By George, What an Honor!

Enough about me! Time to write about George Greenia, one of the very fine people I know in this world. Though after today I shall have to call him "Comendador."

This very day, George X. Greenia of Williamsburg, Virginia USA is going to a posh reception at the Spanish Embassy in Washington D.C., a celebration of the Spanish National Holiday, aka ´Puente de Pilar.´ (The feast day of Our Lady of the Pillar is tomorrow, Friday. Which means it´s a three-day weekend, or ´puente´here in Spain, and probably at the Spanish embassy, too... thus the celebration a day early.)

While there, George will be called up to the front, where the Ambassador will probably kiss him on both his (face) cheeks and put ´round his neck a yellow-and-red ribbon with a nice shiny medal hanging on it... thus naming dear old George a Knight Commander of the American Order of Isabella the Catholic.
The gentleman in the picture is not George, but if you ignore the flowing raven locks and the cunning pantaloons there IS a passing resemblance. He, too, is a Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Fine company indeed for a tipo of George´s caliber.

George is a professor of Spanish at the College of William and Mary, an educational institution in Virginia so eminent it was sung on a hit by Steely Dan years ago. Thomas Jefferson had a hand in the place, and Christopher Wren designed the chapel there, and the Rockefellers spent zillions creating Colonial Williamsburg, a faux capital city on the same place where regular Americans had let all the old original buildings fall down. It´s like a 16th century Disneyland nowadays, so clean and neat and regulated the McDonalds is clad in red brick and the coach horses are not permitted to poop.

George lives there, in a very fine condo just off campus. When he is not chairing academic committees, or overseeing publication of two magazines, lecturing on preterite imperfects, writing up budgets, shmoozing, raising funds, translating 14th century Castilian legal papers, plotting his next hike down the camino with a few lucky students, or scheduling international art exhibits. Or emceeíng some black-tie dinner or making something wonderful for his mother-in-law, who lives next door.

George is an all-rounder. One of his biggest talents, outside all the above, is his attentiveness. No matter how insignificant you are, when he speaks to you, you have all his attention.

We met at a North American pilgrim gathering in Toronto three or four years ago. I told him I´d help with American Pilgrim magazine, the giveaway produced by American Pilgrims on the Camino -- there had only been one edition up til then, and he needed a hand with the editing and writing. I know how to do that, so I volunteered. We hit it off.

And ever since, when George is around it´s a whirl of activity. We went to a very posh reception atop Rockefeller Center a couple of years ago, where we met with an old employer of mine back in my freelance days, the head of the Tourist Office of Spain in New York. We shmoozed the Galician tourist office people, the toffs from Condé Nast, and a gang of other questionable characters from My Former Life. We stayed at a $350 per night hotel up the street, a place that offers a Menu of Pillow Selections, as well as an on-call Pet Psychologist. George paid for the hotel via some grant or other. (Having left our ferrets at home, we could not find a good reason to consult with the pet psychologist, alas!)

George turned that evening´s introductions into a long-term relationship with Spanish tourist authorities... which somehow continue to turn into more grants for more trips and studies and publications on, about, and for Spain and the Camino de Santiago. So everybody´s happy. George X Greenia knows how to hustle!

He´s great in museums, archives, restaurants, and up on cathedral roofs. And at home. George has never been to my house, but when I go to Williamsburg I stay at his. It´s four-star Colonial, but with Indian cuisine. When my house gets civilized, I will put aside a suite (aka "push the dogs off the sofa") for George´s visit. And I´ll have to find space, probably, for the gaggle of W&M students that follow in his wake. Or sometimes a photographer or two. Spain has got a lot of mileage out of George, his students, his talent. They should´ve given him a medal a long time ago.

The Order of Isabella the Catholic was invented about 200 years ago, as a way for Spain to recognize people out in "the colonies" for service to the Mother Country. These days it´s a way to honor a standout academic who specializes in things Spanish. (Miguel Angel Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister and namesake of our town, is also a Knight Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.) (KCOIC). There´s not any money involved, at least not that George is letting on about. I don´t think they have any lodge meetings on Tuesday nights after bowling league... especially not in those shoes with the little bows on!

