Internet Littering

My Daddy’s folks are from Kentucky.  My Mama’s folks are from Oklahoma. Our childhoods were passed overseas or on the east coast, always around a Navy or Marine base.  My father was first in the Navy, and then he went to work for Kaman Aerospace.  I mention this as a frequent summer trip was back to Kentucky and/or Oklahoma.  This was in the 50s and 60s.  Initially there were no Interstates. Even later when the Interstates were under construction it was still a hodge-podge of Interstates and two lane roads. These were long, slow trips, not uncommonly in bumper to bumper traffic on two lane roads not always in the best repair.  Heaven forbid if there was an accident.  It would back things up for hours. Air conditioning in a car, surely you jest.

Vivid Childhood Memory

A vivid memory that implanted on my very young Continue reading “Internet Littering”

Spanish Tutor Cracked Me Up

You are going to need just a wee bit of background to appreciate this… or not.

There is a stereotype involving Latino mothers – especially Mexican mothers – involving their ability to do accurate long distance child correction using a well launched chancla, chancla being the Spanish word for flip-flop. Practically every Latino I have spoken to more than casually has a chancla story. If you doubt the stereotype, just type chancla into the YouTube search box and you will have a wide selection to choose from.  One of my favorites can be found at this link: Hispanic moms don’t miss with that chancla or the video at the bottom of this post.

I’ve been working with a Mexican young man, Saúl, via Skype for Continue reading “Spanish Tutor Cracked Me Up”

¡Guau! ¡Honduras!


At the end of this article you can find pictures from our trip to Honduras.

Guau is the Spanish spelling of the English word, wow. Señora and I just spent six incredible days in Honduras and the best word to describe our experiences is guau.  Both of us were saying guau all the time as we were in the mountains most of our trip and the scenery was absolutely stupendous. And the people were generally kind, friendly and very welcoming, perhaps so, as we were, for the most part, away from the more common tourist areas.  My Salvadoran tutor tells me that he likes the Honduran culture more than his own due to the friendliness and openness of the Hondurans, known colloquially as Catracho or Catracha.

The primary purpose of the trip was to visit one of my online Spanish tutors, Saúl Rios and his wife Sarai Paz, this young couple, both just around 30, make their living as Spanish tutors online.  Saúl is on a platform called iTalki and Sarai is on Prepay. It is always hard to judge these things, but they seem to be making a living better than average for their country.  Saúl is Mexican.  As I remember the story he was on vacation in Honduras, met this Catracha young lady, fell in love, married her and has been there ever since. Ironically, as will become clear in a minute, Continue reading “¡Guau! ¡Honduras!”