I want to introduce you to a worthy, attractive, yet little-known-by-tourists Mexican city. In April 2026, CN and I took a seven-day jaunt to Xalapa (also spelled Jalapa,) in the eastern state of Veracruz. It has plenty of virtues and, IMHO, only one main vice. Here’s the scoop: A big part of Xalapa’s attraction is that it is in the Mexican mainland coastal mountains, receives much rain, and is surrounded by coffee-growing farms and Pueblos Mágicos. It is full of schools and

There were four of us at the end of the 2020, all in our 70s and 80s, who decided to do two things: 1) inform ourselves about climate issues, and 2) figure out ways to put our bodies, minds, lifestyles, and financial resources on the line in service to supporting climate solutions. We called our group the Elder Activist Readers (EAR). A few others joined us. And between January 2021 and now (end of 2022), we’ve read books which introduced us to new understanding and new prior

I’ve regarded myself as a climate-activist-in-training for the past two years that I’ve been living in Albuquerque. And that “training” produced plenty of learning: **Everything is inter-connected—gender, air, racism, water, justice, electricity, economics, political power, greed, religion, Earth, insects, agriculture, caste, land, relationships, oceans, war, transportation, social life, media.… **Climate solutions are the most important thing to focus on now. There is great

What Is the Camino de Santiago? The Camino de Santiago is a road that Roman Catholic pilgrims and others have walked for about 1, 200 years. The word camino means “trail,” “way,” “road,” “path,” or “street” in Spanish. Santiago means Saint James (one of the twelve disciples of Jesus) in Spanish. Thus in English, El Camino de Santiago is usually translated as The Way of St. James. The destination of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage is a beautiful cathedral built on the legend

The grim news, dear friends, is that we have only about ten years to save the Earth’s atmosphere from becoming so damaged that there would be no possibility of its recovery. That’s 2020 to 2029. As I wrote in my last post, at the September 2019 Climate Strike demonstration in Albuquerque NM I woke up to understanding that urgency. I believe that information. I’m horrified. And the information is changing my life plans. It’s making me pivot away from what I thought I’d do. N

About six months before COVID-19 changed our world forever, I was house sitting in Albuquerque, NM. Somehow I learned there was to be a Climate Strike demonstration. Gee, I thought, it’s been a while since I’ve taken to the streets in support of a good cause. I’ll go to soothe my guilt for not being very politically active for years. It’ll make me feel useful. Quickly I persuaded an 85-year-old friend, Barbara, to keep me company. That was September 20, 2019. Unbeknownst to

Three of us sat at a outside café in a charming town on the California coast. I was in my last weeks of a house sit in nearby Sebastopol CA. A breeze blew from the Pacific and the air was fragrant with linden trees in bloom. I knew Linda well; I’d only met Nancy briefly. Linda knew both of us. It was a common configuration: one person introducing two others to each other. Three friends at a Point Reyes café I’d been looking forward to our gathering. I travel and socialize a l

I’ve been to Santiago de Compostela in Spain six times, beginning in 2008. In legend, the city was established in the 9th century AD as the burial place for the Apostle James. (He’s known in English as St James the Greater, and in Spanish as Santiago.) The city is the capital of the province of Galicia in northwestern Spain. It’s a World Heritage Site and the destination of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. Its big draw is the world-class cathedral. In 2008, when I f

There’s hardly a more tranquil place on Earth. And I was lucky enough to be there, in a sort-of house-sitting capacity, in May. Surrounded by rolling hills and farmland, just 40 km from the holy city of Santiago de Compostela on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, stands a renovated stone albergue (hostel) that has served pilgrims since 1523. The Ribadiso Albergue property was restored in the 1990s and is a pilgrim favorite. It’s been used as the setting for videos. The Xunta st

It’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, at Easter. How can I refuse an invitation to walk the eight miles from the tiny village of Nambé to el Sanctuario de Chimayó? It’s the largest annual pilgrimage in America! Why would I miss that when I’m house sitting in Santa Fe at exactly the right time of year? There are many starting points for this famous religious trek to Chimayó. Some devotees reputedly start at the Mexico border; others set off from Albuquerque about 91 miles away; some begi