George X. is enjoying the fuss, but he isn´t taking it too seriously. In his words: "helpful colleagues have correctly pointed out that there's scant difference between "knighted" and "benighted".

Moving Slowly. But moving.

Things are so unsteady around here even the dogs are feeling it. Una´s hiding all her toys and bones in a very dark corner of the house, and hanging out in there with them. I know how she feels, but I rather prefer staying out in the sun long as it´s shining.

The drugs are working, I am feeling a good bit better. We are moving things quite slowly into the new house; last night we slept there for the first time. Once we get the water heater working it´ll be like home, especially when we get some pictures up! Colin and Margaret, our buds from Wales, are stopping by in a couple of weeks, (they´re bringing cheddar cheese, bless their hearts!!) and Libby will probably pop in within a couple of days. We have a fully outfitted kitchen now, and I dug our good heavy cookware out of the barn. So we can roast and bake and friccassee if we wanna, and we WILL!

It´s cool having the pilgrims all around, right outside the door. Last night, just before bed, we nipped into the Irish Pub around the corner. We said hi to several pilgs, but got the best welcome from Kike and Javi. Kike is a Moratinos native who drives trucks for the building supply company. He was one of the orujo singers/dancers we enjoyed so much during the Fiesta. (While in his cups he offered to visit Mario Bozo with a pistola! Don´t worry, he told us. It´s so old they don´t make the bullets any more.) Kike´s not a pretty man...he´s missing some teeth, which kinda makes him look like a cathedral waterspout. But in a sweet way.
Javi (I think that is his name!) is the guy who sold us our chainsaw. He came over and said "welcome to the neighborhood," (apparently word has gotten around) and said he lives right over the road. If we need anything, just shout, he said. Nice. He could be the gargoyle opposite Kike, as he´s got as many extra teeth as Kike has missing. Makes me wonder.

Paddy said in all his days he´s never lived so near a pub. Still, the two of us are downright abstemious these days. For whatever reason.

Anyway, Patrick´s son Matt lives in Spain too, way down south on the beach near Malaga. He is bilingual, and Paddy´s bailed him out of several scrapes in the past. He now is stepping up to help us out, running interference with lawyers, etc. He told us yesterday that Paco Rojo, our shiny new lawyer from Palencia, phoned up Mario Bozo yesterday and actually got an answer. A familiar answer: "I´m starting work in Moratinos again on Monday."

I don´t know what all was said, but I hope it included "You´d better start working before November, or we´re coming after everything you own, pal."

Not very Compassionate, I know. But someone´s gotta stop this bugger. Or start him up. Vamos a ver.

I will post some photos of the new place ASAP. The internet connection is in Moratinos, and the new place is 9 km. away. Maybe I´ll take the computer in and see if I can roach a wifi signal somewhere... or maybe I will try to enjoy life without email and blogs and monumental time-wasting programs for a while.

I must stay sharp. I must not lose my ability to waste time manually, the old-fashioned way.

Causes & Effects

So now we have a lawyer, a consumer specialist guy called Francisco Rojo. Call him "Paco." Paco the Red. He doesn´t hold out much hope for getting our money back or getting the house finished, but he´ll take us on a 10% contingency. We should know by the end of the month if Mario really ever means to come back and finish our house. Then we can start all over again with the project! What fun!

We have the new apartment too. We need to move things in there, but it´s three floors up. I had an asthma event this morning, the first one I´ve had since we came here. I went and refilled my old asthma medicine prescriptions. 120 Euros! Holy moley! I should´ve just kept wheezing! (still a darn sight less than I´d pay retail in USA, where I was really dependent on daily doses of heavy-duty steroids and anti-inflammation drugs.)

