Rancho Santa Clara

Looking for home

2012-02-11T14:05:00.001-06:00

About a week ago an e-mail from a good friend arrived saying she was looking forward to "coming home", meaning she was coming back to San Miguel. The word "home" struck me as a bit strange, for she is not Mexican, not by a long a shot, but a true Texan, who sprinkles her drawl with "y'all's" as predictably as some of our Canadian friends finish their sentences with "eh?"

My Texas friend and her husband have been in San Miguel longer than we have, probably eight or ten years, but have hardly sworn off Texas or the U.S. They have children and grandchildren in Houston, and recently spent quite a bit of time there for medical treatment.

Other American acquaintances here claim they have, physically and mentally, abandoned the U.S. except for collecting Social Security checks. In the words of one woman, "I don't give a shit what happens in the U.S. as long as I keep getting my checks."

Crown Fountain at Chicago's Millennium Park

For our part, Stew and I are drifting toward a twilight zone of sorts regarding what we regard as home. Recently we spent a week at a Mexican beach with friends from Chicago and their tales from that city sounded as distant as a weather report from Finland. Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is doing well in his reincarnation as Chicago mayor. Good for him.

At another dinner with Chicagoans on Thursday we heard that breast cancer had finally claimed Maggie, the wife of former mayor Richard Daley, about four months ago. Stew and I hadn't heard.

Indeed, the Chicago section of our Rolodex has gotten pretty thin during our six years in San Miguel. E-mails from our friends come farther apart until they stop coming altogether, though a few friendships have been instead nurtured by distance. Former co-workers report on the travails of the Chicago Tribune, where I used to work, though I no longer care that much--as long as my pension checks keep coming.

We try to follow American politics but even then the time we can tolerate listening to Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, or even the far mellower Brian Williams, also is shrinking. We regularly cut off newscasters in mid-sentence, out of disgust or just boredom.

The Republican primary, as seen from a leather chair in Mexico, looks like a foreign-language clown show. Amusing one day, bizarre the next, but ultimately irrelevant, particularly when news bits about the race arrive in a thick soup of micro-analysis, punditry and speculation, lately seasoned by CNN with an electronic board that looks like a giant iPad, with John King touching one corner or another to take viewers from Las Vegas to Columbus, Ohio and back. Babble, babble all the way.

Who knows? Who cares? Where's the damn remote?

But in spite of the growing disconnect between us and our former base we haven't developed enough roots in Mexico to call this "home" either, as our friend from Texas does.

Our house here is great, a hybrid of Mexican decor and American gadgets, surrounded by a beautiful landscape and a perfect climate (though it's been clammy and miserable now for three days running).

We designed the house specifically to our needs and tastes, to be our "forever" home, or at least our home for the foreseeable future. Any more we tune out Americans fretting about house resale values because Stew and I haven't thought of selling or going anywhere, certainly not to back to the U.S.

Friends in San Miguel--really good friends--are more numerous than we ever had in Chicago, and a singularly interesting, well educated bunch. Gay and straight couples and also singles, the only thing in common being that they are old--not as "old friends" but as in Social Security-old. Yesterday we bought a desk-size appointment calendar at Office Depot to jot down all our social comings and goings.

This busy circle of friends, though, is like a fish tank filled with familiar English-speaking guppies from the U.S. or Canada. It's understandable because relatively few of our friends speak Spanish. Some are not really interested in Mexico-type things either, beyond colorful handicrafts and an occasional plate of tacos, and are happy to remain perpetual tourists in this place they call home.

I have made a sustained effort to insert myself into the Mexico all around us, but have not made much progress. I speak fluent Spanish, but it's Cuban Spanish, as different from the Mexican variety--and as easily detectable by the locals--as a Mississippi drawl would be in Boston. My Spanish gets me directions and a general understanding of what is going on, but so far hasn't taken me to the "mi casa es tu casa" phase of mixing with Mexicans.

My height--six-foot-three-inches--puts me about eight inches above any Mexicans around. That, if nothing else, creates a glass-like barrier around me that I haven't been able to break.

A good part of the problem too is the reticence and privateness of Mexicans, who are invariably polite but not likely to invite you to go dancing at the next fiesta. Two weeks ago a friend from San Antonio and I went to a big fiesta at Sosnavar, Félix' home, and we were fascinated by the lack of fun among the participants.

There was a traditional dancing group with bright costumes who went through all the motions precisely, but there were no cheers, clapping or other encouragement from the bystanders who stood by watching the spectacle as impassively as if they were watching mesquites blooming.

I could imagine that if we had we been in Puerto Rico or Cuba there would have been much spontaneous whistling, clapping and instinctive booty-wiggling and soon the performers and the spectators would have blended into one raucous conga line.

Most of the noise at some of these fiestas comes from a steady volley of firecrackers, beginning at 6:30 a.m. Some of the participants may succumb to booze as the day wears on, but that's not exactly what you'd call fun.

I'm not giving up. Next weekend is fiesta time at La Biznaga, the little town next to us to which our ranch technically belongs. I'm determined to stay throughout the entire show and find out what if anything I am missing. Also, we contributed $500 pesos to the fiesta fund last week so the least I can do is go watch and eat.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is not about to let go of us. Stew is working on our federal taxes and last week we received, via email, our absentee voter paperwork from Chicago. I know, I know, voting for Democrats in Chicago is like endorsing pasta in Rome, but somehow as a loyal U.S. citizens we feel that's the least we can do.

Here come the bees, honey

2012-02-09T12:37:00.002-06:00

Ready for occupancy

Unless the vagaries of Mexican Time interfere, later this week we should be getting a three-pound package containing approximately 7,000 bees, ready to buzz under the direction of a queen bee. The latter is traveling from Veracruz in her own separate little jewel box-like container, while the rank-and-file bees are coming from a beekeeper in San Luis de La Paz, about an hour from here.

One of the wonders of San Miguel is the plethora of organizations, causes and hobbies, from bird-watching to midwifery and photography. No doubt a large part of the reason is that so many foreigners here are retired, with time on the hands to pursue new or long-postponed avocations. But it also reflects the expats are an active, clever and curious bunch, not the stereotypical geezers in rocking chairs waiting for the sun to set.

Robert Lewis, the head of the local beekeepers
group, attaches a wax sheet to one of the frames
that will go in the beehive. The frames have very
thin wires running across that are heated lightly
by connecting them to a car battery. The heated
wires melt the wax sheets slightly which then
become attached to the wires.

So several weeks ago Stew joined the local bee-keepers group, which meets regularly to discuss plans, order supplies and solve problems. Happily, some of the members are Mexican locals, a departure from the all-gringo membership typical of so many local organizations.

Although beeswax and honey are supposedly the ultimate outcomes of apiculture, Stew says that's not his motivation. It's got to do with plain curiosity and bringing more bees to our land to help pollinate the fruit trees and other plants that are just beginning to flower. That's a good thing. I don't see Stew and Felix setting up a roadside stand to sell jars of honey, or donning granny outfits and making candles in the garage.

For now the arrival of the bees is shrouded in considerable mystery, like an occult science, which may be largely the result of, hmm, lack of knowledge. Stew bought a copy of "First Lessons in Beekeeping," a slender book first published in 1917 and still considered the most authoritative on the subject, and got a copy in Spanish for Felix.

Problem is neither one has finished reading the book and 7,000 bees, and the queen, are due here in a couple of days. I imagine the bees' arrival being like thousands of hyperactive little Martians--which have to be fed and housed--landing on our ranch.

Just in case, Stew also has ordered a beekeepers hat and a smoker contraption to help resolve any misunderstandings, though he's been assured that the bees come on in peace: They are not prone to sting unless provoked because they die as a result.

Bees landing on the flower of a
prickly pear cactus

Stew and Felix already installed the beehive, including slide-in wooden frames with wax panels. The cost of this project so far is US$100 for the wooden box, made by a local carpenter; $110 for the nucleus swarm of bees about to arrive, plus $7 for the queen bee and five "nurse bees" to help the queen launch this incredibly complex colony.

The box carrying the queen and its "court" will come with a lump of sugar "candy" for food during the trip from Veracruz. The other 7,000 schlepper bees come attached to four of the wooden frames which are inserted into the beehive.

Upon arrival they have to set up a feeder with a high-octane mix of half sugar and half water, to help the bees survive until flowers and other sources of nectar start blooming in our ranch. The prickly pear and organ cacti, and peach and apricot trees already have flowers and are being dive-bombed by the local bees. Next the huizaches are supposed to bloom, followed by the mesquite trees. With each wave of blooms the bees produce a different type of honey, with Mexican mesquite honey the most prized of all.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The queen is supposed to start laying eggs right away, triggering a constant cycle of life and death in the hive, as the original bees die off and are replaced by new ones. We're not likely so see either honey or wax for about a year.

By then we will need another container above our hive to collect the honey, in addition to having to exchange the original frames and beeswax panels for new ones. Someone in Dolores Hidalgo is supposed to extract the honey for us.

Questions abound and they will be resolved only playing along with the queens, the nurses and the worker bees. This is a Stew and Felix project which I'm determined to watch from a safe distance-- though I admit to being extremely curious.

Check out the amazing UTube we received from Bill Barnes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTLgSqu4r3E&feature=youtu.be

A very quiet week at the beach

2012-01-31T17:13:00.002-06:00

Calling a week away from home a "vacation" is redundant when you're retired and your life has no fixed schedule to begin with. So we avoid the word and call our vacation-like outings "trips."

Last week we were on one of our trips, this one to Barra de Potosí, a beautiful beach located in a cove a half hour south of the Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa resorts on Mexico's Pacific Coast, and a seven-hour drive from San Miguel.

The weather was perfect; breezy, sunny and in the mid 80s. The beachfront house we rented was equally idyllic, located barely one hundred yards from the water. Two longtime friends from Chicago joined us and everyone had a great time, mostly eating, thinking about eating, reading, playing Scrabble and talking, with no TV or radio to get in the way. A five-minute walk from the house three or four small restaurants offered fish so fresh it practically jumped out of the water and onto your plate.

Stew tried to play a couple of movies on his laptop but it didn't work. Something was wrong with the audio. Just as well. The only disturbance was the relentless pounding of the surf though after the third of fourth day we didn't even notice that.

In fact it was the quiet that after a while started to get to us. This is supposed to be the peak of the high tourist season and yet there was hardly anyone there. Up and down the beach there were empty hotels, beach houses and condominiums. Scores of cheap white plastic chairs at the beach restaurants looked similarly forlorn, half-stuck in the sand.

Even Ixtapa, north of Zihuatanejo, one of those ready-made resorts developed by the Mexican government and offering a Miami-style skyline of hotels and condominiums by the beach, the ambiance was palpably downcast. Across a six-lane boulevard, a shopping area had several holes where stores used to be.

Where is everybody? Where are the boatloads and planeloads of American tourists that normally crowd the area's hotels and roads? The answer, as far as we could figure out, is that the gringos are afraid. Afraid the U.S. economy may not recover; afraid of losing their jobs or their homes; afraid of the present and the future.

But most of all probably afraid of what is generally called "Mexico's security problem." Bullets, narcotraffickers, drug cartels, beheadings and general mayhem, made ten times worse by the fact that Mexico is a foreign place with a salty reputation for bandidos, cheap hookers, lawlessness and who-knows-what. Think Tijuana and other honky-tonk border towns. No matter how calm Mexico is or may become, for many American it'll never be quite as comfortable as the more familiar Tampa or Dollywood, Tenn.

American media can be blamed for not parsing the bad news coming from Mexico--indeed the U.S. media really doesn't parse or analyze much of anything--but you still have the fact that during the past five years 45,000 people have been killed as a result of the country's drug wars, give or take a few thousand. That's an awfully big pile of bodies.

Yet Stew and I keep on going on regular road trips, to Mexico City, the beach, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Xilita, Chihuahua and the Copper Canyon. We're planning other jaunts to Mérida and a resort south of Mexico City, a tour of cheese factories near Querétaro. For some reason, we don't feel afraid.

Part of it is familiarity. Last summer we went to Chicago and later read that during our five-day visit twelve people had been murdered. But we're not afraid to visit because we know the place and where to go and what to avoid. Stew and I lived there for thirty years.

Same thing may be happening with us in Mexico, as we enter our seventh year here. We've found out through interminable rides on buses and cars that Mexico is a huge place and that there are spots in which you don't want to linger, like the towns along the border where the overwhelming majority of the drug-related killings take place, or the hinterlands of Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located. Outside of those areas, Mexico feels safe to us.

Every report I've read also says this is an intramural war within the narcotrafficking world, that hasn't spilled yet onto the general population, as was the case in Colombia several years ago where kidnapping folks off the highways was a national pastime. In Mexico we drive with our car doors locked and will resolutely turn down any requests to transport cocaine or methamphetamines in our pickup.

These explanations and nuances hardly add up to a credible marketing campaign to revive Mexico's tourism sector. If nothing else there are a lot of other beaches and warm spots all over the Caribbean and Central America where there are no drug wars or killings--or at least none Americans have heard of.

In Barra de Potosi we should have been happy there were very few other tourists to block our views or mess up the beach. And frankly, we were. But it was still a bit sad to see the worried looks on so many people who depend on tourism to survive. Even the beach mutts who live on handouts seemed to be working extra hard.

Overture to a rain dance

2012-01-19T12:21:00.003-06:00

It is ungrateful for anyone in San Miguel to complain about the weather here, which is about as mild and even as you can pray for. No Chicago-like deep freezes or Houston-like saunas. Particularly in the past couple of years, when there have been floods, tornados, blizzards and other disasters in the U.S., our weather, with slight seasonal blips, has remained pleasant.

As I write this, at 10:23 a.m., the skies are hazy, temperature 78 degrees, relative humidity 44 percent, and the winds calm.

Ungrateful yes, but I'm going to complain anyway. At just about the midpoint of our dry season, when we can still expect four more rainless months, I'm growing tired of the browned and flowerless landscapes and the scorched hillsides which by now look like they are suffering from a creeping mange.

There have been some gray clouds loitering above in the past couple of weeks, accompanied with some gurgling noises, but pfft. We even had teaser raindrops some days ago but so few and brief the dogs didn't even bother to come inside. Their noses pointed contemptuously at the sky, they scoffed, "You're not fooling us!"

There's a certain apprehension around here this dry season. Last year we only received about 12 inches of rain, about half of normal. Shouldn't complain about that either given the drought that has seared much of Texas and northern Mexico for the past two years, killing hundreds of thousands of cattle and pushing small farmers closer to ruin.

Still, the holding ponds, lagoons and other artifices to help man and beast survive our eight-month long dry season were only one-third full this year and by now are bone dry and dusty.

Gov. Rick Perry's showboat religiosity and prayers for rain don't seem to have had any effect on either side of the border. Maybe he should have spent more time in Texas praying and brushing up on the number of justices in the U.S. Supreme Court. It's nine, not eight.

As far as I can tell, San Miguel sits perilously at the southern edge of the drought that is beating down on the American Southwest and northern Mexico. Will it spread toward us or retreat northward?

The gray yet barren clouds we've had could be a good sign, say the farmers, an auspicious warm-up, an overture containing tunes hinting of things to come. Farmers also quote experience to assure everyone that the lack of wind, a fixture usually late in the afternoon, is also a good omen. Indeed, some of them are already plowing their plots, making them ready to receive the usual seeds of corn, squash and beans as soon as the clouds finally open up.

Another comforting sight, aside from our still-green trees, is our vegetable crops chortling in our two raised beds, oblivious to the withered surroundings.

Though I buy the seeds, this tiny oasis is Félix' creation, which he nurtures daily, raising the plastic covers when it gets warm outside, watering the plants and sowing more seeds, and lowering the plastic when he goes home. It's his baby and he is justifiedly proud of it.

A half-dozen types of lettuce, spinach, arugula, a tasty little weed called mizuna, mustard greens, kale, and radishes make up this tiny jungle. Stew and I are eating more vegetables now than ever in our lives.

Bill Barnes, a blog reader from Florida, recently visited San Miguel and dropped off a bunch of seeds, many of them unavailable locally. Thanks Bill. He also wrote me that he's already busy planting his garden plot with onions, peas and carrots. He's encouraged me not to give up on growing different varieties of tomatoes. Between the uncooperative soil and the iffy rains, my impulse is to stick to the same-old crops. That's not much fun.

An hour after I started writing this blog, the temperature has risen to 86 degrees, the humidity shriveled to 28 percent and there's not a cloud in the sky.

The rains will come, I'm sure, but not today.

A date with Doña Huesera

2012-01-18T11:32:00.003-06:00

Hueso in Spanish means "bone" and in Mexico, a huesera is a healer who works with bones, massaging, twisting and manipulating them in the style of a chiropractor, albeit without the patient information questionnaires, fancy examination tables or insurance forms.

After a week of soreness in both of my feet, caused by chronic tendonitis, I heeded the advice of an American friend and Félix the gardener--that inexhaustible source of Mexican folk wisdom--and headed for Doña Remedios, the local huesera, for some treatment. My gringo friend had had a nagging hip pain cured and Félix a left foot he had dislocated while playing soccer coaxed back into place.

And hey, Remedios is Spanish for "remedies" and she has a busy enough practice that appointments are recommended. Those two omens were enough to convince me to give her a try. There might be something to this.

When I got to her clinic, actually a combination treatment room and a tiendita--a tiny store usually attached to someone's home and selling mostly sweets and soft drinks--I had to wait outside because she was currently assisting another patient, who eventually emerged. She was an unsteady and dazed-looking woman in her forties, hanging on tightly to the arm of a teenager, probably her daughter.

Get a Pepsi and a bone realignment here

When I finally I entered Doña Remedios clinic I realized this was not going to be a quickie medical treatment, but a peek into a world that combined religious fervor and magical realism with gritty reality, and a thriving micro business with a genuine concern and understanding of other people's suffering.

Doña Remedios was a small, bossomy middle-aged woman, with a round face, sparkling brown eyes and an easy smile that revealed several gold teeth. Her hands, the main instrument of her healing trade, were chubby and small though quite powerful, as I was to discover. She was wearing a bright-green blouse of a shiny material that was almost iridescent. If you believe in personal auras, hers was one of kindness.

The small courtyard on the way to her treatment room had not yet recovered from Christmas. Decorations still hung from the trees, and a weather-beaten Nativity scene, with some of the protagonists missing, sat atop a bed of straw.

The actual examination room was maybe twenty feet square, with a cloth curtain for a door. It was an inner sanctum recently built apart from the main house and the tiendita, with a half-dozen folding chairs lined up outside as an outdoor waiting room for patients and their relatives.

Inside, the only furniture was a small dresser, with some bottles and potions on top and a grisly picture of Jesus hanging on the wall, all bloodied and contorted in pain. It struck me as an odd picture for sick people to look at. I would have picked instead a radiant, smiling Jesus ascending heavenward. Or maybe the two side by side, as a more auspicious before-and-after tableau.

A grungy sleeping bag, a pillow and some rags laid on the floor, next to a metal folding chair. She asked me to lie down but then changed her mind when I said the problem was with my feet. So I sat on the chair and she knelt at my feet, rubbing my left foot forcefully with an unguent that smelled like Ben Gay.

Then the serious treatment began with a glass cup, about the size of a large shot glass. She poured a liquid, probably alcohol, out of bruised plastic soda bottle that also contained what she described as "healing herbs," and set the content of the glass on fire. When the flame died off she applied the glass to my foot, which created a vacuum and sucked up the skin. She repeated the treatment throughout my foot, while explaining she was sucking "the cold"--el frío--out of my feet.

Much to her credit, Doña Remedios pointed out right away there was something wrong with the tendons and shape of my left foot, an accurate spot diagnosis considering she had no equipment but her eyes and experience.

Far more interesting though were the stories that poured forth during the treatment. She had learned healing in San Miguel and had been practicing for many years and apparently had developed quite a reputation in the tiny village of Sosnavar, where Félix lives with his family. In fact, she is somehow related to his father, and also to the rancher who lives near our house. In Sosnavar everyone seems to be related to someone else somehow, which may explain the visibly higher-than-normal incidence of mentally handicapped folks I had noticed before.

The patient just before me was an alcoholic, Doña Remedios lamented, a rampant problem in Sosnavar among both men and women who drink not beer or liquor but pure rubbing alcohol provided by a couple of "irresponsible" vendors in town for about ten pesos (ninety U.S. cents) for a large shot glass.

I don't know how a huesera treats alcoholism though, again, Doña Remedios had a keen understanding of the ailment. She observed that the first step toward a cure was for the person to admit they had an out-of-control problem and needed outside help. Whether she realized it or not, she was quoting the first two steps of Alcoholics Anonymous' 12 Step Program.

AA meeting houses are ubiquitous in San Miguel there are none in Sosnavar she said. It occurred to me that a recovering alcoholic who brought AA to town could become a life-saving hero.

In fact when I later told Félix the stories I'd heard from Doña Remedios he said deaths from alcohol poisoning are not uncommon and that an alcoholic woman in La Biznaga, the town closest to our ranch, had been buried this past weekend. Previously Félix had confided that his father was an alcoholic who had almost died of it, a cautionary history that perhaps explains why we've never seen Félix drunk or hung over.

On to my right foot and Doña Remedios' fervent Catholic faith. For the past several years she has participated on a nine-day pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, in the state of Jalisco. She went on about the several thousand pilgrims who travel there on foot, on horseback or pickup trucks, and become a blanket of humanity covering the surrounding mountainside.

They march, pray and sing, many of them praying for miracles and making promises to the Virgin in return. Doña Remedios turned serious for a second and warned that people who failed to make good on their promises would be held to account after they die.

She repeatedly urged me to join the pilgrimage next year, telling me of the regocijo--Spanish for "joy"-- that fills the air and the souls of the participants. Visibly moved, her eyes glistened as she told the story. On my way out she lent me a video someone made of the pilgrimage last year.

The treatment and the stories went on for about 45 minutes and cost me five dollars.

Do my feet feel any better? Thought you'd never ask. As a matter of fact they do. Somewhat.

We're going to be out of town next week but when we return I'll be back for more treatment and an additional dose of Doña Remedios' stories.

Chucha the survivor

2012-01-10T17:25:00.001-06:00

As soon as we began coming regularly to the land were our ranch was to be built, about three years ago, so did Chucha, which immediately became our most devoted and solicitous neighbor. Hers was not the gradual approach to romancing new friends, or at least that wasn't the case with us. It was more like, "Hey guys, can we get this house finished so I can move in?"

Her looks are not her biggest asset. Even before we started to feed her regularly she was a matronly sort, with a beefy torso and legs splayed slightly, which produces a loopy waddle rather than an elegant strut. Old age or perhaps arthritis also make Chucha walk at a slight angle, like an old pickup that was rear-ended and the chassis never quite straightened out.

