Finished Men

They are dark figures, staring out of black-and-white pictures in black robes and collars, owlish spectacles, jowls, bushy hermit beards, adolescent peach-fuzz. They're men from another world, another time, far away from here.
They could be ghosts.
They are from towns I know, many of them quite near: Carrion de los Condes, Terradillos de los Templarios, Villada, Grajal de Campos, Fromista, Becerril. Others are from Camino towns: Banos de Montemayor, Villadangos del Paramo, Puente la Reina, Puebla de Sanabria, Zamora.
They are priests and monks and friars: Jesuits, Augustinians, Capuchin Franciscans, Carmelites, Dominicans, Hospitalers of St. John of God. Their names are Juan, Manuel, Alejo, Froilan, Miguel, Claudio, Tino, Victor, Damaso.
They are teachers and preachers, students, philosophers, healers and most likely sinners, too. Boys from here, some of them grown up, some of them very young indeed.
All of them are dead.
All of them are martyrs, killed for being clerics.
They were killed for being part of the Spanish Catholic church, a monolithic institution deeply loathed by many underclass, under-educated, underprivileged Spaniards back in the 1930's. Their soutanes and birettas set them apart, and when civil war broke down the old order, their uniforms marked these men for death.
Now, 80 years later, their pictures hang in honored places in the churches where they were baptized, back when they were baby boys, before they grew up to take vows. They are honored for their sacrifice, if not their holy lives -- there is no living memory of any of these men. It's assumed they all were beyond reproach.  

They are "Beatos" now, blessed, by papal decree in 2013.  They are not saints yet, but violent death made them special.  Death by firing squad, neglect, long imprisonment. Torn apart by mobs, thrown from moving vehicles, left to starve in a cold room. Many of them died together, and were buried in the same ditch, in places with names like Paracuellos de Jarama, Villecas, Algodor, Escalante Crossing.
They may not have died for the Gospel of Christ, but they died for their religion.
Martyrs, murdered for their faith, their souls gather under the altar in heaven and cry out "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord," or at least that's what St. John heard them saying, when he visited there.
And here we work and live and walk, surrounded by this cloud of witnesses. Here as Holy Week comes at us, contemplating the martyrdom of Jesus himself, and all the martyrs in the news -- Christians, Muslims, Martin Luther King, Jr., freedom riders, Meredith, Malcolm X... politics, religion, oppression, and vengeance, stupidity and violence so common they've become banal.
I wonder if Claudio and Victor and Alejo cried to God for mercy when the knock came on their door.

Even Jesus cried.
Not even God's son got a pass when the time came to die.        

Empezamos

Monasterio de San Anton, image taken from a website I will credit asap

The fading sun shone through a weird ruined rose window, made up of letters T. Taus.The symbol of St. Anthony. The moon rose quickly as we walked in what once was a church.
The Monasterio de San Anton is two kilometers out of Castrojeriz, and almost too Hollywood to be for real. It's a shattered church, roofless, with a monumental arch that every pilgrim must pass through on the way into town. The monks used to leave food out there for the passers-by who arrived after the gates had closed.
But the monastery went out of business 200 years ago. It was turned into a farm, its once-cohesive layout is now subdivided, fenced-off, sliced and diced into odd corners and bricked-up doorways. Somehow, ten years ago, a local foundation got hold of the part that once was the church. They installed a six sets of bunk beds in the sheep barn that once was a sacristy, and a camp stove and dining table alongside. They opened a bare-bones pilgrim albergue in the ruins.
There's no electricity and no hot water. There's precious little running water at all -- the spring the monastery used 400 years ago is still the only water supply, and it needs a good digging-out. No one's much disposed to that, because nobody really owns the place.
It's pretty much what most pilgrim albergues were like, 20-some years ago, before the Camino de Santiago became a money-making proposition.
Nowadays, hotels and albergues and hostels offer pilgrims heat, laundry, swimming pools, privacy, full menus and safety lighting... for a price most happily pay.
This old place operates on donations. It's open all day. Pilgrims who stay there have to put up with what they get -- cold water, candle light, a scruffy yard full of weeds and rubble, a dinner of salad and pasta and canned fruit, and probably a job washing-up afterward.
But a bed among the ruins... how romantic! (No matter if the mattress has too many miles on it.)
And after the sun goes down, there's a spectacular show of stars above the broken pillars.
There's an energy to San Anton. You can feel it humming by the gate, where the bees have a hive under the jasmine.

The Fraternidad Internacional del Camino de Santiago, as one of its initiatives, is going to staff the place. We (I am on the board of directors) can't criticize how built-up and commodified the camino has become if we are not willing to set an example ourselves. And so we will.

We visited today, me and Juan Carlos, FICS vice president and head of everything Camino in Astorga. We looked it all over, we asked all the important questions, we took notes. And we marveled a little, too. It is a magical place.
We're putting the documents together, and he'll take it all to the board after next week. It looks like a go. We need to raise about 15,000 Euro to bring it up to code, and it's a demanding post for hospitaleros. But it's the real deal. Total camino. Really exciting.  

March came in with a bright, warm, dry, fake spring. Things are beginning. After that long wait in the darkness, after the lonely cold, even when I really don't trust the light, things start to happen. The seeds planted in the dead black ground start germinating.

I am not sure how much I am supposed to say. I don't want to expose the tender shoots to too much light too soon. Things grow very slowly in this latitude. The papers are not signed yet.

But I have waited and waited, and worked, too.

priests round here have their work cut out

I haven't blogged because I am very deep into an editorial re-write on a very large book, a reportage, a true-life story of the crew of a World War II Pacific gunboat. Compelling, frustrating, hurry-up-and-wait stuff... How to keep the reader interested between the blasts of gunfire? It's challenging work, very time-consuming. Now that the albergue in Terradillos is open, we have almost no pilgrims again. And just now, that's a good thing.

Because we are starting things.
This summer we will -- God willing -- have at least one priest here in the house, serving Mass every day in Terradillos or Moratinos, in English or in Spanish. We have the blessing of the bishop and the support of the de facto pastor in charge of camino ministry for Castilla y Leon. It's an outgrowth of Camino Chaplaincy, a program pioneered by my friends John and Stephen in Santiago de Compostela. For the past two summers, volunteer priests have offered Masses and confessions in English at a dedicated chapel in the great cathedral, the goal of the Santiago pilgrim. This year, the program is expanding out onto the path itself... and because we have a spare room in the house, and a rather empty lineup of altars in our part of the Way, we decided to give it a shot.

Our first priest, an Irishman with experience in missions, arrives this week for a look around the place. We will feed him on suckling lamb and Ribero del Duero wine, and hope he likes the look of our scruffy little neighborhood. (Paddy has promised to be nice, and to keep off the Wittgenstein.)  

Oh, and we are deep in negotiations with Jose Antonio, our friendly builder. We want to turn the old kitchen and storage room and toilet into its own little apartment, but my vision, alas, outstrips available funds. I must compromise, or pick a winning lottery number, or find another builder.

And so grow the green shoots in Moratinos.
If you want to serve at San Anton, and you are serious about making the trip and living pretty rough for a couple of weeks, let me know in a week or two. I will start putting something together.

Thank you all for standing by while I sit in the dark.
I am a depressive old thing. But I find some pretty important things in there, if I shut up and just be still.  Because eventually, things change. The light comes on.
Just look at what blooms.

Squirrelly

The Month of the Pilgrim continues. It is extraordinary. It is exhausting.
Every night this month but one we've had at least two people, sometimes the full-capacity six or even seven, but almost always somebody.  They walk 31 kilometers to get here. It's another nine kilometers to the next stopping-place. We cannot in good conscience leave people to sleep outdoors.
We chose to live here because there's a relatively steady stream of pilgrims flowing past. We like the pilgrims, we've been pilgrims ourselves -- they keep life interesting in a town that would otherwise be stiflingly isolated and insular.
We've been at this for nine years. We have never, in all that time, had such a steady flow of pilgrims stay with us, day after day after day.
They are nice people, sometimes funny, always cooperative. I've had only one ask for a hair dryer, and I've only had to tell one person "This is my home, it is not a hotel."
They clean up after themselves (mostly), they often phone ahead to tell us they're coming. Some of them are really interesting characters -- we've had a Dane who runs a Ribero del Duero winery, and a Swiss woman who rehabilitates injured wild animals up in the Alps, and the editor of the Korean Airlines in-flight magazine.
A Korean man left a message on our shopping-list blackboard: "I love here," it says.
On Ash Wednesday there was no Mass in Moratinos, so we had a rite of our own. We anointed one another, told one another "from ashes you come, and to ashes you shall return." Even the unbeliever, the "rationalist." He's the one who put the cross on my forehead. He's the one who, the following morning, on his way out the door, assured me that yes, he will pray for me out there on the road. "Yes, I can do that," he said.
It's moments like that that keep me going.
Because keeping going is getting tough now, three weeks into this extraordinary February onslaught.
I like the pilgrims, but I very much miss the quiet, the long evenings of no one but us. Simple dinners, or no dinners at all -- a sandwich, some fruit. A good book, or a writing or editing project. Able to go out for the evening, able to make evening plans. Long stretches of my own company.
I am spoiled rotten this way, or I was, up til Bruno left.
Two weeks is the standard limit for volunteer hospitaleros. After that, they go all squirrelly. Two weeks is more than enough for a lot of volunteers. Most don't come back again.
I think of Bruno and Lourdes and Jato and Tomas the Last Templar and Edu in Boadilla, people who do this all the time, every day, for years. People who have to do this to earn enough money to pay their bills. People who do this because they just love pilgrims. And I see why Bruno takes two months off every year, and why Lourdes only opens her doors in wintertime, and why Jato and Tomas and Edu have gangs of people helping them out. And I remember some of the "sensei" hospitaleros of years past -- Anna of Ages, who helped us get settled in here. The couple who ran the albergue in Eunate for years, and Cirauqui before that. The couple who opened the albergue in Villares del Orbigo, or the Brazilian guy who ran the place in Vega de Valcarce...
They are gone now. Sold-up, moved on, retired. There's a lifespan for full-time hospitaleros, and it does not seem to be a long one. There's now enough pilgrim albergues on the market to support at least one specialist estate agent.
Paddy is unhappy. He still turns out beautiful omelettes and couscous and stodge every day, and I heard him laughing out loud this afternoon with three semi-hysterical Korean ladies... but he glowers at me from behind his computer, even as the merry pilgrims chatter and laugh all around him.
There's hope. February is almost over. And last year, the albergue in Terradillos opened up again in March.
Please, God. I am happy to be a hospitalera now and then, but I am a hermit in my heart. I am not cut out for full-on sainthood. Not even for the shortest month of the year.  

In other news, I do not have breast cancer.
I got the test results. They did not get a clean biopsy sample, even after sinking the needle three times. But none of the tissue they did get showed any sign of malignancy. Something is still in there, but so far it's okay. I am okay. I just have to keep going back every six months to be sure.
Glory be. And thanks to everyone who supported me in this little adventure, with good thoughts, prayers, and words of encouragement.
I love you guys.
Please pray for us, whether or not you believe anyone is listening.

Que Tranquilo!

Rosalia de Castro, resting between mouse-slayings

Spaniards are always astounded to learn we live in rural Palencia year-round. "Que tranquilo!" they exclaim... "How quiet!" And between the lines they mean "Que aburrido!" How boring!

But it suits us right down to the ground, at least the way we play it. There's plenty here to occupy our minds.

We bought a big box of everything Chopin ever wrote, played by tip-top musicians. We got the stereo to play out of four speakers instead of just two, and put one speaker out on the patio, so the whole Peaceable can be All Polonaise, All the Time. Superb!
Two weeks ago, I had a large-needle mammary biopsy of a half-a-lentil-size something in my right breast, without any anesthesia. Yow! Anything but boring, that.
While in Paris, while consuming a sea-salt caramel, a 30-year-old filling came loose from an even-more-venerable tooth. (Lots of other stuff happened there, but that would be a digression.) I had the filling repaired in Sahagun, also without anesthesia. It appears that news of my September over-reaction to dental anesthesia has made the rounds of the Spanish healthcare system. So now, minor surgical interventions are a practice in Being Present With Pain. Zen discipline is my new way of life, whether I like it or not!
So far, I find authentic pain not much worse than the eeeugh of being shot-up with local anesthesia. And none of it compares to the horror of being strapped into the Magnetic Resonance Imaging device. So go ahead, doc, poke me with needles! Anything but that clattering bondage chamber!

...But I shall not be one of those old ladies nattering on about her latest "procedure."
Suffice to say I will, hopefully, learn on Monday whether or not I have breast cancer.

And that is my excuse for not writing a whole lot these days.

That, and it's winter, and I am depressed. And I have a great big toothsome editing project to work on, and a speech to give (in English) at the university in Palencia, and a radio interview after that (in Spanish.)

And we're putting out to bid a big renovation on the little kitchen/despensa/bathroom by the front gate, to make it its own nice little weatherproof solar-powered apartment. The dollar is strong. The time is right. We might need someone to come here sometime and help us out, and they will want their own space. I thought long and hard about buying one of the two fincas for sale here in town, but decided we might as well make the most of what we have already. I cannot save the whole adobe world on my own. At least not until I hit the lottery.

Since Bruno left we have lots and lots of pilgrims, relatively speaking. Most of them are South Koreans, and some of them speak a few words of a language we can handle. They are decent company, they keep the days rolling along, they keep things interesting. Kindly people from far away send us donations to help pay their way, because most of these pilgrims leave only a fiver in the box. It all comes up even in the end, I think.
I try not to think too too much. It is almost tax time, when I have to tally up all the numbers and tell all to two countries, in two languages.
But money is almost as boring as medical procedures.

Like I said, I went to Paris for a quick visit. I ate oysters, and had my spirits lifted. I went last week to Santiago de Compostela, for a "more of the same" hospitalero get-together and some Quality Time with my buds John and Stephen... and Laurie, up on the mountain on the way home in O Cebreiro. Spirits again lifted. It is good to get out, to see how others like me are coping with the grey skies and manuscripts and daily demands.

Plans are moving forward. Schemes are being schemed. Soon I will reveal details of a cool new FICS hospitalero opportunity which I hope will not consume me until I get the latest book edited. Paddy is headed down to Malaga, to visit family and soak up some rays and escape the pilgrim onslaught for a few days. Nothing at all is happening with the Asociacion Cultural, but I can't afford to worry about that just now.

People ask me how I can stand the silence and boredom of this isolated, underpopulated place. And sometimes I say the winter sky here is startlingly clear when the wind blow
s, especially at night. At night I go out and look up at Venus and Mars and the rings of Saturn and the belt of Orion, and I know how small I am, here on our little ball two rocks from the sun.

I know none of us means much at all.
And I will be all right.

Shelter for the Hardcore

Bruno’s burned-out, gone back to Italy until April. He left us with a big pan of tiramisu and a set of keys to his albergue. And every pilgrim who comes down the pike.

Winter’s usually pretty dead on the Camino de Santiago. We don’t mind being the only place open to pilgrims in 20 kilometers, because almost no one walks this part of the path this time of year. In February and early March, if you’re walking westward, the wind tends to blow freezing rain right into your face. Even in June, the tourist-pilgrims complain and skip past this bit because “there’s nothing to look at out here.” There’s even less to look at in February.When you can see past the ice on your eyelashes.

I exaggerate. Only every other day is that bad. We see plenty of blue sky, too. But you don’t see a lot of sky when you’re watching for ice underfoot. It’s winter on the prairie. Most people have good sense enough to stay home by the fire.

Except pilgrims. This winter there are still tons of the buggers out there. Most of the restaurants and pilgrim shelters are closed for the season. The ones that are open are often unheated. That means the walk between stops is much longer than in summer, even as the daylight hours are shorter. There are very few fellow pilgrims to keep you company. Winter pilgrims are a serious lot, a tough breed. They used to be few and far between. 

But that's changing. In January, 1,217 people were awarded “Compostela” certificates at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, a new record for the month. Today, eleven pilgrims got theirs. Eleven. We used to get that many pilgrims in a winter month!

We get pilgrims every day now. Partly because we’re the only open place between Calzadilla de la Cueza and Sahagun. Partly because the winter pilgrimage is getting better organized. Lourdes Lluch, a hero of the modern-day camino, is responsible.

Lourdes is the Ur-Hospitalera, the pioneer. She opened the first pilgrim albergue on the modern Camino Frances, in Hornillos del Camino, back in 1983. She helped to organize the Federation of Amigos del Camino de Santiago, a national non-profit group dedicated to the pilgrimage. She helped create a hospitality network based on donations and voluntary service -- all in the most humble, quiet way. On a camino bristling with experts, "coaches," academics, and documentary filmmakers, almost nobody knows how important she is. 

Lourdes is still around. In Fromista for the past few years, Lourdes and her husband open their apartment in wintertime, when all of Fromista’s for-profit albergues close down. Following the same path Lourdes laid down 30 years ago, they give the pilgrims food and a bed, and ask only for a donation in return. They do it because it’s the right thing to do, because they believe in the pilgrimage. They almost break even.

This year, Lourdes decided to put her camino contacts to work. Starting in December, she made up a list of every open albergue on the Camino Frances – with telephone numbers and email addresses. She updates it frequently, as places open and close almost at random in winter. We’re on the list.

We get a lot more telephone calls lately, people making sure we are for real. We see fewer pilgrims sleeping rough on church porches. We get more pilgrims in here, sometimes too many. We’re eating more lentils and beans and spaghetti. Cheap carbs, easily multiplied. “Pilgrim stodge.”  

We’re meeting some cool people, hearing some hair-raising tales of derring-do, and testimonies, too, of faith found and kindness shared. Everyone’s too tired to cause trouble. Nobody has much money. Many of them walk alone, but everyone’s pretty much met everyone else who’s walking out there. The care for one another. 

After they settle in and shower the pilgrims text each other, to learn where everyone ended up. They text with translation software, because many of them have no common language. They cannot talk to one another on the phone, but they want to be sure that Soo-Rin or Lindsey or Manuel’s found a place to spend the night.

They are tough and quiet and decent, winter pilgrims. They don’t ask for blow dryers, or the best room. They eat all their stodge, and wait til everyone’s done before they ask for seconds. They do the washing-up. Sometimes they talk, sometimes for hours, sometimes in languages I barely understand.

I used to feel bad about not being needed anymore by pilgrims, now that Moratinos has other accommodation options. But now I look at Lourdes, and I see she’s got it figured out. She is a hospitalera to her bones, but she’s found a way to do her service in winter, when the weather weeds-out the party animals and the lightweights, the drama queens and spiritual consumers. 

Winter pilgrims are the real deal. I’m glad Lourdes sends them our way. 

Bruno leaves the best for us.   

Why People Stay Home

The bag is packed, the tickets printed out, money and pills and notebooks all in order.

Train to Madrid, plane to Paris. I will see two good old friends, and a lesser-known but very rich museum I’ve been wanting to visit. I will buy India ink and stinky cheese. I will eat oysters and drink wine and (if it’s clear at night) show my godson Nicolas how to use his new telescope to see the seas of the moon.

The city of lights. People I love. I planned the trip a month ago, to escape the long, long stretch that is January on the meseta. That "slog through the fog." 

I don’t want to go to Paris.

This year, something is different about the long, long stretch.

I am no less depressed than I ever am, in the mid-winter. The weather is rough – gray and bitterly cold in the mornings, dangerously icy. Last week I fell. I still feel it in my back. Walking the dogs is dicey business.

Yesterday morning the greyhounds ran away after a fox, out beyond the tumberon. I saw them go, far away across the fields, stretched out full-length like figures on a tapestry.

Snow spat down, and a piercing wind picked up. Paddy turned for home with the less-ambitious dogs. I headed out into the fields after the runaways. An inch of fresh snow squeaked underfoot. The fields are sown with winter rye, the turned soil barely frozen. I tracked the dogs an hour down and up a sunken lane. More than one fox lives out there. Deer had passed by, and maybe pigs, definitely a weasel. I did not see or hear them, but I saw their tracks. I did not see or hear Lulu or Harry. I walked on tractor paths, across fallow fields, alongside the wild arroyos. The hills rose and fell. Nothing moved but snow.  

On some flat places you can hear the roar of trains blowing through Sahagun. The lonesome whistles blow, miles and miles from town. The wind carries the sound. Sometimes, some places you hear the autopista, the howl and roar of truck tires, air horns, jake brakes. But not very often. Not so far out.

I lost the dogs’ trail in a rough-plowed field. The black sky moved eastward, toward me.

I strode back toward the tumberon. It faded away fast in the snowfall. I listened hard, wondering if that little noise down the valley was dogs barking, if maybe they’d got the fox to ground. I stopped. I slowed my breathing, listened.

Maybe a dog bark. Maybe a crow, down in those black trees. The moaning sound was the wind in my earrings. Loops. The wind catches in them, it whispers and moans right into my ear. I heard the rasp of my fingertips inside my gloves, inside my pockets. I felt warm, I felt healthy and well. My eyes looked hard down the valley, into the wind. I could see only an out-of-focus eyelash, and a skeleton tree.

The rest was silence, milky white. Utter silence. I let it stretch out for minutes, til the black cloud rolled over my hill and the wind struck hard as iron.

I felt embarrassed, having spent the last hour shouting after dogs. I realized how noisy I am, just walking, my feet crunching down, my nose snorting, my prayers chattering words into the empty air. Into this wide place, so silent almost always, silence heavy and almost holy. A place nobody knows. Nobody sees, but maybe a weasel or a wild pig, and now and then a tractor.

This sanctuary stands within a mile of my house. I can go there whenever I wish.  

True, Madrid is a couple of hours away. I can be in Paris a couple of hours after that. But why? Why would anyone want go to rackety old Paris?    

