Sandy Wright's Blog, page 16

Sacred Scotland -Part 3

On Day 5 we traveled north up the rugged north-east coast to Thurso, in preparation for boarding a ferry to the Orkney Islands. The journey itself was beautiful. We saw so many sheep, and this fellow, a Highland cow. Jamie, our guide played an eerie, atmospheric music soundtrack as we wound our way up and up into the mist and clouds. I wondered what it would be like to be a sheep living in a pasture that dropped off into the sea.  I’ve never had such an enjoyable bus ride.

​We stayed on Orkney for the next 3 days. There was so much to see!

“Beyond Britannia in the endless ocean…” is how a fifth century scribe wrote of Orkney. The islands are mysterious, remote, and mostly left untouched from modern development.

You feel as though you’re on the edge of the world in Orkney. Closer to Norway than to London, Orkney is only 50 miles south of Greenland, and begins where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. (Be prepared for a rough ferry crossing at the point where the two waters meet. Go above decks and chew your ginger gum.)

This fiercely independent “nation state” has a personality that is charmingly Orcadian. They speak their own version of the Norse dialect, and, since they were settled by the Norse, the villages have a Scandinavian flavor that mixes with a Scottish “topping.” The landscape is treeless, elemental, sea-locked, and deeply vibrational.

Even the light is different. We noticed that the satellite dishes at all the buildings were nearly horizontal because of our far northern location, and there was no darkness until nearly midnight, and a lot of the residents fly the Norwegian flag. After all, Orkney only became part of Scotland by accident. It was pawned to Scotland through a royal marriage agreement, along with Shetland.

The relic sites at Orkney date from the late Stone Age. There are so many that we must assume there was a prosperous and advanced civilization on the islands.

We visited Maes How for an insight into prehistoric living. This chambered stone tomb is built so that the winter solstice sun shines all the way into the center of its gathering room.

From there we went to the Stones of Stenness, part of a megalithic walkway from Maes Howe to the Ring of Brodgar, located on a narrow isthmus between saltwater and freshwater lochs. 

​The Ring of Brodgar is among the largest stone circles in all or Britain (beaten only by the outer circle of Avebury and the circle of Stanton Drew). There are 27 standing stones still in position, although originally there were 60. Built as a henge (a Neolithic Earthwork) with a deep rock-cut ditch around the perfect circle, two entrances are located in the northwest and southeast. The site sits on a great bed of heather. Bet it’s amazing when those plants bloom in the late summer! Legend called Brodgar the sun temple and Stenness the moon temple. 
It is now known that the Ring was part of an enormous prehistoric ritual complex, from Maes Howe to the Stones of Stenness and Barnhouse to the south, Ring o’ Bookan to the northwest, the Comet Stone to the east, the Ness of Brodgar on the west, and beyond to Skara Brae, all in about a three mile radius.
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I’ll come back to Ness of Brodgar, but first, here’s a picture of Skara Brae, a superbly preserved Neolithic hut settlement. These enormous assembly areas, so close together, hint tantalizingly at a great cult center—the greatest in the UK. But hints are all we had, until recently.
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Now, there is hope we will learn more in the near future from the excavations currently taking place at the Ness of Brodgar.  Photo by Nick Card

It’s a peninsula between two lochs linking the great stone circles of Brodgar and Stenness. The site has been under intense excavation since 2004, revealing what is believed to be a grand temple at the heart of this monumental Neolithic complex. The warren of interconnected stone buildings remains unique in Europe in both size and construction.

​Archeologists, including our site guides Helen and Mark Woodeford, have excavated about 10% of the site’s nearly 30,000 square yards. So far, it’s been an archaeologist’s dream, filled with walls of structures, paved walkways, slate roofs, painted walls and decorated stonework.  
Walls are up to 13 feet thick and internal divisions of stones are incised with a mysterious butterfly pattern. The whole complex is surrounded by an outer stone wall spanning nearly the entire isthmus the site sits on.