No matter. Her tail wags constantly and in various directions, depending on the occasion: Up and down, right to left or at times of extreme delight, all around in a whirligig-like motion.

Her nose is grayer by the day and a nervous tic makes her left lip and ear twitch nervously. Her eyes are beginning to cloud up though she seems to still see quite well. She also hears well. And if you insist, she'll let you check her teeth and discover that alas, there aren't many left, basically just a few grungy canines.

Then you have her teats--hence the Ms. Titties nickname we gave her--which dangle from her belly like a rack of medals for "Outstanding Achievement in the Propagation of the Species Canis Domesticus." Indeed two of her progeny, one a male named Negro with identical markings--all black except for a white blotch on the chest and white tips on all four feet--and a female named Brenda, still hang around with Chucha. Feed one and you have to feed all three. Rub one on the head and immediately you have what Stew calls a "group hug." We have no idea how many litters Chucha has produced except she's a veteran mother.

Even if you could pin down her breed, Chucha would never win a ribbon for her looks. But she surely would win something for something: Personality, lovability or just sheer grit. Of the six farm dogs that come to our gate daily, Chucha is by far the oldest--ten or eleven years old at least--a most venerable age for a dog that was born and has spent her entire life outdoors, her owners good for no more than a couple of stale tortillas a day in lieu of food, and living under constant threat from predators, other dogs, cars, disease or human cruelty.

The Darwin Award for survival of the fittest or at least the most determined. That would be a good award for Chucha.

Chucha actually belongs to Don Vicente, a rancher who lives in a ramshackle house downhill from us, with a wife and fourteen children, not all of them from his wife as we understand. He told me that Chucha is special to him because she was a gift from a "female friend."

From the beginning Chucha followed us around and rested her head on either one of our laps if we sat down. Any sign of affection from us triggers a belly-in-the-air routine until we give ten or fifteen seconds of rubbing.

Chasing her away was useless, so we started thinking of adopting her which just didn't work out. For all her sweetness and gentleness toward us, Chucha was definitely an alpha bitch who wouldn't tolerate any competition from other dogs, including our Lucy and Gladys.

Any sight of each other would trigger frightening bouts of growling and snarling. In fact her aggressiveness is most likely the key to Chucha's longevity. When we used to feed the other dogs, including Negro and Brenda, they would all give Chucha the right of way.

But over the past six months Chucha's supremacy is noticeably fading. Other dogs no longer stand back and let her eat first; now some will even challenge and chase Chucha away. In a touching sign of family loyalty, only Negro and Brenda will still let Chucha eat first; indeed Negro, the biggest member of the pack, occasionally chases and snarls at other dogs bothering or threatening Chucha.

Chucha has had a couple of health scares recently. One of her nipples swelled up grotesquely but the day before we planned to take her to a vet Don Vicente reported that the inflammation somehow had burst and drained by itself. Then a bright red growth about the size of a golf ball appeared dangling from Chucha's rear end. Again, it disappeared. Maybe it fell off or she bit it off. Whatever it was, in a couple of days she was back at our gate looking for food.

Unlike the other dogs, Chucha is no mercenary. She shows up punctually at our gate whenever we come and go, not necessarily looking for food. A quick back rub and a "Hi Chucha!" and a couple of minutes later she's on her way back to wherever she sleeps or hangs out.

Her punctuality has given us a few scares. If she doesn't come, has something happened to her? At her age, we realize one day she's not going to show up for good. We'll miss her and be sad and most likely will say something trite like "for a country dog on her own, Chucha had one hell of a run." In her case, every word will be true.

Brimming with memories

2011-12-18T18:52:00.004-06:00

Half-hidden behind a hedge at a gas station on the way to San Miguel, it was barely visible as we sped by. When I saw it again though, its features were unmistakable even if marred by layers of bad paint and stickers slapped on like makeup and tattoos on an over-the-hill hooker. Particularly cruel was the iridescent red paint sprayed across the nose.

But the huge grille, menacing as a shark's teeth, was still there, in between the two undersized headlights set too far apart, which give the car a vaguely disoriented, wall-eyed look. Also intact was the bumper, including its protruding cones called "bullets," looking more like two impressive but useless chrome breasts. The scandalous front didn't go at all with the puny, demure tail lights.

General Motors' promotional one-liner for its 1954 Chevrolet was "Brimming with Beauty!", a typical adman's delusion. The '54 was no beauty. It was halfway between the matronly models of the early '50s, all curves but no sex appeal, and the late 1950s, when car designers lines fell in love with wings and fins. Just check the rear end of the 1959 Chevy with its three-piece, elongated tail lights framed by enormous swooping eyebrows. From behind the car looks permanently startled.

The '54 Chevy sitting forlornly at the gas station was especially unbeautiful. Not only had it not been restored but several add-ons, like plastic sideview mirrors and rubber bungee cords to keep the hood and the trunk lid shut, showed no respect for the original design.

It was a particularly sad sight to me because a baby-blue 1954 Chevy was our last family car in Cuba. I remember it well because it arrived when I was seven years old and a boy's car mania had begun to stir in my head.

My dad was a lonesome and taciturn man, not one to take the family on a jolly spree to look for a new car. The car just appeared in front of our house, and like him, it was a sensible and prudent choice. No red convertibles or sporty two-doors. Ours was a four-door sedan in a reticent color, with a manual transmission. I don't know when the Powerglide automatic transmissions arrived in Cuba but we certainly didn't get one.

Despite its lack of pizzazz, the new Chevy looked as sleek as a barracuda compared to our family car during the previous six years, a constipated-looking 1948 black Chevrolet my dad had bought shortly after I was born.

I never got to drive the 54 Chevy, just as I wasn't supposed to touch his hi-fi system and collection of classical LPs. "Supposed to" because, of course, I did play his records when I came back early from school and that's how I learned about Chopin, Beethoven and all the long-haired guys.

Though Cuban exiles like to go on and on, and on again, about how wealthy they were in Cuba--as if the entire country was a quilt of lush plantations and mansions before Castro showed up and ruined everything--our family's situation in fact was nothing if not modest. The car, the LP collection, our two-bedroom house, and my dad's printing shop was about it for our our net assets.

I don't remember ever driving the Chevy, but my dad did put me on his lap and point to all the dials and buttons on the dashboard and of course, the horn. I think this was his idea of a man-to-man talk.

The biggie were the gears, which he demonstrated while driving. Out and down for first gear, then straight up--past neutral--for second, and straight down for third.

First gear was the trickiest, my dad explained, because of the car's tendency to lurch and choke unless the play between the clutch and the gas pedal was performed seamlessly. Reverse--out and up--was inconceivable and scary to me. I've retained a preference for manual transmissions.

We also went under the hood and learned about the distributor, radiator, spark plugs and the fan. Tires frequently went flat, so I learned about the jack--make sure the emergency brake is on and loosen the lug nuts before trying to jack up the car--a lesson that has come in handy in later life.

My dad's loving care for the '54 Chevy was matched only his obsession for the record collection. He washed and waxed the car constantly and his only accident, when he was lightly rear-ended at a gas station in Havana, made him swear off ever venturing into the maelstrom of traffic in the capital.

After that, the Chevy stayed in the snoring provincial capital of Santa Clara where we lived, except for occasional jaunts to my grandmother's or to the beach. Even then we had a tragic experience, when we were the first to arrive at an accident involving an overturned flatbed full of poor farm families returning from a day at Rancho Luna, a beach near the later-famous Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba.

Bloodied people clamored to get in the car and be taken to the hospital. Their faces were green from panic and from grass stains. A woman sat next to me with a wailing child who later went silent. I found out when we got to the hospital that the kid had died in transit.

My dad's twin obsessions ultimately went for naught. Castro took power in 1959 and he and my mother had to leave Cuba, and everything they owned, in 1965. In retrospect he should have used the records as frisbees and taken the family for one last, mad drive in the baby-blue Chevy and crashed it into a tree, all while flipping Castro the bird.

The records went somewhere. I hope someone enjoyed them.

As for the car, that '54 Chevy by now must be coughing and wheezing, its innards full of cannibalized parts and improvised fixes, conscripted into the army of '50s cars still rolling around in Cuba. In fact it may be in better shape than its cousin at the San Miguel gas station.

McAttack

2011-12-16T11:45:00.000-06:00

Not arthritic knees, shrinking hairlines or buzzing hearing aids seem to keep the politically correct expats living in San Miguel from raising a little leftist ruckus now and again, just like in the old days.

Barely two weeks ago a debate erupted on the Civil List, the internet sounding board for expats in San Miguel, over the proposed opening of a McDonald's restaurant in the town's historic center, a few blocks away from the main square.

McDonald's on and off the grill.

On Wednesday a protest march was convened in front of the proposed restaurant by the Steering Committee Protejamos de Centro Historico de SMA (sic), which on the Civil List claimed to have collected about 800 signatures from people opposing the project.

The anemic turnout--about 15 gringos, four Mexicans and one Irish setter of unknown nationality--was upstaged by a raucous religious procession, whose exact theme I could not determine but which meandered by at just about the same time. It included about a dozen dancers in full-feathered Indian attire, four people carrying a small statue of a saint in a glass case, a flat-bed truck with additional costumed participants, followed by a drum-and-brass ensemble that detonated periodically. It was not much of a contest.

As its name suggests, the anti-McDonald's group waves the banner of historic preservation, a sacred cause not likely to attract much, if any opposition. San Miguel's colonial beauty and history are its chief assets; to undermine them would be suicidal, both culturally and economically.

Yet as you read the furious arguments against the restaurant what starts to transpire are not so much historic or aesthetic concerns but the old anti-capitalist, anti-corporate refrains from American lefties for whom "McDonald's" is a bloody shirt, along with "Wal-mart" and a few others corporate demons.

Colonial lattes in San Miguel.

It's not what harm a McDonald's restaurant could do to the appearance or feel of the historic center of San Miguel--likely very little, to judge by the tastefully done Starbuck's restaurant across the street--but what McDonald's has come to symbolize, by the sounds of it, a vision of the anti-Christ.

According to some of the comments on the Civil List, a McDonald's burger indeed contains the ingredients of an eventual apocalypse: Globs of grease and cholesterol; exploitation of Mexican workers; rapacity by transnational--read "American"--corporations; too much salt in one's diet; inhumane treatment of animals; rampant obesity; tainted meat; disregard for Mexico's cultural values; unhappy cattle; imperialism; landfills crammed with styrofoam; greed; depletion of the world's water resources. The list sounds like a trailer for a movie about Mayan predictions of the end of the world--exactly a year from now.

Yet as some of the Civil List litigants noted, franchise joints are not anything new to San Miguel. In addition to Starbuck's, which prospers thanks mainly to a young Mexican clientele, within a few blocks of San Miguel's main square one can find Harry's New Orleans Cafe and Oyster Bar, in addition to Century 21, Re/Max and Coldwell Banker real estate franchises. Before that we had a dingy Dunkin Donuts store right on the main square and a Subway sandwich shop up the street, both of which are now defunct.

If the municipal aesthetic police continues to do its work, there's nothing to worry about the defacement of the historic center. Harry's, Starbucks et. al. thrive behind discreet and carefully restored facades. If anything, Starbuck's ought to get an award for its sensitive and tasteful renovation of a colonial building, both inside and out.

But behind the balls-and-strikes in this debate lies an attitude that effectively infantilizes Mexicans and assumes they need foreign guidance and counseling so they can make the "right" decision about siting a McDonald's in their own downtown.

Shouldn't we trust the workings of the San Miguel's historic preservation authorities to make their own decisions? Shouldn't Mexican consumers be able to decide by themselves whether they want to eat at a McDonald's restaurant without foreigners lecturing about the evils of greasy hamburgers or what San Miguel's colonial center should look like?

The quick death of the Subway sandwich shop showed that local consumers can spot overpriced, tasteless mush when they bite into it. On the other hand the success of the McDonald's in the shopping center on the edge of town presents a nightmarish precedent for those opposed to a restaurant downtown: It's not that we may have a McDonald's downtown but that Mexicans may like it, just as they--and a good number of Americans--like the nearby Starbucks.

The project downtown already has been approved and disapproved by the municipal government, and now opponents say the mayor has expressed her opposition to it, so they have "won" this "struggle."

American radicals in exile should back off, let the Mexicans play this one out according to their own lights--and stick to possibly less annoying pastimes like, say, quilting, bird-watching, taking photographs and writing blogs.

Metropolis on the move

2011-12-12T16:59:00.004-06:00

Mexico City, known among Mexicans as "D.F." (for "Distrito Federal," a jurisdiction comparable to Washington, D.C.) or just plain "Mexico," is tantalizingly close to San Miguel, promising what Stew calls a "big-city fix."

"Angel of Independence" on Paseo de la Reforma.

Discounted fares for people over 60 are about 20 dollars round trip in luxury buses with two bathrooms, air-conditioning, sometimes a Wi-fi connection, plus lunch and a bottle of soda. Two American movies usually are shown, though the trip ends before the conclusion of the second feature, leaving passengers with an unsatisfying feeling of cinematus interruptus. So who really was the killer? people mutter as they claim their luggage.

Travel time is about three and half hours, relaxing enough until you get in a cab at the North Bus Station for the run to the hotel. This last leg can last anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes and provide amusement park-style kicks, depending on the temperament or mood of the driver. This past weekend we also found out that the seismic faults running through the city center's mushy subsoil can offer their own thrills.

As you approach the city its size is inescapable, a population mass of about 20 million give or take a million. Except for trolleys, Mexico City has every mode of mass transit known to man: trains underground, at street level and on elevated tracks, double- and triple-car articulated buses running on dedicated lanes, regular buses ranging from deluxe to belching rattletraps, plus some that run on electricity from overhead lines. Neither the abundance of mass transit or the ridiculously low fares, about 30 cents a ride, have an impact on the number of cars jerking in every direction like crazed ants.

Over the past decade air quality has either improved or that in competing cities like Beijing and Shanghai has worsened so much that Mexico City's looks pretty good by comparison. City officials say that the capital is no longer on the top ten of most polluted metropolises in the world. Residents add that on a really clear day you can actually make out the mountains that encircle the city, though I doubt it'll look anything like the Swiss Alps.

For its size, however, Mexico City lacks the ethnic and cultural variety so typical in places like Toronto, New York, Chicago, London and other large urban centers. No matter where you go, Mexico City seems and feels all-Mexican. In the streets, subways and buses you won't spot saris, turbans, Hasidic felt hats, or Muslim women wrapped in chadors like you see in Chicago or London, hear foreign languages or for that matter--except for tourists--see many African or Asian skin tones.

Lovers' altar on a park tree.

Economic differences evident in any major urban areas are much starker in Mexico City. We generally stay in a touristy area, near a Paris-like boulevard with imposing fountains called Paseo de La Reforma that was in fact designed to evoke the Champs Elysees. There's Fifth Avenue-style shopping in the Polanco neighborhood and walled mansions in various other areas. In the new Santa Fe area there's a huge shopping center surrounded by luxury high-rise condominium and office buildings that would fit right in Dallas or Houston.

Stew and I haven't even begun to explore all the different areas of the city but glimpses from the bus or the air tell us that La Reforma, Polanco or Lomas de Chapultepec are but tiny samples of a much vaster, almost impenetrable, urban expanse.

As you walk around the city constantly teases you. There's a neat little altar mounted on a tree on a park, with a spotless white lace cloth and a blue vase with flowers and the etching: "Juliana y Mauricio, 19 June 2003". A wedding memento? Did they die here? Who keeps this personal monument neat and tidy? Abandoned mansions, sooty and ominous yet still fabulous are also sprinkled on Reforma and the side streets. What happened to the rich people who lived here? Why were these mini palaces abandoned?

Jogger stretches on a street sculpture depicting
four electric chairs.

Still, our searches for typical big-city ethnic neighborhoods--think Little Italy, Greek Town, Little Havana or Saigon--with their authentic, immigrant-run restaurants haven't turned up anything in Mexico City. There's a tiny Chinatown near the center, but hardly worth visiting. A large and very good Lebanese restaurant near the old colonial center hints at the sizable population of Lebanese descent in Mexico City that includes Carlos Slim Helu owner of most of the country's telephone system and one of or the richest man in the world, depending on the hiccups of the stock market. There's a large concentration of Jews in Polanco too but as far as we know, not a decent kosher deli serving an excellent pastrami sandwich on rye.

In front of the stock exchange, Mexico City's version
of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Despite the occasional rancor Mexicans express toward gringos and anything American, the most significant foreign influences in Mexico City ironically come from the U.S. Mexicans love American movies, and just like in the U.S., the more lame-brained the better. American-designed clothing, genuine or rip-offs is ubiquitous, as are the stores selling it. A Mexican newspaper this weekend introduced me to the newest Spanglish terms, such as Twittear, Facebookear and Clickear.

During dinner on Saturday night, right about the time my flan con cajeta arrived, Mexico City pulled one of its scariest stunts: A 6.8 earth tremor that lasted for 40 seconds. Everyone at the restaurant dropped what they were doing and dashed for the door, with our Mexican dinner guest and the two of us not far behind. My last sight on the way to the parking lot was the Christmas tree in the lobby, decorated with garish blue lights, merrily swaying back and forth.

After ten minutes of nervous chatter and giggling on the spot in the parking lot designated as a gathering place in case of an earthquake, we headed back inside. We vacuumed our desserts and asked for the check right away.

Next day's Milenio newspaper reported a minor artistic panic at the Bellas Artes theater, a performing arts palace near the colonial center. A pianist was playing Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, specifically the third movement titled "Funeral March." As the ground started to shake, the performer fled the stage and the audience headed for the doors. Tremors and funeral marches: That's a scary mix.

Planned puppyhood

2011-12-05T19:11:00.002-06:00

Aside from the widespread poverty, both rural and urban, one dispiriting aspect of living Mexico is the visible mistreatment of animals, some of it by commission but mostly by just neglect.

There's an obvious connection between human and animal misery: When folk have barely enough to feed themselves and their families you can't expect them to buy salmon cat food or perfumed flea powder for dogs--even though the pet supplies aisles at the local supermarkets gain more linear footage every day.

Osita shortly after her operation.

It's not necessarily willful cruelty toward dogs and cats but a zero-sum game dictated by survival. If there is any money or food left over to fatten animals it's most likely to go for chickens, cows, sheep, pigs, goats and other critters that can be turned into tomorrow's taco filling. Occasionally some stale tortillas are set aside for a pregnant bitch whose puppies her owner hopes to sell for some extra cash.

When we moved to the ranch, the first howdy-how-do-you-do visit was from Chucha, the archetypal "campo" or "country" dog, meaning that she technically belongs to someone but is not fed or cared for by anyone in particular. Naturally we started feeding Chucha. (More about her, one of the most endearing mutts this side of the Rio Grande, in a later blog.)

Bad idea for our animal food budget, great idea for Chucha and her six or seven amigos who now show up punctually every morning to be fed and to begin the day with a hearty barking and snarling fest with our dogs on the inside of the fence. Then we took up feeding Félix' three (now two) mutts. And our two (now three) house dogs. That comes out to, hmm, ten or twelve dogs or thereabouts. Everyone is fat and happy; no ribs showing.

But as we travel back and forth to San Miguel every day it's clear the problem is not food but sheer numbers of strays. Every day some dog between our ranch and the town shows up as roadkill though we've noticed some kind soul goes around moving the carcasses to the side.

Overpopulation--more dogs and cats anyone needs or can take care of--is at the heart of the problem. No matter how many animal shelters are built there's no way they can keep up with a number of abandoned animals that increases geometrically.

Amigos de Animales mobile clinic

The overpopulation issue came to our front gate shortly after we moved in. Brenda--that's what the owner named her--we suspect is one of the offspring of Chucha's long and rather promiscuous life. If so, Brenda didn't inherit any of her mom's smart genes. She's certifiably "taruga", or Mexican slang for "dumber than a bag of manure." A lovable but clueless creature.

About a year ago, we decided to have Brenda spayed, an idea that got messy and complicated: She was already quite pregnant with eight puppies and the operation turned into an abortion.

Then early this year Osita showed up pregnant. Osita is a ten- or fifteen-pound, black and white wire haired something-or-other. Her dubious pedigree is accentuated by her ears--one up and the other one down--which also give her a distinctive "woe is me" appearance. She bloated alarmingly during her pregnancy, during which we gave her side portions of canned food. Finally the puppies arrived--six or eight we heard--which we understand our neighbor sold.

Another litter came about four or five months later, even as we tried to explain to the owner that letting a bitch get pregnant time and again was cruel and may eventually kill her. He blamed it on his wife. Finally they relented and we took Osita to be spayed by a vet from Amigos de Animales, a local animal welfare group started and funded by expats in San Miguel.

To his credit, the neighbor also thanked us profusely for feeding all his dogs and as a token gave us some firewood, a precious commodity in this mostly barren part of the world. He also said he wanted to spay his other dogs because he didn't have any money to feed the ones he had and didn't want any more. That's an encouraging breakthrough in his thinking.

Since 2004, Amigos' chief mission has been to spay and neuter dogs and cats free of charge, by holding sterilization "blitzes" in poor neighborhoods. Over a weekend, volunteer veterinarians can sterilize as many as 150 animals. The latest addition to Amigos is a van that has been converted into a mobile spay-and-neuter clinic, with its own operating room and recovery area.

Since its founding Amigos has sterilized approximately 11,000 dogs and cats. The arithmetic is obvious and compelling. Even if only half of those animals had gone on to have their own litters--and so on and on--there would thousands more abandoned animals in San Miguel by now.

As for Osita, she is fully recovered and back out begging for food. To our eyes she looks healthier and happier. Maybe it's her ears: Now they seem to go up and down in unison.

Arrival of the Little Man

2011-11-29T10:57:00.000-06:00

As is the case with so many events in Mexico, the arrival date of Félix' new baby was only a rough estimate, with a variance of one to four weeks. He and his wife had consulted with three doctors, who predicted delivery anywhere from the first week of November to sometime in the middle of December. I told Félix that although I didn't know much about birthin' babies, those estimates seemed somewhat sloppy.

The only thing the doctors agreed on was that the baby would be delivered by Caesarean section. I suggested to Félix that he ask the doctors why so, but they just gave him an explanation he didn't understand. So a C-section it was going to be and he was told he needed to round up two blood donors before the operation.

Stew donated one pint and Stew's brother, who was visiting from Minnesota, offered to donate the second pint. Why didn't Félix donate the second pint? Pssst: He's scared to death, and so apparently is everyone is family. Félix rather melodramatic explanation was that he had been rejected as a donor because "his defenses were down" and he might need a transfusion himself if he donated. Or some such cockamamie story. Finally, he rounded up a friend to be the second donor.