This afternoon, since we were in Palencia anyway to meet the lawyer, I popped ´round to the only medical clinic that will take my insurance. Good thing I did -- My right lung´s all watery. A bit too close to pneumonia for comfort. Antibiotics. Another 35 Euros.

Because I think he is behind all the allergy and lung business, Tim the new dog can´t come inside anymore. Tim doesn´t seem to mind so much, but Paddy is pouting, saying we should´ve just given him back to his old owner when we had the chance.

There´s always tomorrow. So.

Maybe I will not go to Leon tomorrow to sign up for another course of Spanish. If I feel up to it I will move the essentials over to the new place, and get the gasoil man to come and fill up the furnace tank (an operation involving a hose full of diesel fuel extended up three storeys through the balcony doors and into the kitchen). I´m a bit too wheezy to carry boxes up the stairs, at least for now. And tomorrow the electricians say they are coming, (really, honest this time!) So is the new washing machine... someone´s got to stay here and wait for them all to roll in. Paddy will. He doesn´t like the house any more, but he´s loath to leave it.

Other than that, the weather was beautiful. The newly sown rye is coming up and turning all the fields green once more, a striking bright lime green. Where I come from, August and September are deep green months, where every plant is gone wild with summer. Here, after the wheat is cut in late July, the whole world is shades of brown. It takes til October for the fields to put on their green again, and they stay green all the way through to the end of June! Yippee. I like it better this way.

Our 82-year-old guide to high-altitude real estate

The sun is out today again, after a gloomy, foggy morning. Today we found, I think, our backup apartment in Sahagún. It is small enough, and bright enough, (when I imagined it without the gloom) and looks out over the old San Juan church and the big municipal pilgrim hostel and the Irish pub that´s never heard of St. Patrick´s Day. There are lots of places to park, and an extra bedroom for Libby and/or guests, and the furniture and pictures are much less shocking than the other places we´ve looked at. (It´s not like we´d have to keep the pictures on show. One thing I will enjoy very much is putting up some of our own artwork. All of ours is, of course, in the most exquisite taste.)

Finding it was a trip. On Friday we met up with Paca Luna in her little stationery store on Calle Constitución. She had things all lined up. She tied her scarf around her neck, zipped up her cardigan, tucked her hand into my elbow and rocketed us out the door.

First it was Plaza Santa Cruz, to the third-floor apartment where Elyn lived lo those many years ago. Nice, clean, quiet, near the plaza and to-the-point, with the tie-dye hippy landlady right next door.

Next we went into Calle Flora Florez, a cobbled street in the heart of the oldest part of downtown, to another top-floor apartment above the notary office. This place was HUGE, four giant melon-colored bedrooms with armoires, a long, skinny terrace for hanging out laundry, marble floors, even a safe hidden in the wall. The lemon-yellow salon looked out over the roofs of the town. Nice, but for the Froot-Loop color scheme... and how could we heat the place?

We stepped out onto the street, and Paca indicated the nicely renovated old building adjacent. She pulled us close to hear her whisper. "It´s one of the oldest buildings in town, and really nice inside. When I was a girl I cleaned there. The basement has all these little individual rooms, really curious... Then I learned this is where the Dominicans were. The Inquisitors. The little rooms were where the heretics stayed before..." She opened her eyes wide and slid her fingertips across her throat. "Madre mia."

We walked on, with Paca singing out greetings to all and sundry. "Guapo!" she said. "Adios, chiquitín!" A lot of people knew what she was doing already. One couple stopped to say they have a little house for rent. Their old dad lived there ´til he died last spring. But they´re doing it over. It won´t be ready til November, or maybe January. We headed back to the shop, where another lady, her eyes done up like Liz Taylor in "Cleopatra," told us not to decide ´til we saw her latest offering, a "piso moderno, monissimo, y llena de luz! Preciosa!"

And so we went again today at noon, fighting the market day crowd, and saw it. It´s tip-top. Literally. At the top of the town, on the Moratinos side of Sahagún, and at the top of the building. In Europe, the third floor means a four-storey climb, as the ground floor counts as zero. It seems every apartment for rent in Sahagún is high-altitude, but most don´t require you to carry your heating fuel up the steps. (Paca pointed out there´s a doctor living next door, in case the steps prove too much some day.)

