ABBA House is a shelter for Central American migrants located in Celaya, in the Mexican State of Guanajuato. It is one of 57 such shelters in Mexico. It has been in existence for five years, and provided food and shelter for 25,000 people during that time.

ABBA House serves both migrants in transit and long-tern residents. Migrants usually stay for three days, then move on to the next shelter. They get a roof over their head, meals, and hot showers. When they leave, they are given a two-day supply of food. At this time, most of the transients are coming from Honduras; the rest come from Guatemala and El Salvador.

Residents are refugees who have some sort of disability which requires long-term support. Many of these residents are amputees, the result of freight train accidents. One such amputee is Alan, from the Department of Cortés, Honduras. He has a wife and two daughters. He is 51 years old, and has been at ABBA House for nearly a year. He had a very serious injury due to a fall from a freight train, and his right leg was amputated below the knee. He doesn't remember any of the details of the fall; he was found by the Red Cross, and he was fortunate that they got him to a hospital in time to save his life. This injury was not healing well, and after a number of consultations, the decision was made two months ago to do a second amputation above the knee. Now it is healing very well, and he will be in rehab within the next two months. He speaks English, and is popular among the volunteers. He has a good sense of humour, loves to play cards and do jigsaw puzzles. Because he is the oldest resident, and has been there for a long time, the other residents look up to him. He regrets being unable to help support his younger daughter because of his injury.

The word "mansplain" is one of those English-language fads that I hoped would quickly go away. It's hasn't, and there seem to be some people fueling it. So, I will "lesbi-splain" why this is something that is wrong, and should be opposed.

It recently came up in a Facebook dustup. Someone posted a comment about the debate between Vice-Presidential candidates Sen. Kamala Harris and current VP Mike Pence. It ended with saying that Sen. Harris is "an amazing role-model for all the women who are tired of being talked over, or 'man-splained'."

There's a lot wrong with this. It starts with, I am a big fan of Sen. Harris, and am even a member of the @TheKHive on Twitter. Even if this were not the case, as a male human being, I object to being put in the same category as Mike Pence, for any reason.

Over the past 15 years or so, my taste in reading has gravitated heavily toward biographies, and one significant sub-genre of them has been musicians. I’ve read a lot of good ones, so I’m going to share my observations with you.

I’m putting Life, by Keith Richards, at the top of this list. It covers a huge amount of territory. Like several other books included here, there’s the post-World War II impoverished childhood, the discovery and fascination with 1950’s US blues artists, and the Rolling Stones circus, which includes the self-destruction of Brian Jones and relationships with Anita Pallenberg. Later comes his close brush with imprisonment in Toronto, and a nasty confrontation with Donald Trump. (Yes, you read that right.) After that, there’s a chapter about his own band, the X-Pensive Winos. (If you haven’t listened to Keith’s two solo albums, do so; they are excellent.)

The great thing, though, it it’s primarily about the music. In particular, if you’re a guitarist, you’ll enjoy the part about the 5-string open G tuning that he has used for a very long time. When he started doing his solo albums and touring with the X-Pensive Winos, he worked, at an advanced age, to improve his singing.

Next, a two-volume biography of Elvis, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, by Peter Guralnick. The first one covers up to his departure for Germany in 1958, during his Army service, and the second one covers the rest of his life.

You may ask, “is Elvis’ life story worth reading 1,400 pages?” Well, this about one of the biggest worldwide cultural icons of the 20^th century, and I say “yes”. I certainly didn’t think it was boring. I learned from it that white gospel music, which his mother loved, was a major influence. That he had a three-octave vocal range. That he took his craft very seriously, often working on a song for months to get it to sound the way he wanted. That Tom Parker was a huge negative creative influence. (Forget this “Colonel” crap; he never was a colonel in any army.)

One big surprise for me was, his heavy amphetamine use started in the Army. Had more people known this, his death at the age of 42 would not have been a shock. Indeed, the small circle of people who knew what was going on thought he could have died a couple of years earlier; Parker made an effort to sell his contract.

Radio is important in rural and less affluent areas of Mexico. A lot of people don't have computers, smart phones (a lot of areas don't have 4G coverage), or televisions. Mexico doesn't have any equivalent of CBC or NPR; the closest thing to it are some university stations. Community radio stations are a new idea, and their numbers are increasing.

