Community Service

A Day at the Orphanage

Danang, Vietnam, July 2, 20015 – 5 am: A gauzy dawn heralds another sweltering day.  A few children, a tad groggy, emerge from their 6-bed dorm into the arcade girding the courtyard.  Some wield a wispy straw broom, the quintessential Vietnamese tool in a strictly one-handed exercise.  As the sun starts licking the ochre walls, a bell rings signaling everybody …

Read More »

A Day of Magic

Our Rosarito climate never ceases to amaze.  A short journey south on a well traveled road took me away from the coastal fog on to Black Cross Winery.  On Sunday, third of May, my wife Bunny Wingate Tavares conducted the first book signing of her new book, “Gentleman Tom and the Cookelfeffer” at Black Cross Winery and All the Pretty …

Read More »

Horse

I was born in the concrete jungle of New York City with no horse in sight, but for some reason the first word I ever said was “horse”, some kind of unexplained love affair from age two. My Dad took me to Madison Square Garden every November for the National Horse Show, and he took me riding in Central Park …

Read More »

Beach Care

I collect trash from all over the world.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t keep it.  But every morning when I walk my dog down the beach, I grab a couple of plastic grocery bags on my way out the door, and off we go, ambling along the sandy highway, collecting bits and pieces of global garbage.  It’s easily as …

Read More »

A Different Education

I was a high school English teacher; my sister Joan taught sixth grade language arts, and my sister Janice taught first, second grade and then fourth grade everything.  Because we’d planned a trip to the Baja, we wanted to visit a school; I already knew Oxiris, a high school student in La Mision, so we decided to visit her high …

Read More »

A Positive Story

Moises Hernandez has been fashioning beautiful baskets on the side of the free road near the Pescador Restaurant since 1978.  He patiently and skillfully cuts the carrizo, which is a tall reed that looks like bamboo.  He peels the strips, then pounds them flat until they are perfect for working.  The next step is to cut the strips into the …

Read More »

Send me a man who reads

The Readers Digest… Remember that? Not exactly fashionable to admit reading it these days.  A staple of my youth, I sat down monthly to read it as soon as it arrived; I loved that the Table of Contents was right on the cover (I lamented when a format change moved it inside).  I could jump right to my favorite humor …

Read More »

A New School Like Headstart

Buenos Principios, an elementary school to serve 20 of the poorest and neediest of Rosarito’s children, is ready to begin construction.  Planning for the school was spearheaded by Antonio and Imelda Ayala, local educators who both come from backgrounds of poverty.  Sr. Ayala is now a professor of English and Spanish, teaching classes privately in a classroom in their home …

Read More »