Elsie's Notes from New England - THEMission edition

962 steps. Only two stops this time -- at 400 steps and 800 steps. Shady side only, please! Scarf peeled and purse hung over cart after about 600 steps. Warm day. Exito! (Success!)

Appearances are deceiving. They are fleeting, transitory, easily affected and unsubstantiatable (is that a word?). Judging others by their appearance is dangerous and makes us targets to be judged ourselves. Frankly, I think we should cut one another a little slack. Granted, first we all need to stand in a circle and hold hands and repeat solemnly, one after the other, “My name is (insert here), and I judge by appearance.” Admitting is the first step to overcoming. Don’t tell me you don’t do it – it’s not even always a negative thing. Why do we always presume that if we’re judging someone, we’re judging negatively? We see an adorable child, clean and scrubbed, with shining hair and wearing a smart little outfit and we immediately burst into throes of, “Oh, isn’t he/she just the cutest thing?” How is that offensive? Nor is the judgment necessarily correct. That same child might just punch you in the back the minute you turn around. Been there. Done that. Not a nice kid. Truthfully, ...

A gentleman by the name of Ambrose Bierce wrote the "Devil's Dictionary" in 1911, and in it, he defines patience as "A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue." Interesting. I was not born to patience. Some of my earliest memories are of being shushed and told to wait. It wasn’t just my parents, it was everybody - teachers, siblings, strangers on the street . . . everybody. I recall vividly sitting in school and bouncing up and down, hand flailing over my head, ready to explode if the teacher didn’t call on me next. Waiting for Christmas nearly killed me. However, I was born the youngest of seven children. Patience was thrust upon me. My mother said that when I was small enough to sit on her lap during church, I often would ask questions, expecting immediate answers. If she shushed me, she said, I would stiffen up my body and shoot out of her arms, off her lap and onto the floor in an instant. If she would whisper to me that she would answer my...

Who here can remember those old cartoons of the cars and trucks that had personalities -- you know, the front grills looked like teeth, and the big trucks were the monsters, and the sporty cars had curves in all the right places? No, I'm not talking about the movie "Cars," as much as I loved it. These were really old cartoons in the style of Steamboat Willie. I thought about those cartoons today as I rode the bus home. I don't usually take the bus because I like walking, but today I was tired, and I was carrying some heavy bags from the market -- cauliflower and red peppers and fresh strawberries -- mmmm. So, I took the bus. The bus system here is a good one, and there are buses of all shapes and sizes. There are giant double buses. These are not double decker tour buses, which do exist here. I ignore those as tourist anomalies. The double buses are double-long with a flexible "hinge" between sections of the bus like two metro cars stuck together ...

This, my friends, is a story of scandal from the late 1400s. In an earlier post, I left you hanging with a teaser reference, and I'm finally getting around to putting the dirt to the pen, as it were. It's a legend, actually, of family discord. Don Hernando de Zafra was appointed Royal Secretary to King Fernando and Queen Isabella of Spain. He enjoyed his position of power and lived in a fine home in the town of Granada in the shadow of the Alhambra near the river Darro. This house, called La Casa de Castril, now houses the Provincial Archeological Museum. There is a large open courtyard in the center, and the exterior of the imposing structure is covered with elaborate ornamentation intended to indicate the power and position of its owner. On one corner of the building there is a balcony outside a window that is sealed shut. Above the sealed window is carved in stone the phrase, "Esperando la del Cielo" or, roughly translated "Awaiting that of Heaven," ...