end of May

Hi Everyone,

Another month gone by. Hope it was a good one for you, Mike, and that the trip to Asia led to interesting options and opportunities. I spent the month trying to move forward on two books (one in English and one in Spanish) I am currently editing. Its a pretty thankless job but one I must finish as soon as possible, so all this summer I will be holed up in my study and aiming to be free of both tasks by the end of August. In the meantime Cristina will be taking a sabbatical and working at the National University in Mexico City so that she can take over the job of caring for her mom this next year. She has two siblings, a brother and a sister, and they take turns living with and caring for their mother who is in good health at 86 but has no short term memory. At least she will be sharing a house with two of our children, Emilio and Andrea, so it shouldn't be too lonely. I will be commuting from Zamora Mich. to Mexico City most weekends.
Lois, election time must be coming up for your husband. I hope all goes well. The US elections are getting quite interesting now. I suppose in a week or so we will know who is Obama's running mate. I wish it would be Edwards but I suspect it will be Webb (the idea of a Reagan Democrat, as Webb calls himself, is, for me, a strange betrayal of the progressive stance initiated with Roosevelt and the New Deal, but then I guess Blair was a Thatcher-laborite). I did go to the US Consulate in Guadalajara to get a voter registration form, fill it out and have the consulate send it to my last state of residence in the US (Texas). The Consulate now reminds me of the US Embassy in Belgrade back in the 70s when the American Staff was not allowed to move outside the Embassy. That produced a strange situation where the Embassy was basically run by a local Serbian staff and it was extremely difficult to actually come into contact with any of the higher ranking US officials in their isolated and insular situation. In Guadalajara, post Bush-Cheny politics of fear, its the same. All the jobs of security and information-reception are now subcontracted to Mexican staff and one feels like there are going through the bureaucratic-labyrinth which I used to associate with Mexico or the old Yugoslavia. Anyways it will be interesting to see if I really do manage to register to vote. Though absentee-voting in Texas with my political preferences is not very effective.
Hope all are well.