What did people do here 5,000 years ago?

Those studying the site estimate the complex was in use for a thousand years. They are saying it seems Ness was the ‘center of the universe’ for all of Orkney and beyond, it seems, a major ceremonial and ritual center to serve the entire Neolithic population of the Northern Isles. With a salty sea loch to the right, a freshwater loch to the left, and standing stones in front of and behind, I can perfectly imagine why in 3,300 BC people might have flocked to this unique spot—this vast complex of building that was used for 1,000 years.
 
Excavation season for the site is only eight weeks, July and August. Why? Funding, according to Nick Card, the dig director for the Archaeology Institute at the University of the Highlands and Islands. It costs $3,100 a day to run the site.  Some funding is local, and a bit more from Historic Scotland, but the bulk of the money comes from public donations and charities, including the American Friends of Ness of Brodgar.
 
They welcome visitors during dig months, and they accept amateur volunteers.  In fact, Paul and I are discussing the possibility of applying to join the dig in future years. We figure it would be a way to contribute to unraveling the mysteries of the world. Wow!
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You can find out more about dig-in-progress at www.orkneyjar.com. 

Sacred Scotland Tour - Part 2

On Day 3 we said goodbye to our now-good-friend Diana, and headed to the Inverness Airport to meet up with the Gothic Images Tours group. Turns out there were 10 of us: Couples from Minnesota and Florida, sisters from Alaska and Seattle, a single woman from North Carolina, our in-tour tarot reader, Linda, from Australia, plus our tour guide, Jaime, from England.
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We were an eclectic bunch. Most, including Druids Jaime and Linda, were some version of pagan. Those who were not, like my husband and Caroline, our single traveler, were open-minded and curious. I mean, if the tour says “Sacred Scotland” and travels with an in-house tarot reader, you kinda have to expect an interest in neo-pagan sites and worship.

I’ve always wanted to spend a night in a castle, and I got my wish! Our group spent the first night in Tulloch Castle in Dingwall. 

​According to the staff, and most of the posts online, this castle is haunted. After our haunted tour, I can believe it. This painting of some previous tenants, the Davidson family, convinced me the rumors could be true. 
​The young red-haired girl in the ballroom portrait fell down the castle stairs to her death, after walking in on her father in bed with his mistress. (If you look at the left side of the portrait, you will see the black area where the husband’s likeness has been painted out of the portrait.) Now known as the green lady, she is the castle’s most famous ghost. The portrait is really spooky. No matter where you stand in the room, her eyes follow you.

Day 4 – We all got better acquainted the next morning on the bus ride to the Fairy Glen, in Rosemarkie on the Black Isle We completed the mile and a half hike through this magical woodlands in silence so we could soak in the atmosphere of the glen. Birches and rowan trees, luscious ferns, babbling streams on each side, deep pools and fossilized trees, ending in a series of amazing waterfalls.  The water was icy cold, but people took the plunge anyway.

The Fairy Glen was once the scene of well-dressing ceremonies, where the children of the village decorated the pool with flowers, to ensure that the fairies kept the water supply clean.

Modern visitors have embedded thousands of coins in the fallen trees around the falls.

I filled a tiny bottle from the waterfall to bring home for my altar. On the way back, I performed a releasing ritual for Carol and Christy, the sisters in our group. We all dropped coins in the stream to offer thanks.  And look what was right beside our ritual area – red fairy mushrooms!  Next we visited the Clava Cairns located at Balnauran of Clava, only a mile south of the Culloden battlefield. Oh, what an evocative site! Three burial cairns (two entrance cairns and a third ring cairn in the middle) are in a clear alignment for winter solstice sunset. 

Each cairn is surrounded by massive standing stones, and the entire complex is circled by the most amazing ancient trees. 
​I felt those trees, they had presence.

The central chamber is large enough for a small group to gather, and works as an echo or resonance chamber for chanting. Yes. Of course we tried it. Gave me shivers.