One day while house sitting on Whidbey Island, I notice the recycling boxes in my homeowners’ tidy garage are filling up. I’ll be conscientious, I decide. I google and find the address for Island Recycling. I load up my car and enter the info in my GPS. Little do I know that I’m in for another “unique place” experience. Little do I know I’ll go back to that place several times, just to take pictures. Really? Well, yes. I turn in at the driveway off Rt 525, north of Freeland,

Certainly an advantage to being a house sitter in a new community, rather than a tourist, is that I have unrestricted time to mosey through market and residential areas that aren’t featured in Chamber of Commerce literature. I particularly like to look for people’s art or public art, as opposed to gallery art, all over a town. On out-of-the-way streets in the town of Langley on Whidbey Island, I got to discover what the ordinary (and extraordinary) townspeople think is import

I’m house sitting in a beautiful home in the town of Langley on Whidbey Island in Washington State, way up at the northwest tip of America where it’s only a giant’s step into Canada. A large, mature, independent cat named Meatball is my charge, plus a few plants. I like this home and this cat! Meatball goes in and out through the cat door, often spending long hours outside. He talks loudly, demandingly, when in need, but asleep, well, he’s all angel. We’re getting along well.

Marko Pogačnik’s Sacred Geography: Geomancy: Co-Creating the Earth Cosmos (pub 2007) is the most important book I read in 2018. I heard Marko present his perspectives at the “Co-Creative Spirituality: Shaping Our Future with the Unseen Worlds” conference in Findhorn, Scotland, in September. I should explain that I was blown away by the whole conference. Every day I went back to my room at Cluny, mentally reeling from all the presentations, wondering if I could hold any more n

“We store ‘incompletes,’ things that we do not want to handle, and put [them] into the ‘back of our minds.’ They don’t go away, as we might hope. They surface, usually in unpredictable ways and timing, giving us the opportunity to face and complete what we have started.” —John-Roger, DSS Here’s Part 2 about my personal challenges in letting go of stuff. In Part 1, I wrote about my tears and indecision last summer while clearing out my storage un

Please note as of 2026, this book is no longer available. It has become the inspiration for Preparedness: Get Ready for Climate Chaos. When people ask me where I’m from, I feel apologetic that I don’t have a one-word answer. “Well,” I say, “I’m a nomad. I house sit for people who live in places that interest me.” You wouldn’t believe how many respond with some version of, “Wow! That sounds amazing! How does that work? How do you find places?” Or they ask right off the bat, “W

“Be wary of stuff. Be careful what you purchase, what you save, what you pack into plastic storage boxes. Stuff can hog-tie your life.” —Hallelujah Haymaker Note: This post was drafted in July 2017, but it felt too personal to share then. “You’re doing major emotional work,” said my friend NK, cracking an egg into the frying pan on the stove. I was staying in Southern California with her for a couple we

He wrote that I should look for the tall Japanese man with the bald head. Okay. I walked into Counter Culture Cafe in Santa Fe and greeted him, mispronouncing his name. I said it as “jen”— he corrected me, “gen”—as in Genghis Khan. Thus my hour with humble, warm, and inventive Gen Hayashida—who at first glance intimidated me—began. Gen Hayashida, March 2018 Gen is a remarkable man: his parents sent him from Japan to the San Francisco area at age 16 as an exchange student. He

I’ve encountered nothing but kindness and charm in Albuquerque, NM, and I’ve been housesitting in this city for three months already. Here in Albuquerque’s North Valley where I temporarily live, I’ve explored several walking trails, for this historic area is criss-crossed by ditches. These acequias, in Spanish, are long old trenches of varying widths and depths that sometime during the year, I’m told, carry water to agricultural fields. Much of the time they are dry and dusty

An Occasional Post on Art that Thrills Me Boredom is also the mother of invention. Back-in-the-day, we entertained ourselves in the evening—reading, conversing, playing, singing, writing, carving, sketching, knitting, learning, planning, studying, listening to and making music. Back-in-the-day, there was no screen with words and images created by others to seduce us into simply watching others conversing, playing, doing…. Back-in-the-day, our unspoken mottos were this: Out wi