What To Do When The Networks Aren't Social

     Yesterday, the Internet was down all day.  Because we are in the process of selling our homes, I spend a couple of hours a day, pushing buttons, tweaking advertisement, making changes to the Website (Check out our Website and Pass it on to Interested Parties You Know), Twittering, Facebooking ("LIKE" Casita's Page), Writing e-zine type articles, and Blogging.  And, of course, wasting some time each day just web-surfing.  But it was not meant to be, yesterday.
     Instead, I did do some writing on the computer, made meals, read, and did my socializing with the out doors.  A good deal of every day is spent outdoors, as it is.  But, not having an Internet connection gave me a little more time to finish projects that were in limbo (this limbo being the non-spiritual euphemism for procrastination). 
     Today, we are back on-line, but have been busy, busy.  We spent morning in town, buying supplies to bring back to our home here at Casita Dos Arbolitos, in the quiet countryside of Mexico.  Quiet in the campo, the countryside, is a bragging right, especially in May.  The whole month of May is a fireworks fest, celebrating many holidays and the feast of Santa Cruz.  Each weekend, the fireworks are being set off, early in the morning, and late in the evening.  From our countryside vantage point, the sounds are muted.  Town people are always commenting on the fireworks; and we're always pointing out the peace of living out here.  Especially in the morning; fireworks begin around 5AM, sometimes earlier; while we are still sleeping.  We get up early and have coffee in the Patio Room, while listening to the faraway sounds fireworks and muted crowing of roosters of the roosters in the village.  As the sun begins to approach the horizon, various birds begin singing.  First, is the Poorwill, chirping its bouncy cadence.  Then doves and Scotts Orioles and others join in.  As the sun breaches the horizon, the woodpeckers start complaining about the fact that we have wrapped out wooden patio cover posts in mesh so that they can no longer dig holes in the posts.  The mesh doesn't stop them from trying.  Tag-teaming, the male and female take turns sitting on the posts, tapping a few times, then giving up and letting the other try.
     When we came home from town, we spent the next four hours in the kitchen.  Firstly, I had to restock my cookie supply.  Today's (and for the next few days) offering: Oatmeal Sesame Candied Sunflower Seeds Chocolate Chip.  After that, we were busy making our next Mexican Cuisine Dinner.  Tonight's Dinner was Tamales made with the Amarillo Estofado of two days ago; the sauce used to moisten the masa, and the meat and some sauce and a little Oaxacan string cheese were as filler.  Dessert was guavas basted in cinnamon syrup and filled with Coconut Creme.  I was prep cook drilling holes in the Coconuts, saving the water, then cracking the shells and saving, and then skinning, and then shredding the coconut meat.  We chilled the Aqua de Coco and added chilled rum and ice for a refreshing beverage, on this hot day.
     Now, the reverse of bird calls has nearly finished.  While I was writing this, the tiny sparrows that live in the jasmine vine on one of our Patio Roof Posts flew in and began their evening chatter.  This lasts just a few minutes then they are silent for the evening.  This evening ritual is a small scale version of the larger scale Grackle evening home coming; a tradition that has finally come to an end.  For decades, if not centuries (I'll have to look that up), the Grackles would come to roost in the large trees growing in the Jardin Principal, across from the Parroquia.  Unlike our tiny birds, with their sweet chirping that lasts a few minutes, the Grackles are big-voiced birds, with lots to say.  And while they were saying it and settling in, they would perform their evening toilet, literally, which dropped down onto the benches below and people sitting there.  As San Miguel de Allende grew into its own as a World Class Tourist Town, the Grackles were deemed a nuisance.  They had to go.  Nothing drastic, unless you were a Grackle that liked nesting in the Jardin.  The trees were modified, opened up to make them undesirable for sleeping in.  And so the Grackle moved on. 
     Just now, the sun is fully dropped below the horizon and the Poorwill has begun its evening song.  A good place to end.

More Sounds!

