KRISTOFFERSON KIND OF MORNING

I know lyrics and melody to so many songs there is no situation or  experience that a good hook line doesn’t pop into my mind when the feeling comes along. Right now it’s Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down - “ . . . with songs that I’d been pickin’ - watched a kid, cussin’ at a can that he’d been kickin’.’” It is Sunday morning. I don’t have a hangover and I’m not alone on the sidewalks but there is sort of a Kristofferson feel to the new day. My great challenge this morning is fending off the Casita kittens, Mas & Menos. One is on my lap keeping warm while the other is pawing at my fingers moving on the keyboard. This life is really just one crisis after another. With 5 new volunteers at turtle camp there isn’t much for us to do there today. Maybe we’ll hang around the casita late, get everything back into suit cases and prep for an early morning departure tomorrow. I have an appointment in the morning at a resort hotel in Cabo San Lucas. They give us free breakfast buffet, pool time and reduced rate on a whale watching tour in exchange for a time-share sales pitch. Don’t hold your breath! I am obligated to listen and be nice but if it goes “High Pressure - Hard Sell” I might say, “How are you different than the guy on the street selling trinkets? You want me to spend money I don’t have on something I neither want nor need?” Now there are two cats in my lap. 

I have a new appreciation for nonprofit organizations. What comes home with compelling clarity is, if someone could make a profit at it, no need for the nonprofit. They differ largely by size and the ability to raise money. Las Playitas is small, a part time enterprise by an expat American who is raising her kids, being pulled in all directions. Volunteers get free lodging in a rickety old compound. That is to meet nonprofit requirements but we donate a large contribution to the cause to get around the rule; much more than it costs to keep us. I have no problem with that. I pay a lot of money so I can work for no pay. Not many conservatives volunteering here. 

Church bells are starting up. La Iglacia (Church) is up one block from Hotel California. It’s old school, very traditional, Latin American Catholic with pastel walls, stain glass windows, statuary and uncomfortable pews. Nobody falls asleep during the homily. Mass in Spanish with a simultaneous English translation for scripture readings. I like the bells best. 

“In a park I saw a daddy,

with a laughing little girl who he was swingin.

And I stopped beside a Sunday school,

and listened to the song that they were singin.

Then I headed back for home,

and somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.