Slog through the Fog

If you know me, you know I get a little crazy in January. And here we are, nine whole days in.
It has to do with the fog. Most days here are bright sunny and frosty, just lovely. But lumbering slowly over the plain like great grey mastiffs are fogs. Miles and hours of fog, thick and dark and damp. Youcan see them coming, like a squall on Lake Erie, and once these guys roll into town, they stay around. Day turns to semi-night, sounds are oddly muffled, and nights are very, very long.
After a day or so of fog, I start feeling like I'm under water.
I wrote a blog a few days ago, based on a very good poem I found. It was very apt to my present spiritual state, so I got down and all lyrical with it.
I posted it. I found a typo, so I went in the fix it.
And somehow I blew away the entire thing.
I blew all the color off the blog page, too. God knows how. The fog rolled onto it, too.
I let it go. It probably was not very coherent anyway, knowing what month it is.
Hardly anything moves outside but crows, hawks, and sometimes owls.
The animals stay near the fire, or inside their barn. The hens are not laying many eggs. I am not writing any books. Or blogs, either.
I am trying to register the association with the tax authorities, but I need copies of ID documents for the secretary, treasurer, and vice president. The one person who lives in Santander sent hers right away. The two who live within a mile have not moved. I have not seen them around.
Maria de la Valle lives in the Canary Islands. She spent her holidays here in Moratinos. She is an educated woman, open and bright; her husband Joaquin is a psychologist, they like us, we hung out a bit in the last few weeks. They help me with association business. They have ideas, they have family here, they can communicate things I cannot.

photo:"Memorias de un Labrador Castellano," by Modesto

We came up with a couple of good ideas. One is for a cachapera, little hut made of straw or grapevines, modeled after a photo I found of a local history book.  Back when there were vineyards all around here, farmers built these pointy-topped temporary huts and hired an old man to stay there while the grapes ripened, to keep away grape-thieves.
This summer, during the fiesta, when all the children are in town, we could engage young and old in building one of these ages-past structures. We could put it up in the rarely-used playground, and the kids could use it for a playhouse while they're in town -- we could have a camp-out, and get out the telescope and show them the stars! Long as it held up, adventurous pilgrims could use it, too.
We still have vineyards enough to provide vines to build one of these little huts. God knows we have enough straw, or switches from the chopo trees in the plaza. We'd have to track down someone who knows how to build one, or work it out for ourselves... or contact Antonio, my friend down in Badajoz -- he is building a chozo right now, a stone version of the cachapera. (the swineherds and shepherds down there use them in summer). Antonio says he'd love to come up and help us out. He owes me a favor.

stone chozo, a la Antonio

The kids would have fun. It wouldn't cost much. We'd put it on community land, out of the way. What's not to like?
My pet project is a simple sign. A sign made of metal, with a little roof over it, at the foot of the drive 'round the bodegas. The bodegas are the first thing pilgrims see when they come into town -- a series of little doors dug into a tall hillside, one for each household. They are wine caves, but visitors have no way of knowing that. They think they are Hobbit Houses, or fallout shelters, or some kind of mine. We need to put up a sign and tell them what they are. Bodegas are interesting, and they are what makes Moratinos unique along this route. And because pilgs are lways asking! (If we had enough money and interest we could explain the dovecotes, too.)
Maria de la Valle threw up the ideas at a recent gathering of her family, and no one thought much of them at all.

A sign. Like this.

They don't remember cachaperas, or they don't know how to make one, or they'd rather use the grapevines for barbecue fuel.
As for signs on the bodega -- everyone in the Association knows what the bodegas are for! Why spend good money on people who are only here for five minutes?
They'd rather go on excursions, really. But to interesting places. On a daywhen the nurse isn't coming  to check blood pressures and when no one has an appointment in Palencia, or when there's plowing to be done. And what about the grants? Haven't we applied yet?
"They do not see it the way we do," Maria told me. "You have your work cut out for you." She kissed me on both cheeks, and flew away back to her island paradise.
And left me here in the fog. In my yellow house. My yellow submarine.
I am trolling the junta and provincial websites. I continue plotting and planning, hoping I find a foundation or a bequest or a program...
Something will work itself out. This all is to be expected. Just gotta keep moving forward.
Forward, toward February, and back out the other end to March. The fog breaks up and the sun comes out again.

Note: Please excuse the errors in spacing and just general typos. I cannot make Blogger give me "insert" spaces!