A number of professional international and political analysts have examined Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) President Enrique Peña Nieto’s proposed new policies and found some illuminating but others unpromising.  Their assessments are not couched in the sharp rhetoric that many (both Mexicans and those abroad) believe the new administration’s campaign-tainted maneuvering merits.

During the holidays, many folks looked back, examining what last year meant. Being perched on a rural foothill of a mountain facing the rain and the winds of December and early January, the new year prompted a look back on warmer times.  And to experiences further back chronologically.

“Caray, that’s a good one.”  Paco Ruiz Gonzales grinned as he squinted into the slip of early morning light.  It was a couple of days before a mountain Christmas cold enough to show your breath.  We turned to face a slice of the red disc growing above the distant southeastern horizon.  It was a chill morning, but as soon as the sun crested the far Michoacan peaks, it began to change.

“The book of books” is a newly re-discovered monicker for the Bible.  A lit instructor, in the early 1950s, a gaunt, knowing World War II vet, enthusiastically parsing John Steinbeck’s  rightfully famed “Grapes of Wrath” for a class of unread, if eager students, used the term referring to the King James Bible.