What a Year!
Between visiting South America and Asia, I visited lots (and yet not enough) of Mexico: Tepoztlán and Manzanillo for example. A holy place and a hedonistic one. I learned to ride Mexico’s wonderful long-distances buses, thereby avoiding tolls, topes, and transitos. I learned to live out of a backpack again. It weighs about thirty pounds—more than half of that in cameras and laptop. I’ll be all over Mexico in 2009, riding buses and taking taxis and wondering why I’m keeping up the insurance on the Ford Explorer that today is just sitting in the carport depreciating. I’ll wash out underwear and socks in the lavatory, using hotel shampoo when it’s available. (I don’t really have any other use for shampoo.) I’ll stay in grubby hotels because they’re where you meet people. I’ll eat disgusting things. I can hardly wait.
Last year held some endings. I reported earlier that Jean and I divorced. My heart attack recovery dog—Rosie the Boston Terrier—stayed with Jean. Chiapas, my beloved Amazon yellow head parrot flew off one day to a new life. I hope he found the girlfriend I knew he wanted. Chiapas loved me; he clearly loved freedom more. I’ll never keep a caged bird again. I moved into a new house, one overlooking San Miguel de Allende, where on a clear day I watch early morning balloons ascend over Presa Allende.
I took up playing guitar and singing folk and country songs after an interruption of thirty years, in the process learning not all endings have to be permanent.
Photo: Paul “El Guapo” Latoures
Henry Lockwood, my first grandson arrived at midyear. 
Photo: Laura Josephs
So now I have four grandchildren: Shayla, Kiely, Cassie and Henry, and a new year’s resolution to visit them more often. I hooked up with them this Thanksgiving at Lone Pine, a small town in the Owens Valley of Eastern California, sandwiched between Mount Whitney and Death Valley. Pictured below are two granddaughters, Kiely and Cassie.
Photo: Laura Josephs
Good health, the pleasure of writing stuff for you to read, the love of children and grandchildren, music I once again make myself, travel on three continents—I could have not asked for more gifts from this past year. But 2008 had one more very special one. Laura came into my life this year. I couldn’t be happier.
She and I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas visiting first my family and then hers. So I guess that means our relationship is officially serious. This photo was taken at the Wood family Thanksgiving. We had driven to 9,000’ on the Whitney Portal Road, past the ROAD CLOSED sign, to a point where the first snowfall of the season blocked further ascent.
Laura and I each have houses that overlook San Miguel. Together we watch the year-end sunset over the city, signaling the end of one era and the beginning of a new one.
To all of you who have shown the kindness, patience, and interest to read these posts, thank you for your support. I offer you my wishes that the new year will be for you as wonderful as the last one was for me.