Where, but in Cañar, would I hold the fussy baby of the shoe-shine woman while she gives Michael’s size 12 shoes a good buffing?

Where, but in Cañar, would every person you meet on the street or in the road, regardless of age, known or unknown, greets you with a buenos días or buenas tardes? Then they usually ask after “Miquito”. I used to stop and respond: “Well, he’s at home, making dinner,” or “He’s chopping wood,” until I realized I only needed say, “¡muy bien!” and walk on.

Where, but in Cañar, would Michael and I get our hair cut by the same Teresa at her “Uni-sex” salon - for $5 each? Of course, Michael gets the extras of ear, nose and eyebrow trim. Same price. (She also cut my mother’s hair 20 years ago.)

Where, but in Cañar, when I think I am finished with documenting events, do I see a procession in the streets and jump into action?

Where, but in Cañar, would I take a walk in the fog and see my photo from years ago still in a banner in a municipal park?

Where, but for a Cañar-related book project, would I ride a buseta (mini-bus) for eight hours to Quito to help present the trilingual book at a UNESCO-based conference on protecting and promoting Quichua as a second language in Ecuador, then less than 24 hours later, ride eight hours back to Cañar?

The other day I made the hour-long bus ride to the next town south. It was a beautiful day, the mountains and valleys in sharp contrast in a gorgeous landscape. I loved spotting the many walks Michael and I have taken over the years. We’d see a village in the distance, and one of us would say, “Let’s go there!” Or, Michael would see a road running into the sky and say, “You wanna see where that goes?” We’d make a plan and find a free day. We got a little lost sometimes, and on occasion ventured a little too far to easily get home. But there was always adventure, and always a human being who showed up to give us directions or a ride.

Now, Michael cannot make long walks, and barely short ones. But living in a small community where we know nearly everyone and most know us, we feel secure and maybe even cherished as “los únicos gringos en Cañar.”

I miss our walks, but Michael remains positive and never complains, and that’s good enough for me! We’ll be coming back to Cañar in November. Until then…

Cañar Book Club

Wow! So many books, so little time. This is our last Cañar Book Club meeting of the season, so you, dear members, have six months to read the recommended books on your lists, and make notes for our next meeting in November.

I’ll start with my recent reading.

Have you ever stuck with a book even though you didn’t like any of the characters, but the writing was good and the story catapulted you along? Susan Choi’s Flashlight: A Novel was that for me. It has won tons of awards and accolades. I’d waited months for it from my library. But once I was deep into its 500 pages, I knew I didn’t care about any of the characters, but I went on to the end. I did, however, learn a lot about North Korea.

The Year of the Wind by Karina Pacheco Medrano and translated by Mara Faye Lethem, is set in Peru during the violent Sendero Luminoso years. Michael and I visited Peru during the time, in 1992, when bombs were going off in Lima, and our train to Machu Picchu was “sealed” to keep us safe. The author grew up in urban Cusco, and the horrible fate of her rural fictionalized family stretched credibility, I felt. Still, as with Flashlight and North Korea, The Year of the Wind was a “a timely callback to … political bloodletting that blurs the line between victims and perpetrators.”

After that, The Spare Room: A Novel, by Helen Garner, “Australia’s Alice Munro,” was a comfort to read, even though it is an uncomfortably close look at a woman caring for a dying friend (in her spare room). Definitely some lessons to be learned, but the friendship between the two women is beautiful. Still, think twice before you offer that spare room.

Speaking of not liking book characters, I just finished Next of Kin: A Memoir, by Gabrielle Hamilton. I loved her Bread, Bones and Butter, a chef’s story of running her East Village restaurant. This memoir is about her “real” family and it’s a heartbreaking doozie. One of five children of inept parents, murderous siblings, long estrangements, suicide and betrayals. NYT Review: “Really, could any one book hope to detonate as many land mines as are scattered in Hamilton’s history?” I was happy to leave them behind.

After these, I’m happily soaking in warm and familiar literary waters, with Pico Iyer’s Aflame: Learning from Silence and A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews, both memoirs by favorite authors. I recommend everything those two have written.

On to what others are reading:

Laura in Baja California: I’m reading Francis Weller’s magnificent The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief.

Joanne in Patzcuaro: This is Happiness by Niall Williams. I read it very slowly. The language is so beautiful that I didn’t want to skim.

Francie in Portland, Pat in Bend, + my sister Char in Austin are all reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. (More on that one later.)

Bibbi in CA: Every Man for Himself and God Against All, a memoir by German filmmaker, Werner Herzog. “Simply delightful. On my list is Repetition by Vigdis Hjort, a famous Norwegian author who will be interviewing me for BOMB magazine later this month.” (Now there’s a statement that begs an explanation!)

Pat in Bend, Oregon: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon is narrated by a fifty-year-old midwife in Maine in the late 1700’s. “When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death.” And The Correspondent by Virginia Evans “Both tell stories of the women’s full lives, of family and friends, and of the inevitable complications they face as educated women in a society not quite ready for them.”

Janice in New Jersey: I am reading a beautiful book, My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. “A young religious artist is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels, even when it leads him to blasphemy.” Bruce, also in New Jersey, is reading an “excellent biography” of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G.Kelley.

Miriam from San Miguel de Allende: Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles is a beautifully illustrated journal of her loving, closely observed relationships with the birds that come to visit and sometimes stay.

Finally, a long report from Shirley in Portland:

Theo of Golden by Allen Lev. “Who is 86-year-old Theo and why has he chosen the town of Golden, Georgia, to spend a year? It is a story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen. Beautifully crafted novel about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.”

I just finished Nicholas Kristof’s memoir Chasing Hope. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times who traveled all over the globe reporting on conflicts, sex trafficking, genocide, civil wars, violation of basic human rights and the rising cost of oppression. Growing up in Yamhill, Oregon, he also chronicles the hopelessness and addiction of the people who went to his school and lost their good- paying jobs when mills closed. Fascinating look at our past.

That’s it for now, dear friends. Until our next meeting, stay safe and cozy, reading books as comfort despite all that is happening in our world.

Judy B.

Then the wild fun began. It seemed the town’s entire population lined the streets to watch, throw water balloons, or squirt this horrible aerosol foam, called karaoke, on the hundreds of folks marching in groups representing schools, civic organizations, city employees, and so on. In return, those marching threw water or spray foam onto the observers. The favorite event was the firemen and their water-tank truck, with a pressure hose directed at those lining the streets (mostly young women), and, in return, buckets of water were thrown out of doorways at the firemen, in costume and loving every minute of it.

Unfortunately (I say), kareoke has taken the place of the Carnival tradition of maicena, or cornstarch, tossed or rubbed on one’s face and hair to celebrate the beginning of Lent. Now even three-year olds have their own 12-inch canisters of spray foam, five and six-year olds shoot huge water cannons, and cornstarch was nowhere to be seen.

I usually avoid this parade for obvious reasons, but this year I went at the invitation of a colleague from Cuenca. I came home soaked and covered in spray, but I was glad I’d gone. For years, I did not feel part of town life; I mostly participated in—and photographed—Cañari celebrations. (Graffiti once scrawled on the wall of our previous house, likely by neighborhood kids, read: “¿Por qué no nos aman como a los indios?”—roughly, Why don’t you love us as you do the indigenous?)

But my years working on the Rigoberto Navas photo book have transformed my relationship with the townspeople. Señor Navas (1911-2000) photographed nearly everyone in town —at baptisms, marriages, schools, sports, and funerals. Over a decade, with the cooperation of his family, I developed his glass and celluloid negatives in my darkroom, I also searched for Navas photos all over town in family albums, getting to know people in the process and building an extensive digital archive of the Navas Collection.

In 2024, the Catholic University of Cuenca published the book’s first edition. A second edition followed last year, in three languages—Quichua, Spanish, and English. I coordinated both projects, and next month the university team will travel to Quito with the translators, members of the Navas family, and me to present the book at a UNESCO event celebrating the Year of Indigenous Languages.

Monday is Carnival lunes—Kapak Raymi in the Cañari communities—followed by Carnival martes, a national holiday when everyone stays home to rest and to “play Carnival” with water balloons, buckets and tubs of water (the kids love this), spray foam, and music—music, always music—pouring from the houses. Then comes Ash Wednesday, to church and repeat.

After that, most Ecuadorians simply take off the rest of the week, turning it into the longest holiday of the year. I’ve also learned that no one wants to stay in their hometown during Carnival. Visiting relatives, traveling the country on jammed highways, eating in packed restaurants, and joining throngs at the beach are a necessity if one is to enjoy carnaval, as it’s known in Spanish.

Tomorrow’s Cañari desfile (parade or march) will begin in the host community of Lodón, high in the mountains above Cañar, when the comuneros set out on foot with drums and a band, walking all the way to Cañar to gather with other communities in the compound of TUCAYTA. There, the celebration includes food stands, music, and dancing—and, above all, the colorful Tayta Carnaval clothing, huge sombreros and cajas, the small homemade drums that men, women, toddlers and elders play throughout the day.

Mateo is three years old, the son of Sarita, one of our scholarship recipients. When he visited us with his grandparents several months ago, he noticed a drum on a high shelf—one that had been given to me years earlier. I gave it to him. He walked out our gate playing it and seems never to have stopped; only now he dances as he drums.

Even though I was water bombed and foam sprayed at Kapak Raymi, I stayed a couple of hours and was pleased to see the stronger role women are taking in this Andean celebration. If I remember correctly from years ago, it was mostly men who wore the huge sombrereros and carried the drums. The event is better organized every year, with each community offering food and chicha to the participants, a stage where music groups compete for prizes, and - into the night - more music and dancing.

Finally, after my last chronicle, heavy on Ecuadorian politics, one faithful respondent wrote, “Enough of all this, tell us what Michael is cooking!”

So here he is making latkes (Yiddish word) or small fried pancakes, a standby with us in this land of potatoes. Latkes can be paired with many different things, but our favorite is smoked salmon, cream cheese, onions and capers. (Requiring a trip to the SuperMaxi in Cuenca.)

The secret to crispy golden latkes, Michael says, is to hand squeeze the liquid from the shredded potatoes and fry them in super-hot oil. If anyone wants a more details of Michael’s recipe, let me know. (Next time he’ll do paella.)

Cañar Book Club

Dear Beloved Members: I’d like to start our February meeting by mentioning our own recently published books by Aristata Press: Sunny and Ahmed a novella by my co-publisher Anne McClard, (“…a tender, sharply funny coming-of-age novella about identity, belonging, disability, faith, and the art that helps us speak when the world tells us to stay silent”), and Feeding the Enemy: Soviet Women in Nazi Labor Camps in Norway (“…a lost chapter of WWII illuminating the resilience of women caught in the machinery of war, and the political forces that determine which stories are remembered and which are forgotten).

OK, on to recommendations from our great readers around the world:

Claire in London: The Safe Keep by Yael Van de Wouden is deep and thoughtful, with insight into what happened in occupied Holland during the Second World War and afterward, when society had to deal with the moral dilemmas of occupation. It’s written brilliantly, and I couldn’t put it down.

Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series - very light and utterly delightful and extremely English. His writing about old age is so tender and well observed. I also read a Colm Toibin novella A Long Winter, which, of course, I loved. I was just a bit sad that it wasn’t longer!

Poppy in Portland: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan. “Great writing, plot twists and turns and intriguing characters.”

Patty in Portland: Next of Kin: A Memoir by Gabrielle Hamilton, whose “writing is like a scalpal —sharp and devastating.” (Judy adds: I read Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by this author years ago, and loved it. I’ve reserved this one at my library.)

Mary Day in Colombia: John Sayle’s gripping To Save the Man, about the Carlisle Indian School and the massacre at Wounded Knee. The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong is brilliant but ever-changing chapter to chapter. Hieronymus Bosch in Connecticut.