Paca is in her 80s. She nipped up and down all those streets and steps like a trooper, her hands trembling just a little on the bannisters. She will tolerate no coddling. "I walk all the way to the Virgin de la Puente every day. This is nothing," she said.

We haven´t signed anything, and of course all of the landladies told the same story of "don´t wait long, there´s a girl I just showed this to and she´s just dying to rent it." Yeeah. They learn that at International Landlord School, I think.

In other news, the vet in Sahagún, using the detector wand normally reserved for leaping sheep, found an ID microchip in Tim the Dog. I thought Paddy was going to cry. We asked Juli to call the owner, a man in a town a good 35 km. from here. He doesn´t want the dog, he said, he has two others. And in his former life, Tim´s name was Toby. How we get our name on the microchip seems like another mystery worthy of the Templars.

Libby´s made it to Burgos, and this evening was on her way to dinner with David, a fellow pilgrim from England. Crikey. Gotta watch out for them Limeys, Lib!

Oh yes... just after I wrote the last Blog entry announcing the imminent arrival of an electrical appliance, the house went dark and a smoky smell crept through the despensa. Bloody wiring. We got it working again, but only just. We went to the electrician, who said "Ooh, sounds dangerous! We´ll be there Saturday, sometime after 4." So here we are, 5:30 Saturday, with all of eternity stretching out before us... but no matter when they come, it will be after 4 on Saturday. Cool! Existential electricians!

I love this country. I truly do. I will keep my mind on the bookshelves I saw in the apartment... a dry, warm place to keep books, where I am not responsible for the state of the roof. (Just how I will get my 16 tons of books up all those stairs is another question.)

The Promised Land

The sun is out, at least for a while. Paddy´s cutting up vegetables for soup, making the air sting with onion.
I took the dogs walking this morning to The Promised Land.

I may have written before about The Promised Land. It´s a great miles-wide khaki-colored swath of fields and vineyards on the other side of our two highways. It´s only a few hundred meters from our house, but it feels like another country altogether. There aren´t many roads. The only towns are miles away, and all you can see are the church towers. Sometimes there´s a tractor, but no people, ever. No telephone poles, no buildings, no lights or phones or cars. And no pilgrims at all. It is easy to see the landscape there in abstract -- the longer I live in Spain, the easier it is to see why Surrealism took root here. The landscape is full of abstraction.

It´s lonely and wild. The roads are made of powder-fine dust, soft underfoot when it´s dry and goodgy when it´s muddy, and all speckled with the tracks of animals. There are definitely foxes and least weasels, mice and raptors, prey and predators. Here and there are little patches of bones, fur, and feathers where The Circle Of Life closed down on someone. The neighbors say there´s a flock of Avutarda living over there, a rare turkey-like bird. And wolves. This is the side of the highway with the mountains in plain sight. Sometimes people even see full-size weasels here, and deer -- mountain critters, come down to the plain.

The dogs took great delight in flushing flocks of quail from the hedgerows. Una leapt into the air and pirhouetted and yipped with delight, and Tim ran back and forth as if asking them to do that explosion thing again. They both got horribly dirty. It was a nice workout for all of us, a good four-mile hike for me and a complete full-body workout for them.

Paddy and I talked about roofs, getting a roofer in here before winter to re-do the chicken hut and the barns. It´s so hard to know whether to go forward with other things, or wait til the legal situation works out with the main house... Waiting does not seem to bother him. It makes me crazy, just sitting still while the water pours in and soaks the adobe and the timbers.

Speaking of which... I opened up the big suitcase full of winter woollens, the one that took the downpour earlier this week. The news isn´t bad as I thought. For some reason I´d put my big winter ski coat in there first, and put all the delicate things in after, and zipped up the coat around them. Glory be, I did something right! The coat is damp and musty, but the things inside seem just fine. We have a strange assortment of things hanging on the clothesline now.

