Category: the globe

Guest Blogging

Hi! Today we’re going to mix it up a bit. You’ll find my Friday post over on a wonderful blog called Into The Bardo.

This blog is a collaborative effort of three friends who all face serious health conditions. They created this blog to provide a forum to explore a variety of topics with talent, humor and verve. Post authors include the three main editors, their family and friends and include a number of notable poets and writers.

I was honored to be asked to contribute an essay for their “Perspectives on Cancer” series. I wrote a piece about my paternal grandmother.

Writing this essay has proven to be a magical experience for me. I’m very close to an Aunt on my dad’s side, and I sent her an early editorial layout of the piece as I very much wanted her approval before publishing. She not only approved, but sent it out to many of my cousins, some of whom I’ve only met once or twice.

I’m getting email from around the world to discuss this piece and our grandparents and the connection to my extensive family has touched me very deeply.

So please, give me a click today and go read my piece:

The Divining Trunk

Thanks much, and happy weekend to us all!



That’s my grandma and me in 1976.

Photo from the family archives and Copyright Karen Fayeth, 2011


There’s Good News and there’s Worrisome News

From the Monday Las Cruces Sun-News:

New Mexico’s pecan industry posted its largest-ever production for a low-bearing year and raked in the most money – some $186.8 million – in the nation last year, according to a recent official report.

That’s good news! That’s very good news! For my farmer friends who haven’t either sold their farm or converted to corn, pecans are an excellent way to keep the land and make good income. It’s a proud New Mexico tradition.

In the past few years, China has developed a taste for pecans, so global demand is high, which also means the prices paid the highest ever.

So yes. I’m happy to hear this. A tip of the cap to the Mesilla Valley farmers.

But there’s a little bit more to the story than just a fabulous year with a bumper crop.

Earlier this year, I was in Las Cruces and noted to my best friend and her husband that I was surprised to see so many farms around where they live were planting pecan trees. I’m enchanted by pecan groves with rows and rows of tree soldiers standing firm in very straight lines. I’m fascinated by the process of picking pecans using a machine that shakes the tree and a raker to pull all the ripe nuts out of the soil.

So I wasn’t too upset to see new pecan groves going in. That’s when my best friend’s husband gave me a little insight.

The word is: Water.

Southern New Mexico land owners are fighting with their local water district and the state for irrigation rights. My friend used to be able to order up water and flood his acre with regularity. Now he has to wait and sometimes isn’t allowed to get water. To top it off, his costs for irrigating have nearly tripled.

But, he told me, there’s a loop hole. If you have pecans on your land, you have better access to water rights due to a court case and adjudication between the New Mexico Pecan Growers Associationand the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. So everybody and their brother are rushing to plant even a few pecan trees so that they can continue to irrigate their land. There was a rush on pecan saplings, in fact, they actually ran out in many stores.

But this is a convoluted story…because pecan trees are water hogs. By encouraging people to plant more pecans, they are using up ever more of the already precious resource.

So we’ve got all of these people with pecans on their land. Even a few trees can produce a lot of pecans. It’s pretty easy to pick your own pecans and sell them in town (mostly to the Salopek operation) and pick up a few extra dollars. Plus you still irrigate your land. All in all, that’s a pretty good deal.

So again…I’m happy about the fact that the Mesilla Valley had a banner year and that farmers are making money on pecan and people are still able to access water for irrigation.

But I’m worried.

Here’s an older post in my ongoing musings about Southern New Mexico and water.




Photo Credit: Robin Zielinski/Sun-News



The Fish Of The Babbling

About a month ago, much to my dismay, my very valued and crucial employee handling business in the Latin American region offered her resignation. She’d found a job at another company where she could make a lot more money. She’s a great employee and it was a super opportunity for her career.

In her absence, I’m recruiting for the role, but that always takes a very long time. So while I search for a suitable replacement, I’m also doing the job. This means now I get a LOT of emails in both Spanish and Portugese. BabelFish and Google Translate have become my closest work friends.

But you know that old saying “something is lost in translation”?

Yup. Since I have a weird sense of humor, I’m actually enjoying sorting out what these oddball translated phrases actually mean.

Here are a few of the greatest hits I’ve seen over the past two weeks:

“The gentility has requested immediate attention to this request”


Um. The gentility? Really? What is this, an Oscar Wilde novel?

This was translated from Portuguese and I’ve now seen this same usage of “gentility” crop up a lot. It must simply be how the language handles the notion of management.

Which might also explain this one:

“Waiting on response from God before proceeding”


Whoa! God? It might be awhile to get an answer from that guy. I bet he’s way behind on his email. Maybe he has an assistant we can call?

I believe this implies approval from the very top officer of the company. Now that’s an honorific!

Or, it’s better explained by:

“On taking drugs the equipment in this situation?”


Ah. That’s it. My computer is on drugs. Yup. And waiting for God to respond in a genteel way.