Stew and I went to Peru for a week and left Stew's brother Knute in charge of the animals, the house and keeping track of the imminent, or not so imminent, arrival of Félix' baby. Though Félix fancies himself a what-me-worry, cool as a stale enchilada type of guy, he was visibly worried about the arrival of the baby.

The baby boy arrived on November 8, a mite weighing 2.232 kilos or 4.9 pounds. That's small, but so is Felix' wife, who couldn't weigh more than 100 to 110 pounds herself. The baby and the mom were sent home two days later, and I took Ysela--and Felix, their two-year-old daughter and his tough-as-nails mother-in-law--to the local clinic to have the stitches taken out last week.

Shortly after the birth Knute began asking for the baby's name but Felix didn't seem to be in a hurry. When I asked Felix, he just said it was just an hombrecito, "a little man." I didn't expect the impassive Félix to jump up and down with joy but he was clearly pleased with the new baby, and also that it was an hombrecito rather than another girl.

It wasn't until this past weekend, when I went to their house to photograph the baby, that the new name was revealed: Edgar. I acted supportive but in my head wondered where that name had come from. Edgar Allan Poe? Felix insisted that he didn't know, that it was just a name he'd heard and liked.

Besides the three saints on the birthday, which some Mexican families use to name babies, were Martín, Severino and some other weird-sounding guy. Edgar sounds pretty good by comparison.

Officially registering the baby birth, which Félix still hasn't done, will take another trip to City Hall and the attendant paper shuffling. Maybe days, or perhaps a few more weeks. Baptism is not even in the prospective schedule yet.

The important thing right now is that the tiny baby is healthy and naturally, cute as can be.

Thanksgiving in a different language

2011-11-25T15:55:00.000-06:00

There's no holiday that more reminds us expats that we're not in Kansas--or Illinois or North Dakota--than Thanksgiving. That's not a bad thing.

Start with the holiday itself. The Thanksgiving story is anchored in American history, real or mythical, and not at all portable to a different country. You can dress Mexican kids as little wizards and pretend to celebrate Halloween. And besides, the Day of the Dead, with its own air of ghoulishness, almost coincides with Halloween.

Christmas and New Year's fall roughly on the same dates worldwide and with some adjustments for local climate and cultures, they are celebrated universally. Of course we have a few awkward moments, like the pathetic sight of those poor Mexican guys at the shopping centers sweating inside a Santa Claus suit, but the general idea is the same.

Thanksgiving on the other hand doesn't travel well. Pilgrims with tall hats and Indians with feathers on their heads gathering around some fairly bland dishes like roast turkey, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie are hard to explain to someone like Rocío our cleaning lady or Félix the gardener.

Let's see. There were some people in Europe who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs and they came over on a boat, and once ashore set up shop in the New World by taking land belonging to the folks already quite settled in Massachusetts. Then one day everyone got together to have a lovefest of a dinner and give thanks for the harvest and everything.

By now I can imagine Félix screwing up his face and asking why the Indians would break bread with a bunch of paleface strangers who'd ripped off their lands and possessions and eventually would either kill them or push them into exile somewhere near Bayonne, New Jersey. Then there's the business the huge inflatable cartoon characters in a parade in New York and the football games, and... nah, forget it, Félix.

American Thanksgiving in Mexico is like Ramadan in Bozeman, Montana--a non-event--except for the few Americans who live here. A few frozen turkeys and spiral hams appear at the Costco for Americans to buy and Mexicans to examine with curiosity, but that's about it.

A few enterprising San Miguel restaurateurs have tried to cash in on the Thanksgiving dinner tradition but generally with disastrous results. A couple of years ago we invited a couple of Australian friends to Thanksgiving dinner at the Sierra Nevada Hotel, one of the fanciest in town. It was one of the most expensive and wretched meals Stew and I have ever had. The guys in the kitchen clearly had no clue.

For many of the expats, Stew and I included, the lack of family here leads us to community dinners organized by churches and other groups. These are really pleasant events, requiring enormous amounts of work by the hapless volunteers. They deserve lots of good karma, papal indulgences and a free pass out of purgatory.

The weather is generally gorgeous. Dress casual. English spoken. Lots of friendly hug-hug, kiss-kiss and chit-chat. But after two hours or so, you drive back into the general population, who is coming back from school, getting their shoes shined and who otherwise has no idea what Turkey Day is all about. C'mon, doesn't anyone know it's Thanksgiving?

It's just as well. Since the holiday doesn't exist, there's no aerial bombardment on TV about sales or projected retail volumes on Black Friday with additional prognostications about how it will impact economic recovery and blather-blather-blather. Retailers in Mexico fired their first Christmas salvos back in mid-October, but these are feeble campaigns compared to the offensives mounted by their American counterparts who for two months assault all your senses, all the time.

If you retain your self-control you can also escape television specials of some ideal Thanksgiving get-together as envisioned by Martha Stewart or Paula Deen, when everything is cooked expertly and there are no drunken uncles to wreck the otherwise perfect family occasion.

So with all that noise missing, expats in San Miguel indeed may be more able to focus on true thanks-giving and gratitude, perhaps one of the most underestimated spiritual exercises in the U.S., where public attention seems to be focused on what people don't have--and ought to buy--and lately on fear: of terrorists, immigrants, Muslims, economic calamity, foreclosures, Democrats, Republicans, Fox News and pretty much life in general.

During a walk-around on Thanksgiving morning, I marveled at our house and the gorgeous landscapes that surround it, thought about our good fortune to be healthy, of life together with Stew for nearly forty years, the numerous friends we've met since we arrived here--just as most of our acquaintances in Chicago inevitably have faded away--and the bumper crop of leaf greens Félix has scared up from the ground in our raised beds.

There are always problems with life . Right now the most annoying is our new dog Domino, who inexplicably has fallen off the housebreaking wagon and decided to pee on all corners of the house as if it were in flames. But even that'll pass.

###

New demographics, new menu

2011-11-21T13:08:00.001-06:00

Contributors to the Civil List, the local internet bulletin board for San Miguel expats, frequently drool and rhapsodize about a new dining discovery, a place with better fish than any in San Francisco or steaks every bit as tasty as those in Houston or Omaha. The raves keep flowing like bad coffee at a roadside diner even though, really, restaurants in San Miguel--except for a few you can count with some of the fingers of one hand--range from just "OK" to "fugetaboutit."

Many of the good ones, like Doña Diabla, a tiny Oaxacan joint run by a young Mexican, for some reason open and shortly afterward fizzle. Or if they go on, the quality of the food and service are inconsistent.

Some of the Civil List posters even talk about San Miguel as a new gastronomic center of Mexico and a "heaven for foodies," forgetting many hardly-shabby restaurant towns like Puebla, Morelia, Oaxaca, Yucatan and even Mexico City. Still, if not remotely world-class, our town's collection of ho-hum restaurants, and the few good ones, compare very favorably with nearby towns. Visit Celaya or even the state capital of Guanajuato, and you'll be singing hosannas to our local eateries on the way back, flawed as they may be.

On Friday, to celebrate Stew's Medicare birthday (65!), we went to a one-seating culinary extravaganza at the Hotel Matilda, featuring star chef Enrique Olvera, 33, of Mexico City's Restaurante Pujol.

Well, shush your mouth. The evening, though hardly a cheap treat, was memorable, from the setting, to the service, and certainly the food. It may also have been a preview of what San Miguel is becoming.

I don't know enough about high cuisine to say whether Olvera's cooking qualify as "molecular gastronomy," but some of the portions were so miniscule they may have qualified as "subatomic."

A tiny ear of corn at the end of stick, dipped in some exotic sauce that arrived in what seemed a hollowed-out pumpkin. A few sprigs of nopal cactus leaves with a dash of some intense dressing. A corn mushroom tamal, with a dollop of some sort of cream on top and a green tomato sauce on the side. For a "whaat?" touch, there was a taco, or more properly a taquito, with a fish called "escolar" and dusted with "ceniza," which means "ash." Ash on an oily fish we'd never heard about. Who knew? A really wonderful piece of slow-roasted lamb followed, and at the end came my favorite, an amazing dessert of glazed sweet potatoes in a sauce with four or five little cubes of white gelatin (according to Stew; the waiter didn't really know).

My consistent use of the singular throughout my description of the dishes is not an accident: These were single and very small servings of very nicely prepared food. Molecular gastronomy supposedly involves unusual treatments of ingredients, bordering on lab experiments. I don't know if Olvera's cooking qualifies as molecular, but it tasted wonderful. I'm certain he does not do bronco-busting steaks, Dallas-style, or two-kiloton deep-dish Chicago pizzas.

Matilda also was a revelation. It's one of several super deluxe hotels to open in San Miguel, with prices to match. This used to be the site of the Jacaranda, a tired hotel, in Mexican-rustic style, that showed movies every week for five dollars, one drink and a bag of popcorn included. Some weeks, the audience--mostly gringos--looked as old and tired as the hotel. Now Matilda is a super modern facility with a plexiglass roof over the outdoor dining area, automobile tires hanging in the lobby--and not a trace of the old Jacaranda or even anything remotely Mexican-looking.

The sell-out crowd was a revelation too. Only about 20 percent of it was foreign, judging from the rat-tat-tat of Spanish and the fashions in the room. Men wore casual-shabby jeans and dress shirts open to showcase the many hairy chests. Men were also accessorized with expensive watches and the ubiquitous iPhones. In the minimalist spirit of the evening women favored micro, high-water skirts. This was not just a dinner but a coming-out scene for well-to-do, 20- and 30-somethings from Mexico City, and possibly a snapshot of San Miguel's new crowd.

How much, you ask. About $175 US for the two of us, a hefty portion of which--our one complaint--went for six open-ended servings of liquor after every course. Because we don't drink, the waiter was kind enough to replace the alcohol with sodas and juices. But that still was way too much booze for a meal, enough in my opinion to muddle the taste of the lamb or the dessert.

A thin and quite attractive, older American woman sitting at the next table methodically posed during the earlier courses for pictures by her husband and a roving photographer, flashing a just-so smile while holding very non-molecular glasses of wine, also just-so. Alas, by the end of the meal her posing technique had crumbled a bit, as she leaned to and fro, like a palm tree after a hurricane.

Didn't see nobody cryin'

2011-11-03T17:54:00.002-05:00

So strange are Mexico's Day of the Dead traditions that there's little chance a foreigner will ever be able to fully comprehend them.

Elsewhere in Latin America, people celebrate the Día de los Santos Difuntos alright, roughly the "Day of the Saintly Deceased," with tightly-wound decorum. Dirges and whispered prayers waft in churches filled by women wearing black dresses and veils. A hushed procession to the cemetery may follow, for more prayers, kind words, stifled tears and flowers in memory of grandma Josefina or uncle Rigoberto.

In the U.S. whatever religious significance All Souls' Day ever had long ago succumbed to the commercial hustle of Halloween and three weeks after that, Thanksgiving. Still, on Memorial Day some families wearing their Sunday finery will decorate the graves of their dead relatives and place small American flags on those who were in the military.

There's none of that propriety and restraint for Mexicans. Their directness starts with the name of the feast day: Forget "souls," "saints," "departed," "passed away" or other pious euphemisms. On November 1 and 2, Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead. Josefina and Rigoberto are not up on a cloud benignly spying on their progeny below, but dead
--though hardly forgotten.

As if to underline the point, Mexicans bring out into play all sorts of death-related paraphernalia--bones, skulls, skeletons--that in other countries would be considered morbid, in bad taste or downright gross. What's the story with Mexican children nibbling on skulls made of sugar?

Recently, along the blood-splattered states near the U.S. border, where the narco wars have killed tens of thousands, some Mexicans have minted a new saint, "Santa Muerte" ("Holy Death") though the Catholic Church disavows any such creature.

Mexican writer Octavio Paz famously asserted that the word "death" burns the lips of a Westerner while a Mexican caresses it, celebrates it, and jokes about it. "It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love."

As many times as I've read the "Day of the Dead" chapter in "The Labyrinth of Solitude," and marveled at Paz' silver prose, I still can't fully appreciate what he is talking about. How can anyone celebrate and caress death?

My perplexity mounts every time we visit a Mexican cemetery on the Day of the Dead, which has become a well-trod tourist spectacle. This year we skipped the crowded main cemetery and went to smaller one on the outskirts of San Miguel, closer to the ranch.

There was a festive country-fair air as we approach the cemetery, or panteón, as Mexicans seem to prefer. Vendors sold food, flowers--thousands of brilliant marigolds are the standard--plus balloons and toys. Visitors arrived with plastic chairs and shopping bags full of food, as if heading for a picnic, and in some cases also brought cans of paint, brushes, and picks and shovels for last-minute gravesite remodeling or maintenance.

There were several for-hire duos and trios too offering quick, spirited bellowings of Day of the Dead favorites, and a few larger combos playing more elegant serenades by singers accompanied by accordions, guitars, bass fiddles, and drums.

A young guy lost in his memories,
perhaps of his dead mother or father.

What we didn't see was anyone crying.

Yet there was nothing disrespectful or crass about the celebrations, except for an occasional drunk stumbling by. Some families huddled around a grave eating lunch and presumably talking about the dead relative. Others read from dog-eared bibles or prayer books, or touched up the paint.

No amount of music or chatting though could soften the impact of the disproportionate number of rows of baby-sized graves, marked with little angels of stone or concrete, and signs noting lives that may have lasted only a few days, weeks or months, if that.

Behaving like a couple of Mexicans-for-a-day, Stew and I bought a handful of Day of the Dead marigolds and put them in a vase next to the urn containing the ashes of my mother who died nine years ago.

For the requisite touch of frivolity I then placed the urn and the flowers next to clay figures of a couple of Day of the Dead bandoleros who look like Bonnie and Clyde each clutching a rifle, except these are skeletons wearing sombreros.

My mom probably wouldn't appreciate the humor. Not mom.

If I were dead, though, I'd be flattered by such festivities around my gravesite. All I ask is that the musicians tune up and practice just a little bit, and that visitors, please, clean up after themselves.

###

Below are others photographs we took during our visit.

The children's section of the cemetery.

One offering for a dead child.

Multi-tasking: Painting the tombstone while listening to the music.

A prayerful vigil amid the festivities.

A kind gesture: Some visitors drop marigolds on
gravesites otherwise unattended.

Two parakeets get to visit the cemetery,
maybe to chirp for their dearly departed owner.

Fall falls on the ranch

2011-10-31T18:15:00.001-05:00

Autumn is the time of year when we're especially reminded that we no longer live in the American Midwest. Here jack-o'-lanterns will go on sale by the side of the roads in mid-October, even if most Mexicans really have no clue what Halloween is all about. And a few restaurants will advertise Thanksgiving dinner specials. But none of it rings true.

Fall in the northern tiers of the U.S. is a curtain rising on winter, the final act of the year. Spent leaves cover the ground with a moist and colorful carpet that squishes underfoot. Trees turn into stark wire sculptures outlined against the unnaturally clear skies.

The entire cast of nature seems to be in a frenzy to take cover from the imminent onslaught of winter. Millions of birds fly overhead, the vast majority fleeing to somewhere more hospitable. Squirrels frantically hide nuts and fruits even though they'll immediately forget where they put them.

The entire spectacle of fall says "run for cover, winter is coming!" At retailers, gardening tools and pool supplies disappear overnight and are rudely replaced by heaters and insulation wares, while the media rhapsodize about comfort foods and families gathered around a roaring fire.

Immediately after Thanksgiving comes the Christmas avalanche of trees and ornaments, while carols play nonstop everywhere, from elevators to parking lots. Ho, ho and more ho. The only encouragement to go outside is the need to hang Christmas lights or if you have enough money, to dash to the airport for a vacation somewhere else.

In San Miguel, the definitive sign of autumn arrives in early October, when it stops raining--abruptly and utterly--and the humidity plummets. It will drop down to the single digits by mid-December and your skin will feel sere as rawhide.

Lack of rain will turn the landscape to various shades of gold, even though most of the trees will stay green, along with cacti and other desert plants that shrug at the arrival of the dry season.

Most of the trees here--mesquites, huizaches, pirules--have tiny leaves that hardly perspire and that's how they survive without moisture for months on end. Also their roots. Ever try to dig up a mesquite? Even a young tree is likely to have tap roots going fifteen or twenty feet straight into the earth in search of any buried drop of water.

For the farmers, fall is judgment time when nature reveals the results of all that ground work they put in earlier in the season. This year nature was stingy, even cruel. Early rains around May and June filled farmers' heads with visions of bumper crops but in the end we only received half the normal rainfall. So the crops withered, and most of the dreams of plump ears of corn, bean pods and squash never materialized.

All that's left for farmers, like Don Vicente, whose ranch abuts ours, is to collect the dry stunted corn stalks and gather them in tepee-like piles that will later be used to feed livestock. It's an all-manual job that involves men and women of all ages, and even young kids, hunched over with machetes under a sun that now mercifully sags over the horizon rather than blasting from directly overhead.

Our temperatures drop significantly at night. We've already had a couple of nights of below-freezing weather that left a half-dozen jalapeño and serrano chiles we had finally coaxed out of the ground looking like they'd been electrocuted.

Our herbs--an odd collection of basil, parsley, rosemary, marjoram and thyme--were hastily transferred to clay pots and are now huddled in a corner of the terrace from where they watch the sky apprehensively. Basil and parsley surely are not going to survive many cold nights.

But during the day, temperatures rise to a near-perfect mid-70s, with constant breezes and sparkling skies. Day after day, for weeks on end. At night there are so many stars dangling above you feel like you're living in a planetarium.

There's no reason for anyone to hide inside during the day. Hummingbirds are arriving, not fleeing. In fact Félix the gardener has a mini bumper crop of lettuces and other leaf vegetables already going in raised beds whose only protection is plastic sheeting after dark.

No need to fear snow either, though a couple of years ago a freak storm dumped about an eighth of an inch of the stuff on the startled vegetation. I barely got a chance to take pictures before it had all melted around 10 a.m.

If there is anything here reminiscent of Midwestern autumns is the resetting of the clocks for Daylight Savings Time, but even that ritual comes a week earlier in Mexico. That means that our three dogs who are used to licking our faces at 6 a.m., clamoring to go outside, now do that at 5 a.m., despite all efforts to ignore them. Some things don't change.

[P.S.: Some readers say they are unable to post comments on the blog. I don't know why that is. If you have that problem, send me your comments and I'll post them myself. My e-mail is stewnal@gmail.com ]

Following the bouncing exchange rates

2011-10-29T13:04:00.002-05:00

For many Americans in San Miguel tracking the exchange rate of the Mexican peso vs. the U.S. dollar is a pastime with potential payoffs as well as guilty feelings.

When the dollar goes up, or the peso down, expats whisper excitedly to one another about running to the bank to exchange a bundle of dollars and take advantage of a mini windfall. In fact if the exchange rate goes from 12 to 14 pesos to the dollar, our cost of living as reflected by the greater buying power of the dollar, theoretically increases by nearly 17 percent.

When we were building our house, the value of the peso kept dropping during the nine months of construction, which we figured reduced the cost of the project by a significant amount.

There were also some favorable (for us) turns in the exchange from the time we put a down payment on the land to the actual closing six months later, that we figured saved us about $3,000US. In this case, the deal was denominated in dollars which had gone down in value.

But Don Lucas, the 85-year-old rancher who sold us the land, was a cagey sort whose abilities to make a buck have not been at all eroded by age. I suspect he sensed he had somehow been screwed out of some pesos and later refused to repave the right-of-way to our property, as promised in the sales agreement. That cost us nearly $5,000US.

Then again, Lucas has a well established reputation for trying to shaft everyone he comes in contact with--Mexican or American--whether he's selling a piece of land or a burro. For him, it's just a way of doing business.

Point is that whatever we "saved" in the buying of the land pretty much was eaten up by the unexpected expense of paving half a kilometer of road.

Exactly what propels the dollar or the peso up or down is a mystery to me.

From where we stand, the American economy looks dim and prospects of an early recovery even dimmer given the political impasse in Washington, which could be described as, ahem, a "Mexican standoff."

Meanwhile, the Mexican economy grew by 5.5 percent last year and is expected to go up about 4 percent in 2011. At the moment Mexico's is the 11th largest economy in the world, according to the World Bank.

Visit the neighboring state of Querétaro and there is so much housing, road and factory construction you can almost hear a mariachi version of "Happy Days Are Here Again" playing in the air.

So why is the exchange rate almost 14:1 now compared to 10:1 in 2008? Why is the peso going down and/or the dollar up?

I dunno.

How a favorable exchange rate benefits Americans is also hard to figure out. Bananas and onions at the produce market suddenly become cheaper, a boon to foreigners and certainly a bust to Mexican vendors whose currency and merchandise suddenly is worth less.

But not quite. Large Mexican enterprises--the telephone company and retailers like supermarkets and Costco--have the sneaky habit of raising prices when the dollar goes up, supposedly to compensate for higher import costs.

Our monthly internet fee with the telephone company went from around $599 pesos in June to $698 this month--with no explanation or warning from Carlos Slim, the owner of the phone company and the first, second or third richest man in the world depending on how the Dow Jones market is doing.

In his defense, Carlos might argue that increased costs for imported equipment or whatever justify the 16.5 percent price hike, which neatly follows the approximate fall in the value of the peso since June. Except his labor and other local costs didn't go up that much.

No point in calling TelCel, the company that sells the wireless internet gizmo that we use, to demand an explanation. Whomever you get on the line won't have an explanation or share it with you if they do.

At the end of the afternoon, though, it's the rank-and-file Mexicans who get the worst deal. The costs of many sundries go up but their income generally doesn't. And once large companies or retailers raise peso prices they are not likely to reduce them later to account for currency fluctuations.

Americans in San Miguel, some of whom never cease searching for things to feel guilty about vis-a-vis Mexicans, will somberly lament the impact of the falling peso on poor people.

A few years ago we gave our maid a raise to make up for the shrinking peso which had gone from 11:1 down to 13:1 between 2006 and 2009. Of course, the peso subsequently went up and Rocío got herself a deal, ending up earning about $5US an hour which is a very handsome pay for a maid. So we don't do that anymore.

Soriana, one of two large supermarkets in town, recently installed digital price labels on its shelves complete with a sensor, a system which presumably allows easier changes in prices. It's hard to tell if the prices are changing up or down. I'd bet on up.

As I write this Stew is on a shopping blitzkrieg at the Costco in Querétaro, another instant bellwether of rising prices on account of changing exchange rates. I'm betting on increases there too.

So much for any windfall from the rising value of the dollar.