One of the delights of living out here is what I call taking care of "Bits and Pieces."  By that I mean that I will start on one project and end up doing something there, then a bit over here, then some other piece of a project in another place.  This especially is true in the Garden, when I'll start out weeding some patch underneath a tree in the orchard, and then, while I'm carrying the first load of green waste away, see that the compost heap needs turning, then I'll go over to rake the sand in the Bird Garden; and then, it's time for cleaning another tree well.  So it is with Blogging and working on The Website.  I start a thread of thinking regarding some aspect of living in SMA (like Sounds in the Campo, and then I'll work on a YouTube Video for awhile, then I'll tweak some ad like Craig's List.  And then it's another few days before I am, figuratively speaking, back under the tree in the orchard.
But, here I am.  To round out the week of sounds, from the village and beyond......  Sunday has more Veggie Vending.  And, maybe importantly, there is the absent sound, the Church Bell.  The small village doesn't have a priest living and working with the people, here.  Rather, there are priests that come from the larger areas, of which this village is a parish member.  Services are not usually "rung" in, so to speak, on Sundays.  The bells do ring, at different times:  When services are conducted by the priest of lay members; when there is a call to church-affiliated classes; when there is a holy celebration; and when someone dies.
There are other sounds throughout the week, from Monday on.  Occasional trucks rumbling up to the Bull Farm (just a bit past our area), faints sounds of traffic on the highway, occasional planes passing overhead.  Some mornings, on clear, mostly still mornings, a sound somewhat like a blast furnace can be heard.  It usually takes a minute for me to remember what it is and where it's coming from before I look up toward the southwestern sky.  There, one (or sometimes more) of the SMA Hot Air Balloons is rising up above SMA, for the grand view.  Often, the Balloons will travel overhead, making a tour of the lands north and east of the city.
Compared to the city noise, the sounds out here, because they are more transitory, do not pound deep into the unconscious, creating a stress layer.  Unlike the city, many of the sounds here are pastoral and resonate more naturally with the rhythms of the day.  And even the less "natural" sounds have their place in the daily life of all of us who live here.

Sounds Wafting From The Village Part Two: Friday and Saturday.

What???  It's Saturday already!?!  What happened to the Friday Post?  Weren't there any sounds??  Well, yes.  Mostly, however, the sounds were the everyday sounds.  The Tortilla Guys, the Domestic Animals, Pastorals and Pajaros (birds).  The one sound that wafted down to Casita Dos Arbolitos was the Train Sounding its way through the flatter parts of SMA, somewhat to the West of us, near the Presa, a lake that receives all (and I mean all) of the waters that flow through and from San Miguel.  The Train, especially in the early, pre-dawn hours, has that mixture of loneliness and on-the-road-again sound.
Saturday has all of the usual sounds AND, around 8:30 or 9AM, from where we are sitting in the house, there comes what sounds like a large Bee buzzing one of the window screens.  After a few seconds of hearing it, one of two things happens:  It finally comes to us that the sound is really the Saturday vegetable vendor, making his rounds; or we finally hears some words coming out of the buzz.  Words like zanhoria or manzana or platano; which is to say carrot, apple, banana.  The buzz is ts coming from the Vegetable Vendor's loudspeaker, sounding that way because he doesn't make a space between words.  Hence, the above named fruits and veggies would sound like zanhoriamanzanaplatano.......   And, of course, besides the run-on words, it's in Spanish, which takes our minds a moment or two for adjustment.
When I say "he" when talking about the Vegetable Vendor, I'm not being fully accurate.  He is driving the truck; and it's his voice we hear buzzing our eardrums.  But there are usually other family members as well.  Riding in the passenger's seat is usually the Veggie V's wife; and riding in the back of the canvas-tented, large-bed pick-up truck is the VV's daughter.  Mother and daughter seem to handle most of the transactions, while the VV rests up from his long-winded vegetable soliloquy.
Lots of great veggies and fruits, at farmer's market prices.  These, brought straight to the village, every Saturday.  There is also a Sunday delivery, by a different VV.  And, recently, on Fridays, a family has set up in front of one of the locals' houses, selling his garden foods and some household products.  These vegetable deliveries take the burden off of householders.  The alternative is to go to the farmer's markets Tuesday (the big one) or Sunday (somewhat smaller); or to go to the supermarket; or to go to the open markets in SMA.  All of these offer products of comparable quality.  And, they all offer a larger selection from which to choose (more on the Tuesday Market, soon).  Still, to get to any of these other venues---and because most people in the village don't have vehicles, and because even in small villages, life isn't idyllically communal (another topic)---means walking the 2 miles to the highway, taking a bus, walking around the markets, the "supers" or SMA itself, getting back on the bus, then walking back up the 2 miles to the village, with your purchases dangling from your arms.  Given the choice, that Saturday buzzing is music to many a villager's ears.