Joanne in Patzcuaro: stay tuned….

Maya in Portland: They Dream in Gold by Mai Senaar takes place in Paris and elsewhere with a Senegalese jazz musician and the woman he loves, both damaged from complicated pasts. Lovely writing and great characters, not quite like anything I’ve ever read. Also Martyr by Kaveh Akbar, which was not at all what I expected. After getting past the main character’s youth spent depressed and doing drugs, it got interesting, surprising, and tender.

Judy in Cañar: I’ve had a rocky reading road lately—one book too long (new bio of a famous writer that covered nearly every day of a life, plus a deep analysis of each book). One too sad and tragic, another too violent, one just plain boring, and - finally - one that I’m loving: By The Lake by John McGahern, an Irish writer I’d read years ago. In fact, I’d read this very book, brought to mind last week when we watched the beautiful film with the original title, That They May Face the Rising Sun. (Seen on Kanopy, my public library steaming service). In desperation, I decided to read the book again, a quiet story of a couple who leave their life in London to make a new life in the man’s part of Ireland. What makes the book special, in addition to McGahern’s gorgeous writing, is his capture of the local characters and their colorful vernacular. “All the Connors were decent, as decent as ever wore shoe leather.”

OK - I hope I got everyone’s suggestions; please send more books for March. Until then, keep reading!!

Final note: If any would like to make a tax deductable donation to the Cañari women’t scholarship program before tax time, here is the link - the donate button is at bottom of newsletter.

Dear Friends - Last week, an acquaintance came by—with lots of preamble and apologies—to ask if we wanted to sell our “house in the clouds” (which it very much IS these days). I assured her it was a perfectly reasonable question, but that for the moment, we have no intention of leaving Cañar or selling the house. She explained that she had just received notice to move from her rental house because the owner’s sons are returning from the U.S. Two years ago, she said, houses were for sale all over town. Now, there are almost none, and she’s having a hard time finding a place to live. What happened?

In two words: President Trump. For perhaps the first time in years, it appears that migrants are returning to Cañar in greater numbers than they are leaving, driven by deportation or the fear of it. According to government figures, 43,000 Ecuadorians have been returned over the last four years via routine flights two or three times a week (Trump and Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa are cozy). However, it is impossible to determine exact figures, as many return voluntarily and are not counted.

According to my friend who asked about our house, it is the “returnees” who are squeezing the real estate market in Cañar, renting and buying properties, or relying on parents to evict tenants to accommodate sons and daughters coming home. I’ve noticed for several years, in my walks around town, houses that have been “fixed up” but sit empty, awaiting the owners’ return.

And yet another friend, with his ear closer to the ground, said most deportees return with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a $50 bank card. “They are certainly not buying houses,” he said. In his tiny community, he knows of fourteen people who have been deported, some older folks who’ve been in the U.S. for 25-30 years. One younger woman was separated from her three-year-old. “Grabbed and put on a plane,” he said.

Or, maybe some migrants have simply had enough of life in the U.S.

That’s the story of our friend Pablo (not his real name). For twenty-five years, he lived in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant, consistently working in skilled labor for established companies. With his false social security number, he contributed to the system for over two decades by paying taxes and workers’ compensation, with no possibility of claiming the benefits.

Now over fifty, Pablo is tired. He has a broken marriage in the U.S., two grown sons in Ecuador he has barely known, a new granddaughter he wants to know, and another son—born in the U.S.—who is still in high school.

When he shared with us his plan to return, I figured he would settle in his mountain village above Cañar, where we first knew him. But he said he would go to Guayaquil, where he worked twenty-five years ago. He hopes to start a business related to construction with his savings. Pablo has returned voluntarily, bringing his skills, his capital, (but no pension) and enough energy to start a new life, with a plan to spend the rest of his days in Ecuador. I count that as an asset to this country.

But to return to the story of our friend who wanted to buy our house. She, along with other friends and acquaintances—not to mention taxi drivers, neighbors, market vendors and others we’ve greeted in the streets these last twenty years—all observe Michael and I growing older. Most are too polite to ask, but as they see Michael trudging up to town with his hiking stick, and me walking in country trails, everyone is thinking: What will happen to the house and land? Do they have children? How old is Michael? How old is Judy?

One taxi driver, well-known but not so polite, asked him where he would rather die - in Ecuador of the U.S. “Here!” Michael answered, not at all offended. “Because it’s cheaper.”

Short answer: We will keep coming as long as we are able, so we can continue to enjoy experiences like this one. Last week, a local band, “Los Caminantes de Cañar,” stopped by with a request to shoot a video in our yard. They got all set up with instruments, sound system, silver jackets, and videographer. Inside the house, we kept hearing one simple sequence, played over and over. Turned out they were “miming” the music for the videographer, including performative gestures. The “real” music was to be added later in the studio. After, they asked for a photo all together .

Please stay with me for one last story about socio-economic changes in Cañar.

The other day I met a neatly dressed man coming out of a house across our road. He asked if I spoke Spanish - obviously wanting to talk.

He has just retired in Spain, he said, where he’d legally immigrated 30 years ago. He was back for an extended visit to Cañar, where he owns two houses. In Spain, he chatted, he has an Ecuadorian wife, four sons, and a new pension. He wanted to know if I was jubilada and if so, how much was a U.S. pension. I hemmed and hawed and came up with $1500. “That’s what I receive!” he said, obviously pleased.

We said goodbye at the Paseo, but this conversation made me think back to the 1990s, when the financial crisis in Ecuador pushed waves of migrants to Spain (where no visa was required). By 2005 the number of Ecuadorians in Spain grew to over 500,000, by one figure, the majority staying long enough to become citizens.

This man I met is one of them. Though he has no intention of returning to live here, he and other Ecuadorians in Spain continue to contribute to Cañar’s economy. Now that he has a pension, he can afford to visit, maybe buy more houses, reunite with relatives, pay the modest taxes on his properties, and spend money in local businesses.

OK, enough of “shifting winds” in Cañar. This blog has taken a long time to research and write. Next time I’ll make it more personal.

Cañar Book Club

Dear Book Club Members; Welcome to our first meeting of 2026! I hope this will be a bookish year for all of us. (Funny, we’ve just started watching a PBS series called Bookish.) For your convenience I’m made active links on all books below, the good, bad, and interminable.

After several fiction fiascos, I’ve sunk into two excellent but grim non-fiction books: 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia by Philippe Sands. A devastating account of events in Chile that brings back many memories of political refugees flowing in Toronto while I lived there in the 1970’s-80’s. I’ve read one of Sands’ other books, East West Street:On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Philippe Sands in an international human rights’ lawyer who writes like a dream.

At the same time (rushing against time limits), I’ve started We Do Not Part by Han Kang, the South Korean 2024 Nobel Prize winner. I had read her previous beautiful but devastating book, Human Acts, and I ordered this one after reading her short story from her new book, “Heavy Snow” in a New Yorker. Her writing is gorgeous, even when you have to look away.

On the human rights theme, I’d like to mention our own recent release from Aristata Press: Feeding the Enemy: Soviet Women in Nazi Labor Camps in Norway, by Liv Mjelde. I hope you’ll consider ordering it.

Charlotte in Portland:South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry. “It’s fascinating, dense, sobering--and I recommend it. It’s a National Book Award winner and I can see why. SO much research! Presented in a very readable style. She talks about how southerners, particularly Black southerners, seek the community of families living close, especially on rural land.”

Mary Day in Colombia sent a list of books she read in 2025, all worth checking out: Patriot: A Memoir, Alexei Navalny; The Great War for Civilization, Robert Fisk; On Tyranny, Thomas Snyder; Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars, Peter Godwin; The Doorman: A Novel, Chris Pavone; 38 Londres Street, Philippe Sands; Skyfaring, A Journey with a Pilot, Mark Vanhoenacker.

My sister Charlotte in Austin: “I’ve started The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans. I’m only 30 pages in, but I’m sure your readers will like it. I just finished my 🫣 third reading of Madelaine Miller’s Circe. When life gets too complicated, like now, I go straight back to the Greeks!”

Allison in Minneapolis: “I can’t seem to get through 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolaño - recommended by a personal hero, Patti Smith - but it’s truly awful, dark, and seemingly hopeless. Reading it feels like torture. I’m 75% done, can barely forge on… Help! Do I abandon it or finish it?”

Joanne in Mexico: “I started Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser, but found it pretty thin and at times pedantic. Can’t really recommend it. Also just got Niall Williams’ Four Letters of Love from the library. And I have to finish Hitler and My Mother-in-Law: A Memoir, Terese Svoboda, as the review (I’m supposed to write) is now overdue. I just bought the Rabih Alameddine that won the National Book Award: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother).”

The title alone makes me want to read that one.

That’s all for January 2026, dear friends. Here’s what I’m looking forward to when back in Portland in April: paper books! I’m tired of reading on my iPad, with books loaned from the library for three weeks that disappear in a flash (OK, with a warning or two).

Please send titles of your favorite books for the February chronicle. Apologies if I’ve forgotten any of your recommendations. Please send again.

Finally, if any of you still want to make a contribution to the Cañari Women’s Education Foundation before tax time, follow this link, with a donate button at the very bottom.

So we create our own evening entertainment around the fire, with Portland all-jazz radio, occasional podcasts, music, movies and TV series, all on my 13” laptop and a small Bose speaker. (Plus, maybe a little wine, a little beer, and occasionally a shot of rum.) We’re presently enjoying The West Wing (on the screen in the photo below). Running from 1999-2006, this wonderfully entertaining political series makes us yearn for more innocent times.

Lately, however, I’ve created a new evening routine: reliving our railroad walks from 2009 to 2011, when we covered close to 30% of Ecuador walking the old defunct rail line, much of it deep in the mountains. I read aloud my written accounts while clicking through the photos. We’ve been lost, tiptoed over fresh landslides, chased by dogs, crossed derelict bridges on hands and knees, and lost the rails themselves. For years I’ve wanted to gather together the stories and photos (and sketches and hand-drawn maps), and I finally have some time to do it. No idea where it will lead, but we’re having fun. Here is a photo that I’m particularly I’m proud of: Michael on the tracks with Chimborazo looming. The top of this magnificent mountain is famously shy, usually swathed in clouds, and I must have taken 50 photos that day.

That’s our nightlife. During the day our life is primarily domestic. In the mornings I make coffee with a little stove-top espresso (thanks Patricia) and print Michael’s puzzles (3 KenKen math puzzles, 1 NYT crossword). We plan dinner and decide who will go shopping. If it’s Michael, he calls a taxi and goes early; if it’s me, I walk and go in the afternoons. Michael cooks. I do laundry to hang in the patio (our LG Korean machine is 20 half-years old and going strong). We both do dishes, enjoying the view of the mountains.

During work hours I’m in my studio/office or the garden. We eat lunch in the patio where, during these sunny December days, the temperatures can reach the 80s under our glass roof. As it grows cool to cold, Michael builds the fire. He cooks dinner while I work on my sketchbook. Come 6:30-7:00, we’re settled by the fire for the duration, dinner (photo: latkes and salmon for hanukkah) and entertainment until bedtime (OK, if you’re curious: it’s around 9:30 or 10:00)

The town, during this holiday season, is jumping in a way I’ve not noticed before. Partly it’s the Christmas “mania” brought back with the migrants from the US, plus social media for a real, imagined or dreamed-of American Christmas. In the stores, all the newly appeared mass market stuff is certainly imported from China. Before, Christmas was marked mostly by elaborate créches that folks built in their entryways with open doors to the street so passersby could stop and look. I actually came across one the other day.