Looking at the bright side

2011-10-22T12:15:00.001-05:00

At the suggestion of my friend Billie, a couple of days ago I began plowing through "The Artist's Way," by Julia Cameron. "Plowing" is not used loosely. What I got from Amazon.com is an anthology of her three books about creativity, a tome which looks and feels as formidable as the Koran.

In fact, the first 100 pages or so of it may lead some readers to quietly walk over to the bookshelf and put Cameron in their New Age or Wu-Wu collection, next to the "Road Less Traveled," "Buddhism in Three Easy Steps" and the Dalai Lama's greatest bumper stickers.

Except I'm neither an atheist nor allergic to 12-step programs or Wu-Wu-ism in general, and after the good money I paid for the book, by G-d, I'm going to read it. Too early to guarantee I'll finish it, but so far so interesting.

Cameron's plan is to release the bottled-up or blocked creativity that's in our heads, specifically the right side of our brain, or for that matter all around us. A myriad factors block our creativity, particularly a chorus of finger-wagging Censors telling us to remain on the safe, logical, left side of our brain, because our creative impulses are for some reason impermissible, impractical, foolish.

Law and medical schools are full of people who may have been better off--certainly happier--if they'd stuck with playing the flute or becoming a chef. The Censors may include parents, cousins, siblings, partners, one's own trail of bad experiences or failures, fear or what-have-you.

My own chorus is not quite the Mormon Tabernacle Choir but large and loud enough to stifle many of my ideas and ready to strike up a tune at any time. By the sound of Cameron's book, I'm not alone.

The first step in her book is to write a three-page "morning paper"--long-hand and unedited--of anything that comes to mind. Every morning. Gripes, stories, observations, wishes and whatever, that you just file away unread in an envelope. As a career writer, one thing I'm told to avoid is "writing" the morning paper by noodling or pre-editing what goes down on the page.

It's easier read than done. The Censor wakes up bright and early, I think earlier than the rest of me. The first day it took ten minutes before a word landed on the page. Ballpoint or fountain pen? Why doesn't the fountain pen work? I should unclog it before I start no? Let me find a notebook. Nope, don't have one, need to get a special notebook at Office Depot. Maybe I should put out my new dog first before he poops somewhere. All this and other mental detours before I started.

As I understand it, the purpose of the morning papers is to help you jot down all the "logical" stuff in the mind and with that out of the way start tip-toeing to the right side of head, the creative, subconscious side, presumably a storage bin or stifled or censored notions. Indeed, from what I recall, my first morning paper had a lot of should's rather than I will try this or that, or just plain W.T.F.'s.

But hey, one mustn't massage this too much, lest logic and censors and choke spontaneity and creativity.

By the way, I did unclog the fountain pen after the first morning paper, and went for a yellow pad.

A night at the General Hospital

2011-10-20T12:32:00.000-05:00

At around 7:30 p.m came the call, just as Stew and I were ready to have dinner. Félix, our gardener/handiman/watchman, wanted to redeem my offer to take his wife, who is eight months pregnant, to the hospital if an emergency came up. She'd been having pains since that morning and had not been able to reach the doctor at a nearby health clinic.

Not the most articulate guy even when he's calm, Félix now sounded like he was speaking in Morse code.

Félix lives in Sosnavar, which he calls un pueblito, "a little town," five minutes from our house. It has only about a thousand residents, most of them straddling the line between poverty and misery.

At night Sosnavar becomes a true terra incognita to outsiders when they discover there isn't a single inch of paved street or sidewalk, much less street signs, and only a half-dozen street lights. Ruts weave around rocks and trees and lead you to an open space which must have been set aside for a town square that never materialized.

Towering over Sosnavar, quite incongruously considering the surrounding penury, is the white dome of the Catholic church, with a cross at the very top that is lit up at night. We can see the dome from our kitchen window.

So intent was I in avoiding trees or rocks on the way to his house that I missed Félix, his wife Ysela and two-year-old Alondra standing in a dark corner waiting for me, and I had to drive back.

Not wanting to retrace my way through Sosnavar's Martian landscape, back to the main road, I just gave Félix the keys, asked Ysela to sit in front, and Alondra to come on the back seat with me. This was the start of a three-hour, first-hand glimpse of Mexico's public health system and the serpentine logic and traditions that guide reproductive decisions by poor Mexican families.

San Miguel's General Hospital was built by the state government about three years ago. It is impressive. I had been there twice before, once to get Stew an X-ray of his foot and on another occasion emergency care for a gringa who lived in our condo complex and had taken a bad mix of prescription drugs. The attention was prompt and professional, with shiny, fresh-out-of-the-box medical machinery standing at the ready, including a CAT-scanner. No problemas except the staff was unable or not in the mood to even mumble a single word of English.

By now, signs of wear-and-tear, and general weariness, already permeate the waiting area of the combination outpatient clinic-emergency room where people wait, and wait, to be seen by a doctor. It has the glum ambiance of a bus station with no definite arrival or departure times.

There was no waiting for Félix' wife. Pregnant women feeling pains and other people with ominous symptoms are escorted immediately into the emergency room through a pair of glass doors guarded by a couple of short but imposing female guards in uniform with nightsticks dangling from their belts.

Félix, Alondrita and I now just had to wait for one of the guards to announce Ysela would either be admitted to the hospital or for her to walk out on her own and go home.

Alondrita readily killed time with some giggly playing and running with a boy her age whose parents, along with dozens other people in the courtyard in front of the hospital, also waited for word from one of the guards.

Chit-chatting with Félix for hours can be challenging. He's not one to have an opinion about the Republican presidential primary or climate change. I once tried to explain the Irish potato famine and he just looked at me politely but blankly.

He's a very bright guy; it's just that he and I look at the kaleidoscope of daily living from different ends. Of necessity his perspective is one of day-to-day survival.

So he told me about Ysela's first and rather complicated pregnancy. It turns out she has epilepsy and high blood pressure and Alondra had to be delivered by emergency Caesarean section at a government hospital in Irapuato, a mid-size city about two hours from San Miguel. Ysela was hospitalized for eight days during which Félix sat and slept on the benches in the emergency room.

This time around Félix and Ysela, aware of the potential medical complications, frequently visit either a small clinic in Corralejo, a Sosnavar-size town a couple of miles away, a doctor in San Miguel, or in this case the general hospital.

Félix clearly worries about his wife, enough to ask his boss for a ride to the hospital at 7:30 on a Monday night, but he seldom has shown any emotion to me. At age 25, he seems to have the impassiveness, stoicism--or resignation--of someone twice his age.

The only time I've seen Félix choke up was when Stew found Chupitos, his favorite dog, dead on a field across from our land. They had to load the mangled carcass on a wheelbarrow, cover it with a black garbage bag, and wait for a backhoe to come and dig a grave. Félix was visibly shaken.

After a couple of nervous pauses, Félix talked about the size of Mexican families, and who-had-how-many-kids. Take the case of Lucía, a Sosnavar woman with 74 grandchildren. That's 7-4, or seventy-four. He calmly explained that Lucía, one of his father's sisters-in-law, had, hmm, 12 or 13 children, so given the laws of addition and multiplication, 74 was not a number that difficult to fathom.

Last weekend too, some woman in Félix' vast cobweb of a family had buried a seven-month fetus, her second still-birth in as many years. The woman already had six daughters and a boy, but she and her husband insist on having another boy. Both of the dead babies were boys, Félix pointed out, suggesting I don't know exactly what. That she continue to get pregnant until a baby boy survives?

On the next breath, Félix mentions that none of his brothers has a job at the moment, despite several children to support.

I fight the impulse to ask questions, much less preach, as I listen to these Sosnavar family tales. How can someone living on the edge, if not chest-deep, in poverty end up with 74 grandchildren? Why doesn't the couple with seven children, and two consecutive still-births, just quit? And by the way, after Ysela has this one baby, shouldn't she quit too, given her potential complications arising from her history of blood pressure and epilepsy? I'm not a doctor, but hers could be considered high-risk pregnancies.

But out of respect for Félix' privacy I don't ask. He's one of the most thoughtful and decent guys I've ever run across, capable of making his own decisions. Besides, as a childless gay man I feel singularly ill-qualified to pass judgment on questions of who-should-have-how-many-children-when, specially in a foreign land with its own cultural mores and customs.

Beginning in the 1970s Mexico has had an aggressive birth-control campaign that has drastically reduced the national birth rate to a level comparable to that of the U.S. But those macro statistics haven't necessarily filtered down to the level of pueblitos like Sosnavar. Indeed, Félix noted that birth control information, pills and condoms are readily available at the small clinic in neighboring Corralejo, but some people don't want to deal with any of it.

For one thing, given the paucity of pensions among the poor, having a sizable brood is one way of ensuring someone takes care of you when you get old.

The night air cooled rapidly and I moved into the waiting room.

On the way in I noticed a rickety man in his 60s with a mangy beard, hunched over on the floor holding his head between his knees. I recognized him as Don José--I never got his last name--whom we had hired to plant the first dozen trees on our property before construction began. I remembered he had a slick line of bullshit and a major drinking problem and that one day he just disappeared. Most of the trees he planted died as their roots strangled themselves because Don José had not dug holes large enough.

I didn't last very long in the waiting room when I realized it was a cauldron of germs with wheezing and sneezing all around me, and noticed a man sitting next to me holding a colostomy bag.

Finally Ysela came out through the glass doors, still holding her belly but now with a faint smile on her face. She handed Félix the prescription and he ran next door to the pharmacy to fill it, also at no cost to him.

The diagnosis was cystitis, an inflammation of the bladder usually caused by a bacterial infection. The prescriptions were for an antibiotic, an anti-spasm medication of some sort, and generic Advil. The day after she was feeling much better.

As we headed back to the truck, Félix pointed out that Don José had moved, or someone had moved him, and was now lying just outside the waiting room, covered with a blanket and sound asleep.

We all climbed in the truck. Tired from a long night of playing, Alondrita huddled close to me on the back seat and immediately fell asleep, and we headed back to Sosnavar.

Annus mirabilis

2011-10-14T11:03:00.001-05:00

That's Latin for "a miraculous year", such as 1905 when Einstein published his theory of relativity. About an hour ago a San Miguel municipal official in a pickup stopped by to deliver news not as earthshaking as E=mc2, but astonishing nonetheless.

The road connecting the ranch to San Miguel, never a main thoroughfare even in the best of times, had developed crater-size potholes, some three or four meters across and 20+ centimeters deep. So in a burst of civic optimism I took pictures of one of the potholes and attached it to a letter to the mayor, asking her to have the road fixed.

I mentioned my initiative to Félix the gardener and Rocío, a woman who comes to clean our house twice a week and they both had a hearty giggle at my naivete. Either there's no money to fix the road or if there was, someone probably stole it, they agreed.

Letter and photo in hand I went to City Hall early this week and was not encouraged. The place was a cacophony of citizens petitioning city officials and other functionaries for something.

Leaving my petition felt like tossing a wine bottle in the Pacific Ocean with an SOS note inside hoping it would reach New Zealand.

That was two days ago and this morning--zowie!--a hand-delivered written response from City Hall.

Alright, alright, the road hasn't been fixed yet. If that happens 2011 may become a magnum annus mirabilis, if there is such a thing. Albert would be jealous.

***

A Pointer-ish sort of guy

2011-10-13T16:16:00.001-05:00

It's always a dangerous thing to let my partner Stew wander unsupervised around the Sociedad Protectora de Animales, San Miguel's animal shelter. Sooner or later one mutt will make goo-goo eyes at him and Stew will be ready to put it in the back seat of the truck.

This time around a beagle named Jack caught his eye, but once the dog let out a beagle-type howl it set off bad memories of our late beagle J.D. Named after Jerry Donald, someone we knew at the time, what J.D. lacked in brains he made up in stubbornness. He was never housebroken and as if to spite us, lived to the ripe old age of 17. We didn't hate him, but J.D. was a tough guy to love.

After Jack, Stew zeroed in on another smallish S.P.A. dog named Chino. It was friendly enough, a short-legged guy vaguely reminiscent of a corgi, with a thick mane of black curly fur. Chino and I didn't hit it off. It looked to me like a nursing home lap dog.

Undeterred Stew began working his way up a row of cages at the shelter, with the encouragement of Lynn Weisberg, a friend who volunteers at the S.P.A. Then Stew met the guy above, named Domino. Lynn came up with the odd name because its black spots reminded her of a domino tile.

Domino is about 18 months old and had spent a year at the S.P.A. As far as shelters go, dogs there have it pretty good: They get a couple of meals a day, three hours of romping with the other dogs, and the rest of the time they sit in a clean cage. Some dogs sit and sit waiting to be adopted for as long as five years. The S.P.A. won't euthanize any dog unless it is terminally ill or dangerous.

Disturbances--visitors, a stray cat walking across a nearby rooftop, or another dog walking around loose--inevitable sets off an eruption of howls, barks and whimpering from the 50-odd canine population. By the time Stew had finished his tour every dog seemed to be clamoring: Take me! Over here! Look at me!

I'm not sure why Stew picked Domino, a pointer-type mutt, but off he went into our pickup, to join our other two dogs and three cats at the ranch. He's about forty pounds, with a splatter of spots on his white fur and an enormously long tail.

The first day was not a good opener. Domino refused to come in or let either one of us come near him, so he spent the whole night outside in a pouring rain. The next day we asked Lynn to come by and see if he could get a hold of him.

She did, and counseled patience. Domino had spent most of his life in a cage. The sight of two complete strangers trying to approach him and seven-and-a-half acres of open space was bound to jangle Domino's nerves.

It worked. Domino has settled down considerably over the past four days though housebreaking is still a work in progress. If initially he didn't want to come in the house or have anything to do with us, now he likes to stay close by and we have to shove him out the door to go play with the other dogs.

Best of all, Domino doesn't care about our cats, which return his indifference. Our last attempt at an adoption, a Doberman we named Desi, almost killed one of our dogs and at one point had the head of one of our cats in his mouth. Desi went back to the woman we adopted him from. It was not a happy experience.

Whenever we adopt an animal Stew says they must feel as if they've won the lottery. I don't know how Domino feels but I do feel good about adopting him. I'll feel even better when we come up with a different name.

Tuning in to the cacti

2011-10-11T11:04:00.002-05:00

The precocious cactus and its lute.

Sometimes we need to accept pleasure when it comes and not ask questions.

On Sunday, with nothing else to do, we invited a couple of friends to go to El Charco Botanic Garden, a small jewel just outside San Miguel, to check out a demonstration of, yes, a cactus playing a lute.

Initially the demonstration left me mystified, but as in Whaat?! rather than Wow!

A sensuously shaped string instrument made of beautiful carved woods indeed rested at an angle on a small platform covered with Mexican shawls. From the lute two thin wires went to a pot filled with cacti, about five inches high. One of the cacti was pierced by acupuncture-type needles attached at the end of the wires.

Thin needles and wires connected
the cactus and the lute.

And yes, from inside the instrument, which was described a Plasmath Lute, came soft, delightful and random plicking and plucking sounds. Nothing to whistle on your way out, but I could buy a CD of this talented duo to help me relax or even fall asleep.

The signs, in Spanish and English, credited Ariel Guzik of the Laboratory of Research of Resonance and Expression of Nature, for this creation, but shed no light on what it was or how it worked.

An Internet site described Guzik as a Mexican who "designs and produces mechanisms and instruments to enquire into the various languages of nature."

How does it work? How does it work? Is this for real?

I followed a thin white wire going from underneath the lute to the nearby wall, over the roof of the greenhouse and on to the other side, where it went into a solar-powered box with a small transformer inside. At the lute end there were no signs of speakers or any other sources of the entrancing music.

Finally I gave up as my curiosity surrendered to the music. Whaat!? became Hmm!

These four potted cacti were described as the "audience."

The night before our visit there had been a serious downpour that awakened the flowers and other plants at the garden just as they were ready to slip into winter dormancy.

We're not supposed to have rain this late in the season and cacti are not supposed to play lutes.

But it was all too beautiful to ask why. So I just enjoyed it.

****

An unseasonably late downpour the night before seemed to have awakened the plants at the botanic garden.

Dramatic combinations of succulents and cacti turn up where you least expect them.

Time for Newsweek?

2011-10-08T10:57:00.001-05:00

Historically I've subscribed to more magazines that I can possibly read because, one, I tend to be a compulsive magazine reader, and two, I'm also cheap and loath to pass up a bargain even if it's for something I don't really need. So when I'm offered some ridiculously low subscription rate--some alleged "professional rate"--for even a magazine in which I'm only marginally interested, I tend to take the bait.

So over the years we've subscribed to such sundry titles as Smithsonian, The Atlantic, Bon Appetit, Organic Gardening, Harper's, Martha Stewart's Living, Reason, Dwell, Travel and Leisure, National Geographic Traveler, and even the Economist, which every week provides 50 percent more information about the state of the world than the average human can possibly absorb.

Lately I was considering Lapham's Quarterly, a book-sized publication with each issue dedicated to one topic, such as food. One friend recommended it as a "good magazine to keep by the can" presumably because you can gradually work your way through all the relatively short articles as you tend to your bodily functions.

Yet over the past several months I have gradually edited down our list of subscriptions. On the one hand I've grown tired of all the shrill and pointless political noise in the U.S. The self-mutilating debacle over raising the debt ceiling may have been the corker for me.

Second, I want to expand my reading horizons, especially since, ahem, at 63 time is not limitless. My reading habits have been heavy on politics, economics and generally non-fiction, and light on novels and history. One of these days I intend to even tackle poetry; and "tackle" it will be because reading poetry is something I find very frustrating.

A few magazines are staying. One is the New Yorker which I hardly read cover-to-cover but which most always delivers something arresting, one of those reading moments that leave you mumbling "Wow that's interesting," like James Surowieki's "Financial Page" columns. Or a really good writers like Calvin Trillin or Jeffrey Toobin. And the cartoons and cartoon-captioning contests.

Garden Design is voyeurism: Photo features of beautiful garden designs most of which won't work here because San Miguel is a semi-desert climate. National Geographic has beautiful photos and peeks at corners of the world you never imagined existed.

But I'm not sure about Time and Newsweek both of which I started receiving a couple of years ago thanks to some super cheap "professional rate." About a year ago Newsweek went into a coma: Under the editorship of Jon Meacham it had become a soporific collection of essays, with no particular appeal. And as the magazine lost advertisers by the week, it felt as if it was literally vanishing.

Enter magazine Wonder Woman Tina Brown, who had revived Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and whose arrival was billed in apocalyptic terms such as "if anyone can bring Newsweek back, it's Tina Brown." So I gave Brown a couple of months--probably not long enough--to see what she could do.

Newsweek seemed to get louder, more discombobulated, and went from boring to vapid. Time magazine remained its solid self, so I cancelled my bargain subscription to Newsweek, which has been sending me desperate pleas to re-up ever since.

As the editing dust has settled a bit, I'm having second thoughts. Newsweek is evolving into a interesting read. The October 10 issue has a cover about sperm donations of no interest to me, i.e., "how to get pregnant fast, cheap--and in public." But then it offers articles about comedian Jon Stewart touring with the USO in Afghanistan; Anita Hill 20 years after the Clarence Thomas hearings and a report on the Taliban that opens with a stunning two-page photograph.

Tina Brown throws in quite a bit of newsie tidbits that are not particularly informative, but overall the layout of the magazine is more open with more use of photography and graphics. I'm not one of those who scoffs at photographs taking space that rightfully belongs to words: A good photo indeed is worth a thousand words.

By comparison Time looks constipated. The October 10 "Special Money Issue", devotes nine pages to junk like "The 5 Things You Should Never Buy Again" and "The Extremes of Couponing". Several pages are "briefings" about world, national and science news. An interesting four-pager talks about the collapse of the solar panel manufacturer Solystra after it had received hundreds of millions in federal subsidies. Compared to Newsweek's "Omnivore," Time's "The Culture" is awesomely dull.

News weeklies inhabit a tough corner of journalism. They pretend to provide news but really can't compete with daily newspapers, much less the Internet or television news which is updated constantly. That problem is worse for us because we receive magazines a week late. So they need to spin or find new angles to topics or people we we're already familiar with, such as Newsweek's piece about the Taliban or Jon Stewart's USO tour. That requires good writers and columnists but particularly much imagination on the part of the editor.

Wait, should I cancel my cancellation of Newsweek? Keep Time too?

Or cancel both and just get my news and analysis from the New York Times' Internet version to which I already subscribe (about $5 a week, the greatest bargain around)? Accessorize my commode with Lapham's Quarterly?

Right now I'm in the mood for reading more fiction or non-fiction divorced from current events, like my current Kindle selection, a book about Italy under the Borgias, who make the Sopranos look like a 4-H Club.

Another endangered subscription is Vanity Fair, whose mile-long articles, in tiny type and buried in heap of fashion ads, are getting on my nerves. How about editing down the articles and allowing more space for larger type, eh?

A fair to remember

2011-10-06T15:15:00.002-05:00

Set against the crimson sunset, San Miguel's fairgrounds looked like a Shangri-la of striped circus tents, fluttering Mexican flags and hundreds of twinkling multicolored lights.

As we drove up to the dusty parking lot the sights were not quite a mythical--ticket booths and guards frisking everyone as they entered--yet the excitement of going to an annual country fair remained. You strain your neck at first, trying to figure out what's there to see, which way to go: Food to the right, mechanical rides to the left. The voice of carnival barkers hawking must-see, never-seen-before spectacles. How is this different from last year?

September is a huge month for San Miguel. It's Independence Month, celebrating events and heroes that in 1810 set in motion the eventual freedom of Mexico from Spain. San Miguel and neighboring Dolores Hidalgo were two towns at the center of it all.

Plus it's the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, which concludes with insane fireworks display at 4 a.m.--the alborada, in the town square. Insane for the amount of gunpowder used as well as the absence of even the most rudimentary safety measures: Rockets fire from all corners of the square and the rooftop of the old municipal building, while a packed crowd oohs and aahs at the noise and lights or ducks for cover when the spent munition comes back to earth. It's insane and exciting.

And for the last two weeks of the month there's also the San Miguel Fair, our equivalent of a state or county fair in the U.S., though much more modest. Years ago I remember attending the Texas State Fair in Dallas which, as it befits anything Texan, seemed as big as Rhode Island.

Stew vividly remembers the county fair when he was growing up in Iowa. There were not only
Ferris wheels and roller coasters but pavilions and more pavilions holding contests for everything: the biggest watermelon, tastiest pie, handsomest chicken--or cow, sheep or whatever. The possibilities for winning a ribbon were endless.

San Miguel's fair had a dimly lit livestock area with enormous sheep representing strange breeds, and some cows patiently ruminating and looking like they couldn't wait to go home.