Our new laundry machine will arrive on Tuesday. We bought this uniquely European appliance yesterday: a combination washer and dryer. We probably did not shop around enough, but both Paddy and I found the shopping experience excruciating. We are turning into hermits, without a doubt. We already live in a cave and speak in monosyllables. The only real obstacles are our fondness for museums, blogging, books, and international cuisine.


Even as our house project has stalled, our neighbors Marianne and James are scurrying on theirs. She is Irish, he is English, they met three years ago on the Camino They are the original Moratinos foreign pioneers, they came here and bought a ruined farm compound right at the point where the camino enters the town. They want to have an albergue, (an overnight refuge for pilgrims), but have run into innumberable obstacles on their way... including familiar tropes like disappearing builders, materializing cracks and leaks, high ideals and long winters... even the proprietor of the pilgrim hostel in San Nicolas, who´s harrassed them with legal complaints to slow their progress and keep all the pilgrim business for himself. They have two completely lovely toddlers named Poppy and Finn. They live in a rented piso in a town 20 km. away, so they don´t get to integrate into Moratinos like we can. Still, they keep coming back, making periodic progress on a very daunting task.

James is especially charming, and the house project, using old-fashioned adobe and appealing colors and imaginative arches and brickwork, draws pilgrims like honey. They sometimes volunteer to lend a hand, and you never know who you might see out in the yard, scrubbing old tiles or flinging adobe cob up on the walls. (that´s where Anselmo´s been working the past few weeks.) Theirs is a real communal kind of vibe. In the last couple of months it´s taken off, with interior plasterwork and a general outdoor cleanup, wiring and plumbing and carpentry and all kinds of things going in. It´s exciting to see it progress. It may be habitable by next spring. (They´re going to Ireland to spend the winter, on a cottage on the beach. Romantic, no?)

So we know building a place here is do-able, even if it turns into a monumental ´do it yourself.´ Even if we are not 32 years old, and charming enough to recruit a corps of international volunteers... Seeing how their place has stalled-out a few times but kept coming back, it makes me think our place, too, will see progress again.

The waiting is the hardest part. But this IS the Camino, you know. And some solution always comes up, usually at the last minute, with or without us worrying and fretting over it. The Promised Land, after all, is just over the road.

El Dia de los Milagros

Nothing miraculous happened that I know of, but this was The Day of Milagros.

It started with a trip to Sahagún to look at an apartment on the Plaza Mayor. Our neighbors, known collectively as Los Milagros, offered to rent it to us through the winter. We really need someplace else to sleep and stash our valuables, as the Peaceable Kingdom is as porous as it is peaceful.

The Milagros (Spanish for ´miracles´) are heroes of the the day. They have been key players in our experience here. The dad of the bunch is Esteban, a rather mercurial and self-made man. (That´s him in the pic. with Paddy, at the church/bar at this year´s Fiesta.) The eponymous mom is Milagros, a woman with a piercing voice and a powerful presence. She Gets Things Done. (She´s the sad-looking woman in the other pic.) Their elder son is Estabanito, now mayor of Moratinos and a bit of a melancholic intellectual; an attractive man in a very Spanish way. His brother José is the family clown, one of the mojos who rousted Paddy out of bed during the fiesta to come out drinking and dancing. (The brothers are shown serving snacks in the plaza, after carrying the St. Isidore statue around town in May.)

All of them are very hard-working and moody, characters much too complicated to be spending their days driving tractors...which they do anyway. In addition to acres of grain they have corrals and chicken houses and fields and barns scattered all over Moratinos, and a little house on the edge of town on the Calle San Martin from which they run a farm-equipment repair and combine-rental business. (The guard dogs Roldan and Toby are marvellously fierce.) All four shuttle between Moratinos and Sahagún, the big market town 9km. west of here, where they own a big feed and seed business, a house, and bits of real estate. Milagros´mom is 90-something, and still lives in Moratinos. The children take turns caring for her -- another reason why they´re so tied to this town.