The Clava Cairns date from the Bronze Age, about 4,000 years old. Cup-marks within the chambers, as well as on the north cairn, look like a stargazer’s map.

This was one of my favorite sites, and the feel of the whole complex was

 extraordinarily calm and welcoming.  

However, in 1999, a Belgian tourist took a rock from the site. The next year, he mailed it back to the Inverness tourist board (Guardian newspaper, 19 January, 2000, BBC News) after suffering several family misfortunes, so beware….

At this point, I thought we’d seen the best of the tour. But then, we went to Orkney. But that’s a story for next weekend. See you then!

Sacred Scotland Tour - Part I

My husband and I are in Scotland while I research settings for the second book of my Ancient Magic paranormal suspense series. What a marvelous excuse to get to know the country of my origin!
Day 1: Inverness
Despite being jet-lagged, we enjoyed our stay in the Palace Hotel, right across the street from Inverness Castle. We had tea while gazing out the window of our room at this amazing view of the Ness River and Inverness Castle. Thank you, Paul, for asking for a “castle view” upgrade, it was worth it. 

Inverness is a pedestrian-friendly city. It includes a lovely two-hour waterside walk that follows the river south and then crosses to the opposite bank via a couple of islands. While we didn’t have time to do that whole path, we strolled around the city center and shopped. I found my Campbell clan tartan and bought cashmere scarves for family members (my buying splurge for the trip), as well as a traditional sgian-dubh, the ceremonial knife that’s part of traditional Scottish Highland dress.
​If you have any friends who wear kilts, you know the clansmen usually wear their knife tucked into the top of their kilt hosiery. However, I plan to use mine as a ritual athame.  
We had dinner at a little Italian restaurant down the street for our hotel, where I discovered a new favorite wine, Primitivo Del Salento Caleo. I would recommend both the restaurant and the wine.
My only regret is that we could not visit the Inverness Highlands Family Archives to research my Campbell clan family roots. It wasn’t open on Sunday, and we had an early-morning tour scheduled the next day. I do intend to contact them for research assistance when we get home.

Day 2: Outlander Tour
We met Diana Bertoldi, our Tours By Locals guide, and were delighted to discover we were her only customers for the day. She told us she’d lived in Italy before moving to Scotland. While her son still lives in Milan, Diana considers Scotland her true home.

Our first stop was the Culloden Battlefield, one of the most important places in Scottish history. It’s managed by the National Trust of Scotland and has an informative visitor centre. However, Diana worked at the site previously, so she gave us a vivid account of the final battle in the Jacobite Uprising.

At Culloden), the Jacobites (mostly Scottish clansmen) lost 2,000 men, while the British suffered a mere 300 causalities.  The Duke of Cumberland’s dragoons (think of the Outlander character Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall) chased fleeing Jacobite clansmen into the Western Highlands, executing many of those they caught.

​The massacre of the Scottish was so complete that the Culloden burial sites are marked by clans, not individuals. 

Those clansmen  not executed were often transported to the colonies, ushering in the first wave of large-scale Scottish immigration to North America. The British government also banned the tartan and kilt. The clan system—the social order that had existed in the Scottish Highlands since before the days of William Wallace—was lost to history.

​Although the clan way of life was formally eliminated, their sense of national pride was not.  In 2014, Scotland issued a referendum on national independence. That, coupled with the release of Diana Gabaldon’s Starz television drama, Outlander, has sparked renewed interest in Scotland’s Jacobite Rebellion. The efforts of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Highlanders mark one of the most important—and ultimately tragic—moments in Scottish history.