There was also weird stuff. A tent close to the entrance supposedly housed a woman with a body that was half-snake and had come to San Miguel all the way from La Habana, Cuba! A recording of an announcer describing her bizarre anatomy was followed by a plaintive female voice inviting people to come visit. I didn't quite understand the half-snake, half-woman schtick, and she didn't sound very Cuban anyway. I took a pass.

Another tent housed a Komodo dragon, an albino boa and some other animal rarity, which we were assured were all LIVE! Not in a jar or plastic model! For your own safety, please stay away from the display cases! Didn't fall for that either.

But the core feature was the rides and games, and the delighted customers, mostly children. Nothing exotic, mind you: Bumper cars, Ferris wheel, merry-go-round and various other rides whose main attraction was the thrill of going around in circles, whether in a little airplane, car or boat. The only daring ride was a 30- or 40-foot high tower that raised people up to the top, paused for a split second and then dropped them to within six feet of the ground, for an adrenalin jolt of about 30 seconds.

Stew noted that there was no roller-coaster.

The games were all far-fetched, especially since almost all the customers were kids who'd have to fetch a rubber duckie with a six-foot fishing pole, shoot a balloon from 15 feet away or perform some other impossible feat.

For someone used to first-tier county or state fairs or amusement parks, the San Miguel event is small-potatoes. But to the locals--particularly kids--it's an irresistible once-a-year thrill, a chance to be dazzled, whipped around by some contraption, eat cotton candy, or dreamily walk around holding hands with your girl friend for a couple of hours, all for about two dollars.

This was our second visit and I plan to come back next year.

Fairs are so fascinating.

My brothers love this ride. I don't.

Waiting for customers and planning my life.

Too much alfalfa, not enough exercise is not good for your figure.

Not the biggest Ferris wheel in the world,
but certainly one of the fastest I've ever seen.

Bumper cars, a perennial favorite: Boy is this fun or what?

Impossible to win, but fun to try.

It wouldn't be a proper fair without cotton candy, would it?

--30--

The biggest, baddest angel of all

2011-10-02T15:19:00.003-05:00

September 29, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel is marked in bold letters in San Miguel's religious calendar. No surprise there: The town is named after that feisty angel.

Except for celebrations surrounding Holy Week, it's the biggest event of the year among the faithful, and even among those who score only más o menos on the religious fervor scale. Probably one-third of the municipal and private fireworks budgets go up in smoke that day, everything from the kaboom of large bowling bowl-size pieces to the far more common rat-tat-tat of lighter and cheaper artillery.

Michael is no wuss of a saint. A ten-foot statue in the median of the street leading to San Miguel's bus station shows him wielding a huge sword, his face contorted with anger and his wings spread out in a warlike manner, while his left foot rests on the throat of the Devil. Indeed, Roman Catholic hagiography depicts Michael as a mucho macho figure who led the angels in their victorious charge against the devil, rather than the type of angel who'd sit on a cloud plucking a harp.

Part of the celebration of St. Michael's day are processions--walkathons--originating as far away as nine or ten miles in the countryside and converging on San Miguel's main square and church. One of these pilgrimages began a half mile from our ranch, in the village of La Biznaga, and I decided to walk along.

It began as a smattering of 15 or 20 people carrying a small glass case containing St. Michael's statue but in a matter of only one mile or so it grew into a major event, with hundreds of people, dozens more on horseback, banners, Mexican flags fluttering in the cold wind and a spirited brass band who couldn't carry a tune if it tripped over it.

As the procession stepped off at 8:30 a.m.--punctually, a surprising touch for any kind of Mexican event--the first thing I noticed was the pace. I figured that a group of devout old matrons, teenagers and assorted kids would likely amble, meander or cruise leisurely through the countryside. This was more like an aerobic trot that had me struggling to keep up while trying to shoot photos. Riders joined the pedestrians at the same pace or faster; I don't know who was trying to keep up with whom.

After a couple of miles the procession slowed somewhat. After three miles--with about four miles to go to the center of town--I called Stew to come pick me up.

Some of the women whispered prayers and sang songs, under the leadership of hefty, no-nonsense grandma. But there was nothing resembling the seriously solemn tone of the Good Friday procession in San Miguel that takes practically all day. This was more like Casimir Pulaski Day in Chicago, where thousands of Poles dress up, bring out high school bands and 4-H Clubs banners and just walk through downtown.

It seemed like a man's type of religious procession too, with hundreds of cowboy hats, riders with fancy boots and spurs, and boys balancing on their fathers' saddles. One scrawny yellow dog, presumably belonging to one of the lead riders, walked officiously alongside in perfect formation except for periodic dashes to the bushes to take a pee.

As a further challenge to my flat feet, that night Stew and I went to the annual San Miguel Fair that was in full swing. The place was packed. I wonder if the determined grandma who led the Biznaga procession all the way downtown--seven or eight miles--was there too.

Standard bearers leading the horseback contingent

A grandmotherly type was the parade marshall.

A double musical threat.

The smallest and most determined band member.

Out for a ride with dad.

My dad worked long and hard in the U.S. and
brought me this leather jacket.

My favorite image from the event.

Another father-and-son team, though not so fancily attired.

Non-walkers cheered on those people in the procession.

One of the few women riding in the procession, and a very beautiful one at that.

This photo and the four following: Boots styled at the procession,
some brand-new, others well worn.

This gentleman went all out: new hat, jacket,
chaps, saddle and boots. Even the horse looked new.

An hour after it started, the procession had grown to almost a quarter-mile long.

-30-

Living the American dream in Mexico

2011-09-30T15:50:00.001-05:00

As deep as you may get into the heart of Mexico, hundreds of miles from the U.S. border, reminders of America follow you everywhere.

Tee shirts trumpet American products and in some cases totally inappropriate American slang.

You might see a very proper-acting middle-aged woman with "HOT MAMA!" emblazoned across her tee shirt. You wonder: Does she know what that means? I've been tempted to stop such unwitting victims and translate except the embarrassment will outweigh any benefit.

Car plates and bumper stickers also remind you of the U.S. Probably 20 percent of the cars circulating in the state of Guanajuato have expired plates from practically every state in the American union. Many of the plates are not just a little bit over the hill but ancient. Two weeks ago at the auto mechanic I spotted a VW beetle perched atop a hoist with 40-year-old California plates. Both the car and the plates were cherry-shape. If you are interested in plates commemorating the American Bicentennial, there are quite of few of them still around.

While driving through the neighboring states of Queretaro and San Luis Potosi earlier this week we noted far larger and more expensive reminders of the U.S., apparently brought back by Mexican workers who toiled Up North for who knows how many years, saved their money and came back home to spend it on something tangible--like a house or a small business.

In two cases, the immigrants--who may have worked in construction in the U.S.--brought not only the money but also plans or photographs of their dream houses, which bear no resemblance to a normal Mexican house.

In one instance, the owner must have either worked in some southern American state or gone to see "Gone With the Wind" too many times. The result is a scarily Tara-like creation, except built on a far more modest piece of land, perhaps half an acre.

What will the neighbors think? Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

The other looks like standard-issue suburban America. It could be suburban Chicago or suburban Houston, but it's definitely out of place on the road to a speck of town called "El Carnicero" ("The Butcher")

A piece of American suburbia in rural Mexico.

A more enterprising sort invested his savings into what he (or she) may hope will eventually turn into a retailing giant, sweeping across Mexico and other countries. Its name is "Gualmart".

We've got the concept, all we need are the customers.

###

Las Pozas in the time of the butterflies

2011-09-30T14:45:00.001-05:00

One of several spring-fed pools ("pozas") at Edward James's phantasmagorical jungle retreat.

Hush and listen carefully. You may hear Edward James' snickering, giggling and even belly laughs coming from the myriad moldy crevices, rotting vegetation and crumbling concrete creations at his surrealist jungle retreat of Las Pozas. He started building it in 1945 and kept adding to it, one strange building, column or structure at a time, until he died in 1984.

Las Pozas, located about six hours from San Miguel by car, is described as a sculpture park and it's open to the public. Visitors invariably walk around with their mouths open, noodling the same question over and over: What the hell is all this?

A passageway to one Las Pozas' many
tabernacles. Watch your head.

There's no definitive answer to that question, so the guessing game begins. This must be the trunk of an elephant. Or a Moorish arch. Maybe a swallow, a duck, an airplane or a poppy flower. After a couple of hours of clambering through the sticky heat, past catwalks to nowhere and columns propping up nothing, you are not one millimeter closer to solving the riddle of Las Pozas.

That confusion must endlessly amuse Edward James' ghost, which surely hovers around the place, watching as the vegetation, humidity and creeping rot inexorably destroy his creation which is exactly what he said he wanted to happen.

When we visited Las Pozas earlier this week, James' jolly spirit was accompanied by tens of thousands of butterflies deliriously fluttering about the place. Very few were common Monarchs, and we couldn't figure out whether they lived at Las Pozas year-round or were just pausing to take advantage of the pre-winter bumper crop of tiny zinnias, orchids and other blooms.

Aside from us, our guide, the butterflies, assorted other insects--and James' ghost--there were only two visitors at Las Pozas that day.

As you tame the impulse to constantly put labels on the artifacts lurking everywhere in the foliage, and perhaps make some sense of Las Pozas, your mind drifts to another imponderable: Was James creative, imaginative or crazy?

To my mind, creativity means transcending established, same-ol' ways of doing things by arranging words, designs, musical notes or whatever in unprecedented and presumably pleasing ways.

Before Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple was built in suburban Chicago, most all houses of worship had soaring ceilings presumably to propel everyone's attention heavenward. But Wright instead prescribed a flat, relatively low ceiling that leads the congregants to look at each other or the preacher. That's a creative concept in church-building and in this case a useful one too, since most Unitarians don't believe that a Mr. G. or anyone else is living Upstairs.

Imagination on the other hand suggests unreality, fairy tales, Harry Potter and little gnomes. A vivid imagination can be fun and wonder-full, but ultimately frivolous.

Walking around Las Pozas you sense and see imagination at the edge of craziness, but not useful creativity. In the case of James, his immense inherited fortune gave his imagination a freer rein that most mortals are likely to enjoy.

James undoubtedly had a 12-cylinder imagination, one hears supplemented by drugs, booze and side trips into religious cults. He also kept company with odd fellows like Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, not exactly boy-next-door types.

Except his friends created enduring things: new ways of writing music or depicting reality on canvas. Las Pozas is fabulously imaginative and fascinating, but ultimately pointless except for affording James a very enjoyable way to pass the time and spend his money.

Las Pozas' hallucinogenic collection of elements didn't start any artistic or architectural trends. Indeed it was James' wish that it all be allowed to crumble and eventually get swallowed up by the jungle.

Maybe we should blame surrealism for Las Pozas' seeming pointlessness. The point of it, if there was any, resided only in James' mind, beyond our duller, reality-oriented heads.

But that sort of analysis once again tries to rationalize or impose some logic on James' greatest creation. I can see his bearded face, lurking behind some half-finished concrete flower, grinning at our enduring confusion.

A six-inch-long butterfly-to-be.

A spider and the leftovers from its comida.

A flower displaying its petals and pistils.

Supposedly a bathtub carved out of stone. During the rainy season the rushing spring waters
would wash over the top and onto the bather.

Faux, poured-concrete bamboo vs. the real stuff.

Las Pozas' ruins host thousands of orchids and other air plants. James hoped
his creation would eventually succumb to the surrounding jungle.

Moorish-inspired arches. Or so we heard.

A concrete trellis duking it out with creeping moss, orchids and banana trees.

The last step is a doozie.

Few of the sculptural pieces at Las Pozas were actually carved out of stone. Most are poured concrete. To achieve the different shapes, James' workers had to make molds out of pieces of wood--many of them tiny, like the ones above--into which the concrete was poured.

Stairs to the clouds and back again.

Help! Get us out of here! This place is nuts!

Design changes

2011-09-25T20:54:00.001-05:00

The Google blogger machine presents you with infinite design and layout possibilities. Or if not quite that many, enough to leave you cross-eyed. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours picking a new set of elements that I think make this blog cleaner-looking and easier to read. I hope it works.

Aside from changing the appearance I also wanted to add links to a few other blogs I follow.

Billie Mercer's blog is one of my favorites even if she doesn't write much; in fact she hasn't posted anything for a couple of months. But her prose is not why I follow her blog. It's her photographs, which are awesome on the screen and even more so when you see them on paper.

If you fancy yourself a photographer, viewing her work could trigger two reactions. One is frustration, as in, "Hell, I'll never come close to that!" The other is inspiration, which Billie provides through her images and in person by her generous advice.

I discovered Roger Ebert's blog only a couple of days ago, when it was mentioned in a rave review of his memoirs in the New York Times. His movie reviews and commentary are both insightful and stylish. I intend to read him regularly.

Pioneer Woman, aka Ree Drummond, was profiled in the New Yorker magazine a few months ago. Her site is not a blog, but a medium-sized enterprise, a case of multi-tasking run amok. She is an accomplished photographer, book writer, mother who home-schools her children, cowgirl, wife of a guy she calls the Marlboro Man (he looks like it too), owner of a photogenic basset hound named Charlie and the host of a new program on the Food Network. That's all before noon. Her pretense of self-sufficiency is patently not credible; she must have a full-time staff of six or eight people just to answer e-mails from the hundreds of thousands of followers of her blog. Nonetheless she is a very good photographer and a fun writer too.

Steve Cotton's blog is interesting because he is interesting and also a good writer. Interesting as in a gringo who bypassed the usual expat hangouts in Mexico like Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende and instead set up shop in the Pacific beach resort of Malaque, where it's so hot and humid half of the year that even the mosquitoes pack their bags and flee. I like his eye for detail and he's not even a journalist but a damn lawyer.

I also enjoy Babsblog. I know Barbara but forgot how to spell her last name. Her off-the-cuff comments and observations about San Miguel are fun to read, probably because she doesn't take herself too seriously.

Maybe in the future I would also like to post some of my photographs, which are piling up in the hard drive of the computer. But before that I need to learn how to raise sheep, train Italian greyhounds and get my own talk show on Oprah's network. Get ready for Pioneer Man.

Gobble-gobble on the range

2011-09-21T16:00:00.002-05:00

On the way to town this morning Stew spotted a group of turkeys working their way diagonally through a field next to our ranch, pecking, pecking, pecking the ground for any trace of seed, worms, weeds or whatever turkey crave. At first we thought it might be a flock of wild turkeys, but then we spotted a tiny old man sitting on a rock and keeping an eye on the birds.

I stopped to ask the man if they were his. He laughed a toothless smile and said indeed they were, all 33 of them. Remembering turkeys' reputation for dimwittedness, I asked how he kept them from wandering off in all directions.

More smiling: The turkeys generally stay in some sort of formation, he said, like cattle or sheep. He shoos them out the back door of his ranch, about half a mile from here, and the turkeys just amble along until they get to the corner of the field next to our house and then he shoos them back home.

Even more interesting, he said he had a bunch of chicks at the ranch. Interesting because in the United States, thanks to industrial farming technology, turkeys don't reproduce on their own. Frankensteinian breeding methods have created grotesque birds with such large breasts that they can no longer, you know, connect--hell, they can hardly walk--so the females have to be artificially inseminated with a turkey baster-like device.

But enough of that.

Thanksgiving dinners in San Miguel's expat community tend to be tumultuous affairs, with some delicious dishes but mostly mounds of lukewarm sweet potatoes, canned cranberries and coleslaw, and much chit-chat.

So Stew and I were thinking of hosting an intimate, quiet dinner for eight or so good friends, who can share the blessings, or perhaps travails, of the previous year.

One of those 33 guys we saw this morning could make a nice Thanksgiving dinner. It would be organic, definitely range-fed, and locally produced.

Something to think about, though the turkeys in question probably rather not.

A river of flowers

2011-09-21T14:46:00.000-05:00

Rain has been scarce this year but that hasn't completely stopped the annual wildflower display around the ranch. Clever survivalists they are, wildflowers instead have concentrated their blooming and reproductive efforts along drainage ditches, the edges of ponds and puddles with some water still in them, and anywhere else the reduced amount of moisture has collected.

When we built the house we worried about flooding, even though the house is perched on a pretty steep incline. On the back side we put in a small serpentine ditch, about two feet wide and eight or nine inches deep, and lined it with stones and gravel, to divert heavy rains away from the foundations.

This year the ditch worked in a miraculous way: The little water that collected there created an ideal habitat for tiny yellow blooms that in effect have become a river of wildflowers. As an added visual bonus, the river meanders past one of our bedroom windows.

I took this picture early in the morning when everything was shimmery, dewy and aromatic. A couple of cobwebs, about two feet across joined in the display (upper left hand corner) before they vanished under the heat of the rising sun.

The river remains but I haven't seen cobwebs again.

Changó in San Miguel

2011-09-18T17:34:00.000-05:00

As I coursed through the menu, somewhere between the baba ganoush and the falafel, she caught my eye.

Her gaze was tranquil but the huge sword on her left hand also reflected strength and determination. The crown on her head, the flowing white robes and a small crenelated tower to her right in turn suggested royalty and authority.

Yet she was also surrounded by a small array of the commonest objects: an apple, a small jar of honey, a bottle of wine, a couple of flickering votive candles.

Most startling of all was the location of this vision: Why was a small statue of Santa Bárbara, one of highest-ranking figures in the Caribbean religion of santería, presiding over the Lebanese restaurant Fenicia in San Miguel?

Though Mexico is home to thousands of Catholic churches each populated by dozens of statues and religious icons, Santa Bárbara is not a biggie, and neither are the frenzied santería rituals in her honor that are traceable to Western Africa.

There are towns in Spain, Peru, California and other places named after her, but Santa Bárbara is not a supernova in the crowded firmament of Catholic saints. Mind you, that's not taking anything away from her saintly and tragic life story, or miracle-granting prowess.

But you need to figure there are over 2,500 entries in the perpetual Catholic best-seller "Lives of the Saints." Pope John Paul II alone added nearly 500 more saints to the list, including Crispin of Viterbo, Clelia Barbieri and 103 Korean martyrs, the latter inducted in one massive canonization ceremony. The late pope himself is on a fast-track trajectory to become a saint. Competition for altar space is fierce.

But in the Caribbean, particularly Cuba but also Venezuela, where santería is a major religious force, Santa Bárbara is a prominent religious figure. Her feast day, December 4, is a time for building elaborate altars--comparable to Day of the Dead creations in Mexico--and much celebration to the beat of African drums.

Nancy, who owns Fenicia with her friend Leticia, told me that in her native Venezuela, Santa Bárbara Day is indeed a major religious to-do when some devout businessmen put altars even in their establishments.

A striking feature of most Santa Bárbara altars, such as the one at Fenicia, are the offerings of bananas, honey, apples, wine, honey, okra and other paraphernalia not found in the Catholic church-decorating manual.

Indeed Santa Barbara's popularity is based on her being an avatar or stand-in for various African deities, a clever subterfuge created by slaves brought by Spain to America. The Spaniards insisted on imposing Catholicism on the blacks slaves who in turn refused to give up their traditional beliefs.

So they created a parallel world of deities, in which Santa Bárbara represents the major African god Changó--the god of thunder and lightning, fire and drums. St. Peter stands in for the god Ogún and St. Lazarus for Babaluaye, and so on.

It's a hysterical farce. Slaves would be reverently bowing to Santa Bárbara while secretely channeling Changó. Santería may have been the biggest boost to Santa Bárbara's career as a saint.

The Catholic hierarchy occasionally puts out statements reminding the faithful that Santería and Catholicism are two different religious venues, but the former survives and prospers. It could be something as simple as santería's throbbing rituals simply being more fun than incense and Gregorian chants.

Nancy, Fenicia's co-owner, told me in some quarters of Venezuela Santa Bárbara is also known as Changó.

But I doubt Nancy would admit to any santería sympathies, any more than my own mother who also kept a prominent Santa Bárbara altar in our home, fully decorated with apples, bananas and the rest of it.

Santería is for black folk, white Cubans would tell you, while admitting that hay que tenerle respeto--something you don't mess with. Thing is that Santa Bárbara's split religious personality also offers a cover for nominal Catholics who might wish to dabble in santería now and again.

Nancy and Leticia at the Lebanese restaurant are ardent followers of Santa Bárbara and were thrilled that I recognized the statue.

Yet they clearly hedge their religious bets. On the shelf, to the left of Santa Bárbara, is a smaller statuette of St. Charbel of Lebanon (Nancy is of Lebanese descent) and to the right a figure of Michael the Archangel, San Miguel's religious hero (Leticia is Mexican). That in addition to the apple, bottle of wine and honey.

When it comes to saints there's no point in dissin' any of them.

Meanwhile, Santa Bárbara is keeping up with the latest technology, with her own Facebook page: http://facebook.com/virgensantabarbarabendita.chango

The lure of memories

2011-09-15T16:14:00.003-05:00

Though neither one of us is an antique-y, living-in-the-past type, Stew and I somehow have become archivists for both sides of our family. At this stage our collection of family artifacts, documents and photos, which has survived several moves and the death of all of our parents, is both impressive and a bit strange.

Stew has a Lutheran Bible written in an indecipherable Old Norwegian Gothic script that he must have inherited from his father, who was born in Norway. As far as Stew can recall, no one in his family was particularly religious, certainly not enough to try conversing with God in Old Norwegian. So who kept the old Bible and why?

Of all things, I have a gym tee shirt from my grammar school in Cuba, as well as the Cuban passport, Pan American Airways plane ticket from Havana to Miami and the baggage claim stub from when I migrated to the U.S. in 1962. The latter three items could claim some sentimental value, but a gym tee shirt?

None of this stuff is Smithsonian-worthy, yet Stew has started the job of scanning into the computer all the family photographs--including a jumble of pictures from our 39 years together--so we can place them in one of those printed albums ordered through the Internet.

We wouldn't think of discarding this stuff yet keeping it in boxes in the basement, helter-skelter and unexamined, seemed about as good as throwing it in the trash.

But for us archiving of family mementos is really a selfish pastime: I'm an only child, and Stew's brother and his wife don't have any children. So it's not as if in 2082 one of our descendants is going to be leafing through our computer-generated album, find a picture of me standing by an incredibly ugly car and wonder what model and year it was. (A 1974 baby-blue, four-door Volvo, with a manual transmission. If someone tries to sell you one, run.)

Grandma Herminia

Selfish but interesting, sometimes even fun, for photos can be both revealing and misleading. One of my maternal grandmother Herminia accurately captures her "don't mess with me or I'll break both of your knees" personality.

Except I also know about her incredibly tough life. She lost her husband early on and had to raise two girls and three boys by herself, through the chaos of Cuba's economy, in a struggling small farm outside the town of Cienfuegos in southern Cuba. You don't survive those circumstances by being a cream-puff.