Anyway, the Milagros know everyone and own the rest. They are good people to know, even though some of the other folks in town hate their guts. (We try to track the middle path... so far, so good.) They have been very kind to us ever since we came to town. Our freezer is full of green beans from their garden.

Today, Esteban I and II took us to see their little rental apartment in Sahagún. For 220€ per month we can have a tiny kitchen, two little bedrooms, a salon with tired circa-1972 furnishings, and a fabulous second-story view of the Plaza Mayor from up above Teri´s Butcher Shop. We´d have to carry very heavy propane canisters up dozens of steps to heat the place, which may be our excuse for not taking it. (The location really is prime, though. We´d never miss a thing, right there on the corner!)

Afterward Estebanito drove us out to Población de Campos, a village to the east of us, to meet with Manolo, the Castilla-Leon District Secretary who will introduce us to his lawyer friend in Palencia on Monday. It´s not like we can´t just call the guy up and get an appointment, but this running-around, face-to-face, introduction biz is how things get done here. VERY time-consuming, but civilized. If anybody can nail Mario & Co., this guy can, Manolo sez... we may not get our money back, but somebody will GO DOWN. Hmmm. It makes me wonder. I´ll pay money to get my house finished, but I´d rather the state pay to put people away. Vamos a ver.

While we were in Población (an adobe village used as a set for a film in 1998), Libby phoned. She´s feeling much better, and walked a good 16K. today to Navarrette, and thinks she´s going to keep going! Yay Libby! I knew she could do it!

We scaled the roof again and put plastic sheeting on the worst part of the Chik-N-Hut. We´ve gotta get a roofer in here, no matter what the dollar is doing. Maybe with the stock market booming I should sell out my little portfolio, which is up by 66%... maybe I´ll break even when I exchange the currency! Expat America Thanks You, Mr. Bush!

And in the evening we went back to Sahagún to talk with Paca Luna, the little old lady who runs the Libreria. (stationers.) She is a friend of Elyn Aviva, an American anthropologist friend of mine who did the Camino and lived in Sahagún and studied its memories back in the 80s...another pioneer. Paca´s a real entree to Sahagún society, and invites us to all kinds of things related to The Virgin de La Puente, a local apparition and shrine. (the dancing lady is Paca, at this year´s Fiesta de la Virgen de la Puente). We take turns giving her fresh Gladys eggs when the Benedictine Sisters have had their share. Paca today said she knows a perfect piso, also on the Plaza, with lots of light, good-size bedrooms, and a good price, too. She´ll find it all out and tell us tomorrow. Woo-hoo! The Bozos may have ripped us off, but Paca´s watching our dimes.

At the end of our busy day we went to the Bar Deportivo and had a copa and read the papers, with excruciating Flamenco blasting in the background. It is a quintessential Sahagún bar, with homemade vermouth, bullfights and soccer games on the big-screen TV, decor from 1955, deviled-egg tapas, and the tiniest, elf-scale ladies´ room ever seen. It is usually too smoky for my taste, but it is unusually well-lit and suitable for newspaper scanning. And it´s just across the street from the supermarket and the Chainsaw Boutique and the veterinarian. Pad loves the place. We ate vegetable sandwiches and watched Barcelona beat Stuttgart.

Life is tough, but it is still good. Chin up and all that. Circumstances still suck hugely, but I am feeling much more energized and much more like myself now. I have to credit Pure Land Buddhism for that... nothing like serious meditation to make you get a grip on What Is Real. That, and the sun came out today. I talked in the morning with Jeanne, my best bud in Paris.

One of the very strangest things about hard times is how they switch on my creative energy. In the past week I´ve been struck with a new story to write and a really quite do-able entrepreneurial idea. Not to mention several murderous plots involving amoral Spanish builders.

The Terrifying Center of a Great Adventure

It gets worse.