Our wonderful guide Diana had arranged for us to meet the current McKenzie Clan Chief, Laird John Ruaridh Grant MacKenzie. We spent a delightful couple of  hours visiting with him and touring

his home, Castle Leod. We shared a dram of whiskey, while he gave us the background of the castle and all the family portraits. The relative most interesting to me was George, the 1st Earl of Cromartie. A friend of Sir Isaac Newton and an ardent alchemist, he spoke five languages and was against the burning of witches. A truly modern man!  His father Sir John, owned Staten Island for a time, but sold it on account of “too many Indians and mosquitos.”
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He also showed us the giant chestnut tree on the back grounds, planted by Mary Queen of Scots’ mother, as well as the only redwood tree in Scotland, along the front drive.  
​When she learned I was researching sacred sites for my book, Diana took us to the Corrimony Chambered Cairn.  Sitting in a grassy field surrounded by sheep and bordered by a small stream, the 4000-year-old burial cairn and the standing stones ringing it are still intact. We had the place completely to ourselves, so Diana gave me no information, just instructed me to walk the perimeter and then let her know what I felt, if anything.

I walked two-thirds of the way around the stones, feeling like they were repelling me. As I rounded the back of the cairn to complete my circle, it felt the opposite: the stones were pulling me toward them. When I told Diana what I’d experienced, she explained that an energetic ley line ran through the site, roughly along the line where I’d begun to feel attracted!

That was my first experience with the supernatural Scottish highlands. It wouldn’t be my last, as we had two full weeks of sacred sites to visit with our next tour group, Gothic Tours.

So, meet me here on Friday, to learn next about the Black Isle fairy pools, plus the standing stones, prehistoric villages and Viking influences on the island of Orkney. Plus, we'll visit a dig-site-in-progress and meet two of the archaeologists unearthing an exciting new discovery that could be larger than anything uncovered to date in Scotland. 

Researching My Next Book in Scotland

     Older than Stonehenge,   the Ring of Brodegar makes an impressive landmark for miles around.  We will spend three days of our tour exploring Orkney.  
     Our Scotland visit will begin with a tour of all things Outlander.

In one week we leave for Scotland!

My heritage is Scot-Irish, so I'm looking forward to tracing my Campbell and Idol roots. I know my Campbell relatives have been in the Midwest states since the mid-1800s, but I haven't been able to trace them back further, so hopefully Scotland records will help me find when they immigrated.

And, speaking of research, Book 2 of my Ancient Magic series will be set in Scotland, and deciding on the exact site is the main purpose of this trip. The characters and plot can be written from my imagination, but an actual site visit is what "anchors" the book and gives it authenticity.

Will the story be set at the Ring of Brodgar?  With its prehistoric sun and moon temples, this is the heartland of the Neolithic North, a bleak, mysterious place that has made Orkney Island a magnet for archaeologists, historians and other researchers for decades.  We're spending three days in Orkney, including a guided tour of the archaeological excavations on the Ness of Brodgar. These sites pre-date both Stonehenge and Avebury by some 500 years.

Orkney is actually closer to Norway than to London. It's only 50 miles south of Greenland and begins where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. I'm told the area feels like the end of edge of the world, and I can't wait to see it in person.

Maybe the story will journey to the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis, a complex of megalithic stones laid out in the shape of a Celtic cross, with astronomical alignments that feature vividly in this sacred landscape. One of the stones is estimated to be three billion years old. That gives me shivers!

This landscape temple and its satellite sites makes up a lunar observatory created as an ancient power center to witness the major lunar standstill that occurs only once every 18.6 years (The next lunar standstill will take place in 2025). Two of our tour guides live in this area, so hopefully they will have many little-known tales to tell.

Or perhaps the book will originate in Iona, the home of one of the Book of Kells (circa AD 800), one of the finest illuminated manuscripts over created. When the Vikings sacked the island and its monastery in the late eighth century, the monks secreted the book off to safety in Ireland, but the rest of their entire library of knowledge went under the sea.

Iona is believed by some to be the Yew Island of the Druids, the sacred isle known as 'Tir nan Og, the land of youth, and the 'Otherworld." Such a lot of expectations to live up to!