Then I also recall her doting on me--I was the youngest grandchild--and of her phenomenal cooking skills. Anything for Alfredito. Tough? Bah! She was putty in my little boy's hands.

Other pictures make you wonder what were the subjects thinking. A picture of Stew's paternal grandparents Christopher and Verda, probably taken in Norway in the late 1800s, is a beauty.

It's a very formal shot, both sitting behind a desk rapt in their own thoughts: They seem to be looking past each other. Christopher's eyes are focused on something above, like he's bored or just arrogant. His manicured moustache, hair style--that shock of hair combed over his forehead!--and his starchy outfit suggest a man of means or some importance. Or maybe photographs were so rare that common people dressed up for the occasion as if they were aristocrats.

Verda and Christopher

Verda's sweet face is a true semblance of her personality. Stew once took me to visit her in a suburb south of Chicago, when she was in her early 90s, physically frail yet her mind still razor-sharp. Verda lived with Stew's aunt and her husband.

When I met her, Verda told me how she still read newspapers from Norway, about her keeping a small Norwegian flag on her bedroom dresser and about the family dog named Marshmallow. The second time we came by, she recognized me right away, remembered my name and everything we had talked about during our first encounter.

She loved to tell stories and in my mind was the very model of sweetness and grandmotherhood. Stew confirms that no one ever had a bone to pick with Grandma Hammer.

Old photos inevitably send you careening down the "wonder what happened to them" alley. There's a picture of me and two school friends sitting at Varadero beach in Cuba. Judging by our ages it must have been taken shortly before Castro's arrival. The friend on the left is Francisco, a classmate who was tall, slender and a bit effeminate. He was teased because of his mannerisms though I suspect because of jealousy too because he was far and away the smartest guy in the class. His younger brother Augusto was short, chubby and as stolid as Francisco was willowy.

Francisco, Alfredo and Augusto

From what I've heard Francisco remained in Cuba and became a lawyer though he gave that up to play the piano at tourist hotels in Havana. Not an unusual trajectory, given that in Communist countries cab drivers and piano players working for tips often make better money than doctors or university professors.

Meeting up with Francisco, and comparing our parallel lives--his in Cuba, mine in the U.S.--alone would be worth the price of a trip to Cuba, assuming I could find him.

His brother Augusto left Cuba, became a citizen of Spain and a diplomat for that country. I emailed him this picture, hoping to get some updates about his brother and family.

And the guy in the middle with the Obama-size ears? Ah, yes, that's me.

A year without cosmos

2011-09-13T14:14:00.002-05:00

Except for a patch growing by our driveway it appears the Lady Upstairs may have cancelled the annual outburst of cosmos which in a good year covers countless acres of open land around San Miguel.

The ones growing by the driveway, typically spindly and with flowers delicate as fine silk, attentively follow the sun as it travels across the sky (Mexicans call cosmos girasoles or "sunflowers").

These have prospered because we planted ornamental grasses and agaves in that area and the cosmos seeds apparently took advantage of the extra water. Wild flowers can spot a survival opportunity when they see one.

Their cousins in the open fields haven't been so lucky and more important, neither have the corn, beans and squash crops so essential to the subsistence farmers around us.

We had been hearing about how the terrible yearlong drought that has scorched most of Texas and the northern edge of Mexico has ruined crops and killed livestock. That while other parts of the U.S. have experienced tornadoes and unusually high precipitation and heat.

When we visited Chicago six weeks ago monsoon-like rains kept the grass on the parks growing and the city's lawnmowers going all day long, beginning at 7:30 a.m. Driving down Lake Shore Drive with some friends one afternoon the cascades of rain and the flash flooding made it feel as if we were visiting Bangladesh.

Around the ranch the weather has not experienced either extreme. The Texas drought hasn't reached us so the fields are still generally green, but the rain we've received so far this year has not been enough. Also, we've had generally cool temperatures, unlike the heat waves in Texas that have sucked the moisture out of the ground.

Rains in the San Miguel area are supposed to begin around June and build up to torrential gully washers by July. So far this year we've had a few heavy rains of an inch or so, but the rest have been but teasing drizzles and impressive but unproductive shows of thunder and swirling dark clouds.

The craters and other depressions in the landscape that should be filled with water are just muddy and covered with opportunistic beautiful wild flowers.

Our only measuring device is a 99-cent plastic rain gauge, which has started to tilt back slightly in the dry soil as if it too were imploring the clouds for rain. As far as I can tell we've received only five to six inches, far from the usual 24 inches or so we should receive between June and September.

Two months ago we planted 15 10-foot-tall evergreens that despite a good drenching at planting quickly started to yellow. Suspecting some dreaded pine scourge I called Louis Franke, an American nurseryman and possibly the only person in San Miguel to carry some sort of factual botanical database in his head. He quickly diagnosed the problem as lack of water. It just hasn't rained enough this year.

Félix the gardener, who from now on will be referred to as just Félix, started a crash watering campaign and all but two of our evergreens recovered.

Things are far worse for the farmers around us, including Don Vicente, whose six hapless mutts show up at our gate every day looking for food. From our terrace we have a panoramic view of his rancho of about 50 hectares of marginal soil and rocks, dotted with some mesquite trees.

When the rains finally came in July we saw him patiently plowing his land with a contraption pulled by two horses, followed by two of his sons sowing corn and bean seeds from a bucket. Despite such primitive methods the result was amazingly symmetrical: Perfectly straight rows, from the stone fence closest to us clear out the man-made pond at the back of his property.

But by now most of the beans are fried and the corn stunted if not dead. Vicente has no way to irrigate the land and has no choice but to sit and watch his entire crop, his chief means of subsistence during the winter months, slowly die.

It's no more sickening, I suppose, that what his counterparts in Texas are going through, except the latter may receive some disaster help from the government. Vicente, his wife, 14 children and his motley herd of sheep, goats and cows are on their own.

I'm sure Vicente will survive. Subsistence farmers are nothing if not used to living on the brink.

And in the next few weeks we might still get a few gully-washers that could save some of the crops of Vicente and others like him. Some patches of corn down the road are about shoulder-high, probably because they were planted earlier in the season, and may come through.

And so there's still a chance the cosmos, yellow daisies, tiny zinnias and other wild survivors in the fields might come back for their yearly show.

Our not so big or fat Mexican wedding

2011-09-11T18:12:00.003-05:00

Except for the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love" and other American romantic oldies wafting from a boombox resting on the counter--and the ear-to-ear smiles pasted on the couple's faces--you couldn't tell a wedding was about to take place.

We were on the second floor of a largely empty shopping center that once housed a tired "Gigante" supermarket and San Miguel's only two movie houses, and where the State of Guanajuato has set up an office, somewhat similar to a county clerk's office in the U.S., to issue licenses, including births and marriages, and other official paperwork.

The freshly remodeled space is cavernous, clean and sterile, with rows of chairs filled with citizens patiently waiting to be summoned to the counter by the unsmiling clerks, to transact their little bit of business. Not a single peso has been spent to decorate the expanses of white drywall or to otherwise visually soften the space.

At one end is the "Sala de Matrimonios" or "Wedding Hall," a name far grander and cheerier than the actual space deserves, also painted white. Furnishings consisted of a office desk, six chairs and a government-issue sign above the door. The only concession to romance or love ever-after was a dusty pink plastic rose in a wooden container vase at one corner of the desk.

The Wedding Hall was dismal and not even functional: In addition to the government clerk and the bride and groom, the ceremony requires the presence of four witness, the parents of the couple and usually a photographer. That's four chairs short in this crowded and mirthless space, even with photographer standing.

I didn't expect a Vegas wedding chapel with an Elvis impersonator, but this room seemed depressing. It's the only ceremonial venue for poor folks who can't afford a church wedding or a banquet hall, and this is all the pomp and elegance the government can provide?

Even in no-frills countries like Cuba the government has set aside a fancy building, usually a former mansion, as a "Wedding Palace" to provide one day of glamour in the proletarians' otherwise plain lives.

The reason Stew and I were gathered here two weeks ago was not to get married--same-sex marriages are legal only in Mexico City--but to celebrate the wedding of our gardener Félix, 25, to Ysela, a shy girl with a freckled, baby face that looks younger than 20. They brought along their girl Alondra who, stricken with a bad case of "the terrible two's," remained unsmiling, fidgety and grouchy the entire afternoon.

Although Félix had referred to Ysela as mi esposa or mi mujer (my "wife" or "woman"), in fact they had just moved in together two years ago, I suspect prompted by Alondra's imminent arrival. When Stew and I returned from a two-week trip, which earned Félix extra money for taking care of the house and our dogs and cats, he announced he had saved enough money, would like to get married the following Friday and would we give him the day off.

Sure. Congratulations, man!

Our role in the celebrations grew as the week went on. Félix and his family had no way of travelling to the ceremony, and would we give them a ride so they wouldn't have to take the bus.

So on Friday at 12:30, an hour before his appointment at the Wedding Hall--Félix worried about being late for his own wedding--his entire family was waiting for us under a huge pirul tree by the side of the road to Jalpa. Five of them, including Ysela and Alondrita, piled into our pickup, which Stew had vacuumed for the occasion, and four others into our VW station wagon. The remainder of the party, brother Juan and his wife, Félix's two sisters, and a nephew and his girlfriend rode into town in another pickup, the last two on the bed of the truck.

As we met and congratulated Ysela we noticed there was another, perhaps more compelling reason behind the marriage: The bride was quite pregnant.

Félix also enlisted me as photographer. The guy who hangs around outside the Wedding Hall would charge about $25 U.S., he said, and the ever-thrifty Félix thought I'd be a better and cheaper option--cheaper like zero pesos and zero centavos.

The day before the event Stew and I drove to Querétaro and at Wal-Mart picked up a bouquet that included three beautiful roses among other flowers, and at Costco a large chocolate cake decorated with flowers, a smiley sun, balloons and a generic "¡Felicidades!". We figured these were two luxury items Félix probably wouldn't be able to afford. We were right.

Felix wore a white shirt with thin black stripes, black pants with a white patent leather belt and the pointy dress shoes favored by Mexican men. Ysela had on a dress with a gingham-type pattern and two bows on her still damp hair. The only two other people who had dressed up at all for the occasion were Ysela's mom, a stern-looking matron in her 60s who wore a shiny blue shawl over her shoulders and nylon stockings, and one of Félix's sisters who wore a blue skirt made of some sort of shimmering fabric.

As I looked through my viewfinder for the group shot, I paused as I realized the obvious: Félix and his family are dirt poor. Even Félix and Ysela, the fashion plates of the bunch, were wearing hand-me-down outfits probably picked up at San Miguel's Tuesday flea market.

I was also taken aback by the matter-of-fact mood among the party. Missing was the glee, back-slapping, crying, and hugging and kissing one expects at a typical wedding. These folks looked as humorless as a bunch of Norwegian undertakers.

Maybe their hard lives had sucked the joy out of even a momentous occasion like a child getting married, though at the local fiestas people seem to whoop it up with dancing, drinking, fireworks and otherwise great relish.

Or perhaps the crush of so many children, who get married, or not, pregnant, baptized or whatever, turns a modest wedding into a here-we-go-again affair.

On the way to the wedding I asked Ysela's grizzled father, who was sitting on the front seat of our pickup, how many children and grandchildren he had. He paused for a few seconds to do the math in his head. Answer: 10 children and so far four grandchildren--he thinks. During a conversation with Félix and his brother Juan after the wedding, I asked how many kids their sister had. There was a brief, embarrassed giggle because they didn't agree whether it was seven or eight. Correct answer is seven.

But for all the ho-hum attitude among the relatives, Félix and Ysela couldn't stop grinning, joking and just gazing at each other in wonderment.

How much I love you! How fortunate I am to have you!

These two seemed really, really happy.

The actual wedding ceremony was conducted by a uniformed state employee, a woman who couldn't squeeze a faint smile from her lips or even an interested look from her eyes as she recited the requisite boilerplate. With no wedding rings to exchange, Félix and Ysela just held hands and they were officially married.

Then it was back to the station wagon and the pick-ups and on to the wedding dinner at Pollo Feliz ("Happy Chicken"), a franchise operation in the spirit (if not the taste) of Popeye's Chicken. Félix sat next to me and confessed he needed help ordering because he'd never been to Pollo Feliz. I counseled under-ordering because tortillas and salad came with and you didn't want to end up with too much food.

Cake and more pictures followed. Félix and Ysela just kept smiling while the relatives remained non-plussed.

When he returned to work Monday, Félix thanked me profusely and offered an unexpected compliment. His relatives had declared Stew and I to be buena gente, "nice folks." It was not for buying the cake and the flowers, or chauffering the family around, but just for being willing to share the modest event with poor folks like them.

Actually, the honor was all ours.

Don't open any email about a "Youtube" video

2011-09-06T09:09:00.000-05:00

Some people have received an e-mail supposedly from me, directing people to a video in "Youtube". I didn't send any such thing, so don't open any link and just delete the message. Thanks.

al

Life without, or at least fewer, gringos

2011-09-04T18:28:00.001-05:00

At the heart of the forbidding, fortress-like Biblioteca building in the center of San Miguel is the homey and beautiful Café Santa Ana, a colonial patio with a large tree and fountain in the middle. A few of the tables are under the open sky but most are protected by a high overhanging roof, and there's a pastries and espresso bar at one end. The clientele is gray-haired and library-quiet, gathered in small groups, along with a few loners sipping coffee, reading a book, working a crossword puzzle or just rapt in their own thoughts. The tranquility of the place and the median age of the customers can't help evoke an image of a day room at a retirement village.

Indeed, despite a valiant facade of bilingualism, La Biblioteca ("The Library") is primarily a community center for San Miguel's English-speaking retirees. The book collection contains endless linear feet of shelves of middle-brow paperbacks and old magazines in English. Americans provide most of the funding and make up the board of directors; the programming is almost all in English, including lectures, tours of luxury homes, movies and amateur plays. The one significant exception is the Biblioteca's charitable arm which channels tens of thousands of dollars of aid yearly to talented but underprivileged Mexican students.

So it is interesting to note the decline in customers at the Biblioteca nowadays and speculate how it may signal a change in the demographics and ambiance of San Miguel.

Last week we attended a guitar recital held in the Sala Quetzal, a room off the Café Santa Ana, and only seven people showed up including us. A showing of the 2010 film "Howl", starring James Franco as the poet Allen Ginsberg, attracted nine customers. A lecture later in the week about money and how it affects one's life was more successful probably because of the persistent belching of the Dow Jones Index and the U.S. economy: 15 attendees, many of them fretting about their portfolios.

We had bought tickets in advance because in past years Biblioteca events usually sold out. This time even the Café Santa Ana had plenty of empty tables.

The absence of pale-faced tourists is also noticeable on the streets: Where are all the bermuda shorts and cowboy hats? It's supposed to be one of two high seasons, this one attracting Texans fleeing the scorching heat and humidity in Dallas and Houston. In the old days they not only drove down by the thousands but also stayed for several weeks. Hell, the giddier ones would even buy real estate on the spur of the moment.

The chief reason for the slump now undoubtedly is the bad news about violence in Mexico, primarily along the U.S. border. Some angry expats in San Miguel blame it on anti-Mexico bias by the American media though if you read Mexican newspapers the news is far more alarming and unrelenting. Still, many Americans and Canadians continue to drive back and forth across the border, singing "¡No Problema!" along the way.

Safe or not, surely it's the Texans' loss for not coming down. While they're frying their butts off back home, weather here is as close to ideal as one can get. Highs in the mid-80s dropping to perfect beddy-bye temperatures in the 60s. Rainfall is below normal but sufficient to keep the landscapes kelly-green.

As the number of American tourists declines there seems to be an uptick in the number of national visitors, along with license plates from Mexico City, Nuevo León, Chihuahua and other Mexican states. Rumors fly of wealthy Mexicans from Monterrey--where recently 53 people died when someone fire-bombed a casino--San Luis Potosí, and the capital moving here to escape the violence. More hearsay: Ten units sold in an ultra-upscale townhouse development near the center of the city were all bought by Mexicans, except one purchased by a Canadian couple. Personal observation: More of the tourists pointing cameras at old buildings definitely are speaking Spanish to one another.

Give it enough time and San Miguel may become a more Mexican town, with less English spoken and fewer establishments catering to gringos. Real estate salesmen no longer will be able to assume most clients will be English-speaking foreigners. The Biblioteca may have to start looking for vintage Lola Beltrán and Cantiflas films.

But for now all we can do is to sound as TV reporters do when they're trying to spin a story without sufficient information: "Only time will tell."

Harrumph. Time for a word from our sponsors.

A trail of tiny chapels, part two

2011-08-27T11:50:00.005-05:00

The ancient and tiny building, with no identifiable religious symbols, sat alone atop a barren, cratered hill, looking like an abandoned space station waiting for someone to arrive.

"¡Hola E.T., mi casa es tu casa!"

Its weathered wooden door was shut tight with a large padlock. There were no holes or cracks that would let you peep inside. A faded graffiti scribble on one side was no help in identifying the purpose of the anonymous structure, which nevertheless towered over the town of Cruz del Palmar and the valleys on all sides, spray-painted bright green by the recent rains.

After losing track of the last few chapels on the Ruta de las Capillas because tourist signs disappeared beyond a certain point, we returned two weeks later but drove in from the tail end of trail, to try find out what we had missed. Shazzam: The state tourist board had come around and installed the rest of the signs.

Yet none pointed or explained what was the mysterious and forlorn chapel-like building on the hill. Instead the signs pointed to Cruz del Palmar, a typical off-the-road Mexican village except for the inordinately large church in the middle--and the four or five diminutive belfries attached to abandoned chapels, whose names no one seemed to remember.

Only two of the towers had any bells or apparent purpose today. One had been retrofitted as a place to hang a TV antenna. We christened that chapel "Our Lady of Television." The other bell tower still in use was attached to the main church; indeed it looked like it was an huge expansion of one of the original mini-chapels.

The big church was very much a live operation, decked out with natural and artificial flowers, holy statues and even a base fiddle leaning gently on one corner, ready to turn around and join the next religious shindig at a moment's notice.

Out in front by the left of altar was a statue of the infant Jesus, an odd touch on two counts.

It was a young, cherubic figure, with a hint of a smile on his lips. It contrasted with the rest of the statuary, which as in most Mexican churches, depicted saints bleeding, weeping or otherwise contorted in pain. Jews who think they hold the patent on guilt and suffering need to check out Roman Catholic churches in Mexico for some needed perspective.

At the foot of the baby Jesus parishioners had deposited not candles, flowers or "milagros" (mementos of answered prayers) but toys: a teddy bear, toy horse, a fire truck. Indeed, with both hands up in the air, the baby Jesus seemed ready to lead the congregation in some jaunty hymn.

"Hey, folks, don't worry, be happy!"

The middle-aged, shy man who gave us a tour of the church also solved the mystery of the would-be space station on top of the hill. It was a large "calvario", a usually small shrine next to a church were parishioners place wooden crosses or other relics belonging to their ancestors.

Before community events, such as religious fiestas or pilgrimages, the participants would check in at the calvario to seek permission to proceed from the souls of those who had passed away. The structure on the hill was the main calvario for all of Cruz del Palmar, according to the tour guide.

(I wondered if the ancestors ever denied their permission. Like a voice thundering from above: "Hey guys put those Coronas away. Enough partying already.")

Our quickie tour was but an introduction to the history of all these chapels which looked somewhat similar but have unique narratives. Each commemorates a different saint, like San Isidro, who looks after farmers, and enshrines a community's history and aspirations for the future. Each chapel and saint requires its own yearly fiesta, typically prayers and somber religious processions combined with drinking, dancing and fireworks.

I'm particularly interested in the fiestas at Cruz del Palmar, when they open the lonely calvario atop the hill. I need to see what's inside. It'd be a hoot if it turns out to be a large black slab covered with hieroglyphs and with a strange energy field around it.

The mysterious structure on the hill, which we found out was the main calvario for
the community of Cruz del Palmar.

(Above and below) The main church at Cruz del Palmar, an otherwise nondescript town except for its collection of chapels and churches, functioning or abandoned.

The cheery baby Jesus, standing tippy-toes on a cloud.

Strike up the band.

An abandoned chapel, which we named "Temple of Clay Pots."

Our Lady of Television sanctuary.

This chapel had lost its nave and become part of someone's house. Let's call it "The Shrine of the Unknown Saints."

This ruin was not connected to any chapel or other structure. Judging by the elegant interior decorations and murals, it must have been a fancy place in its time, about 150 years ago.

The Chapel of the (Three) Kings, the last one on the tour and one of the best preserved. Above, the bell tower. Below, the decorative downspouts and buttresses on the side.

Above, carved dove on the door of the Chapel of the Kings. Below, decorative painting around a round window in the chapel. The tear-like discoloration was probably caused by rain seeping in. Or is it a sign from God?

A small calvario in the front yard of the Chapel of the Kings. The objects inside are probably new; most of the calvarios were looted over the years.

###

When the babes come marchin' in

2011-08-22T12:54:00.002-05:00

Photographing baby animals around the ranch is cheap but irresistible blog material.

Félix the gardener found the little rabbit under a cactus, where it had been cornered by Lucy who spends her life going after rabbits but never catching any. Like dogs who chase cars, Lucy wouldn't know what to do if she actually caught one. What were we to do with the stray baby? Put it in a box and feed it lettuce? Félix advised to give it a piece of lettuce but instead take it to the other side of the fence out of Lucy's reach. And so it was.

In my imagination donkeys have a sad, long-suffering appearance though most of them probably don't feel that way. Our neighbor Arno has found several that were starved and abused, bought them for as little as ten dollars, to join his animal kingdom which includes 50 dogs, several sheep and a few birds. Arno even put bricks and rocks around the anthills on the road to his house lest someone drive over them.

After a few weeks on Arno's as-much-alfalfa-as-you-can-eat burro diet (with no physical labor required except walking around batting your ears) the donkeys become noticeably cheerier. They answer to their names and trot up to the fence contentedly to have their noses scratched and even bray a little.

Baby burros, with their disproportionately long ears, sport a silly grin maybe because they don't know the work and hardship that awaits them as adults. We've been tempted to adopt a couple. We have the land though we'd have to fence off an acre or so, otherwise the donkeys will eat all the vegetation and probably come after the dogs (or vice-versa).

Calves look underfed and unhappy, just like their parents. Hard to imagine how the scrawny cattle around here have the energy to have babies much less feed them. I miss the sight of Midwestern American cows standing around fat, indolent and unappreciative of how good they have it.

Colts look neither sad like donkeys nor skinny like calves, and instead hop around unsteadily but happily on their stilt-like legs. Maybe horses are more valued by the owners who feed and treat them better. Maybe that's just the way they look.