Still, walking through town is a pleasure because every store and tiny shop or small business that has suddenly popped up in a 10-foot space, is independent and/or family owned (many still live above the store). Pharmacies, clothing, cell phones, eyewear, bakeries, agricultural products, street food, small cafes. All open to the streets, with not a single chain or box store or sign of US mega-commerce.

Most of the talleres de artesanos or workshops from earlier times are gone, however. The knife sharpener, shoe repair man, blacksmith, radio and TV repair, farm tools, artificial flowers for graves. Most, but not all! Yesterday I went looking for a tabalerero, a leather worker. I had a belt that needed shortened, and I vaguely remembered a taller in the old section of town. And there he was, in a tiny shop without a sign and behind a half-door that signaled, “ask before you enter.” I did. As he worked on my belt, we exchanged stories.

He said he started work at eleven years, tanning skins that were larger than he was, using his hands to show their size, or perhaps the damage done to a child’s hands. “Gracias a dios, a señor took me on as an apprentice and became my mentor.” He pointed to a photo on the wall. “That was my savior. I’m 73 years old and still working.”

When he finished my belt, I asked if I could take some photos, and pay for the work. He shook his head - no charge, but I could bring him a photo. Then he invited me to coffee and a tamale from a street vendor who obviously passes by every afternoon. I sat on a sheep-skin covered stool and thought, this is the sort of “town transaction” that I love.

Another: the next day I walked up for a single spool of white thread to stitch some curtains. In the course of making a 25-cent purchase in a tiny “notions” shop, three generations of women waited on me, beginning with the ten-year old girl who met me at the door. When I asked if she had thread, she said, “What color?”

Cañar Book Club - December 2025

I’ll start our December meeting with a shout out for two books close to home, both launched on December 1 by our own Aristata Press. Sunny & Ahmed by my co-publisher Anne McClard is a tender, sharply funny coming-of-age novella for all ages about two young people who meet at a random open mic, “and the art that helps us speak when the world tells us to stay silent.” Feeding the Enemy: Soviet Women in Nazi Labor Camps in Norway by Liv Mjelde is a long-buried chapter of WWII, when thousands of Soviet women were captured and transported to work in fish factories near the Arctic Circle to support Nazi Germany’s war economy. “Combining personal memoir, academic inquiry, and detective work, Mjelde tells stories of fortitude and survival hidden behind a veil of lies for decades.”

I hope you’ll take a look and maybe order both books for holiday reading or gifts

After complaining last meeting about overly long books, I’ve just finished the 1,200-page Mark Twain by Ron Chernow—albeit with a few chapters skimmed once the library warned me I had only three days left. I’m not sure why I ordered this book, though I suspect a glowing review made me want to know more about Samuel Clemens. And know him I did, thanks to the astonishing volume of daily letters he wrote, along with articles, notes, books, and correspondence among his family, friends, critics and enemies. A boon for Chernow, who organizes the biography by themes, making it easy to use chapter headings to drop into Twain’s long life (1835–1910 ), whether his happy marriage, crazy inventions, bad investments or disturbing interest in teenage girls. I ended up thinking of it it as a kind of irascible social history of his era. (Too bad there will no such history of our lives, given disappearing emails and texts and fewer and fewer letters.)

Which brings me to what other club members have recommended:

Maya in Portland: “James by Percival Everett, which I found a surprisingly fast read. Such an interesting take on what life was like for the enslaved, as well as a great sort of rebuttal to Twain’s view.”

Timothy Snyder, of On Tyranny, returns with On Freedom. Really thought provoking look at how we in the US tend to define freedom as a negative, a lack of interference, when really it is a positive—the conditions necessary for a good life. No book has made me think as much in months. And important as we try to envision post-Trump, what it is we want to build in this country.

Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare. An Englishwoman rescues a leveret, a newborn hare, and ends up raising and befriending it, while never actually taming it - leaving it to live a wild life, yet in and out of her house for the duration of its life. It’s a lovely book and an amazing story of cross-species respect and affection.

Claire in London: I love Claire’s book-related emails because they are largely about what NOT to read: “I’m actually in quiet despair about the state of literature at the moment. Why is nobody allowed to be happy? Why does everyone have to find their not terribly pleasant selves?” A friend just lent me America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo. I’m not completely convinced, but I’ll keep going for a while.”

Judy in Cañar: The problem with ordering ebooks from the library is a bunch tend to come at once. Even if I’m involved with a good read, I can’t always resist a title I’ve been waiting weeks or months for. So, at the moment, on my iPad: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. As I a started this memoir of her formidable mother, I recognized the story of The God of Small Things, which I re-read earlier this year, when I found in my bedside bookshelf. I left everything else aside while I read it. Recommended!

I fear I’ve forgotten some friends’ recommendations, so I hope you’ll remind me for the January meeting. Meanwhile, this just popped up in my email, so we’ll end with this. Happy Holidays!

:

As some of you know, my original Cañar Chronicles website was hacked about this time last year. It’s been repaired and secure since February, but while it was “in recovery,” I switched to Substack. However, I’m using my original website for our annual fundraising letter, which goes out to our scholarship subscribers.

That said, we always welcome new donors! Please consider joining us in supporting university scholarships for Cañari women — your contributions truly make a difference.

With thanks, Judy B.

Before we begin, I want to give a quick shout-out to my Aristata publishing partner, Anne McClard, whose 2024 novel Margaux & the Vicious Circle is available here in print and Ebook. Now, she’s just released an audiobook and a reader’s guide. Check them out for a full immersion experience in this wonderful novel!

Colleen in Guadalajara: My Friends: A Novel. “Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.” (Goodreads)

Carolyn in Portland: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by A. Chakraborty is a relatively lighthearted pirate-style adventure story. The ocean trading routes between the Middle East, Africa, and India were not something I knew much about, so what I really enjoyed about this book was the author’s research on the history of 12th-century pirates and merchant sailors in the Indian Ocean area. It had me opening Google Earth to find the places she was talking about.

Bruce in Portland: I devoured every detail of The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. It’s African lit at its best. “A Zambian debut novel that follows three generations of three families, telling the story of a nation, and of the grand sweep of time.” (Goodreads)

Claire in London: I read another Abdulrazak Gurnah - By the Sea - which is considered his masterpiece. I liked it because of the writing, but it got a little tedious and digressed towards the end so I didn’t love it like I did Theft: “In his first new novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize, a master storyteller captures a time of dizzying global change. At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania.” (Goodreads)

Claire continues: I’m now making my way through the Booker Prize short list, starting with Susan Choi’s Flashlight. It’s another book with a Japan-Korea theme (after Women of the Sea and Pachinko). I’m really enjoying it. More great writing with small individual stories wrapped in big themes.

Annie T. in Portland: The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts is my favorite book of the year. Set in 1954, Annie Wilkins sets off from Minot, Maine on her horse, and with her dog, for California, a place she had always wanted to see. Having been told by a doctor that she only had two years to live, and no family or home, she decided that at 62 years she had nothing to lose by riding horseback along highways from gas station maps. I found myself following her route, looking at particular places I wanted to visit sometime, and trying to find photographs online of Annie and her animals.

Macon in Boulder: I just finished reading detective story March Violets by Philip Kerr. The story unfolds in Berlin in the summer of 1936, just before and during the Olympiad. Detective Bernie Gunther is a former Berlin police officer turned private investigator. I have wondered about the similarity between Germans in the 1930s and people in the US today, watching their country sink into fascism. This book imagines what it is like, as people signal their aversion to the regime. March Violets is the first novel in Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series, which blends noir detective fiction with historical detail from the Third Reich.

Arlene in Toronto: I loved Rachel Clarke’s The Story of a Heart, which won the Women’s Prize for non-fiction this year. She is a beautiful writer and a very good storyteller. She is a British palliative care physician and a former broadcast journalist. Also, I really liked her previous book Dear Life. Dream Count, a new novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, features four women whose stories are told in turn. I also enjoyed Intimacies by Katie Kitamura: “An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court.”

Suzanne in ? Great Black Hope: A Novel by Rob Franklin describes the life of a young Black man set in Atlanta high society and the New York City club scene and its underworld. Issues of substance abuse and the struggles of recovery and finding a way back are interwoven with Smith coming to terms with grief over the loss of a close friend. A great first novel about what it means to be upwardly mobile and at the same time downward spiraling.

Nancy in Portland: Three recommendations of books that couldn’t be more different. First, The Guest, by Emma Cline, a millennial writer with a powerful sociological/psychological story of a woman with few resources who makes her way in Long Island society through a long, long weekend with the sheer force of her ability to read and manipulate others. Second, How to Think Impossibly, by Jeffrey Kripal, Rice University chair in Philosophy and Religion. Kripal maintains Rice’s “Archives of the Impossible” and provides a thorough survey of great thinkers’ and philosophers’ explanations of paranormal experiences. He includes his own fascinating interpretations at the book’s conclusion. Third, The Spy and The Traitor, by Ben Macintyre, a gripping history of a Russian spy for the British who betrayed his country in part out of love for classical music, and helped to end the Cold War.

Judy in Cañar: Finally, a word about book length. After resisting Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver for several years, I finally launched into her 560-page novel on my iPad, on loan from my library. As I grew impatient with the minutia of poor Demon’s life, I switched over to a “real” book I’d brought from Portland: A Soldier’s Legacy by Heinrich Boll. (Where it came from I have no idea, but I suspect a neighborhood little library on one of my walks.) Each morning, with coffee, I savored a few pages of this tiny 5 x 7 hardback, 131 pages, published in 1985 as a lost first book of this Nobel Prize winner. Large type, generous margins, I was afraid to finish too soon. On the other hand, Demon went on and on and on and was finally snatched from my iPad on its due date. I got a warning and flipped through the last chapter to get to the happy end. (Oops, spoiler.)

Keep those recommendations coming, dear readers, and we’ll convene again in December. Until then, may you enjoy reading a book every day.

One morning last week, I called our usual taxi stand in town — for Michael to shop for dinner and for me to buy seeds and a bottle of wine.

“Judy here in Chaglaban,” I began… but I was interrupted by, “Sí, vengo. Número 5,” as the driver tells me he knows where we live — and that his taxi is number 5.

Thirty years ago, when we bought this property, we did not want but wanted to be close enough to walk everywhere in this hillside town. But with Michael’s mobility now limited by Parkinson’s, he uses taxis or taxi-trucks almost every day. We know the drivers well — many of them for years — and they are always ready to help “Don Michael” or “Miquito” carry a case of beer or a heavy load of groceries.

Cost of a trip: $2.00. I don’t think we could live here without them.

Cañar in the 1990s

When we first knew Cañar, there were virtually no private cars or trucks — and certainly no taxis or stoplights. We risked our lives running across the Pan-American highway to get into town, dodging roaring transport trucks from Quito.

Back then, I’d taken on a volunteer job with a research group in Cuenca, connected to an Indigenous organization here in Cañar. We rented a two-room storefront for $15 a month on the Paseo de los Cañaris. At the time, it was a dirt road leading out of town toward the Cañari hamlets (remnants of the huge hacienda that dominated this area until mid-20th century.)

Here’s the Paseo now. Our little storefront is long gone, but it stood somewhere near the pink building. Today, a paved road winds into the countryside, busy with cars, trucks, and twice a day a traffic jam as parents drop off or pick up their children from school.

Our weekend home back then had a “Turkish toilet,” which required us to step out into the street, walk a few paces, and take a rickety stairway down into the lot behind.

Dogs ran free — good only for guarding a house at night. Now I see large sacks of dried dog food in the stores, and small dogs on leashes wearing jackets on rainy days. Still, I could hardly believe my eyes the other day when I saw a pet store on the Paseo.

The Collapse of 2000

When we returned that year — the year the economy collapsed, banks closed, millions were lost, Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar, and the president resigned — chaos and sadness were everywhere. Farmers could no longer make a living, jobs disappeared, and small businesses closed with no customers, unsure how to manage a new currency.

