​Four days ago, we had a few intense thunderstorms and quite heavy rain, part of New Mexico’s yearly monsoon. As welcome as the moisture is, it killed my internet connection… And the company which provides this service, Windstream, can’t send a repair person before August 25. Unacceptable? You bet! Luckily a neighbor lets me use his connection.

Here is the recipe:
When I was little, and I mean REALLY little, potato salad was my all-time favorite meal. This was a few years after the war in Germany, when food was simple and anything but extravagant. Potato salad and hot-dogs, or better Wieners, would be served on special occasions, when my father’s siblings and my cousins and my family would gather at my grandparents’ house. It was somewhat like a pot-luck, and my father’s twin sister’s potato salad always tasted the best. When I was a bit older, I asked her about the secret ingredient, which was -- freshly grated horseradish! It’s not easy to find fresh horseradish, and the kind in a jar always has mayonnaise in it, so I use wasabi paste as an alternative when I make regular potato salad. It might work with this version, too, but I haven’t tried it.

~ Hilda Joy
​Our very American Fourth of July culinary celebration can be enhanced by reaching across our Southern border to our Mexican neighbors and borrowing one of their well-known street foods, Eliote, but adapting it to please several people.  After all, we corn-consuming Americans owe Mexico thanks for its agricultural gift of maize.  The word ‘Elote’ derives from ‘Elote,’ a Nahuatl word meaning ‘corn on the cob’ or ‘tender cob.’

Having grown up in Chicago with its large Mexican population, I learned to appreciate Mexican food at an early age.  The first Mexican food I ate as a child was a tamale sold by a street vendor in our neighborhood.  This inauthentic treat, wrapped in paper rather than in a corn husk, acquainted me with masa and a spicy filling and gave me a life-long taste for Mexican food.  I did not know about Elote until much later in life when I was strolling along one of Chicago’s beautiful Lake Michigan beachfronts and getting hungry.  I bought a cob of Elote and fell in love with it and am still smitten by it.

You might not find an Elitero from whom you can buy a single cob on the street, but you can easily grill this dish in a quantity to feed your family and/or friends.
EnJOY

​Jessica Rath

This is for all of you (us) who don’t like to spend a lot of time slicing and dicing. All ingredients go into ONE pot, so there isn’t much to clean up, either. Nonetheless, the taste is exceptional – good enough for a special occasion!

We’ve been travelling a lot this summer. After 2 years of Covid, putting off several trips and visits to friends and family, we decided it was time. I wrote about our trip through Arkansas where we stopped at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, and then went to the Jim Coleman Quartz Crystal Mine.

This last trip was to Seattle via Wyoming. Not a direct route, you may have noticed. One of the states we regularly go through on the way to Seattle is Utah and when I Googled rock/fossil collecting in Utah, it came up with this place in Wyoming. To be fair, it’s just over the border, less than an hour from Park City, Utah.

It turns out the ‘Fish Fossil Capital of the World’ is in Kemmerer, Wyoming. There is a park there devoted to it, and also, there are several privately owned quarries that allow the public to look for fish fossils. I spent the day, literally 8 hours, bent over, splitting open slabs of rocks that they provided. They also provided the tools. I went to American Fossil, check them out HERE.  
​
I found some great fish fossils, had a blast, was thoroughly exhausted at the end. They were very friendly and helpful, and I plan on going back again

Zach Hively
Fool's Gold

I have decided to become the human version of P.F. Flyers: I want to run faster, jump higher, or at least endure nominal physical exertion without hurting my back.

I have also decided to embrace who I really am, which is a man deeply averse to exercise. I have tried it all: running never gave me that mythical high. Swimming never enhanced my hearing with swimmer’s ear. And tennis? Well, I quite like my elbows just the way they are.

Yet for all the distaste and disdain I have for exercise, I LOVE being active. Who doesn’t love activities? This is a word we use to coerce children and child-like adults into keeping themselves occupied for at least five minutes a stretch. “Let’s do an activity!” could lead to ANYTHING. Building the Tower of Giza or the Pyramid of Pisa out of clothespins and pasta is an Activity. Digging for the Lost Ark is an Activity. Picking up the trash that blows in from the neighbor’s yard like money-seeking relatives in the night? Most definitely an Activity.

In fact, the only thing better than an Activity is a NEW Activity. This is really quite Zen, if you don’t think about it too hard: it’s the doing that matters with Activities, much more than the finishing, and if a new Activity gives your caretaker ten more minutes of effing peace and quiet, you best believe there will always be a new Activity.

Of course, I don’t get such inventive variety with my Activities these days, because I spend all my time walking the dog.