Birds are the most difficult to figure out. Félix keeps finding nests all over the place: On top of small bushes, hidden somewhere in the middle or sometimes built on the ground. The latter are the riskiest; talk about a bird-brained place to put a nest. The dogs sometimes find those chicks and try to play with them until Félix intervenes and put them back on the nest.

Most chicks still in the nest behave frantically. Could be fear of a human's eye or camera lens, or just a perpetual call to their parents: "More food! More food! Quickly!"

Once they leave the nest, either by flying off or getting the heave-ho by their weary parents, chicks take a while to get their bearings. The one we found on the railing of the back porch, its fluffy faux-feathers gently blowing in the breeze, remained there for about a half hour, just looking around and calmly admiring the beautiful world into which it had been born.

Or it could be all my imagination.

The yearly cosmos festival is about to begin

2011-07-31T19:01:00.000-05:00

Cosmos plants have sprouted by the tens of thousands and are beginning to cover even large rocks.

Last year's display of wild cosmos flowers.

The mostly cool, moist weather of the past few weeks has set off an explosion of vegetation all over the ranch, but the best is yet to come: Waves of pink cosmos flowers--hundreds of thousands, nah, probably millions--that will cover all the fields around the ranch for a breathtaking yet short-lived show that should begin around late September.

Before we had fenced in our land, sheep and other livestock had munched practically everything down to a stubble. But over the past two years wildflowers have returned as if they had never left, particularly the cosmos. The seeds from spent flowers blow off in all directions, to bloom next year in a geometric progression of color.

Thousands of bright green cosmos plants already have sprouted and are growing by the inch every day, covering up even large rocks. Can't wait for their show in just a couple of months.

From ennui to anomie

2011-07-31T10:59:00.000-05:00

Six years after moving here we've discovered an unexpected benefit to living in San Miguel, besides its near-perfect climate, colonial ambience and lower living costs: Insulation from the hailstorm of news--including "news", commentaries, extrapolations, speculation, pundit-fications, fear-mongering and sheer media noise--to which Americans back home are subjected every day.

During the first several months in Mexico we felt a vague craving for newspapers and current events, a bit like withdrawal symptoms. That was supplanted by boredom with the shallow and repetitive news cycles in U.S. television news stations and most magazines.

Most recently the debt-ceiling debacle in Washington, a beat-it-to-death media riot spiced with countless and ominous what-ifs, has been pushing Stew and I toward anomie, an alienation from the dysfunctional American political process. If you live in the U.S. this latest spectacle may seem urgent and worth following; it's certainly inescapable, unless you live in a cave in Wyoming.

When you witness it from a foreign country though, even one as close as Mexico, it resembles a Third World soap opera--crude, ridiculous and incomprehensible. This disconnect is an odd and unpleasant sensation for Stew and I, who've followed and voted in elections punctually even in Chicago where the dead have been known to vote and zombies can win as long as they are Democrats.

News from the U.S. doesn't come to you naturally when you live abroad. It takes some work to keep in informed. It doesn't blast your eyes and ears constantly from newspapers, magazines, radio, television, iPhones, Kindles, and even billboards exhorting you to enjoy Coca-Cola while one of those twinkling-lights crawling message boards underneath warns you the world is on the verge of turning into total shit.

Here we have to make an effort. You log onto the Internet and check the New York Times, Huffington Post or Daily Beast, but that doesn't always work: Our wireless broadband Internet is so erratic sometimes we can't connect for days at a time. We subscribe to Newsweek, Time and the New Yorker but thanks to our equally erratic mail delivery system, we get them one or two weeks late, or two or three issues at once. As for satellite TV, well, ours comes from Canada, whose current events and politics seem quaintly soporific compared to the endless American political circus.

Nonetheless, Stew and I used to make the effort, duly informed citizens we try to be. Then boredom set in: Obama's election two and a half years ago was an undeniably exciting event. For months the screensaver on our computer was the photo of him and his family speaking to a huge crowd of delirious supporters in Chicago's Grant Park the night of his victory. Six months later I replaced it with a portrait of Lucy, one of our dogs.

What happened is that the expected exchange of ideas, and the forging of new ones by the two parties turned into an Animal House-like food fight, with some of our political leaders looking as inspiring as Bluto Blutarsky, and political dialogue reminiscent of his famous maxim: "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily."

Food fights are fun to watch but even they get tedious after a while; the one in Washington goes on interminably. TV news analysts, who could sort out facts and ideas for their viewers, have instead joined in, on opposing teams.

On MSNBC, Chris Matthews sounds like his underwear is on fire; the shrillness just wears you out after ten minutes. Perhaps as a foil, Lawrence O'Donnell follows with his show "The Last Word" in which he drones on with lectures that sound like Lutheran sermons. Next on the schedule is Rachel Maddow, a brilliant political analyst who unfortunately comes off as she were trying out as a comedian or a satirist, which she is definitely not.

So tedious has become the ranting on MSNBC that on a few occassions Stew and I have resorted to the Doomsday Option: Turning to Fox News. After Obama's speech we tuned in to Hannity who asked his three guests to grade the speech by the president and House Speaker John Boehner's Republican response. Two of the guests gave Obama an "F" and Boehner an "A+": How's that for nuanced political analysis? A third guest was supposed to present the liberal point of view but kept getting shouted down and ultimately mostly covered his face with his hands. The cumulative effect was about as enlightening as watching a panel of three seals at Sea World blowing their horns on command.

A few days before I had stumbled on Fox's Bill O'Reilly arguing that calling the Norwegian terrorist a Christian was yet another example of anti-Christian bias by the media. O'Reilly said that "no one believing in Jesus commits mass murder." Huh? Did O'Reilly miss, for example, the wars in Northern Ireland where Christians of different denominations bombed and slaughtered each other for decades? Or the Spanish colonization of America?

MSNBC's rants at least keep in touch with facts and reality; Fox News doesn't seem to suffer such constraints.

The most recent symptom of our growing anomie came Friday when we tried to watch "Real Time" by Bill Maher on HBO, usually one of our favorite shows primarily because Maher can be very funny. His panel included Eliot Spitzer, Republican Margaret Hoover and the leader of the Tea Party, an odd-looking duck with a buzz cut and sideburns that hadn't been seen on TV since the days of "American Bandstand." A discussion of the federal deficit immediately turned into an incomprehensible shouting match.

Five minutes into it, it was click and off.

Time to read a book.

Trail of the Indian Chapels

2011-07-26T15:38:00.013-05:00

As one travels around Mexico, urban areas and countryside alike, the overwhelming economic and cultural power of the Catholic church is inescapable. There are churches bumping into other churches, sometimes two or three on the same block, perhaps with a convent or school sandwiched in between. The churches vary in size and splendor but none are makeshift storefront temples you find in American inner cities. Indeed in Mexican colonial skylines church steeples and domes rise above all other earthly real estate, like exclamation marks signaling the supremacy and power of Catholicism.

Once past the initial awe at the baroque opulence of some of these Catholic temples--the almost vulgar excess of gold, precious woods, paitings, statues and other trappings seemingly intended to humble as much as inspire the faithful--some mundane questions come up. How could there have ever been enough parishioners with enough money, even at the zenith of Roman Catholic influence over the Mexican populace, to fill all these churches, much less pay for their construction and perpetual maintenance?

The ubiquitousness of religious buildings spills over to the countryside. Out my office window I can see a small, century-old chapel belonging to the community of Biznaga. From our kitchen we can also see the impressive dome of the church of Sosnavar, a town of about 800 with not an inch of paved streets. A few miles in the opposite direction is Jalpa, hardly richer or larger than Sosnavar, with its own outsize church lording over the town and its inhabitants.

At the suggestion of a posting on the Civil List, the local expat Internet bulletin board, last Sunday Stew and I went on a recently completed tourist attraction called "Trail of the Chapels of the Indians," a driving tour of seven restored tiny chapels scattered on the countryside just outside San Miguel. Along the way you find a few other chapels and churches that are abandoned or for some reason were not included in the refurbishing campaign by the state government.

Jack Connelly, a Chicago friend who lived here for several years memorably described Mexico as a country "where everything almost works" and so it is with the signage along the chapel trail. Upon departure from San Miguel you follow shiny new signs, increasingly vandalized, later replaced by handwritten arrows on pieces of cardboard tied to trees--and ultimately no signs at all. We never found the last chapel listed on the fancy tour brochure.

Each chapel on the tour had a couple of smiling and charming young women ready with a spiel that was informative though limited to the script they had memorized. Nevertheless it was a fascinating introduction to church building in this part of Mexico; it's a shame there was only one other visitor on the trail aside from the two of us.

The chapels are tiny, and everything in them proportioned accordingly. Anyone over six feet tall has to duck to get through some of the entrances and passageways. Even the largest one couldn't accommodate more than 25 people comfortably. In the case of the chapels of Santiaguito and Guadalupe, they are located a scant 400 feet from one another along the same road. In the town of Cruz del Palmar--around the area where all signage vanished--there were three or four small churches within shouting distance of one another.

What type of marketing plan were church authorities following when building a string of tiny churches so close to one another? The answer appears to be "none." According to our guides, these mini tabernacles were not built by the church but by families for their own use and that of their employees. Why not pray at the chapel already built by the Joneses just on the other side of the fence? Well, evidently that would be like grilling your hot dogs on their BBQ. In addition, building your own mini church, complete with a miniature bell tower, was a way of flaunting your faith and wealth.

The exteriors of the chapels reflect an indigenous aesthetic and craftsmanship. One of the young tour guides talked about neo-classical design, but that may be a bit of a stretch. In fact the nave-to-steeple proportions don't seem to follow any patterns or rules, and the lines are often crooked, no doubt owing to a combination of age, settling and primitive construction skills.

That crudeness, though, is precisely what gives the chapels their arresting beauty and charm, particularly in the heavily decorated interiors. The paintings are not the work of budding Michelangelos, but Indian artists who went at it with far more fervor than artistic training or experience. In one church the ceiling over the altar is filled with chubby, clumsy angels blowing flutes and stroking violins and representing the artist's vision of heaven. Artwork could get a little subversive too: One ceiling included images of the moon and the sun that may have more to do with indigenous cosmology than anything in Christian scripture.

As with any old temples or monuments, one can just sit back and imagine a handful of people 150 years ago fervently praying for deliverance from an illness, or expressing gratitude for good fortune or sorrow at the passing of a dear one.

Maintenance was the responsibility of the families who built the chapels which means that many were abandoned or turned into storage sheds when properties changed hands or times got tough. One miniscule chapel, opened in 1865, is in ruins and filled with hay, bats and swallows. Some of the chapels also were looted over the years, so the altar decorations today are of recent vintage, like pictures of Pope John Paul and plastic babies that are supposed to depict the "Holy Child". In other cases the renovation and painting was so heavy-handed the exteriors have lost their ancient feel.

This tour partly explained the abundance of churches in the countryside. These mini temples were built by wealthy individuals or families to celebrate a happy event or merely show off their wealth, rather than as a result of a campaign by the Spanish church to evangelize, indoctrinate or subjugate native Mexican populations.

Ironically, either way the result was pretty much the same.

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A niche in the Capilla de Guadalupe, the first one on the Trail of Indian Chapels.

[Above and below]: The chapel of San Isidro Labrador.

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[Above and below] This tiny chapel which is abandoned and now used for storing animal feed, was built by a mason named Pedro García, and opened in August 1865, according to a carving on the stone over the door. The entrance is about five feet high and the interior could not accommodate more than a dozen people.

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[Above and below]: This mesquite door is original and so is the lock and key mechanism which still work. The interior of this chapel could not hold more than 20 people.

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[Above and below]: According to the legend on one of the walls of the heavily decorated Chapel of San Mateo (above and below), construction began on August 11, 1867 and the chapel was finished about two and a half years later. The sign also mentions that the total cost--including masonry work, painting and the blessing--came to 234 pesos.

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One of the more interesting features of most of the chapels were the "Calvarios"--or "Calvaries"--which were like mini-churches that held small wooden crosses, personal items and other mementos of people in the community who had passed away. Even today, local folk come to the Calvarios to ask permission from their ancestors before having a community celebration. Unfortunately, many of these Calvarios have been looted and now stand empty. Some chapels had an additional and smaller Calvario (or "Calvarito"), about the size of dog house.

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A mystery chapel, not on the tour, atop a hill.

[Note to any fact-checkers who may read this: I didn't take notes so some of the names of the chapels included in the captions may be wrong. In fact we may go on the trail again this coming weekend to sort this out and see some of the chapels we missed.]

Try the smut soup

2011-07-22T17:30:00.001-05:00

Huitlacoche soup will be a hit at your next dinner party as long as you stick to its original name derived from Nahuatl, a Mexican indigenous language. American corn growers call huitlacoche, a fungus that develops in some ears of corn, "corn smut" and treat it as a pest. Other folk call it "corn fungus", which hardly makes it any more appetizing. Some geek at Wikipedia felt compelled to trace the Nahuatl etymology of huitlacoche and made things much, much worse: Apparently it means something like "hibernating excrement."

Whatever. Huitlacoche is considered a delicacy by some gastronomes, and has been rechristened "Mexican truffles." It bursts out of the tip of some ears of corn and at close inspection looks like overgrown or mutant kernels which when crushed are jet black. Like so many delicacies, you wonder what possessed someone to try it for the first time.

[Somewhere in Central Mexico, ca. 1510:

"Gee, María, why don't we try the unappetizing growth on this here ear of corn."

"Great idea, José, I'll mix in some chiles and stuff tacos with it. You go first, though, and if you croak I'll feed it to some goddamn Spaniard."]

Maybe the Nahuatl people were very hungry or adventurous. Maybe many of them died from eating all sorts of weird things before discovering huitlacoche. Then again truffles also look pretty disgusting-- and you need a French pig to find some varieties--yet are considered the ultimate in culinary sophistication.

Despite its status as a Mexican delicacy, we've never seen it on the menus of San Miguel restaurants except for Don Félix Tacos which in our opinion is the best and most authentic Mexican joint here. It's located in a residential area at the edge of town, opens only on weekends and is staffed with uncles, aunts, cousins and even a 10-year-old nephew of Don Félix.

The latter is the most recent addition to the crew. Emilio has his own starched white waiter's jacket with his name embroidered on it, and his brown eyes are almost as big as his smile. Probably half the gringo customers offer to adopt Emilio but he doesn't have any time for cutesy-poo stunts. He is all business as he brings the appetizers on a tray that next to him looks as large as a flying saucer, and later tries to haul away some of the dirty dishes one at a time. The last time we ate at Don Félix, Emilio was battling to uncork a wine bottle; an uncle had to finish the job. When Emilio gets tired or bored he discreetly retires to the kitchen and sits on a ledge under the sink.

For me their best dish is an assortment of seven different tacos, stuffed among other things with chicken; a spicy Spanish sausage called chistorra; a couple of types of meat and usually at one end of the plate, a taco filled with huitlacoche. I've had the huitlacoche a few times and found it tasty, though hardly something that would make you lean back and pat your stomach in delight.

In our garden this year we planted two types of corn. One was supposedly a Mexican sweet corn that turned out to be gooey, not too sweet and inedible. Our gardener Félix took a couple of ears to his family and they agreed it was awful.

The second type of corn seeds came from an American friend and it turned out quite good, except half the ears so far have been filled with huitlacoche.

Last time we visited Don Félix we brought a plastic bag with huitlacoche to ask how to cook it, something the owner was delighted to explain--and then some--though all his recipes were of the on-the-fly variety, as in a handful of this, a chunk of that plus chiles and onions. A woman in the kitchen separated and washed the large, mushy huitlacoche kernels for us.

So on to Google to find a recipe with more precise measurements and instructions than Don Félix' family concoction. Stew tried it and the result was a deep-black, thick and delicious soup. Though the recipe said to use fresh or frozen huitlacoche, we've never seen the latter.

So tell your guests it's Mexican truffle and corn soup and they'll be impressed. If someone asks where it comes from, play dumb and by all means don't get it into the fungus or excrement part of this story.

HUITLACOCHE is pronounced something like "weet-tla-coach-aye." And while you're at it, remember that the singular of "tamales" is "tamal," not "tamalee"; and that the "h" in "habanero" is silent, so it sounds like "ah-bah-nay-roh" not HAH-banero. Your guests will be either impressed or annoyed by your culinary and linguistic pedantry.

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RECIPE for Tomato and Huitlacoche Soup. ("The Mushroom Lover's Cookbook and Primer" by Amy Farges)

1/2 cup dried black beans soaked or 1 1/2 cups of drained canned black beans
6 cups of light chicken stock or canned low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup shredded cooked chicken meat
1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
1/2 cup fresh or canned tomato puree
4 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced, green and white parts kept separate
1 large Anaheim chile, with or without seeds, or other chile, stemmed and thinly sliced. Stew used poblano chiles, which are smoky-tasting and not too hot
1/2 cup (2 oz) of huitlacoche
1 tbsp of olive oil
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
Kosher or sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

1. Place beans in small saucepan of simmering water. Cook uncovered until tender, about 45 minutes. Add hot water to keep the beans submerged. Drain.
2. Combine the chicken stock, meat, corn, tomato puree, whites of scallion, chiles and beans in a medium-size saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
3. Stir in the huitlacoche. Add the cilantro, lime juice and scallion greens, and simmer for 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot with some tortilla strips over the soup.

On the pulque trail

2011-07-12T16:20:00.005-05:00

The pulque madonna of Sosnavar

Slowly emerging from her house, which is almost totally buried by dense vegetation, Doña María Ascensión at first seems like an apparition, a latter-day Virgin Mary coming out of a grotto to meet a supplicant. As she comes nearer, though, hers is not the ever-youthful face of a saint but a leathery one crisscrossed by a myriad lines that tell of old age and a hard life. Saints and holy virgins don't wear tennis shoes either. It's impossible to guess her age and it would be very rude to ask.

Doña Ascensión does not promise visitors eternal salvation but the relief provided by her own homemade pulque, a milky liquor that she sells for about a dollar a quart. Drink enough of the stuff and your head will be heaven-bound far quicker than by saying a rosary. Pulque also benefits the body, she assures me, by "strengthening the blood" and staving off anemia. It's a boon to both your body and mind.

What put me on the trail of pulque was not the search for a quick buzz but another one of Stew's culinary experiments, this one a "Loin of Pork Pulque," from The Whole Chile Pepper Book, by Dave DeWitt and Nancy Gerlach. The recipe gave the option of substituting tequila but we opted for authenticity. Besides I'd heard of pulque but didn't know what it was. I'd be a small adventure.

The no-name pulquería

Stops at the supermarket and a couple of liquor stores yielded embarrassed grins and quizzical looks: We don't sell the stuff and why would you want to drink it anyway? A clerk at the MEGA supermarket suggested a pulquería near the Ramírez food market; maybe if I brought an empty bottle they would sell me some.

Pulquerías are cantinas devoted to the sale of the stuff and they tend to be rough-looking establishments sometimes with ominous names like "Sálvate si puedes," or very roughly translated, "Save yourself if you can."

The pulquería by the food market had the most ominous name of all--none. Its cafe-type doors are as ancient and battered as the rest of the building, and it doesn't open until late in the afternoon. It's truly a rough-looking joint out of a Western movie. But then pulque is not a highfalutin liqueur the president of Mexico would serve at a diplomatic reception. In fact today pulque is consumed mostly by poor people wanting to forget their miseries, particularly when it's doctored with additional alcohol.

A dark pool of aguamiel at the core of an agave.

Pulque is made from the core of large and mature blue agaves that are practically endemic in the area around our house, along with mesquites, huizaches, prickly pear cacti and other desert plants. Around Doña Ascensión's pulque factory most of the agaves, which are normally erect and proud, are now hacked off and its leaves pushed back to reveal the dark pools of aguamiel, or "honey water," in the middle, from which the pulque is made. She has been in the business for about 20 years, so she has sacrificed a lot of agaves along the way.

It's a process of fermentation, rather than distillation, of the aguamiel. Its origins go back into the fog of Mexico's ancient history, when it was considered a sacred drink sipped by the upper classes. There's no need for any expensive equipment but the finished product has a very short shelf life, maybe a week. That's why it is not sold in bottles or cans and sales of pulque plummeted when canned beer was introduced in the 20th century.

Doña Ascensión was not too forthcoming about her production methods, no matter how much I prodded her. From what I could tell, she fermented aguamiel by adding a certain amount of finished pulque. She proudly insisted she didn't add alcohol to her product. Given that it's basically a homemade hooch, the alcohol content of the stuff varies widely though in its original form it's about as inebriating as wine.

Despite her age and wrinkles, and nearly toothless smile, Doña Ascención projects some really tough vibes. Her eyes are small, her lips tight and with one hand on her hip she seems like the type who'd kick a rowdy customer in the balls just as easily as she'd sell him a jug of her product.

While we were talking a customer approached her across the low stone fence surrounding her house and handed her an empty mug, which she refilled inside and brought back in a very businesslike transaction, as if it were a Slurpy at a 7-Eleven, all for six pesos or about forty cents.

After all this research and talk about pulque, I can't precisely describe its flavor or punch because I don't drink alcohol. Duh. I dipped and licked my index finger in the two-liter bottle I bought from Doña Ascensión and what I tasted was a creamy liquid, the consistency of evaporated milk, with only a vague trace of alcohol.

That also made it impossible to know for sure how the small amount of pulque the recipe calls for--a quarter cup for a 4-pound pork loin--really affected the taste of the finished dish.

My guess is that it didn't make much of a difference. The recipe called for a combination of ancho, pasilla and chipotle chiles that gave the pork a really mellow, sweet taste that wasn't particularly firey. The chiles probably overwhelmed the pulque. It was delicious.

Doña Ascensión told me she was the only producer of pulque producer and that buyers came from several miles away, though I suspect her business is not strictly legal. The second time I visited she hesitated and said she didn't have any stuff to sell. It was only after some talking and having her picture taken--which she seemed to enjoy--that she relented.

"Let me go inside and see what I can find," she said.

Fire in the patio

2011-07-06T12:01:00.001-05:00

At least until winter returns we have set up our breakfast headquarters in the front patio. It's a setting almost too pleasant if such a thing is possible.

When the house was built we had connections built in from the amplifier in the living room to speakers in front patio and the back terrace, controlled by a cheapo selector box from Radio Shack. Until recently we also had a purple finch nest hidden in a trumpet flower vine that has completely covered the wall by the gate though it hasn't yet started to bloom. The chirping of the mother finch and the babies clamoring for food made any piped-in music unnecessary. That stopped about ten days ago when the chicks flew off.

The patio is also flooded with flowers and greenery, and literally dozens of hummingbirds constantly dive bombing a sugar-water feeder hanging from the big Japanese privet tree in the middle of the patio.