Then came a sea change: the illegal migration of Cañari men to the U.S. — slowly at first, then in waves — until the countryside was nearly emptied of fathers and sons. Soon, wives began to follow, joining their husbands “to preserve the marriage.”

With migration came moneylenders and coyotes, families mortgaging their land as collateral, danger and sometimes disaster on the trip north. Children were left with aging uncles and illiterate grandparents. Malnutrition became common.

2005: Signs of Recovery

By 2005, remesas — dollars sent home from migrants in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Massachusetts — were trickling in. First to pay off the moneylenders (migración cost up to $10,000 in those days), then to build houses that often stood cold and empty but proved success in “La Yoni” (New York).

Often the new concrete homes were built beside old adobes, where the elders preferred to stay — warm and close to the animals.

That same year, we bought a small parcel of land and started our own house, which took two years to finish. Around 2007, we noticed the local economy waking up.

For me, it was seeing the first small shops in town run by Cañari women, sewing machines whirring as they made beautiful skirts (polleras), blouses, and woven capes. Indigenous women in business, in town? Never before — except for the photo studio run by my early student and comadre, María Esthela.

The countryside remained agricultural — everyone had crops and animals, even if they had no other income. The open-air markets thrived.

2010: Small Prosperities

By 2010 — our fifth year returning every six months — the town was buzzing. Small shops opened, closed, and reopened under new owners. The government subsidized bakeries, so for a while we had one on every corner. Then shoes and cell phone stores, and now pharmacies! The indigenous communities organized votes to elect the first Cañari mayor in almost 200 years. (The second one governs today.)

As remesas continued to pour in from the U.S., more construction sprang up around us, slowly blocking our once-open view. Neighbors were building concrete-block houses that went up in four-six months. Small new cars appeared bumping slowly over unpaved roads — some even driven by women.

Neighbor Magdalena, whose husband and at least one son were in the U.S., first built a brick wall at the end of her lot, and a couple of years later began a house. The women on the other side — known as “charismatic healers by prayer” — built a church. A neon cross appeared in our living room window.

2020: Pandemic Year

By 2020, our small town — now about 10,000 people in the center — handled the pandemic admirably. The town shut down tight, with volunteers surveilling the streets. In the countryside, the Cañari communities simply closed off all access. We were stuck here, but we felt safe.

The economic hit was enormous, but adaptation is the name of the game in Cañar. Folks sold produce from their yards and driveways; outlying villages held their own “closed” markets. No one went hungry, nor have I ever seen anyone homeless.

2025: The New Cañar

Neighbor Magdalena now has a two-story house where once she lived in a hovel. Her husband and son have not come back, but over twenty years they’ve sent enough money to give her family a stable life. She lives with a daughter and two grandkids — I often see the daughter walking her children to school. Education, too, has been a quiet gift of migration.

After debts were paid off and houses and vehicles bought, I noticed young people leaving for university. I remember one of our early scholarship women whose father, after years in the U.S., refused to help pay for her university. Instead, he offered to bring her to the States to work in a hotel. Today she’s a community leader with three boys, one at university in Quito.

Credit, Cars, and Change

And those new traffic jams, stoplights and even paid parking enforcers? Credit!

I started noticing used car lots maybe ten years ago. Perhaps the banks recognized the financial stability that migration brought. Beside them, savings and loan cooperatives created within Indigenous communities have had a huge impact.

Mushuk Yuyay, originally an agricultural organization has grown, largely through migration dollars, to become a major financial institution in Cañar — sponsoring sports teams, fiestas, concerts, and more (not to mention offering up to 8% interest on long-term deposits). On November 18-21, it will sponsor the International Quinoa Congress.

So…Cañar is no longer a poor neglected town in the southern Andes of Ecuador, but has become a vibrant, multicultural small city, with commerce (in every nook and cranny), proud of its traditional agriculture, indigenous civic leaders and professionals and its place in the modern world.

The Cañar Book Club

…is alive and well, but coming with a separate post, as Substack tells me I’ve reached my length limit.

Yes, dear friends, we’re here earlier than usual to accommodate a returning tenant in Portland. When we arrived a week ago the wood supply was low, and as the fireplace is our only source of heat in this chilly climate, Michael soon called our wood supplier, Chirote. A constant figure in our lives for over twenty years, Chirote has hauled furniture from Cuenca, building materials for our house, all our goods to move into the house, and firewood ever since.

“Miquito!” Chirote yells from the street, sitting in his dilapidated hauling truck, or sometimes standing at the front door. Today, he’s at the door, and as the two old friends sit on a patio bench to chat, Chirote yells at me when I appear (he only has one volumn): “Judicita, Did you know Michael is having an affair? He loves someone else. All the women love him. What’ll you do now?” It’s a familiar routine. I serve him a glass of juice and walk on into my studio as negotiations begin for the delivery.

Two days later, Chirote shows up with a helper and a load of wood to last us six months. Work done and humor routines aside, we chat seriously as he rests on the stacked logs. “It’s hard to find helpers,” he says. “All the young men leave - to the oil fields in the north, and the gold mines in the south. There, they can make $50 a day; here, it’s $20.” This led to a discussion of monthly salaries in Ecuador. The official wage is $470 a month, although for many unskilled workers, like the helper sitting next to Chirote, that is a dream. As for migration to the U.S, it’s not even an option these days. When I run into a neighbor she told me her son has been in detention for over a year. “La situación es muy dura,” is the refrain we hear everywhere.

But to go back: our trip from Portland took the usual three flights, two days, an overnight in Guayaquil and four hours overland. The only novelty happened as we were about to leave the Guayaquil airport, loaded with five bags in a cart and a helper. “Señora,” a security agent approached me, “Your passport please.” (A dreaded phrase, always bad news). While Michael and the helper stood waiting, she led me to a small office where a customs agent sat in front of the contraband: a giant mandarin with a topknot that Michael had bought in Portland for the trip. We’d forgotten it in a carry-on bag. With pen and paper the friendly agent carefully noted my information, asked for a signature, and returned my passport. I asked if I could take a photo. “Of the orange? he asked. “Just for the record,” I said or something like that. He shrugged and turned to his phone.

We walked on, past the adjoining office of the national immigration police, where years ago Michael and I sat tense before the desk of an officer as he counted the amount of cash we were bringing into the country, slapping the bills one by one on the desk. We were girded for a bribe, at the very least, as he reached the allowed limit, plus a few dollars beyond. The agent neatly stacked the bills and handed them back to Michael, with this: “Next time, Señor, let the señora carry some of the cash.” We could hardly believe our good fortune. Every dollar returned, no bribe, and a friendly warning. (Which has not stopped Michael from traveling with way too much cash strapped around his waist.)

Next morning, with coffee at the hotel and sketching the “blue architectural zone” (including our hotel), our driver from Cañar, Jacinto, calls to say the route to Cañar has been closed for three weeks due a national strike, but it appears the way is open today. He will pick us up in his van at 1:00 as planned, with his copilot and wife, Alicia.

As we make the four-hour drive, with evidence of cleared blockages all along the way, Jacinto recounted details of the strike and the headaches it has caused him. Called by the national indigenous organization CONAIE, the response has been nationwide among rural communities after President Naboa eliminated a popular, decades-old subsidy on diesel. Although some vehicles are exempt, for Jacinto and his tourist van, his fuel cost doubled, and he has lost many jobs with the closed roads. Indigenous communities, including Cañar, have a long tradition of blocking the Pan American highway and other major roads to protest government actions. It is a very effective strategy with no national railway and only roads used to transport goods the length and breadth of the country.

I grabbed an internet photo of a roadblock to give you a better idea of how it works. Local protestors pile loads of dirt and rocks, trees and branches, concrete pieces, and whatever else is at hand to block a major highway. Often, the military will clear the road at night, and the comuneros return the next day to rebuild the barrier. This strategy is largely non-violent and avoids confrontation. Here in Cañar, I have photographed many such protests over the years, the most memorable one being when Mama Michi cooked a huge pot of potatoes over an open fire in the middle of the PanAm to serve lunch to the protestors.

Settling in: we miss our friends who came with us from Portland last year and spent a week helping dust, clean, vacuum, mop, and cook. We miss them! This year, it’s mostly me doing all of the above. (OK, Michael chops wood, makes the fire and cooks.) Last year both electricity and water were rationed due to an epic drought - up to 8 hours a day for power and sporadic water service! This year, although irrigation water is scarce, we have all we need to be comfortable in this lovely place. The nights are cold, the mornings are sunny (sometimes) and the afternoon are gloomy with clouds to the ground.

San Antonio sits in his niche in the atrium, covered with an old sweater of Michael’s while we’re away, and ritually uncovered when back. We like San Antonio, patron saint of Cañar, because he symbolizes humility and simplicity, social justice, children and learning (the child-figure is sitting on a book), hope for the despairing, and intercession if you are looking for a lost object. All things we need these days.

Cañar Book Club

Well dear readers, it’s been so long that I’ll begin with the books I’ve been reading recently, and ask you to send recommendations for November’s blog. After this, we can look forward to monthly meetings until April, 2026. I just finished two books by photographer Sally Mann that might not be for everyone (what book ever is?). In newly published Art Work: On the Creative Life, I think she is a little too full of herself, though at age 74 perhaps she feels entitled to be, but it’s value, for me as a photographer, was the descriptions of the search, inspiration, recognition of the moment captured, and the darkroom work required to produce work you’re happy with.

That took me back to an earlier Mann book, Hold Still, An Autobiography with Photographs, which is exactly what it says, a history of her immediate and extended family with tons of photo. I was fascinated from first page and it got me excited about a project I’ve had on hold for a couple of years - writing about my mother.

As usual with my wonderful Portland library system, I have too many e-books ready at once, reserved so many months ago that in some cases I have no idea what or why, or how long it’s been in waiting on my iPad. I was enjoying Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah when it suddenly disappeared. My present download includes What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (oh yeah, I just finished that one; not my cup of tea with keywords in “sci-fi: dystopia,” and not nearly as good as McEwan’s other books, which I’ve always enjoyed. I just started Heart the Lover by Lily King, which seems a bit sophomoric with angst-y students on a college campus, but I’ll report on it next time. Finally, one I’ve been putting off to read in Cañar because it is 560 pages and I have more time here: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve always preferred her nonfiction to her fiction, but after so reviews, awards and recommendations by friends (as well as respect for Kingsolver), I’ve got it up next. Stay tuned on that one….

I do miss the paper books I used to bring, neatly stack on bedside table and not-yet-read shelf where I could see them with delicious anticipation. It just ain’t the same with e-books

Goodby for now, dear readers. Give me some raves, recommendations and pans, and I’ll post them in my November chronicle. Until then, keep reading!

.

Since I last wrote the arborist has visited. He looked up at our granddaddy aspen tree -guessed it at 50-60 feet in height, not my exaggerated 80 feet - scratched its surface, dug around its base, and declared it healthy. Then, he began calculating an estimate for pruning the two ornamental pear trees on the street, encroaching on the house, and the cherry tree that provides a canopy over the back yard. Shamelessly sold to us in 1995 as a “semi-dwarf,” it’s grown to have a trunk circumference of about 13 feet and bossy above-ground roots that cause us to continually rearrange our eating area.

I asked him to include in his estimate the two trees of our terrible next-door neighbors that loom over our back yard fence - an ugly black walnut and a hideous golden rain tree that drops dried blooms and leaves over our compost bins and surrounding area. The terrible neighbors are another story.