The Inner Hebredes are separated from the Outer Hebrides by the Minch, a treacherous strait of water on the northwest coast. Famous supernatural inhabitants, called the Blue Men, are said to guard the strait. Something like 'mermen', the blue men tribe live in deep underwater caves and swim alongside ships passing the Sound of Shiant, luring sailors into the sea and creating storms to wreck ships. Some say they are fallen angels. I say they sound like the perfect subjects for a short story between novels!

I'll be posting musings and pictures of our Scotland travels for the next three weeks. I hope you will join me to learn more about our travels through Sacred Scotland.
 

Goodbye Dear Friend

Cheryl Elliot Wilson

When I tell other friends stories about Cheryl (we all tell stories about our life-long friends, right?), "lake eggs" always come up.

For years, my parents owned a cabin on the Lake of the Ozarks. Because they were amazing parents, they let me invite gobs of my friends down for weekends of boating, water skiing, card playing, sunbathing, puzzles, reading, walks, and, best of all, food. 

Everyone attending would pair up and furnish all the groceries for one meal. The meals were epic, especially dinners after a long day on the water. I wish I had a picture of their long, drop-leaf table, situated in front of the double windows to catch the breeze, and surrounded by a crowd of laughing, sunburned friends.

On Sunday morning, Cheryl made "lake eggs," scrambled eggs with anything and everything that was left over from the previous meals. We often had the usual additions--onion, peppers, cheese, steak chunks. Sometimes the fare was more exotic. I can recall pinto beans, corn, diced pork chop, eggplant, cabbage.  If we had leftover dessert, fruit or alcohol, she'd find a way to concoct a delicious side dish. Cheesecake with powdered chocolate, cinnamon and chile pepper anyone?

Cheryl had a knack for cooking  wholesome meals, from scratch, and in  large quantities. Her first husband was an actor in a traveling theatre troupe, and she was--you guessed it--the camp cook. The husband didn't last (he was the only one of three I didn't meet during our 30-year friendship), but her love of cooking did.

Honey, you couldn't water ski, but you went out in the boat with us every time and tried. You disliked snow skiing too, but you went on every trip with the gang, bless your heart. Even when I moved away, you came out to Arizona for my 60th birthday.

You shared your daughter with us for her entire youth (hi Christy!), and you loved my kids like your own. And you were never, ever, too busy or too tired to lend me your ear and a tight, for-real hug when I needed it.

Plus, you got up EARLY at the lake to make breakfast and let the rest of us sleep in.
I raise my fork for you in love, girl. Miss you so hard.

Diana Gabaldon talks about Writing

I have had the pleasure of listening to Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, speak twice in the last two weeks.

As the featured speaker at the Desert Dreams conference, she gave us the insider view on how the Outlander series was created, how she feels about Jamie Frasier (you'll have to wait until next week for this tidbit, sorry!), and some harsh realities on cutting for time on a TV series.

Yes, I totally fan-girled and had her sign my book.
At Phoenix ComiCon last weekend, she talked about her books and how she became a writer.

"In 1988, I decided to write a novel for "practice, just to learn how to write," she says. "I had no intention of showing it to anyone." As a research professor at Arizona State University, she decided a historical novel would be the easiest to research and write.
She had just watched a rerun of the Doctor Who TV series. He had a young 17-year-old Scots lad that he'd picked up in 1745, she explains. "He appeared in his kilt, you know. And I thought, well, that's rather fetching." It didn't matter where she set the book, she was going to have to look everything up anyway. "So I said, Scotland 18th century it is."

And the main male character, Jamie Frasier, was conceived.

"About the third day of writing, I decide I'll have to have a female character her to play off all these men in kilts. And given that we're dealing with the Jacobite rising, perhaps I should make her an Englishwoman, that way, we'll have lots of conflict built in."

Gabaldon stops to take a breath and a sip of water. She talks really fast, you have to pay close attention to her Lauren Bacall-type throaty voice. And she's articulate. No "uhs," "uhms" or pauses to choose her words, the woman is a born story-teller.

"So I introduced her, and the minute I put her in, she refused to talk like an 18th century person. She immediately started making smartass modern remarks, and she also started telling the story herself. I said, 'If you're going to fight me all through this book, go ahead and be modern and I'll figure out how you got there later." The audience laughs and she adds, "It's all her fault that there's time travel in it."

It took her about 18 months to write the Outlander. It's 850 pages in trade paperback, or about 213,000 words. So, those of you who despair of ever finishing your novel, take heart. Gabaldon, who was working full time during her first novel, with three kids and a spouse, wrote approximately 400 words a day between midnight and 3:00am, slipping in a quick nap before she began.

The thing that amazes me is that she writes without a net: no outline, character sketches or plot plan. "I don't write in a straight line at all," she says "I just write bits and pieces and then glue them together."

But, like the Outlander books, her unorthodox approach results in magic. When, during Q&A, I commented that writing without a plan would be terrifying, her reply was pure poetic Diana Gabaldon: "It's like raising new continents. You look out over this vast sea and you see volcanoes popping up here and there. As they rise and lava goes down the sides, mountains form, and then gradually it all becomes clear. You begin to see how one mountain flows down into a valley and up into another. To start with all you see are the mountains, but gradually, you can look below the surface and see the connections."

I'm re-reading the Outlander series as a "refresher" before Paul and I head to Scotland in July. In fact, we're starting our visit with an Outlander tour lead by a local guide. I can't wait!

Thank you, Diana Gabaldon, for giving us Claire and Jamie, and such a personal and readable history of my ancestral homeland.

A Summer of Firsts

My summer is going to be mind-blowing busy, but in a positive way.

Every year, when the temperatures in Phoenix begin to inch over the 100 degree mark, my husband and I flee to Northern Arizona. In mid-May we take our tribe of dogs, cats, plants, and sometimes our son, and move into our cabin in Munds Park, a tiny alpine town thirty minutes south of Flagstaff. The 6800' altitude keeps the thermometer at 80 to 90-degrees max--low enough to hike the national forest in our backyard every morning, and sleep with the windows open at night when it cools down.

Unfortunately, I won't get much cabin time this summer.

First up is Phoenix ComiCon, May 25-28. I'll be there every day in the Wikked Writers booths (we have AA 1300-1330). Arizona friends, the lineup this year is spectacular. I'm going to find a way to sneak out to see Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Terry Brooks, and maybe play a little Quidditch.


Author Jim Butcher writes the Dresden Files series with "Wizard For Hire" Harry Dresden. Must reads for all paranormal and fantasy fans!


Plus, Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, is a guest speaker. This is the perfect time to visit with her before I head off to Scotland to see all the sites from her series in person. If you've read her books or seen the Starz mini-series, I'm sure you love her characters Jamie Frasier and Claire Randall Frasier.
Paul and I are taking an Outlander tour to start our vacation in Scotland (July), so I'm going to re-read the series before we leave (and probably take one book with me on vacation since it looks like laptops and other electronics will no longer be allowed on planes (damn!). Right on the heels of ComiCon, I'll be participating in the Desert Dreams Writers Conference. Held in Phoenix June 1-4, the conference includes "Meet The Authors" speed-dating style, so you can decide which authors to visit with at break-out sessions, and also who you'd like to sit with at dinner. It's a lot of fun and I encourage you to go to get your tickets now. I'm also excited about this one because I'm a finalist in the Diamonds in the Desert contest and winners will be announced at the conference dinner.

So, it looks like my time at the cabin will consist of three weeks in June, then home to the Valley of the Sun to figure out how to pack for a 15-day tour where we stay in a different place every other day. If you've done such a vacation tour...HELP!

Is Mexico Tipping Toward Prosperity?

While we were in Mexico last week, I was reminded again, first-hand, of the "have" and  "have not countries we tend to take for granted in the United States.
But, wait. Is it accurate to characterize Mexico as a "have not" country? The disparity of wage-earning opportunity between the United States and Mexico is always cited as the reason for the stream of immigrants—legal and undocumented—across our southern border.