We never did actually figure this one out. Someone on my team thinks this is a question about how are you using the equipment…and perhaps that term “using” which can mean taking drugs, got confused in the context.

Maybe.

But when it comes to equipment, there is also this advice:

“To remember when arriving at the visited country, extinguishing and to ignite the equipment”


And also please remember to extinguish fully before reigniting. Because reigniting an already ignited device might equal “ouch”.

Especially if you:

“Reset in the heat of the moment”


Best to wait for the heat to pass before resetting or even reigniting.

And by far, my favorite closing sentiment:

“Thanks so much already”


You’re welcome by now.






Image by Jakub Krechowicz and used royalty free from stock.xchng.

Rasty Feline – Come here – I want to see you.

Back in 1876 I would imagine that Mr. Bell had no idea how his invention might take unify the world.

I appreciate that telephones and long distance dialing are nothing new, and yet I can still find ways to be amazed.

Since my job is global, I’m often up early in the morning to take conference calls. No matter what time of the dark night I rise, The Feline is always certain that it’s time to be fed.

It doesn’t matter if it’s actually her feeding time. She’s awake. I’m awake. Food. Now.

I usually ignore her until the clock spins around to the right feeding time, but this does not sit well with The Feline. Which means she rather vocally lets me (and The Good Man. And the neighbors) know just what’s on her mind.

I usually keep my phone on mute and I close the door to my home office to keep her out, but that does not deter the persistent one. She’ll get her snout into the gap under the door and let the vocalizations rip.

Through the magic of telephonic technology, my crabby Feline has been heard around the world. London, Singapore, Sydney, Mumbai, São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Argentina, Columbia, Sweden, France, Ireland, and more have all heard her pleas.

Two weeks ago, I was on a call with at least six vice presidents and executive vice presidents of my company. I fed the Feline early to pipe her down. I was on mute. I said very little. I made sure she was far away from this call.

Little did I know…

The second I went off mute to give my input to the executive team, The Feline had something to say.

Yes, executives of a multinational company had to hear my damn cat hollering.

Today was a first for The Feline. This morning she was heard in Kenya. Yup, all the way to Nairobi. May all those nice people in central Africa know: “I will not be ignored!!”

*siiiiiigh*

By the way…if it’s seven in the morning and you are stumbling around trying to dial Kenya with a country code of 254 and you forget to dial the 011 first…well, you talk to a really nice lady in Waco, Texas (area code 254) who wants to know why in the heck you are calling her.




Who me?



Photo by Karen Fayeth and taken with the Camera+ app on an iPhone4. Photo subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page.


Which Side of the Pond Are You On?

Yesterday I had to attend an all day meeting with representatives from a fairly large British company. We work very closely with this company, and almost daily I’m on the phone talking to these Brits. I think I’ve spoken about this in quite a few previous posts, but I’m a bit of an Anglophile, so I have a lot of fun with these quirky cats from London.

After our day long business meeting was done, we all went out to a fabulous Italian restaurant in San Francisco to celebrate over good food and good wine.

As we all waded into appetizers and Chianti, the good natured ribbing began all around. The Brit sense of humor works for me and let’s be honest, it’s extraordinarily easy to make fun of the squishy British man.

At one point, I’d brought up a topic which after a long bit of convoluted conversation (you had to be there) landed us on the topic of the Steve Miller Band. Which then caused one especially posh guy (think of a messier and louder Prince William) to start naming off Steve Miller songs.

It went something like this (hear this in a Brit accent as you read):

“Ah, Steve Miller. Yeah, right, Abracadabra, isn’t he? Fly Like an Eagle, sure. And what about Space Cowboy, then? You know, Maurice, wheeet-whoo!”

To which I replied, “So, are you a midnight toker?”

And he took a prim sip of wine and responded “no, I’m a cowboy joker.”

Which caused the rest of the lads to break down in giggles. Then these London boys got down on a riff about cowboys, and how they all fancied themselves to be cowboys.

Well now we’re in my zone, right? I know more than your average person about actual cowboys, so I just sat back in my chair with my own glass of red and stayed quiet while these Brits went off on their version of the American cowboy.

My over active mind started imagining some sort of summit meeting. I imagine my best friend’s back patio for this event. We’d serve good food, and we’d set up a nice long table. Squishy Brit boys sitting down one side, New Mexico cowboys on the other.

Same planet, worlds apart. But not so different, I suspect.

I believe both sides would agree on the importance of beer. They may not agree on the brand, but the concept, hell yes.

They’d both be able to dish up hearty doses of self-effacing humor.

And each would talk with their own particular accent that would make the other say “huh?”

Ay god, what an event that would be. Once everyone got past the awkwardness, I bet it would be one hell of a party.

Or one hell of a fight. Hard to say.

I think I should ring up my best friend and get to work on the party planning.

Or maybe I need to go a little easier on the Chianti next time.





Photo by Raúl Fernández and used royalty free from stock.xchng