We play this game at the Seattle airport: who ever sees someone we know first has to buy the other breakfast. It took Chip about ten minutes to win, and of course Nelle and Larry came over to our table and chatted and we all talked about our vacations. Then at the gate we see Roger and Robin and there are more exclamations. A rainy January Sunday in Juneau was even nice (my daughters who live there may not agree, since they haven’t been in Mexico where we just returned from since.. well, it must be five years now since we all did that family trip.)
We sat around at JJ and Bryan’s house with the dogs and the baby, and all of us, and half watched football and roasted a chicken and had a family dinner and looked at slides of JJ and Bryan’s honeymoon trip in Italy, and fresh off my big trip I heard myself saying “we should go there next…” I know that Mark Twain was right when he said travel is “fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
San Pancho is not all that different than Haines– well, except for the sun, and the avocados, and the sing song sound of Spanish, and the roosters and the horse hooves on the cobblestones, and the dogs sleeping under restaurant tables, and the palms, and sun, and beach, and tacos. But otherwise, it’s sort of similar. What is very different, is that in San Pancho the discussions of local government are rather vague, as there isn’t really one, nor is there a local paper or radio station.
My New Year’s resolution is to attend Borough Assembly meetings, just to watch, listen, and perhaps add two cents now and then, but also to support the people who are trying to make Haines a better place– especially the ones, who like me, know how lucky we are to live in such a dynamic, engaged, and friendly town. (Now I have to answer a lot of emails.)
Here’s postcard from San Pancho:
