On You Tube, I saw a video about people from the United States and Great Britain who have moved to Mexico and formed what the reporter called "an expat community."
("Expat" is short for the word expatriate, which means a person who lives outside their native country. I first heard of the word expatriate when I was in college, reading a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the 1920s, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and other writers and artists left America to live and work in Paris, France, for a while.
They traveled around Europe too, I think, but Paris was sort of their home base. That was right after World War I. Although they didn't call it World War One then, because no one knew there would be another world war in 20 years. I think they called the first one The Great War. Not "great" as in fabulous, but "great" as in huge and terrible.)
If I remember correctly the Fitzgerald biography I was reading was The Far Side of Paradise, by Arthur Mizener. The title played off of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald's first novel, published in 1920. One of the other students in the dormitory asked me which class I was reading the Mizener book for; it wasn't for any of my classes, I was just reading it. It was kind of like in the summer after, I think, sixth grade, my family took vacation time at a cottage by Lake Erie.
And I was typing out a mystery book that I wrote, using my dad's Smith Corona manual typewriter, "hunting & pecking" with two fingers.
My cousin Eddie and one of his friends were there one day, and the friend asked me if I was writing the book for school. And I had to answer No, I was just writing it. He thought I was a little crazy to do homework that wasn't assigned, in the summertime. He didn't say I was crazy, but I picked up a feeling that that's what he was thinking. (Maybe it was the way he slowly backed out of the room -- LOL, not really...)
Anyway, the "expats" who live in this one community in Mexico were interviewed on this You Tube video -- they say they like living there because it's more peaceful and friendly, and there's more of a positive attitude than in the U.S. (And the British people say the same thing, comparing it to their countries of origin.)
One American guy said, "Every time we go back to the United States to visit, there's another shooting."
They showed some people doing some local entertainment -- an audience watching children onstage singing a song from The Sound of Music. They talked about the food -- lots of locally grown organic vegetables and fruits. It showed someone cooking outdoors, laying out banana slices on top of a tortilla or something....
A couple of different people interviewed in the film remarked that in Mexico the highest value is "Family." I picked up on that, because a friend of mine who used to be in the state legislature back in the '80s recently made an observation about the Hispanic population which our town now has, and did not have in the past. He said, "One thing I notice with those people, they are very big on family."
^^ Reading one serious news article per day. Since I recommended that for other people, thought must do so myself. Last week I was reading my Serious Article -- a story in the New York Times about false information being spread over the Internet (Facebook and Twitter), to try to influence our upcoming election.
It was not a very long article, and it was interesting, but partway through I wanted to check this Cat Blog I like. I wanted to see and be delighted by the beautiful kitties.
The news article was not delighting me.
But then I remembered the advice I typed for other people, here on this blog, and said to myself, No, I can look at the cat blog later. First, serious news story. Salad before sherbet.
Today I selected a serious news story and read it. It was B.S.! Some guy who left his job at Instagram -- the headline implied that something was amiss at Instagram/Facebook, and that's why he left, but then he skirted around that topic in the article. No real information. (Well -- a hint, and then you just had to guess. [Don't tell me Mr. Zuckerberg is a jerk...!?]) All bun and no hamburger. That was on CNBC News.
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