* Justi, the guy next door is "rat-bombing" his barn. Which means we might have uninvited guests in the next few days. I do not mind a few mice, but I really hate rats.
*It rained hard all yesterday and last night, and sposed to rain off and on all week. The chicken house roof is a resounding failure.
*I slipped this morning and gave my tailbone a fearful crack. That kind of injury hurts for frickin´ever. I was carrying a newly-washed Una to be dried, and she ran off into the house and instantly rolled in the dirt. &%%$ dog!
*The bozos apparently, while working on the main house, trashed the connection where the barn roof meets the side of the house. We have been storing things in there we didn´t want to put in the leaky old main barn... upholstered furniture, rugs, boxes of lovely coffeetable books shipped over from America, suitcases full of our woollen clothes. The rain came in there too. I got through a box of sodden books and a suitcase, and then I had to leave it.
I don´t usually cry much. I am breaking all my hysteria records. Paddy, maybe because he´s English, thinks when someone cries they are terribly ill. He keeps hugging me, and telling me to go to bed!
Anyway, after all the drama we took some giant plastic sheets and some old roof tiles, and I climbed up on the roof and Paddy handed things out the windows to me, and we got a temporary fix done. It was good to DO something.
*Bozo News: Fran and Mario are dissolving their partnership. All the paperwork has Mario´s name on it. Fran claims he is taking over the job, but he doesn not answer his phone any more than Mario does. And because we thought ol´Fran was just the gang boss, we never learned what his whole name-ID number-address was. We found a lawyer to look over the paperwork and tell us what our options are.
* The US dollar hit its seventh record low against the Euro on Thursday. All the money we saved for this house project is in US dollars. What the Spaniards don´t rip off, the George Bush Americans are pissing away.
* I contacted my two most "enchufada" ("well-connected") friends yesterday: an Augustinian priest from Valladolid now an Ivy League professor, and another Ivy League professor who´s going to be given the Spanish Order of Isabel the Catholic in a couple of weeks for his record of academic achievement and service to Spain. (Impressive indeed, and no one deserves it more than George X. Greenia, hardworking editor of American Pilgrim magazine, the latest issue is on newsstands now!) Neither of them can do much to help us. It was the Valladolid bud who told me I probably don´t have a real contract, and my smart Welsh friend down in Almeria who confirmed that. (I used to know a really important foreign ministry guy in Madrid who could do anything. But he´s in jail for tax fraud!)
* It is hard, coming to terms with the sad fact that I am a chump/fool/dupe/idiot. After reading all the books and consulting with all the experts, we still managed to be ripped-off in the most elementary way.

But Paddy is over at the Ayuntamiento (town hall) now, seeing if we can finally get Tim the Dog legalized, seeing if the Junta can do anything more about the Bozos, seeing if the Milagros can rent us a little apartment in Sahagun for the winter.

It´s come to that. We cannot live here in winter. We´ve got to get what little worldly goods we have left out of the rain. And it looks like we gotta get a lawyer. I´d settle for a roofer just now, or a plumber. Better yet, an electrician who can put in a clothes dryer! There´s the chance this Hoja de Reclamacion paper we filed last week will set a fire under the Bozos, but I have lost all belief in them.

I feel like I´m becoming very boring these days, whining about the same things all the time. I wish I could tell you Libby is enjoying life on the Camino, but she apparently twisted her ankle just outside Los Arcos and is now laid-up in Logroño with it all swollen and painful. Damn. She oughtta be cruising through through the LaRioja vineyards and west. I hope she recovers and can continue. Otherwise she will have to come back here. In the rain. Until Christmas.

Now that I´ve written all this down it doesn´t look like THAT much. So I guess I´m feeling better already. I am still not ready to go back to Pittsburgh. But Sahagún is looking better all the time... bedrooms! Windows! Shops!

We still are alive. Moratinos life is not exactly the Siege of Stalingrad. Unless you are one of our hens.

We´d probably quit if we could, but we are totally invested in this. We can´t bail on it. Our only fear is what might happen next. Such an adventure, this!