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ODINA, A TUSCAN JEWEL

Unlike Rome, only one road leads to Odina, an agriturismo haven in Tuscany, just a few kilometers south of Florence. We were there recently. Us two and our two kids and their spouses. We had a ball, the six of us. We took a private shuttle to get there from Firenze, making a two-hour-plus stop at Siena for lunch and to take in the sights. Stefano the driver was accommodating, stopping here and there to…
Pedro Chavez
October 24, 2022
ColumnsPolitics

Dear Mr. Lincoln

Dear Mr. Lincoln, Your political party, the now called Grand Old Party, the one founded to oppose the spreading of slavery and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, would be unrecognizable to you today if you were to return from the grave. It is no longer the party bent on such liberal ideal as the pursuit of happiness and the principle that all men and women are created equal. The GOP, Mr. Lincoln, has done a one-eighty…
Pedro Chavez
September 24, 2022
ColumnsNovels

Guarding the Haven, Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO Born near El Salto, Colima ALEJANDRA HAD TURNED thirty-six recently. Just like her daughter, she was born at home with the help of a mid-wife, but in a different part of the country, in a two-room shack and in a settlement next to an open ore mine. Her place of birth was a shanty wedged on the side of a ravine, along other shanties that hung for dear life on unstable squatted land.…
Pedro Chavez
November 28, 2021
ColumnsNovels

Guarding the Haven, Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE Early December, nineteen-ninety-eight ALEJANDRA HAD AN off-and-on vexing discomfort in her stomach, a strange nagging feeling of queasiness and lightheadedness that had been pestering her all morning long. It worried her because it was different than any other bellyache she had experienced before. She was alone. Her nine-year-old daughter Juanita was at school and her husband Manuel was at work. She thought about resting for a while to see if the rare vexation…
Pedro Chavez
November 15, 2021
ColumnsNews

THE WEEK IN REVIEW

THE WEEK IN REVIEW October 1, 2021 A proposal is coming to protect DACA beneficiaries… President Biden and his administration are taking steps to protect some 700,000 DACA recipients, the undocumented residents brought to the United States as children. A proposed rule is to be published this coming Tuesday, which would take effect after a 60-day comment period. Great news for those young Americans, also called Dreamers, who have been riding a politically manipulated roller…
Pedro Chavez
October 1, 2021
ColumnsNews

A Ballad of Love and Glory, the Book

Some stories need to be told, even if they’re just a fiction take on the original tale, the one that was also fabricated by the usual suspects, you know, by the historians in charge of supposedly telling it like it is. Reyna Grande’s A Ballad of Love and Glory is one of those fictional takes on a historical time in our past that will help correct a faulted script and bring some light into the…
Pedro Chavez
September 29, 2021
ColumnsNews

The Week in Review

September 24, 2021 SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience is back… It landed off the coast of Cape Cañaveral during the early night, on September 18. It marked the end of the Inspiration4 mission, a private space flight with four rich, really rich civilians on board that orbited the earth for three days without an aircraft commander. Yikes. It was a fundraising effort we are told. But, but, and adding an Ummm to it, me thinks it’s…
Pedro Chavez
September 24, 2021
ColumnsGlobalizationGrowing the Americas

The Mega-Rotondas, Part Two

NOTE: The following is the second part of a fictional take on innovative communities that could potentially be created in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. Or the world, for that matter. * * * The China threat turns into a silver lining Initially, the Mega-Rotondas were not meant to be as large as they eventually became. The original plan called for them to be small, but part of closely tied geographic groups made up…
Pedro Chavez
August 12, 2021
ColumnsGlobalizationGrowing the Americas

The Catalyst Behind the China Miracle

On July 15, 1971, the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, announced that he would visit the People’s Republic of China the following year. That visit ultimately took place from February 21 to the 28, 1972. It was a watershed moment for the United States and China. The sojourn would soon lead to full diplomatic relations between both countries and to a commercial and trade exchange that on most counts has benefited them both.…
Pedro Chavez
August 4, 2021
ColumnsGlobalizationGrowing the Americas

The Mega-Rotondas of a Time to Come

NOTE: The following is a fictional take on innovative communities that could potentially be created in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. They might seem too utopian and unreal to some readers, but such arrangements make a lot of sense. To me, anyway. * * * Sometime in the mid-Twenty-Thirties They’re called “Mega-Rotondas” because they’re big and round. They’re really huge. The circumference in most of them is about six miles, close to ten kilometers…
Pedro Chavez
July 30, 2021