There's an alternative form of radio that's been around for 40 years. Mexico's National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (Instituto Nacional Indigenista, or INI) created 21 radio stations, which broadcast in 31 indigenous languages. They are mostly AM and daytime-only. Six of them broadcast in Nahuatl, Mexico's most common indigenous language, spoken by 1.7 million people. Three of them broadcast in Yucatec Maya, spoken by 800,000 people.

Purépecha, spoken by 124,000 people, is way down the list. It is spoken in the highlands of the State of Michoacán, an area which includes Pátzcuaro, Uruapan, and Zamora. Their radio voice is XEPUR, "The Voice of the Purépecha", located in Cherán.

I first heard of the Parícutin volcano when I was in elementary school, somewhere around 1960. There was a story about it in one of the weekly news magazines handed out to students. The way the story went was, in 1943, this Mexican farmer went out into his corn field, and smoke started to come out of the ground. The result was a brand new volcano, the only one on this planet that scientists have been able to study starting with the initial eruption.

Like most children my age, I didn't have much of a concept of Mexico, let alone the State of Michoacán. Michoacán is known primarily for the cities of Morelia and Pátzcuaro, monarch butterfly reserves, and narco violence. So, Parícutin wasn't something I was conscious of until I made my first visit to Pátzcuaro and nearby Uruapan in late 2017.

Parícutin last erupted in 1952. It is officially classified as dormant, but contrary to what some local people will tell you, the ground is warm, and steam emissions can be seen.

An announcement came out on June 12, 2019 that an agreement had been made between the governments of the United States and Ecuador that would allow the US military to extend the runway of the airport on San Cristóbal Island, then use it as a base for AWACS surveillance planes, specifically the Lockheed AP-C3 Orion and the Boeing E-3 Sentry (derived from the 707).

San Cristóbal Island is the easternmost of the Galapagos Islands, and is the second-most populous, with 5,600 people. Like all of the Galapagos Islands, it has a huge population of sea lions, birds, marine iguanas, and tortoises. The airport is one of three in the Galapagos Islands; the other two are Baltra and Puerto Villamil. There are commercial flights to the San Cristóbal airport from Quito, Guayaquil, and Baltra. The runway is 1,900 meters (6,230 feet) long.

The entire Galapagos Islands are an Ecuadorean national park and marine reserve, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO has previously expressed concerns about the impact of human activity on San Cristóbal, at the airport in particular. Any expansion of this airport will reduce wildlife habitat, and any increase in air traffic will damage the bird population. Long story short, this is one of the most ecologically sensitive areas on this planet.

The stated purpose of the AWACS planes is "the fight against narco traffic".

I first heard the term "Americana music" about four years ago, and it's convenient, because it includes a lot of music I like: folk rock, folk, bluegrass, outlaw country, and Grateful Dead.

When I was first exposed to The Kennedys, I thought of them as a folk rock group, and specifically, a successor to The Byrds, a band that I liked a lot in my youth, and still do. However, "Americana music" appears quite a few times in this book, and during Pete Kennedy's long musical career, he has been in the thick of it. The long list of people he has worked or jammed with includes Emmylou Harris, Chet Atkins, David Bromberg, Charlie Byrd, Roger McGuinn, Dave Carter, Steve Earle, Danny Gatton, Doc Watson, Tom Paxton, and Eric Andersen.

I think that the most important lesson in this book is just how much hard work it takes to be a professional musician like Pete. In addition to the long hours of practice and jamming, he took lessons from Joe Pass and Johnny Smith.

If you've heard the phrase, "life begins at 40", that is about how old he was when he went on his first full-scale tour, with Mary Chapin Carpenter's band. That led to another gig with Nanci Griffith's band, the Blue Moon Orchestra, and ultimately meeting his wife, band mate, and songwriting partner Maura Kennedy.

I'm going to pass along two anecdotes from this book that I especially liked. When he was a teenager, his garage band chipped in and bought a copy of "Are You Experienced?", Jimi Hendrix' first album. After listening to it, they concluded, "this is what we're going to sound like from now on." The drummer said that he was going to have to quit, because he felt that there was no way that he would ever play that well. The rest of the band talked him out of it.