On the subject of trees—when moving our house in 1994, one of the first tasks was getting approval (by law!) from the City of Portland arborist about the route the house would take. The mover had proposed the shortest path, but the arborist replied that it wasn’t possible because of a row of purple-leaf flowering plum trees that stood along the route. I was new to Portland then, after eighteen years in Canada and Latin America, and even amid the chaos of adjusting to the change, finding work, moving a house, I was charmed. If Portland cared that much about its street trees, I thought, perhaps I could be happy back in the U.S.

When we first found our house, it was painted a lovely shade of yellow. After moving and rebuilding, but before approaching the bank for a mortgage, we repainted it a safe, neutral taupe—a non-color I intensely disliked. When the time came for a new paint job, we happily returned it to its original “Naples” or butter yellow. It has stayed that way ever since.

This year, as we prepare to return to Ecuador in October, marks our twenty-first time renting the house. Friends and acquaintances are often curious—and sometimes a little horrified—at the thought of strangers living in their home for half a year. But after the first couple of years of confused days (or even weeks) preparing for tenants —where to stash my clothes, the family photos, the tchotchkes cluttering the bookshelves?—we settled into a routine that has worked ever since. Personal things go into the attic or my basement studio, Michael has his own storage methods using large plastic boxes in his workshop and my old darkroom. We leave the house as though it were an Airbnb, complete with books, art, linens, and kitchen gear, beds made and towels in the bathroom. My mantra is always: How would I want this place to be if I were to live here for six months and pay good rent? Now it takes about a week to deep clean, store all personal effects, and make the kitchen ready for a new cook.

But way before that, we are hoping that my pitch will have caught a “fish” - a good tenant. Here’s my post from a few years ago, when I took the advice of several friends on hyphenated adjectives to bait the line.

“Light-filled, two-story furnished Victorian with large master suite, second bedroom, home office, three bathrooms, cook’s kitchen with Wolf range, daylight basement with laundry and guest quarters. Fully renovated and energy-efficient, off-street parking, mature garden with patio. Great location in Southeast Buckman neighborhood, ten minutes driving or biking to downtown Portland, easy walking to 28th Street shops, restaurants, pubs and theater.”

We pay all utilities and cover emergency contingencies (such as when the grandmother aspen fell against the house). The tenants need only pay the rent on time and leave the house just as they found it, with beds made, towels in the bathroom and a sparkling kitchen floor. One tenant came back six years to help raise her grandchildren in Portland. Others have repeated for two years or returned after a pause. Some became friends. We’ve had only one bad experience, but that is another story that I will not tell here.

The yellow house was built in 1903 and has stood for 122 years, so we feel responsible for ensuring it lasts at least another hundred. A decade ago we put on a new roof, which gave us the chance to cut two skylights into our bedroom. When Michael retired from contracting, he “contracted” his large shop in the basement and made a beautiful guest room. Grandsons wanting privacy appreciate it, (with it’s private garden entrance) as do guests wanting to slip out for early morning walks. We love it too—a cool place to sleep during Portland’s increasingly summer “heat events,” like the three days of near 100 degrees we endured last week and face again this week.

So who will be living in the yellow house a hundred years, in 2125? The aspen trees and cherry tree will be long gone, but the firwood of its structure should last, and the roof if replaced. The garden will survive in whatever form the next generations of owners decide, or maybe return to nature.

I wish them well, but do hope they will keep the paint color “Naples” yellow.

!

A quaking aspen tree grove.

Each morning, with coffee in hand but before opening my laptop or checking my phone, I read a chapter of Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses, because she is a brilliant essayist and her book is full of thoughts and facts that inspire me. Yesterday, I read: “A 106-acre quaking aspen forest in Utah whose forty thousand or so trees share a common root system, are essentially clones of one another, and constitute a single organism larger than any other on Earth.” It’s name is Pando, from the Latin meaning “spread,” and it sits in the Fishlake National Forest. (Images Wikipedia)

I was the one who insisted that we plant two or three populus tremuloides when we moved into our Portland house in 1994. Remembering the forests of quaking aspens in the mountains of my Colorado childhood, I wanted those delicate trees to be a part of our new life here. Little more than thin sticks when we planted them, I imagined them growing to 15 feet or so into a light-filled leafy view that I could enjoy from our kitchen window.

Today, thirty years later, I have to walk all the way across our street in order to take a photo that captures the full height of the last original tree. It waves at me from about 30 feet above the house, well beyond its normal maturity age and height, thanks to our mild Portland climate, without the winter freezes that would control its growth.

This is concerning because about five years ago another of the original “giants” that grew to about 60 feet fell gently against the house while a tenant was here. It caused no damage (except to our pocketbook after calling emergency tree service while in Ecuador). Now, we schedule a visit next week with the same tree service for a “risk assessment,” hoping to prevent another surprise.

But I do indeed have the quaking aspen grove of my dreams outside the kitchen window, with five trees at different stages, not to mention the multitude of root sprouts, or “ortets,” springing up in the side and back yard that grow as clones of the parent roots. Our little grove is not connected to a single tree, like in Utah, but we are definitely proud members of the Wood Wide Web, with our trees forming an underground network that stretches throughout the side and back yard and, no doubt, beneath the house. One of my constant gardening jobs is cutting back these “baby quakies” that seen in photos below - I mean, they are everywhere at every stage of growth until I spot them with my clippers (small bright green leaves on thin stalks).

I continue reading: “Quaking aspen clones are virtually impossible to kill. Individual stems can be destroyed by humans, wildlife, and disease, but the below-ground root system is resistant to almost all of these factors. While one stem has a relatively short lifespan, the entire clone can live for tens of thousands of years.”

Which means, I guess, that the root system of our populus tremuloides will outlast our house.

Where am I going with this? I started with the idea of using our aspen grove as a metaphor for life, politics, network of lies, the dire state of affairs, etc. But I’ve somehow gotten lost in the woods. So instead I’d like to tell you about the house that sits atop and alongside the aspens.

Our house was built in 1903 in the style I’ve recently learned is called “folk Victorian.” I’ve always felt it was not a fancy kind of Victorian, but must have originally been that of working people. We found it on a summer night’s walk with my sister thirty-two years ago, sitting on a small lot in a working-class neighborhood of Portland. The house was abandoned, or at least not lived in for awhile. Mail piled on the porch was an invitation to climb the stairs and peek through the front door window. Strips of wallpaper or plaster hung down the entry hall walls. “Water damage,” said plumber Mike, “probably frozen pipes.” (photo below: the house as we found it in 1993)

We were new to Portland and looking for a house. I noted the address, called the city and was given the name of the owner. In the phone book I found a number and dialled one Mrs. Potts. This was 1993, no cell phones, no Internet, remember? When I said we were interested in the yellow house, she replied airily, “Oh, that house is to be torn down. I will give it to you if you can move it.” It turned out she owned the entire half block at 9th and SE Davis, which included her small business, another (occupied) house and a couple of vacant lots where houses had been. (“My husband’s gone; I want to sell it all as commercial property.”)

Well, dear readers, she sold us the house for one dollar (her lawyer got involved). I’ll skip the details of what it took to move the house about 16 blocks to its current site, but here are a few photos from that chilly November morning. (Top right, the move paused so the workman in the air released a fiber optic cable so the house could pass undernearth); bottom right, the house coming onto its new site on Ash Street.)

Michael and his contractor friends spent a year rebuilding the interior, tearing out the 1903 lathe and plaster but keeping the basic layout of the rooms, including the Douglas fir floors, solid wood doors with original hardware, and the cast iron bathtub.

I have more, but I see a message from Substack that I’m reaching my email length, so I’ll stop here and maybe tell you more about the house in my next chronicle. In fact, I’ll make the next one short on the house and long on books. The Cañar Book Club recommendations for summer reading should reach you before the glorious summer of 2025 is over! May all of you in the northern hemisphere be enjoying this time.

Speaking of summer, I’ll sneak in one more photo: Michael picking blueberries at the urban “farm” of friends.

)

We left Cañar on May 1, six weeks ago, and since then, I’ve been immersed in a love affair with my garden. We’ve never before returned to Portland this early in the year, so I hadn’t seen the peonies I planted about 15 years ago in full bloom. Now mid-May they are in their glory: varied shades of light pink shading to white, with one or two hot pink ones on the way (you can see the bud). Heads so heavy they drooped below the ferns, so I found an old metal trellis to prop them up so I could admire them from the dining room window.

And then—oh, the roses! I’ve never been a big fan of traditional rose bushes, but when we moved our 1903 house from its original site to our current lot, Michael and I dug up a few rose bushes that remained. It was November, so we threw the plants on the back of our muddy construction site, covered them with burlap sacks and forgot about them for a year or two while we rebuilt the house. Somehow, they survived. Eventually, I planted them along our east-side fence, where they sulked for years, with only a few pale, halfhearted blooms—unhappy in the shade of our trees.

But one day this May, I couldn't believe my eyes—a cascade of twelve roses on a single long stem, arching gracefully to the ground. (The color, according to ColorPalette.com is Razzle Dazzle Rose.) I cut a few for the kitchen table, where I could admire them over lunch and congratulate myself for having done absolutely nothing to create such beauty. And then, just like that, they were gone again—vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. Now I have to look closely to even find the old bush.

That first week in May, we fertilized the raspberries, which did poorly last year, and I got busy planting the vegetables, a goal in coming back early. I showed up at a community plant sale I’d seen advertised to find lines stretching around the block. Turned out it was a famous annual event, held in a church parking lot, complete with food tents, music, activities for children, and an army of well-organized volunteers. I was handed a timed entrance for an hour later, which gave me time to attend a lecture on tomatoes. The master gardener said it was still too cold to plant tomatoes, that the seedlings should be brought inside during the nights. I came home that day with five tomatoes, one padron pepper, gourmet lettuce mix and bok choy seedlings.

I cleaned a lot of junk out our garden shed to make a little greenhouse, where I hovered over the tomatoes like a nervous midwife, planting them in successively larger pots while the weather warmed, then in the ground with wood chip blankets. Now I water, (just around the roots, not the leaves!) and feed with seaweed fertilizer and watch with wonder as they put on flowers. We look forward to tomatoes in July or August - at great cost per each, as Michael likes to point out. (Below: not mine, not yet!)

OK, time to talk about Trump and the NoKings Day (Yes “tyranny” is misspelled, being one of those famously hard English words with double letters that are unsure where they go. Truth is, I didn’t notice it until looking over my photos days later.)

It was a chilly Portland morning when I walked down to the protest in my part of town. The streets were packed with demonstrators—from babies in strollers to teenagers carrying cryptic signs to older folks with their portable chairs. I darted around taking photos of the exuberant crowd and creative signage.

If I’d made a sign for the protest it would have been “Bread for all, and roses too” - the refrain adopted by of the women’s suffrage movement in 1910 to give women the right to vote in the US (didn’t happen until 1920). The campaigner Helen Todd wrote, “Women’s votes would bring us to a time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country, in the government of which she has a voice.” (From Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit, emphasis mine.)

As thousands of folks went on to march across bridges to join the main demonstration on the waterfront, I walked home for lunch, thinking how deeply Trump’s reign (not as a king, more like a tyrant) has affected each of us. Not just in our political and social spheres, but in ways that cut close to the bone.

Gone are educational opportunities such as Fulbright grants, Peace Corps, JobCorps, study abroad programs. Alucky Cañari scholarship woman just finished her master’s in civil engineering with a Fulbright at University of Illinois, but the possibility of a doctorate in the US evaporated overnight. A friend lost a Fulbright research grant that had already been awarded for 2025-26. The National Endowment for the Arts is gutted, so I might never have a chance to apply for a photography grant. Chamber Music Northwest lost an important grant, as did an August Wilson play one night before it opened. This being liberal Portland, citizens made up the shortfalls. The public radio and TV we listen to and watch here and in Cañar. NPR OPB, PBS News? I keep saying, “It can’t all be gone!” So much damage has been done, it will take years, if ever, to restore these “roses” in our lives.

