the coup de grace. 

“Forget canvases!” she shouted.  “Perhaps you should consider a performance piece instead.  You, in the center of the gallery, roped off, and surrounded by orange cones, bound in yellow crime scene tape – a large X taped across your chest and reading Do Not Enter!” 

With that, he told her that her issues were her issues and his issues were his issues and he refused to take responsibility for her issues when he had so many of his own issues and their issues were their issues – and with that, she kicked him out of her casita – barking at him as he walked the entire length of the ancient cobbled street.  She stopped, finally, when he had turned the corner and she realized that she had surpassed her word count.

Just up the street, and oblivious to the dregs of intimacy that trailed along the cobbles, the therapist from New York moved the last of her boxes into the apartment she now shared with her lover from Burkina Faso.   

Help! I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up! 

“I need to talk to someone,” the Windy City woman confided to her friend over cups of strong coffee. “I can’t get enough of him and yet we talk about nothing – it’s a twisted, sexual addiction with a man who speaks only gibberish and shouts “Olé!” at climax and murders bovine. 

I have two weeks left here and I need help. If I look up and into the eyes of El Dandy one more time while I’m riding the bull, I’ll surely shove his sword into my own heart.” 

The friend fumbled through her purse and produced a card.  “I met this woman at my African dance class.  She just moved here from New York.  She’s living with the instructor from Burkina Faso.  Set up a small office at their casita, doing a little counseling on the side.  I hear she’s a rather good.” 

The documentary filmmaker from the Windy City who once carried kibble and now walked bull-legged, took the card and made a mental note to call the therapist later that day. 

“He’s broken my heart,” she whispered to a friend over healing herb tonics at a local café.  “My stomach is in constant turmoil.  I’m popping Pepto Bismol like Tic Tacs.  Look, my tongue has turned black.” 

With that she produced a tongue that mirrored the color and hopelessness of his canvases. “My colon feels like a briquette manufacturing plant.  Not even my flaxseed smoothies are loosing things up.  I think I need to talk to someone.” 

Her friend fumbled through her purse and produced a card. “Odd, you’re the second person today to ask for a recommendation of a shrink. This woman is a therapist from New York, just moved here.  She’s living with the African dance instructor from Burkina Faso.  I hear she’s good, knows how to cut through the psychobabble.  She’s taking new clients.  Hmm, must be something in the water, or a shift in the breeze.” 

The English Professor from Dartmouth with a fractured heart, a black canvas tongue and who no longer knew her colon inside and out, popped a Pepto Bismol and made a mental note to call later that day. 

 Everyone Loves a Parade 

Up the ancient, steep and narrow streets, four shivering teens from Canada, their father, a French stepmother with lips of scarlet, and three young step-siblings who sprung from her loins, stepped onto the steaming cobbles to enjoy a leisurely stroll beneath a soothing Mexican sun in hopes of finally thawing the frigid four.  

Having promised her five-pack a final afternoon of hot chocolate and churros, the Windy City woman ushered her children out the front door and toward the jardin.  Meeting on the narrow sidewalk, the French-Canadian family bumped into the bull-legged filmmaker and her five children sporting tiny red capes and the party spilled into the middle of the street. 

Just then the school bells chimed and 30 uniformed children jostled off of the curb, screaming and shouting, and sweeping up and into their wave of blue and white, all who dared walk in the center of the cobbles.  The Dartmouth professor stepped out her front door to expose her fracture to the healing powers of the sun and was caught up in the tumble. 

The therapist from New York and her lover from Burkina Faso, having just finished their African dance class and still moving to its rhythms took front and center of the impromptu parade, the dancer from Africa now leading the group in a swirl of limber movements and song that pierced the entire neighborhood. 

The bullfighter, out for his daily fix of pork rinds, brought up the tail and shouted “Olé!”   The school children sang Mexican songs at the tops of their lungs.  The three French children sang songs from their mother’s beloved soil, the once frigid teens from Canada sang along with their siblings, the parents laughed, the dancer danced, and the bullfighter pranced.   

A mariachi band resting in the shade of a stone hacienda joined the swell, strumming their guitars.  An old woman selling tortillas moved along the parade route handing out warm snacks to singing school children.  Street dogs and family dogs collected on rooftops and terraces and along the curbs and barked and howled and sang in tune.  

Cars could no longer pass.  Pedestrians, young and old, tall and small, became part of the pulsating parade. The ancient stone cobbles warmed and waved to a sea of tropical colors.  There was deafening singing and laughing and everyone forgot where they were going and knew not where they were headed, but they knew they were all moving in the same direction.  

Up on his terrace, the New Yorker opened a bottle of wine and stared at his blank canvas.  He heard the laughter from a block away, the singing, the shouting, the dogs howling, and wondered what all the commotion was about.  He glanced over at a single stem of a calla lily and noticed the soft, sensuous curve of the creamy white tip and the strong hopeful protuberance from its center.  He saw the sunshine yellow of the pistil reaching skyward in nothing less than a leap of faith.  He looked again at the blank canvas.  He glanced down at his palate and the hopeless shades of grays and blacks and dark violet.  And at that moment, after years of uncertainty, he realized it might just be time to make peace with Crimson Yellow.

~ The End ~

*Cannot be reprinted without consent of the author. 

A native Californian, Jan Baumgartner is a writer and book editor dividing her time between surviving in Maine and living in Mexico. Her writings on Mexico are included in the book/literary journal, Lady Jane (San Francisco Bay Press, 2009). Her background includes scriptwriting, comedy writing for the No. California Emmy Awards, and travel writing for The New York Times. She has worked as a grant writer for the non-profit sector in the fields of academia, AIDS, and wildlife conservation for NGO's in the U.S. and Africa. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications including the NYT, Bangor Daily News, SCOOP New Zealand, Open.Salon, Wolf Moon Journal, Media for Freedom Nepal, and Banderas News in Mexico. In addition to working on a memoir about her husband's death from ALS and how travels in Africa became one of her greatest sources of inspiration, she writes for online sites/magazines based in San Miguel de Allende, MX.