The Annotated Church of the Old Mermaids

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3 Apparently much of Arizona was a warm shallow sea during the Precambrian. ka

4 La Catrina or La Calavera Catrina has a long and fascinating history. This skeletal woman seems to symbolize the Dia de los Muertos these days. Some say she is a modern stand-in for Mictēcacihuātl, the queen of the Aztec underworld. In the 1900s, Mexican political lithographer José Guadalupe Posada created a lithograph of who we think of as La Catrina: a skull wearing a fancy European hat. This lithograph made fun of the Mexican elite who seemed obsessed with European fashion. Essentially, he was poking fun at the Mexican leader Porfirio Díaz, too. (As I understand it, the name La Catrina comes from “catrin” which seems to be slang for a dandy or fancily dressed people.) Flash forward to 1946-1947. Mexican artist Diego Rivera paints Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central or Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central, a mural in Mexico city. At the center if this colorful mural depicting Mexico’s history is La Calavera Catrina only now she isn’t just a skull. She has a body, too, a skeletal body. ka

5 Palo verde trees are gorgeous Sonoran Desert trees with (mostly) green bark that have chlorophyll, which enables it to conduct much of the photosynthesis for the plant. ka

6 Currently there are nearly 6 million vacation or second homes in the U.S. that are empty most of the year. There are also 17 million vacant homes in the U.S. ka

7 The Sonoran Desert covers much of the Southwest of the U.S. and parts of Mexico. This 123,500 square miles is considered the most biologically diverse desert of the four U.S. deserts. ka

8 The Great Horned Owl is the largest owl in the Sonoran Desert. When we stayed at the Sanctuary when it was Endicott West, a great horned owl often roosted in the palm tree on the property. Cooper’s Hawk often runs it off. ka

9 La Llorona is a ghostly character in Latin American folktales who wanders washes and river banks looking for her drowned children. Apparently parents used this story to scare their children into behaving and getting home on time. ka

10 I dreamed of David Thomas Crow before I wrote about him, including his name. Sometimes when I’m writing a novel, I will dream of some of the people and plot points. ka

11 When I was about 20 years old and very depressed and fragile, I dreamed that a water nymph came to me. At least that was how I described her in my dream journal. She had huge soulful eyes, and water and seaweed ran up and down her body. I dreamed of her all night. When I awakened in the morning, I knew that I would be OK, and I was. The depression lifted. Decades later, I realized that that dream may have been the beginning of the Old Mermaids. This isn’t the same dream I used in the book, of course, but dreams have been important to me and my writing. ka

12 I wrote Church of the Old Mermaids every day in the Quail House, a writer’s studio on the property. Afterward, I would walk the wash. I usually found some object, and it would be the inspiration for the next story Myla told about the Old Mermaids. Nearly everything Myla found in the wash, I found in the wash. ka

13 Mesquite trees do have the deepest roots of any tree ever documented. ka

14 When we lived in Tucson the first time in 1986, I was shocked at how many people had grass lawns that they watered seemingly non-stop. This is a desert! Grass lawns drink too much water in a place where water is scarce. Fortunately that has changed over the years. For one thing, the county banned ornamental turf in new commercial developments. Water prices went up, and people became more aware of water scarcity. Very few places have grass lawns now. ka

15 After a wash fills up, flows, then recedes, the sand left behind does resemble the path a glacier makes as it descends a mountain. mm

16 Many migrants cross the Rio Grande to get into the United States. It can be extremely treacherous, especially since most crossings are at night. Many of us remember the heartbreaking photo from 2019 of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter, Valeria, who was still tucked up into his t-shirt, her tiny arm draped across his neck, at the edge of the water, both drowned. Lily was fortunate that she survived. ka

17 La Frontera is what some people in Arizona call the border lands. ka

18 Guia is what the guides for border crossings are often called. I’ve been interviewing people and studying this issue for twenty years. Over the years names and methods change to get people across the border. What remains the same is that crossing is dangerous. Presently it has gotten even more dangerous than when I originally wrote COTOM because many ordinary people who are crossing to find work in the U.S. or escape gangs in their own countries are being forced to be drug mules, too. What hasn’t changed is that people die crossing every year, usually from exposure. This didn’t used to happen. At one time, work permits were easy to get and Mexicans would cross the border, go to work, and then head back home, either at the end of the day or the end of the season. Now Border Patrol estimates that over 7,000 migrants have died crossing the border over the last 20 years. Citing a U.S.A. Today five-year study where they looked at the number of human remains reported by other agencies besides BP, the San Diego-based humanitarian group Border Angels estimates that between 9,100 to just under 29,000 deaths have occurred over the last 20 years. The Sonoran Desert is an extremely harsh environment. ka

19 La migra is immigration. Migrant farmworkers are often reluctant to report illnesses caused by pesticides because they are afraid they will be deported. This is a valid concern. By law, companies must report what they are spraying and when, but often they don’t or they don’t wait the recommended amount of time before sending farmworkers into the fields or nurseries again. And if the farms are caught and (rarely) prosecuted or sued for misuse of pesticides, they are often fined minuscule amounts. In one case in Tennessee where several farmworkers were poisoned, the company had to pay a fine of $425. The EPA estimates 20,000 farmworkers are harmed by pesticides a year. These figures are most likely greatly underestimated since most farmworkers do not report pesticide injuries. The Migrant Farmworker Justice Project (MFJP) in Florida estimates that one tenth of one percent of pesticide injuries are reported. One tenth of one percent. When MFJP surveyed workers in Florida, they learned that 1 in 4 workers had been directly sprayed with pesticides, at least 50% had been exposed to pesticide drift, 36% had become sick or nauseated, and four out of ten had developed skin rashes. ka

20 I used the name Ford to honor my best friend Linda Ford. She taught me so much about being in the world, especially about being in Nature. When I found a deer’s head orchid once in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and told her about it, she said, “Just wait next time you find one and then look around. Others will appear to you.” So when I found another, I did exactly what she instructed me to do, and lo and behold, deer’s head orchid after deer’s head orchid popped up on the forest floor—or more accurately, I began to see what was there. Stillness is such a gift. ka