And, of course, we fear for our Cañari friends everywhere in the US who are so vulnerable. ICE could show up any day at their workplace or courthouse and separate them from their children, spouses, livelihood and all else that they have worked so hard for over the years (while paying taxes and breaking no laws).

Cañar Book Club

Back in Portland, I’m in book heaven, where I have my local library for “real” books, bookstores I can walk to (new Literary Arts store in photo above), book readings, many walk-and-talk bookish friends, and even a book in the works with Aristata Press.

Marion Greenwood: Portrait and Self Portrait - A Biography, by my friend Joanne Mulcahy, is now available in bookstores and online. For Portland readers, she will be reading at Broadway Books on Friday, June 26, 6:00 PM, talking about Greenwood’s life as an artist and feminist pioneer, why she was forgotten, and the process of writing her biography that took over ten years.

Speaking again of roses, I am reading Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit, full of wonderful quotes about gardens, Zen practice, and death, as well as roses, which Orwell planted and lovingly tended throughout his life. In fact, in his diaries and essays, he made more references to growing vegetables, flowers and chickens than he did to his brilliant wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, who provided him with ideas, editing, meals and health care, while sacrificing her career, economic security and, ultimately, her life. For more on that story, I recently finished Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder, a fascinating read that diminished Orwell in my eyes but revealed a remarkable woman. (Annoying, but recommended.)

Claire in London writes: Hisham Matar’s My Friends. “Beautiful writing and such profound themes: exile, loneliness, family, friendship all delivered without sadness or introversion or “poor me” but with insight and sometimes a lot of humour."

Ballerina by Patrick Modiono. “I never have a clue where his books are going but can’t put them down. I also enjoyed another slender novel - Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. It ends abruptly but my goodness it’s beautifully written.”

Julie in Vermont recommends: “Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love by Julie Sedivy, a book that lovers of multiple languages might enjoy.”

Finally, Donald in Toronto: “I would recommend Richard Powers' latest novel Playground, an ode to the wondrous creatures of the oceans, as another world so unknown to most of us landlubbers.”

Apologies to Cañar Book Club members that it’s been so long since our last meeting that I’ve lost track of some your recommendations. Please send again - old or new reading raves - and I promise to keep better track for our next meeting.

Meanwhile, I send un abrazote from Portland, where summer kicked off with a cold and rainy day of below 60 degrees, but now we have sun and my garden is thriving.

.

Today we’re leaving Cañar—after six months here this year, and after twenty years of going back and forth between Cañar and Portland, Oregon. Our departure has become routine, unlike the early years when we’d spend a frantic week stripping the house of artwork, textiles, rugs, and linens, cleaning everything, packing it all away, hiding Michael’s tools, closing the shutters, and leaving the house in suspension for six months. Now, the textiles and artwork stay on the walls, the rugs remain on the floors. I cover the furniture and bookshelves with dust cloths (there’s a lot of dust from the road), wrap our patron saint of Cañar, San Antonio, in the patio niche to protect him from the sun, and pack our bags.

We’ve used the same driver for years - Jacinto, who brings along his sweet wife Alicia. After picking us up in the van he bought last year to replace his taxi - dubbed Saint Tours - he always stops just beyond the next town, Tambo, at the roadside shrine, El Señor de Gran Poder, to ask for a safe trip and bless the car with holy water water.

As we leave Tambo, I spot one of my photos on a billboard—faded and enormous—welcoming us to the next region: Zhud and Suscal. It shows three men facing forward, dressed in traditional regalia for a dance ceremony called Mama Danza Cañari, or Tundunchil, which was recently declared a cultural heritage of Ecuador. In this place where I’ve freely shared my photographs over the years, there’s no question of copyright or credit—just a quiet thrill at seeing an image I’m proud of.

Up and over the big divide that marks the high point on this leg of the Pan American, past the entrance to the Sangay Nacional Park, now marred by the construction of a long, low love hotel painted bright red - the only building for miles. Who comes all this way to a love motel, I wonder?

Our first destination of our trip home to Portland is to Guayaquil, the coastal city about four hours away and 10,000 feet downhill. It’s the rainy season, so the mountains are vivid shades of green, with landslide gashes in the steep hillsides that regularly close the road. Today we are not stopped, but we see lots of evidence of recent slides and road closures.

In Guayaquil, where we are always cautioned not to walk out onto the streets for the dangers of robbery and drug cartels - grossly exaggerated when it comes to gringo tourists - we stay in the same hotel. The Whydham Garden (I’ll never get that silly name right - it’s Wyndham!) because it is close to the airport and our flight is inevitably at 6:00 AM. Our room is high up, quiet and air conditioning, giving us a quiet few hours before the 3:30 AM wake-up call for our flight to Miami.

Miami is our least favorite airport, due to the exhausting process of going through immigration, collecting our bags, rechecking them, and then enduring TSA all over again. While stuck in line, we heard a woman ahead of us lose it—screaming unintelligibly—and we couldn’t help but sympathize.

But Miami is also our favorite for the world’s most famous Cuban sandwich at Café Versailles. We just had time to grab one—cut in half to share on the next flight—and a guava pastry, in memory of our dear friend Joel Weinstein, who introduced us to Café Versailles and its delights on a visit to Miami years ago.

After Miami, we become travel robots - two more flights, two more airports, and then dear friends waiting to take us home, with enough TJ’s groceries to get us through the first couple of days. It is 8:30 PM in Portland on Thursday, May 1, and we started this day at 3:30 AM in Guayaquil. Incredible!

Before leaving Cañar, we had an important event on April 24 - the 20th anniversary of the Cañari women’s scholarship program. Thirty-three graduates, twelve current scholars, family and friends and supporters - all gathered on a rare, sparkling-sky day to celebrate - in our front yard!

Our planning committee did a great job - all of which I thought was Too Much. Did we really need four marquee tents that read, “You deserve to be happy”on one side? Yes, we needed them for the sun, not the more common rain.

And what about those 450 brochures in little boxes, by a local designer and beautiful artwork by a friend in the U.S? Yes, we’ll use them for years go come to promote the program.

Did we really need a full sound system—two huge speakers, microphones, a control panel, and even a sound technician—all provided gratis by the Municipio de Cañar (where the president of our committee works)? As it turned out, yes, we did.

And was the hour-long opening ceremony led by a yachac really necessary to begin the day? Again, yes.

So - our 20th anniversary event was a great success, thanks to the planning committee, the weather and our wonderful guests. I was honored with a gift made by my comadre: a wallkarina, traditionally worn by Cañari women on special occasions.

I see a message that I’m out of room, dear friends. I promised a Portland book club post - and it is coming soon!

On the day that PINO* announced devastating cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanites, we happened upon a one-hour filmed concert in 1978 of Vladimir Horowitz playing Rachmaninoff’s Opus 3. He had come out of one of his repeated sabbaticals for depression and anxiety to perform again at Lincoln Center. He was 75 years old. The standing ovation lasted 15 minutes. In front of my laptop on our couch in Cañar, we sat riveted for every minute of the ovation, as Horowitz came out again and again - bowed with arms wide, touched his heart, and finally indicated with a flap of the hand, “that’s enough.” (Then I went to Wikipedia and saw that his last concert was almost ten years later, in 1987. He died two years after that)

Stay with me for one more example before we get to the point. On day that Trump gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services, IMLS, I read the obit of Abel Rodriguez, a “plant namer” of the Nonuya people in the Amazon of Colombia. He became an artist late in life and is now recognized as a national treasure in Colombia and around the world. His art is shown in museums and galleries (and libraries in his books), including MOMA in New York, where this article appeared.

POINT BEING: As dire as things are at the moment in the US, and in many other parts of the world, what matters most will remain: the music of Rachmaninoff, the genius of Horowitz, the paintings of Abel, my watercolors of Cañar market folks (just kidding, that last).

"Culture perpetuates a legacy that stretches beyond history." (Anon)

On another subject, yesterday was election day in Ecuador; Michael was reminded when he went to buy beer at our usual market and was told that the law says no liquor sales for 48 hours. Then he went to his old friend Doña Mila and bought a six-pack. (Here, there’s always a way around!)

The presidential candidates presented a between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea choice. Daniel Naboa is a good friend of Trump; Luisa Gonzalez is a good friend/front for ex-president Rafael Correa, in exile in Belgium after being sentenced by an Ecuadorian court to eight years in jail for corruption. Luisa’s victory would have assured Correa’s pardon and a return to Ecuador. Naboa’s victory (which occurred late last night) solidifies a relationship with the Trump administration that will no doubt include accepting more deportations of migrants, a hardening of the penal system, (El Salvador model) and - without doubt - no tariffs on bananas!! (At present 1.4%!) Naboa is scion of Ecuador’s banana dynasty. His father is Alvaro Naboa, who ran for president and lost five times! Even with assets he claims are over one billion.

POINT BEING This too will pass. Naboa will be president for four years, as will you-know-who. They will remain rich men with a privileged life, while Ecuador will continue to struggle as a poor country, and the US - who knows? But what will remain long after these difficult and devastating times will be long-held customs, art, music, languages and plant-naming wise men and women.

As April rushes to a close, and we are two weeks from leaving Ecuador, I want to (belatedly) pay homage to Women’s History Month as it related to my work. I took on a rare photography job for the Catholic University in Cuenca to document women emprendadoras in Cañar. The translation to entrepreneurs or business women doesn’t sound quite right. These are lively groups of mostly poor women in rural areas who have come together in hopes of earning an extra bit of cash. Last month I visited these communities and met women raising chickens for organic eggs, making plant-based shampoos, and rum from sugar cane. The project was funded by the Canadian embassy in Quito (reminding me I’m proud to be a Canadian too) and carried out by a team at the Catholic University satellite here in Cañar.

Eighteen of these panels with text and photos will be on show for several months at Ingapirca, the well-known archeological and tourist site near us in Cañar.

The Cañar Book Club - promises to be back in session in May, with a special edition from Portland. Meanwhile, best wishes to all from Cañar, our 20th year!

*PINO: President in Name Only

Dear Friends: I confess I am at a loss for a theme this week, but a recent bus trip to and from Cuenca (four hours total) sparked this idea. Cañar sits at 10,000 feet, so early in the morning, we leave our local terminal bundled in jackets, hat, scarf, and gloves (that’s me; Michael wears an extra sweater over his two regular ones). As the bus climbs around the mountain Tayta Bueran and on over the continental divide, we enter the “paramo” or clouds that regularly mask the highlands. People with animals or crops in the area get off and vanish into the mist. Others, lulled by the motion and body warmth, drift into sleep. I too close my eyes, not to sleep but to enjoy a sort of dream state, a reverie. Two hours with nothing to do but relax, reminisce, take in the countryside, plan, or read on my iPad. Imagine if you had four hours in a day to do nothing but this! (If Michael is with me, he does math and crossword puzzles and never, ever, looks up.)

We have been riding buses in Ecuador for 30 years, typically the two local Cañar lines: Transportes Cañaris or Jahuay International. The drivers usually own their buses and are part of one of the two cooperatives. These are not the rattletrap buses we’ve encountered in Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia. Some even have TVs mounted in front (though they’re never on) and “climitazada” written in large letters on the outside, which means air-conditioned and heated (though they never work). The ride is generally comfortable, unless a younger driver blasts a radio station filled with inane laughter or music that I can’t stand.

As we reach the summit and begin our descent toward the cities of Biblian and Azogues, I am wide-eyed at this stretch of road where I always think, “This is where we will die if the bus goes off the road.” I sigh with relief as we drop further and see Cojitambo, the mountain rising out the landscape like a giant thumb. (You’ll have to squint to see it poking up in the distance.)

Memories flood back. Years ago I accompanied Mama Michi and her group of “native healers” on a day to pay honor to the mountain, share a meal and collect plants.

Then there were walks with friends and my sister to the Inca ruins at Cojitambo. This site is part of the Inca Trail, or Qhapac Ñan, that connected the vast territories of the Inca Empire that stretched from Chile and Argentina to Colombia, and passed right through Cañar. That’s why we have two significant Inca sites here: Cojitambo and Ingapirca.

We’ve dropped to a comfortable temperature, and I take off my cap, gloves, and jacket. I look out the window to the west and I see a rift in the landscape that indicates the defunct railroad line, (photo #1 below). I love these visual reminders of our “famous” railroad walks and always watch for them on our bus rides. Over about five years, Michael and I walked roughly half of Ecuador, from Cuenca to Ambato. Most of the line was broken, disappeared due to landslides, or lay underwater, but the original route was still public domain. We loved the challenge of trying to find our way over falling-down bridges and through dark creepy tunnels. We came across old stations, like the one in photo #3 below, used by the communities for meetings or to hang clothes out of the rain. We only got lost once, in classic walk-in-a-circle style through dense underbrush and heavy fog (a twice-seen yellow bucket revealed the story). We were rescued by two little boys on a horse who emerged from the mist, startled by two big strangers yelling “¡SOCCORO!” (HELP!). They led us to their house, where we paid an older sister to guide us to a trail and show us the way.

While waiting on the bus outside the terminal in Azogues (the driver hoping for more passengers), I observe the woman selling fruit. I remember her mother, who used to sell fruit at the old bus stop in the middle of town, in the 1990s, amidst a market. Then I saw both of them working here, at the new terminal. Now, the mother is gone and I watch the daughter, who might be the same age as her mother was when I first saw her. (Sorry no photo, but here is Michael in our Sunday market, where ever possible fruit can be found).

Well, folks, the interesting part of this bus trip is over and it’s time to take out my iPad. After Azogues we hit the “autopista” and it’s all traffic and big warehouses and a military complex and then we are in the bus terminal in Cuenca (where, as we get off, we pay the driver $1.25 each for the ride.)

Flash Cañar Book Club

My friend Joanne Mulcahy’s book is out this week. Her wonderful editor (and mine), Wendi Schnaufer, at University of Alabama Press wrote this:

“Brooklynite, art prodigy at the Art Students League, Yaddo favorite, Woodstock Colony member, “one of the greatest living women mural painters,” free-wheeling adventuress, dedicated artist whose work always came first. These are just some descriptors for Marion Greenwood (1909–1970), whose life and career biographer Joanne B. Mulcahy magnificently recreates in this seminal biography. Make room in the modern art pantheon for Marion Greenwood!

Spread the word! Ask your library to purchase it. Consider it for your book club.”

Judy adds: Buy it at: https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817361983/marion-greenwood/ or your favorite independent bookstore.

LIFE: I want to start with this joyful image of Carnival in Cañar, when life seems to come to a standstill for a week (while everyone moves around the country) and alternates between frenetic activity and dead quiet. Today is quiet, a national holiday before Ash Wednesday. A few days ago, I was here, photographing the grand Carnival parade that winds for hours through town. I had not gone for several years and was surprised to see that the desfile de Carnaval has morphed from a staid parade through the streets to a bacchanalian event akin to Brazilian Carnival.

Traditionally, things are “thrown” at one another during Carnival - water on the coast and maicena or cornstarch in the highlands. Why? No idea, but a few years ago, water balloons appeared in Cañar, followed by this horrible spray foam from aerosol cans called - for some reason - Karaoke. Why? No idea, but you can see in the photos above the foam raining down like snow. It was this foam, being assaulted along with my cameras, that caused me to stop going to this parade several years, but I was back this day for a paid job. Sure enough, I was sprayed from all directions, including my Lumix camera, which I held above my head and yelled, “I’m working here!” No luck. Not even the floats were exempt. This was the last photo I took three hours later, as I limped home in a downpour. That’s LIFE.

LOVE: Have you ever tried to do something secret, in plain sight? Maybe to make a special surprise, or get something done in the midst of daily life and hope a partner or friend doesn’t notice? Or maybe to protect a loved one?

For the last few years, whenever I mention to Michael that we need to paint our Cañar kitchen - after 20 years of baking, frying, fireplace smoke and general wear and tear - he sighs and says, “No, no, just not possible with everything hanging on the walls. I won’t be able to cook for days, we’ll have to go out and there’s no place to eat. Maybe even stay in a hotel. No, we definitely can’t paint the kitchen. Anyway, it looks all right to me.”

So, about a month ago I bought a small amount of paint to match the color, did some clandestine tests, and then brought home a gallon, pan, roller, brush and masking tape, which I’ve hidden in plain sight in the laundry room. When Michael goes shopping in town, giving me roughly 45 minutes, I rush into the kitchen, open the back door for air, remove the dishes, utensils, knives, pots and pans and brush on a coat of pain. Thank god for fast-drying acrylic; I’m able to get two coats on every surface, return the utensils, hide the evidence, and sit down at my computer by the time Michael returns in the taxi.

So far so good, he hasn’t noticed a thing, not even the old Coca Cola sign I took down to paint the wall behind. But I’m reaching the point where I will need a ladder and the pan and roller to paint the upper walls. “Don’t you need to make a trip to the SuperMaxi in Cuenca for blue cheese, anchovies, salmon and good bread?” I ask him. This would give me the whole day. “No, I think we’ll make do here,” he answers. I’m patient, I’ll wait. I want to surprise him once it is done. Does this count as LOVE?

HUMOR & HOPE: Like me, you are probably overwhelmed by emails, social media posts, and podcasts about the tragedy and chaos that PINO (President in Name Only) and his minions are spreading across our country and the world. While I don’t have the time or the will to read everything, I find myself gravitating toward video posts from commentators who provide me with not only the bad news, but also hope, humor, and insightful political analysis. (I find humor helps me process all that is happening.) I love Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen, the original Contrarians who seem never to sleep what with their news updates, interviews, special alerts, and Norm’s jokes and battles in the courts. Their Substack blog reached 500,000 subscribers last week, with the money going towards legal challenges. Well worth the $7/month.

I also check in on Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse, especially their Saturday morning coffee klatch where they spend an hour going over the week’s debacles with a cuppa and passionate commentary. I’ve admired Reich since he was Secretary of Labor under Clinton and worked with Obama. Heather is President of Inequality Media Civic Action and has also developed health and education programs for children in the US and Latin America. They make a lively team - she in Berkeley, Robert in Florida. As for humor, Reich creates a weekly cartoon that invites readers to supply the punch lines (or, in some cases, none needed).

Finally, I’ll pass on recommendations by friends: The Andy Borowitz Report for good satire (“Putin Scolds Trump: "I Got You Elected and You Haven't Said Thank You Once.") My Canadian friend mentions Charlie Angus/The Resistance as a hard-hitting liberal politician who uses humor along with tough talk.

BTW: I’m learning a whole new vocabulary these days: "Elbows up" is an expression used in sports like hockey and boxing, and it generally means that someone should be ready for a fight and prepared to hit back.”

“Knob,” which an Australian politician called JD Vance a few days ago, can mean either “An annoying, unpleasant, or idiotic person,” or a penis. “If you call someone a knob in England, you're essentially calling them a dick.” OK, that’s enough for now… But please send any new words or expressions you, dear readers, come across.

FLASH CANAR BOOK CLUB

I loved Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, though I found it a mind-twister at times and I’m still thinking about it. I’m not usually a sci-fi fan (though I was in my youth) but this had such humanity that I was hooked.

Book blurb: “A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all.”

(Grown in Ecuador, sold in Paris. Robert Crum / shutterstock from The Conversation)

Dear Friends:

I’ve been trying to come up with a subject for my February letter, and it came to me early this morning, Valentine’s Day. Then, when I opened my laptop and saw in an article on the front page of NYT that consumers in the United States are expected to spend nearly $3 billion on flowers for today’s holiday, I knew I was onto something big.

Can you imagine?

I’ve known for as long as 30 years ago, when we lived in Cuenca, Ecuador, that roses were harmful to people, village life, and the environment. Our friend Maria, who worked for us then and remains a friend, told us that her small town, located about 20 miles from Cuenca, was being transformed by the influx of rose greenhouses. Neighbors were leaving their farms to work for wages, no longer tending their own fields and gardens for daily food. Workers complained of respiratory problems, rashes, and eye infections due to exposure to fertilizers, fungicides, and pesticides—often with little or no regulation. Women in her town reported experiencing miscarriages like never before, while men noticed they were having trouble fathering children.

Michael and I took these anecdotes with a grain of salt, but we both remembered a well-known case in Costa Rica where banana workers exposed to the pesticide DPCP were found to be infertile. Although it was banned by the EPA in the U.S. in the late 1970s, it continued to be exported, mainly in Spanish-speaking countries, by Shell and Dow Chemicals, with no warning labels except in English. A class action suit brought by banana workers was joined by workers in other countries, and although some compensation was won, other recent cases for DBCP users in South America have been won and lost.

(Image, YouTube Quito Rose Farm Visit 2019)

While there is no evidence that DBCP is used in the cultivation of roses, Ecuadorian roses are routinely dipped into a vat of fungicide to prevent spotting from humidity, first dunking the bloom, and then the stem. According to one article I’m reading today (among many), of the 37 products that are used as rose dip treatments, 17 have been identified by the Pesticide Action Network to be problematic as groundwater pollutants or harmful to humans, toxic to life and the environment.

Back to Maria. Since we first heard from her about rose cultivation in her village, Ecuador has risen to the world’s third-largest exporter of cut flowers, 73 per cent of which are roses. On a bus trip to Colombia a few years ago, Michael and I saw miles and miles of rose plantations north of Quito, where the industry thrives, even as a tourism draw. {Magnificent Experience in a Flower Farm/ Rose Plantation Tours; Real Dreams Ecuador}

What I didn’t know back then was that the U.S. engineered the whole thing in 1991 with the Andean Trade Preference Act to promote legal industries like flower cultivation in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia to stem the flow of cocaine into the U.S. (Pun intended, but Ecuador’s roses are unique for their long stems and large, multi-colored heads, as high-altitude roses require a much longer growing cycle, taking up to 15 weeks instead of eight.)

As far as I know, coca has never been a traditional crop of Ecuador, nothing like its neighbors, but, typically, the U.S. pundits scooped up little Ecuador as part of the problem:

“One part of the strategy was to convince farmers in Colombia to stop growing coca leaves – a traditional Andean plant that provides the raw ingredient for making cocaine – by giving them preferential access to US markets if they grew something else.” (Jay L. Zagorsky, associate professor at Boston University.)

Sorry to keep being a downer, but should we go on to to discuss the thorny issue of the carbon footprint associated with shipping roses from Ecuador to the U.S.? Here’s a statistic I found today: “In the United States, the approximately 100 million roses grown, shipped, and purchased on a typical Valentine’s Day produce around 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from field to florist. (I have as much trouble getting my head around that figure, as the 3 billion being spent today.)

So what can you do for your lover or favorite friend on this Valentine’s Day?

• buy flowers with green labels like FairTrade

• go for locally grown organic flowers

• buy tulips instead. I love tulips!

To end on a note from Portland, my other hometown (which, by the way, is known as the City of Roses), where it’s currently snowing with an ice storm expected. Schools and offices are closed, roads are icy, flights are cancelled, and folks are warned to stay home. But Valentine’s Day must carry on, so why not walk a couple of blocks to your neighborhood flower shop for some forsythia?

I love forsythia! Happy Valentine’s Day All.