Turns out, the country has some valuable natural resources, most of them below the soil. The country's semi-arid climate, its lack of rainfall, and its limited amounts of fertile land have made large-scale agriculture difficult. Only about 13% of Mexico's land is cultivated. Approximately one-fourth of the country is covered by forests, giving Mexico some of the world's largest remaining forest reserves, despite high levels of deforestation. Most of these forests are found in the Sierra Madre range, which runs north to south in the Pacific Ocean side of Mexico. The rainy, tropical region of the Yucatan Peninsula and the Chiapas Highlands, in southern Mexico, has both pine and oak.

Monarch butterflies enjoy the warmth near their overwintering colony in Michoacan, Mexico.

Monarch butterflies return year after year to the same swath of forest in central Mexico, to pass the cool winter months clustered together on evergreen trees.
Mexico also has large deposits of silver, copper, salt, iron, manganese, sulfur, phosphate, zinc, mercury, gold and gypsum.

And then there's the oil.

Until recently, petroleum was the country's single most valuable mineral resource. For a decade, Mexico was one of the elite oil producers in the world, the fourth largest in the Western Hemisphere behind the United States, Canada and Venezuela.

From 1979 to 2007, Mexico produced most of its oil from the supergiant Cantarell Field, which used to be the second-biggest oil field in the world by production.

And, until last year, the state-owned company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) had exclusive rights over all oil production in Mexico.

But annual production at Cantarell Field had dropped or failed to increase each year since 2004, and Pemex didn't have the financial or technical skill to exploit the remaining deep water reserves on its own.
 
So Pemex opened parcels to bid last December, and the international oil industry responded. Investors have agreed to pay billions of dollars to the Mexican government for rights to drill in the country’s portions of the Gulf of Mexico.

The auctions were the result of Mexico instituting energy reform legislation in 2013 and 2014, which ended the 75-year-old monopoly of Pemex and opened the country to foreign investment for oil exploration, production, pipeline construction and other energy ventures. The effort was viewed as the only way to end years of declining production.

“This is a vote of confidence that the energy reform is moving forward and for the geological potential of the Mexican Gulf deep waters,” said Jorge R. Piñon, former president of Amoco Oil Latin America and now an analyst at the University of Texas at Austin.

The government awarded eight separate blocks of offshore territory to companies including Total of France and Exxon Mobil and Chevron of the United States, which all already have a strong presence in the Gulf of Mexico and can therefore take advantage of existing service crews and pipelines they use in Gulf waters.

The most significant new entry may be by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, which won two blocks in the auction. Cnooc also has a strong presence in Latin America, and could now become a big player in Mexico as well.
The auction provides a rare moment of positive news in a gloomy period for Mexico. The peso has been battered by concern that the administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump will renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is the foundation of Mexico’s manufacturing exports. Mexico is not a member of OPEC.

Across Mexico, entire regions are positioning themselves for what they believe will be a major makeover.

Mexican authorities hope that bringing in foreign energy companies will improve security by offering jobs to people who might otherwise work for the cartels.

“The best way to counterattack organized crime is by generating jobs in areas that are heavily influenced by criminals,” said one former Mexican ambassador.   

Raúl Garcîa, 25, is an example of such a recruit. He said he once worked as a lookout for a cartel in Nuevo Laredo, earning about $200 a week, and thought of taking work as a hitman to double his pay. Then he heard of the Eagle Ford oil in south Texas. Now he earns about $1,000 a week as an oil field worker and shares a room with four buddies in a “man camp.” He sends much of his earnings to his wife and two boys back in Mexico.
“I hope someday I can go back and share my expertise,” he said. “That’s my dream.”

When it comes to illegal immigration, it seems clear that people from Mexico and Central America will continue to cross the border into the United States until the economies in their own homelands can provide them with employment that compensates them sufficiently to feed their families, and educate their children.