Both my faithful readers will remember that I recently adopted Ryzhik, who requires approximately seventeen consecutive hours of exercise each day. This contrasts with my other dog, Hawkeye, who like me prefers Activities to exercise. We are really quite alike, Hawkeye and I, and the similarities go far beyond our matching rugged handsomeness. I like throwing balls, and Hawkeye likes fetching them. I also like throwing sticks, which Hawkeye also likes fetching. We both enjoy the pure being-ness of being outside, and we both will turn around and head home rather than talk to strangers out there in the world. We will also congratulate each other on a ten-minute-constitutional well done, then settle in on the couch to re-binge a season of Daredevil.

So Ryzhik has forced a bit of adjustment in our lives. It now takes three, four days to binge a full season. And walking is now a regular form of exercise, especially if I don’t want someone pulling all the coats off all the hooks in all the rooms of the house, sometimes with the hooks still attached.

Ryzhik is that freakish beast who revels in exercise but can’t stand Activities. For a block of time each day, we leave Hawkeye at home for some of that well-warranted effing peace and quiet, and we go out for a destruction-prevention walk. Rather, I walk—and Ryzhik leaps up cliffs, and digs up rabbit dens, and disappears to join the circus, and returns with exotic animal skulls in his maw. He truly is a P.F. Flyer, and the reason I want to become one too is the dread that someday I will have to carry all 75 pounds of him home.

Fortunately, I have a brother-in-law. Let’s call him “Scott” because that is his name. Scott is the sort of man who was born capable of lifting refrigerators. For a long time now, he has been rucking—which is the fine art of powerwalking with the equivalent mass of a Ryzhik in a backpack.

“Teach me,” I said, because even after whole decades of Activities I am more likely to empty a fridge than move it.

So Scott got me started—and we started smart. I selected a moderately petite rock, and Scott had me wrap it in duct tape so it wouldn’t chew up my pack. I strapped the pack to my back and took the first steps of turning Ryzhik’s walks into an Activity—hey, let’s go carry rocks for an hour! It’ll be fun!

And it was, both times. I could practically feel myself getting stronger and less resistant. It’s amazing the difference that five, six whole pounds made in my worldview. Until those pounds made me take up new Activities like “should I take two or three ibuprofen this morning,” “where’s the ice pack,” and “Epsom salt baths.” Much less P.F. Flyer, much more penny loafer. Which is okay, too, because from now on, I’ll make the dog carry the rocks—in preparation for the day he needs to carry me home.

Note: Concerned about the plight of the Monarch Butterfly and their endangered status, I republished an article Sara wrote last year and asked her to write about what we might do to provide habitat for this jewel.   Thank you Sara
 :
I am going to begin this essay with a personal story. Yesterday was a gorgeous blue and gold day and I was walking through my milkweed strewn field when suddenly I discovered a baby monarch caterpillar chewing up a leaf… I was just starting the research for this essay and so I was very excited. This year I had already planned to raise another monarch as I have done for most of my life – and here he was! I carefully removed the milkweed stalk, added others and brought them home to place in a bucket. I planned to raise this one outdoors. Then I came in to work on my research… needless to say I was simply horrified to learn that scientists are now saying that it may put the monarch at risk to hand raise them. I checked other sources with the same result. I went out to see my little friend thinking I had best return him to the field as fast as I could and he was GONE. Oh no, I was distraught. I came back in with a heavy heart that I couldn’t shake all day. Why do I have to keep learning again and again that nature takes care of her own WITHOUT MY HELP, even when I interfere so rarely? Last night returning from a walk with my dogs I casually checked a nearby milkweed patch – and lo – there he was munching on a leaf warming in the sun! I quickly took a picture and then moved closer to inspect my little friend and he simply dropped off the leaf and disappeared out of sight! Enough of this predator; the message couldn’t have been more clear. As I came down the driveway I realized the little fellow had made a long arduous journey up the hill to rooted milkweed, no doubt by scent. He must have been exhausted. But what choice did he have? His field was a quarter of a mile away. I was so relieved but still worried. Monarch caterpillars like full sun and this batch didn’t have it. This morning I couldn’t find him – the sun doesn’t hit the milkweed patch until after 10 AM. When the sun rose over the trees I went back to check and he had moved to another plant that was getting full sun.  I apologized profusely telling him that I was so sorry to have behaved so stupidly but that I didn’t know…  then I left him unable to decide whether moving him back to the field was what I should do, or perhaps it would be better to let him be? The end of this story remains unfinished…But you can be sure I will NEVER move a monarch caterpillar again. He taught me a powerful, painful lesson that I needed to learn…