By the late 1990s, around 45% of Ecuador’s population lived below the national poverty line. We were here in 2000 when the economic crisis reached its breaking point. Think Great Depression: banks collapsed, the sucre spiraled into inflation, and the president was forced to resign after switching the currency to the U.S. dollar. Total confusion and chaos as the country came to a standstill.

That year, 2000–2001, we watched as rural communities were nearly emptied of young men leaving for the U.S. I would guess that 98% of the indigenous migrants were “illegal.” They relied on local coyotes, or money lenders, mortgaged their fields, borrowed from relatives, and sold their farm trucks and tools to finance the journey.

When I first heard about la migración, the cost was $10,000—a price that included three attempts. Once in the U.S., migrants spent their first few years working to pay off the debt. Then came extra money for houses, vehicles, and higher education.

A Cañari friend told us he never wanted to leave his wife and two young children, but the sale of his crop didn’t even cover the cost of gas to get it to market. Desperate, he sold his truck, arranged the trip through a coyote, and traveled to Guayaquil to wait for the fishing boat that would take him and others to Guatemala.

Later, he described that final night—pacing a cheap hotel room in Guayaquil, unable to stop crying. He didn’t want to leave his family, his village, his farm, his culture. It took him three months to reach the U.S. border, during which time he was robbed in Mexico down to his underwear and nearly died in an overheated transport truck.

Twenty-five years later, he still lives in the U.S., having worked steadily, paying taxes, Social Security and workers’ compensation —benefits he will never collect. His earnings have helped one son get through university in Quito and another start a successful business in Cañar. Is he a criminal?

I saw in the news that last week the president of Colombia turned back two military planes loaded with deported migrants, until T. threatened such dire consequences as 25% tariffs and other penalties that Colombia backed down. Of the first 205 deportees to arrive in Colombia on military planes, none had criminal records, and 26 were children.

I wondered about Ecuador, but then I saw a large photo of T’s inauguration with Ecuador’s young president, Daniel Naboa, seated in the first few rows with other favorites. Sure enough, as of this week Ecuador has agreed to receive two U.S. military flights a week carrying deported migrants. Here is the press photo above of the first group being loaded into a C-17 military transport. Forty-three women and 37 men, handcuffed, shackled and chained around the waist. Are they criminals? Of course not! They are ordinary folks, trying to get an economic foothold in life. Just like the rest of us.

I don’t know how to end this. But I’m interested to hear from you all, and send you best wishes for the Year of the Snake.

Dear Friends: I got so excited by your responses to my new blog format that I was inspired to call a long-delayed meeting of our Cañar Book Club. Welcome all! We have members here from far and wide, with a large backlog, so let’s begin.

Whenever I read two books at the same time I’m reminded of my wonderful book-loving mother, who always kept a thick historical novel by her bedside that was “not too exciting to keep me awake.” She read more gripping books during the day. So like her, I have my own two-book routine: nonfiction over lunch (while Michael does puzzles - no talking!) and fiction at bedtime. This week’s lunch special is The Copenhagen Trilogy by Danish author Dove Ditlevsen (1917-1976), a memoir of childhood, youth and “dependency” that the The New York Times Book Review named one of the 100 best books of the 21st century in 2024. I’m in the final third of the book, and know it’s heading for tragedy, so my bedtime read is Nothing to See Here, a hilarious novel by Kevin Wilson about twins who catch fire when agitated. Though I usually avoid such weirdo narratives, Wilson’s lovable, believable characters have me I’m hooked - and sleeping soundly. (I also loved the cover).

And now….from our dear members:

Maya in Portland: “I recently read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. I loved seeing the Christianity I was brought up with so knocked sideways. Also started The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, a Goncourt winner. About African immigrants landed in Sicily - excellent so far.”

Mary Day in Colombia: “I have to admit this past year involved a lot of mystery novels and rereading Georgette Heyer. Also in the category of escape I might put Carl Hiaasen, who writes brilliantly and searingly about Florida in Squeeze Me. Other writers who got me through the year include Jasmine Guillory and Jacqueline Winspear's wonderful Maisie Dobbs.

(More serious) highlights were The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé; Tu Suenos Imperios han sido (You Dreamed of Empires), Alvaro Enrigue; Personas Decentes. Leonardo Padura; North Woods, Daniel Mason and, last but far from least, Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time!”

Claire in London: “I absolutely DO recommend the latest from the German author, Bernard Schlink. His new (or possibly newly translated) book is called The Granddaughter, and I was hooked from beginning to end. Beautiful, light, tight writing which conveys so much about people but also about the recent politics of Germany. Now I’m reading an extraordinary book by Lisa See - The Island of Sea Women - based on the real life women divers of South Korea (a dying breed) and their lives though the twentieth century.”

Arlene in Toronto: Spring, Heat, Rains: A South Indian Diary by David Schulman. (From Goodreads: An expert on South Indian languages and cultures, Shulman knew the region well, but from the moment he arrived for this seven-month sojourn he actively soaked up such simple aspects of his surroundings, determined to attend to the rich texture of daily life—choosing to be at the same time scholar and tourist, wanderer and wonderer.)

Charlotte in Portland: Doppelganger by Naomi Klein and A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan, both of which were excellent, eye-opening, and frightening. Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen.

Joanne in Mexico: “I’m re-reading Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King because I loved it so much. He has new one on a totally different theme that I haven’t read: Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah.”

Nancy in Portland: “I really enjoyed reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee while sick with a never-ending cold, allowing me to appreciate a 500-page plus read. It features some strong characterizations and sharp descriptions of the sad plight of Koreans in Japan between 1932 and 1989. I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece but rather a solid work of fiction. Also, Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck is a beautifully written book with sharp characterizations of a retired classics professor protagonist who tutors a group of African young men who are caught in the limbo-land of refugee status in Berlin. Finally, You Dreamed of Empires, by Alvaro Enrigue, a Mexican author, and translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. It’s a somewhat odd, but lyrical, re-imagining of the meeting between Cortes and Montezuma.”

Miriam in Portland: “Just read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Hard going for awhile and well worth it.”

Char in Santa Fe: Right now I’m reading Conclave by Robert Harris, and it's so good. A look into the Vatican goings on, so archaic and full of intrigue. You get to know a mixed bag of cardinals, and the weirder they get you have to imagine one of them as Pope.

Maggi in Toronto: Moments of Glad Grace a memoir by Alison Wearing who accompanies her aging father on a trip to Dublin to act as his research assistant as he delves into family genealogy. Unfortunately she has no interest in or understanding of this pursuit. She does, however, have a great deal of love for her father, an adventurous spirit, interest in everything around her, and an insightful & witty outlook on life. Beautifully written. Both her earlier books are delightful reads: Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter: Growing Up With a Gay Dad and Honeymoon in Purdah: an Iranian Journey.

There is more: I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad by Karolyn Smardz Frost. The riveting story of Thornton & Lucie Blackburn, their escape from slavery, their fraught journey north, including sparking the first ever racial uprising in Detroit, and their significant contributions to the development of Toronto, where they ultimately settled.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon. Though mother & daughter, they never knew one another, their lives were inextricably bound together. Winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction.

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan. A heartbreaking story of the daughter of the monstrous dictator; “a woman who courageously struggles not to be undone by history and who made history herself with her denunciation of Soviet repression.”

OK, dear book club members, that’s a lot for today’. Keep your recommendation coming, and I promise more frequent meetings. Meanwhile, remember what Jane said: “If a book is well written, I always find it too short.” — Jane Austen

Thanks to all those who have tried to help with advice, serious intervention, and sympathy. I hope to return to my regular Cañar Chronicles in the future, but since I miss writing, being in touch with you all, and exchanging book ideas at our dear Cañar Book Club, I’ll try Substack...for now. (Substack might recommend paying for a subscription, but my blogs are always free!)

Here’s a recap of the past couple of months: Ecuador experienced a prolonged drought in 2024, which caused nationwide blackouts and water rationing—in some areas up to 12 hours a day without power. When we arrived in November, power was cut for six hours daily in rotating three-hour shifts. While the daytime outages were no big deal, no electricity during dinner and movie time seriously dampened our spirits. Watching movies or TV series is a nightly ritual that we simply cannot live without.

Then, a lightbulb moment. I remembered an old laptop with a DVD reader. In the guestroom, I found a basket filled with hundreds of DVDs I’d bought in Cuenca during the 2000s and 2010s, back before streaming. Suddenly, we had entertainment—provided the laptop and Bose speaker were fully charged before the lights went out and the DVD discs were in working condition (about 50% of the time). And there were really many good movies during those years! Here’s our dinner-hour setup.

On December 20, after the rains finally began, the Ecuadorian government delivered a holiday gift: power 24/7. (Ecuador relies heavily on hydroelectric power, made possible by massive loans from the Chinese government to build dams in the 2000’s.) Since then, we’ve enjoyed uninterrupted electricity, internet, and water—ahhhh. (Actually, too much water; high pressure burst the pipes three times before Michael dusted off his plumber skills, traveled to a nearby town to buy a pressure gauge and mended the pipes.)

In hindsight, it’s remarkable how quickly we can adapt to “pre-modern” conditions such as limited water and no electricity—and just as quickly readjust to having all our usual comforts back. (The daily rains continue, out of season, along with an intense cold spell and dense fogs—also out of season. But that’s climate change for you!) The sheep and fields surrounding us seem happy.

In other news, Ecuador has an election coming up in February. Current president, Daniel Naboa, (elected in 2023 for a short term after the previous president, facing impeachment, dissolved the national assembly) entered office declaring the country was in “armed conflict.” He imposed a state of emergency in seven provinces (mostly coastal), suspended some basic constitutional rights, deployed the military to fight organized crime, and announced the construction of two super-prisons. He also created serious human rights violations by scooping up hundreds of young men—again, mostly in the coastal cities—charged with “flagrancy” and never brought before a judge, according to Human Rights Watch. Some were never seen again by their families. Prison populations have soared. But unlike El Salvador and Honduras, where impoverished gangs lead much of the drug-related violence, Ecuador is dealing with transnational cartels that are richer and better armed. In other words, Ecuador has become a booming transit point in drug trafficking largely controlled by outside forces. President Naboa brought down the murder rate with these Draconian methods, but as Juanita Goebertus of Human Rights Watch writes: “he hasn’t done the less glamorous work of shoring up the country’s weak justice system to fight criminals in accordance with the law.”

Here is Daniel Naboa - at 35, the youngest president of Ecuador and heir to the wealthy banana dynasty - declaring his win in November 2023, wearing a bulletproof vest.

On the Cañar homestead, we’re nearly at the half-way point of our six months. It feels good. We’ve rarely left. As Michael finds more and more Cuenca-centric foods here in Cañar, such as butter, “natural” yogurt and - every now and then- bacon! Hallelujah. No need for weekly shopping trips to Cuenca. He’s happy as king of the kitchen and tender of his woodpile (regularly replenished by the famous Chirote), and daily maker of fires and sometimes bread.

And I’m happy as long as I have work and a good internet connection. At present I’m translating the essays into English in the Navas photography book, and managing the Quichua translations, for a second edition in three languages to be published in June by the Catholic University of Cuenca.

As today is January 20, I want to end on a hopeful note by recognizing Martin Luther King’s birthday with his “I Have a Dream” speech (below), and recommending a alternative news blog, The Contrarian. Take a look - Jen Rubin a journalist who just resigned from the Washington Post, and he’s a….I don’t know, but he looks like someone I would like. Today she interviewed Heather Cox Richardson on historical precedents and a context for troubled times such as these. It’s only took 18 minutes for me to became a contrarian too.

Please let me know what you think about my new format. I miss the old Cañar Chronicles and I don’t yet feel quite tuned to Substack. But it allows me to communicate with you again, dear friends. (You can make responses here or to my regular email.)

And I promise the return of the Cañar Book Club next post. Until then…

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!”

Delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C

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