Thousands of miles of fencing will not change either of these facts.

Deportation does not work, either, they just come back. University of California at San Diego immigration expert Wayne Cornelius knows both tactics are futile. His recent study indicates that 97% of the people who try to cross the border eventually succeed, despite all the obstacles. “If they don’t succeed on the first try, they almost certainly will succeed on the second or the third try,” says Cornelius.

“Unless you can stop poverty or hunger, it will never stop, because people will always want to help their families. Doesn’t matter how tall the wall is, they will just dig a hole then."

The money sent back to Mexico by Mexicans living in the U.S. topped $26 billion in 2016.  In 2015, those remittances totaled 2.3 percent of the country’s GDP.

In fact, Forbes reports that the money sent from the U.S. to Mexico by migrants, “replaced oil revenues as Mexico’s number one source of foreign income” in late 2015.

Will an infusion of new money into Mexico's flagging oil industry be enough to improve life for the average family in Mexico? And, if the standard of living does improve, will it improve enough to slow the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States? 

The next few years will tell. In the meantime, I hope President Trump and his advisors will look carefully at our neighbors to the south, and not let knee-jerk decisions upset the delicate balance from potential improvement to total chaos.
 

Wedding Blessings

I just got back from a destination wedding in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

The couple gathered with friends, relatives and extended family—people from all the important times in their lives to date--and declared their commitment to each other. Against a beautiful backdrop of azure blue water and white sand, they stood barefoot and promised, "For all time."

The hubs and I have been friends of the groom and his family since he attended grade school with my son, so there was a lot of reminiscing and "remember when…?" teasing mixed in with the hugs and well-wishes.

I also had an opportunity to study the faces in attendance. Some married for 25 years. Some divorced and brought uneasily back together for the occasion. (You did it with grace, by the way!) Some with new families. And, because the bride and groom are young, there were several unmarried couples.

But somehow, in all the conversation, I neglected to give the newlyweds a blessing. So here, Ian and Marissa (with one "R") are my heartfelt wishes for you both.

Think of your marriage as your Tree of Life.

It is anchored, deeply rooted to the community of friends who witnessed the joining of your lives.

May you both branch out to form new friends, and intertwine them into your relationship as a couple, weaving new alliances.

May those friends cause new interests to bud, and your respective talents to grow.

I invoke the Goddess of Life, by these roots, branches, and buds, and I ask her to continually seed your love to create love anew.

Blessed Be.  

Beltane: Celebrating Sexuality

There are two high sabbats within the annual cycle of Witch's celebrations. The first is Samhain, on October 31, marked by somber rites of death and return. Then, directly across the Wheel of the Year is Beltane, on May 1.

Beltane is the sweet yang to Hallows' dark yin—a joyous celebration of life and sexuality. Lots of lovers and weddings. I even find the butterflies flitting our backyard garden, locked in coitus. Mother Nature is regenerating her children, and everything is horny.

The followers of the Old Religion met on mountaintops and danced the spiral dance on the night before, called Walpurgis Night. The ancients believed that the earth appreciated the sexual energy expended in her open fields, that it stimulated the fertility of the crops and animals. Babies that resulted from these parties were called sons and daughters of Pan, or Cernunnos, since all men represented him.
I wish we were going to Scotland a month sooner, so we could attend the annual Beltane Fire Festival on Carlton Hill in Edinburgh (shown here). It claims to be the biggest Beltane festival in the world.
Here at home, we make flower caplets for our heads and dance around the Maypole. One year I hosted a back-yard concert for my friend Wendy Rule, and she and her husband Tim danced with us.

If you want to attract Beltane love into your life, here's an attracting oil recipe.
Love Oil
Mix one ounce Almond oil or vegetable glycerin with the following essential oils:
4 drops rose3 drops apple2 drops jasmine1 drop lavender
Apply the finished blend to your heart chakra and to the chakra area just above the genitals to attract love.