One unfinished piece in the patio was a fire pit for which we had installed a propane gas connection. It was supposed to be an easy-on, easy-off affair, controlled by a gas valve, just as seen in some garden magazines that also show elegant women in slinky dresses standing by, sipping champagne.

Our fire pit didn't exactly work out that way. It came out better and without the extra cost of champagne.

We asked our iron worker Gustavo--the indispensable herrero who has built furniture, light fixtures and countless other metal things--to create a fire pit roughly based on a picture we had seen in a magazine.

Don't tell anyone but Mexican herreros have an uncanny ability to reproduce any object you show them, including designs no doubt copyrighted in the U.S. and Europe, for a fraction of the cost. Like most other developing countries, Mexico is a hotbed of piracy and knock-offs, from movies and CDs to furniture.

Our fire pit was not a complete rip-off though. We changed it enough to give it a plausible claim to originality and us a measure of self-respect.

The design is supposed to evoke the shape of a tulip with three rounded petals. Gustavo made it with hammered metal which he gave a rusted, copper-like finish. It rests on a flat base that sits on the flagstone sidewalk around the garden. The finished product is about 18 inches in diameter and about the same in height.

Our design called from a grate on which we would put a layer of red volcanic rocks through which the festive flames from the gas burner would poke through. Visitors would say, "Ahh, isn't that nice!." Not exactly, as it turns out.

Problem is that a regular burner, of the type that Gustavo installed and which you find in a kitchen stove, doesn't work. Even when we adjusted the air intake to make the flames yellow instead of blue, there wasn't enough oomph to the flames to create much of a show.

For that you need a special fire pit burner with smaller orifices that forces the gas the flames higher. Mail-order from the U.S. those guys would cost about $100, plus S&H and Mexican customs, and we weren't sure they would work with propane. Gustavo had made the whole thing for about US$400 and an additional $150 for just a new burner didn't make any sense.

So on to Plan "B": Burn pieces of scrap lumber--we still have a pile of it left from the construction of the house--and use the burner just to light the wood.

The reconfigured pit has bigger flames and lets off a pleasant smell of burning wood. The metal of the pit gets quite hot and takes the morning chill off. The only drawback is that periodically we have to take it apart and scoop out the ashes at the bottom of the bowl, which we spread on the soil in the patio.

Our fire pit is a "Good Thing" would declare Martha Stewart, who is turning 70 and a grandmother at the end of the month. A very "Good Thing" indeed.

Early or late, a surprise arrival in the garden

2011-06-27T12:05:00.001-05:00

Adding to my confusion about the seasons in San Miguel, this morning I discovered our first asparagus spear popping up tentatively eight or so inches above the ground. In Chicago asparagus emerges in early spring, around April, as the plants awaken from a long winter slumber. San Miguel's winter, which this year came with a few below-freezing overnight temperatures, ended sometime February. Then we slid into three months of hot, dry and dusty weather. About two weeks ago, cooler, rainy weather arrived. So which season are we in--spring, summer or fall?

And now asparagus. Just as surprising, and gratifying, is that spears are coming up at all, from seeds I started about 18 months ago. Germination took two or three weeks, and months more before four or five asparagus-looking ferns finally developed. Until now they seemed unsure about life in my raised beds: Do we want to stay and prosper here? Evidently they decided in our favor.

I've never seen them but rumor has it there are large asparagus farms nearby. Still, every book I'd read warned that growing asparagus from seeds was mission improbable if not impossible. The universal advice was to buy asparagus roots, which look like spiders, except Mexican customs won't allow live plants to get through the mail and I couldn't find any local suppliers. So seeds was the only alternative.

From my experience in Chicago, one does not cut off any spears the first year, only a few the second year, and begin some serious asparagus eating in the third year.

Fresh asparagus should be a treat. There are some Mexican asparagus at the stores right now but before that most came from... Peru! You don't need to be a fanatic locavore to wince at the thought of asparagus coming from that far away.

Even if they travel by air those babies would have to get from the Peruvian farms to the Lima airport, from there to Mexico City and then transfer to a truck to San Miguel or to the grocery store's distribution center. If the asparagus travel economy on a ship they'd have to be embalmed in Peru.

Before the weather gets cold, around December, I'm going to transplant the asparagus to the beds at the far end of the property, where we now have squash, cantaloupes, corn, broccoli and beans. Whenever they decide to send up those luscious spears we'll be ready--spring, summer or fall.

Sad story with a happy ending

2011-06-25T19:50:00.003-05:00

Though people ceaselessly praise the loyalty, intelligence and friendship of dogs no one really knows what goes on in those little canine brains. Sure, you'll hear some owners gravely aver that their little Poopadoodle peed on the rug "because she wants to get back at me" or was angry at something that happened two days ago.

But c'mon. Truth is there are no lines in the operating software of dogs for processing such complex, and useless, human emotions as holding grudges and resentments, much less plotting revenge.

If anything, dogs are masterful and natural practitioners of Buddhist mindfulness: the Poopadoodle peed on the rug because at that precise moment that's all that came into her head. When you yell at her for the mess three hours later she is not contrite or having a learning experience but instead baffled by what might be going on in your little human brain.

Just such unfathomable canine behavior earlier this week led our recently adopted Doberman, Desi, to attack and damn near kill Lucy, a white Labrador-ish female that we had adopted as a puppy four years ago. We thought Desi and Lucy would make a good pair; Desi obviously didn't agree.

Desi came to us through Save a Mexican Mutt, a group that rescues local strays and finds homes for them locally or in the U.S. He had been found lost and emaciated on the streets of San Luis Rey, a dirt-poor colonia in San Miguel.

We had been talking about getting an outside dog to guard the property and Desi seemed ideal. He's a massive creature, about 90 pounds we figured, and to our eyes a perfect specimen of the breed. After he started to eat regularly he developed a thick and shiny coat. His nose was incredibly long and his ears floppy and silky. The only flaw was a bad hacking job that had left him with a stump instead of a tail.

Desi nevertheless wagged his stump as happily and expressively as if he had a tail. We quickly discovered his incredibly sweet manner toward people which seemingly rendered him useless as a guard dog. He greeted everyone as if they were old friends and placed his huge head on your lap at every opportunity, begging for a pat or scratch behind the ears.

The only sign of aggression came when Desi ate. He wouldn't let anyone, human or canine, anywhere near his food. We've been told such obsession with food is the natural result of being abandoned and hungry in a previous life.

Desi's relationship with Lucy, and our other mutt Gladys, seemed friendly and playful. Same with Félix' own two mutts, Palomita and Luiso, who come to work with him every day.

So why did after a few months of amicable relations with everyone, human and animal alike, did Desi turn on Lucy, sinking his massive teeth on her shoulder and on one leg, almost clear to the bone? We weren't home and if Félix hadn't intervened and taken Lucy to the vet immediately, she certainly would have bled to death.

That would have been the same fate encountered by Chupitos, Félix' own cheerful mutt, who seemed to have a permanent grin on her face but which was killed and nearly disemboweled six months ago by a pack of strays that hangs around by our entrance gate.

Félix says Lucy and Desi may have been fighting over a piece of rawhide or a bone. Or did a playful rassling match turn bad?

It's just as likely Desi suddenly--and definitively--tried to settle a brewing disagreement with Lucy over dominance. Up until Desi's arrival Lucy had been the undisputed leader of the pack if nothing else because she was the biggest.

After the fact, Stew said he had noticed that Lucy, the usually lovable bully, had started to cower and hide in the house instead of running around outside. Perhaps Desi and Lucy already had had a few sets-to over who was top dog.

Someone else suggested that inbreeding, very common among poor people here who cross animals indiscriminately for dog-fighting or for sale, may have created a animal that was beautiful but came with a few genetic short circuits.

Whatever and who knows: Desi had to go or another fight would ensue. If not that, he would get to one of our three cats, which he constantly stalked through the glass doors. Lucy and Gladys, and Félix' two mutts, regard the cats with total disinterest, as if they were potted plants. The cats are equally disdainful of the dogs.

Fortunately the woman who runs Save a Mexican Mutt offered to take Desi back immediately. She will put him through a three-week training program before placement in the home of someone with no competing pets who wants Desi.

Initially I felt sorry for Desi; after several weeks we had bonded and I loved his soulful eyes and his gentle, attention-seeking style. After I saw what he did to Lucy though, I realized I had no choice but to get rid of him and even thought of putting him to sleep. I'm glad it didn't come to that.

In the end it all worked out well for everyone, particularly Desi, though we have no explanation for his behavior. Lucy is on the mend but still a bit spooked and walking with a slight limp. She is probably grateful for her good luck except I'm not sure she can understand what being grateful and lucky is all about.

Bugs in your tacos

2011-06-13T12:01:00.002-05:00

A tantarria perched on Félix' finger.

Tantarrias gathered on a mesquite.

The redoubtable Félix, our gardener and fountain of information on all things Mexico, two days ago showed me these gorgeous bugs which had just appeared on our scraggly blackberry bush. They looked a bit like cockroaches except for the precise and intricate markings that resembled some sort of Moorish mosaic or a design on the shield of an African tribesman. Félix informed me they are called "tantarrias" and they live mostly on mesquite trees.

Moreover he said matter-of-factly that they are considered a delicacy by folks in Hidalgo, a state southeast of here. "But not by me," he added. We've talked about foods and cooking and I've noticed that Félix, or more properly his wife Ysela who does all the cooking, seldom stray from conventional tortilla, beans and chile type of fare.

I checked on the Internet and once again Félix was right. He has such sharp and observant mind that in another place and time he could have been a naturalist or biologist instead of a gardener with a sixth-grade education and an uncertain future. Such are the tragedies and waste poverty brings about.

Along with chapulines (grasshoppers), escamoles (ant larvae) and huitlacoche (a fungus that grows on corn, known in the U.S. as corn smut) tantarrias inhabit the more exotic corners of Mexican cuisine.

Some marketing genius has rebranded huitlacoche as "Mexican truffles" and escamoles as "Mexican caviar," based not so much on taste but on what they look like on your plate.

After years of complaining that Mexican grocery stores don't carry this or that ingredient or vegetable to make some Italian or Indian dish, Stew and I are coming to the conclusion that perhaps the most logical solution is to use local ingredients and concentrate on Mexican cooking. It's a culinary adaptation of the Serenity Prayer, about accepting things one cannot change.

Even then one has to fight the "yuk factor" when it comes to eating insects and cancerous-looking fungi scraped from deformed ears of corn. Or for that matter, "tacos de cabeza," or "head tacos" stuffed with some sort of brain matter extracted from the steaming skulls of cows and sold as a delicacy by street vendors in Mexico City. Eyes and cheeks also are considered yummy.

Ever since we got Canadian satellite television Stew and I have become fans of "Iron Chef America," in which two teams of chefs are given a "secret ingredient" to create, along with other meats and vegetables of their choosing, five or six dishes, each more exotic than the last.

The show is all very haute cuisine and has raised or lowered, somewhat, the threshold of what we consider too disgusting to eat. There are all sorts of carpaccios and tartare meats, which are raw but marinated or otherwise seasoned. One time someone served the entrails of sea cucumbers, a vile-looking worm-like marine animal, and in another show the brains of squab, which are baby pigeons before they learn to fly. The judges had to suck the brains out of the little squabs' heads.

After not long the show almost becomes an addictive sort of culinary voyeurism or pornography, showcasing improbable feats of cuisine performed by very experienced and talented chefs. You feel curious and intrigued but not enough to attempt cooking and eating some of that stuff.

Except I'm a 63-year-old Cuban and I just can't go on eating black beans and rice and pork roast with garlic for the rest of my life. Or in the case of Stew, Iowa-style meat and potatoes. One must learn, grow and diversify, no?

So I have sampled beef carpaccio in Mexico City and tacos stuffed with huitlacoche at a local restaurant. I can't clearly recall the taste of either one, except it wasn't bad. Tensing up, closing your eyes and screwing up your face is not the best way to fairly judge the taste of a dish. I may try both again, maybe with some breathing exercises or tranquilizers beforehand. The ant larvae? Let me think about those.

These late stirrings of adventuresome dining, however, won't lead me to a plateful of tantarrias or chapulines. The one recipe for chapulines began with a mound of grasshoppers which one had to prepare by first pulling out their heads and legs, presumably while still live and squirming, as is the case with crabs. The tantarrias also required dismembering and using ingredients like lye and some sort of disinfectant. I didn't get past the first few lines of the cooking instructions for either critter so if you're interested you'll have to do your own research.

As for the tantarrias, I need to find out if they are liable to kill my mesquites. If that's the case, out they go no matter how beautiful or tasty.

Royalty, composting and toads

2011-05-30T18:31:00.016-05:00

We get our hair cut by Juan, a young, soft-spoken guy with a luxuriant bundle of dreadlocks that hangs down his back, halfway down to his tail bone. Last time we were in for a haircut I brought a newspaper photo of one of Osama bin Laden's sons who looks scarily like Juan. Juan's wife agreed.

While waiting for Juan I usually rifle through the shop's musty collection of celebrity magazines, especially ¡Hola!, a glossy the size of the old Life magazine with an obsessive, voyeuristic interest in European royalty. It excitedly covers the comings and goings of princes, kings and duchesses as if they were significant news events rather than just overdressed rich people loitering in each other's castles and palaces. Occasionally royalty converges on one spot to celebrate a wedding or baptism, like chiropractors convening in Reno, in which case ¡Hola! doubles up on the number of four-color pages and editorial heavy breathing.

On to composting. On my last visit to Juan I also found the May 2010 issue of Phoenix Home & Garden, which had an interesting idea for composting in hot, semi-desert climates. It suggested that finely chopped vegetables and fruits be spread over the ground around vegetables and then covered with six inches or so of straw.

Intuitively it makes sense. The straw keeps the ground and the composting material damp, thus saving water while speeding up the composting process underneath. Any fresh compost goes right into the soil, benefiting the plants more directly. In addition, it should encourage colonies of earthworms, though the article didn't specify whether one had to import them or worms already in the soil just come of the closet at the sight of fresh compost.

I further speculate that diced citrus rinds on the surface could repel pests such as leaf-cutting ants, snails and earwigs, and that would be a blessing. On the other hand, the compost could attract them. An experiment conducted by Félix a while back and involving pieces of orange rind placed by the mouth of one of our huge anthills was inconclusive. The ants were neither attracted nor repelled: They just meticulously moved the offending bits of orange and grapefruit out of the way--and went back to business as usual.

Even if this turns into another organic gardening boondoggle, at least the straw should help keep the soil cool and damp. Stew, an organic gardening agnostic, is always at the ready with the Miracle Gro in case anything needs emergency fertilization.

Now, an apology to the Mayans and the buried clay pots they used to irrigate. After blogging a while back that they seemed useless (the pots, not the Mayans), Félix and I have noted that they work quite well, deep-watering the roots of plants already established. Any seeds or seedlings near the surface, though, still need to be water manually.

Finally, a few toads have appeared and the nightly chorale of toads is gathering new members each day. Wonder where these guys go during the rest of the year.

Rain

2011-05-27T10:34:00.007-05:00

February in Chicago is cold, damp and most of all dreary. Daylight hours have shrunk; it's dark outside going to work and likely the same when coming home. Wistfully scanning seed catalogs doesn't seem to help. At Starbucks, sales of the Sumatran Vente Molto Loco blend have increased dramatically, which makes people bug-eyed but hardly cheerier.

This is normal, you argue to yourself. It's not climate change, or global warming or cooling. It'll pass. Even if it's climate change, you feel too gray to care. So what if another chunk of the North Pole broke off. Surely there's plenty more left.

In San Miguel the weather is not anywhere near as dismal and I'm not complaining. Even in the dead of winter the sun blasts off from behind the mountains every morning, hovers above lazily for hours and plummets on the opposite horizon in a splash of color. Relative humidity, never high to begin with, decreases inexorably with every passing week since the last time it rained.

That's all perfectly normal San Miguel weather except that after seven months without a drop it starts to nag you and you secretly start to wish for a gray, cloudy day followed by a man-sized downpour--a gully-washer, a thunder-boomer, sis-bam-boom! let's go!--anything to shock the landscape from its gold, arid hue.

Recently this hankering has been exacerbated by the heat. Summer here usually is a two-month formality that comes around March or April and then recedes. This year, though, the heat, in the mid-90s, has stayed with us until now.

Humidity has dropped as low as seven percent, and the smoke and smell of brush fires tinge the late-afternoon air with something resembling smog. This weekend the botanic garden caught fire and left two-thirds of it charred, and the cacti stunned and looking even lonelier than usual. Strong afternoon winds spur any fires and create "dust devils" that look like mini tornadoes kicking dry soil and garbage around.

During the past week we had a couple of teasers. The sky grew dark and cloudy and rumbled as if God were clearing Her throat, but nothing came of it but a couple of anemic drizzles.

Until yesterday, when the skies really opened up and let down an avalanche of fat droplets that clinked against the window panes like hail. As dry as the ground was, puddles formed immediately, as if the water didn't quite know where to go.

Félix ran into the garage but not our dogs Lucy and Gladys, which sat on top of a pile of black dirt, squinting delightedly in all directions. This was the first occasion to get covered with mud, nose-to-tail, and they didn't want to miss it. Desi, our more level-headed Doberman, retired to the basement and waited for the storm to end.

Our rain gauge made its debut, recording three-eighths of an inch, a good show particularly since the rainy season doesn't normally start for another three or four weeks. Maybe it was but a rehearsal of greener, more humid days to come, like a sparklingly sunny and warm February day in Chicago.

I hope it's the real thing. Despite our mixed luck with trees, we have kept on planting, adding an avocado, a guava, two pomegranates, several silver poplars, another fresno, six "paraiso" trees and two different varieties of cherries. They had looked a bit wheezy and droopy from all the heat, despite our watering.

No more. This morning they look greener and more vigorous. I swear.

Comments

2011-05-15T15:53:00.004-05:00

I've received several e-mails from readers complaining that they are unable to post comments or that their comments are "rejected." In order to post comments you have to sign up as a "Follower", by clicking "Follow" on the upper left-hand corner above the blogs and then selecting whether you want to be identified on the page as a Follower or to remain anonymous. Once you do that, you should be able to enter comments in the box at the end of each blog... I think that's how it works.

Al Lanier

Let there be light emitting diodes

2011-05-13T17:53:00.007-05:00

Because we rely on solar panels for our electricity, we're conscious, though less so each day, about appliances, lights and other gadgets that suck up juice, and curious about new ways to conserve energy. So we were glad to find our local hardware store stocking LED lights that seem almost too good an idea. We had looked at LEDs before but at US$25 apiece we just walked away. Now the price has dropped to about US$7.50 and suddenly they make sense.

How LEDs work I don't know. Internet explanations I checked ranged from moronic ("LEDs are devices that produce light when electricity runs through them." Duh.), to technical jargon that was equally useless. Try this:

Most commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs), both visible and infrared, are fabricated from III–V semiconductors. These compounds contain elements such as gallium, indium, and aluminum from column III (or group 13) of the periodic table, as well as arsenic, phosphorus, and nitrogen from column V (or group 15) of the periodic table. There are also LED products made of II–VI (or group 12–16) semiconductors, for example ZnSe and related compounds. Taken together, these semiconductors possess the proper band-gap energies to produce radiation at all wavelengths of interest.

Whatever. The ones we bought are not just one light but a series of tiny lights bundled together and which remain cool to the touch despite their brightness. They are wired so they can replace two-prong halogen lights which consume up to 15 times more electricity and get very hot. The ones we bought are 3 (three) watts and put out as much light as 50-watt halogens. LEDs also come in one-watters which we haven't tried.

According to the package these LEDs are supposed to last up to 20,000 hours. They are useful for replacing halogens used as spotlights on pictures or other special areas. We put ours in a couple of niches showcasing Mexican handicrafts, and on an outside fountain (in sealed outdoor sockets and not submerged in the water). From what we can tell they provide an amount of light comparable to the halogens but use only a fraction of the electricity, which combined with their longevity should make them cost-effective. The wattage for the three fountain lights went from 150 to 9.

A couple of shortcomings. Unlike halogens or regular incandescents, LEDs cannot be dimmed. Cristian, the helpful local hardware young man who seems to know everything involving electrons, says manufacturers are beginning to offer dimmable LEDs, but they are not yet available in Mexico. At a hardware store in New York we also saw dimmable fluorescent energy-saving bulbs.

So LEDs are not suitable for creating the type of dimly-lit, romantic ambiance that minimizes the wrinkles on people's faces. Don't toss out those candles yet.

In fact, LEDs tend to emit a harsh, intense light you don't want shining directly on your eyes. Originally the only color was a ultra-white, almost bluish light, but now they come in various colors, include the "warm white" we bought. I also read that one manufacturer has repackaged tiny LEDs inside a container that looks like a conventional light bulb that can be screwed into a regular socket.

I don't know what's caused the sharp drop in the price of LEDs, but a note on the package carries a familiar hint: "HECHO EN CHINA." A local installer of solar electricity systems told us that the price of photovoltaic panels also is dropping sharply, as China barges into the market like an 800-pound panda.

So here's a question for all libertarians, free-market economists, open-trade advocates, warmed-over socialists, members of Canada's Green Party and any others who fall sleep at night fondling big thoughts. Is it a good thing for China to be flooding our market with these cheaper green products that help us save energy and lessen our dependence on polluting oil and coal, spooky nuclear plants and other old-energy sources--even if the Chinese walk away with most of the profits?

Or even more profound still: Is there anything left at the hardware store that isn't made in China?

Please feel free to post your answers, theories and pontifications in the comments box at the end of this blog.

The ironic thing for us right now is that with more daylight every day we are actually generating more electricity than we need. Yesterday our system produced a little more than 17KW, so LEDs don't seem as urgent as if it were cloudy and rainy, which we hope happens soon.

Mid-spring farm report

2011-05-07T16:37:00.008-05:00

Last night we were having dinner and Stew remarked that it felt so good to eat food that had come mostly from our own land. We had beets, which were really good and about the size of tennis balls, a salad and a strip steak, the latter from Costco. We're not about to start our own herd of cattle.

The garden is going through an intermission. The bumper crops of leaf vegetables--various kinds of lettuce, chard, kale and mustard greens--have gradually expired under the heat, while other crops--zucchini, basil, corn, broccoli and beans--are still revving up. Some exceptions are the romaine lettuce, radishes, arugula and a couple of other odd salad plants including mizuna, a type of Asian green with a slightly bitter kick like arugula, that just keep coming up even as the weather warms.

Under the category of "I'll believe it when I eat it" are white onions (our last batch of onions grew up to about one and one-half inches in diameter and not a sixteenth of an inch more); leeks (locally grown, mutant-looking leeks grow to almost the diameter of a baseball bat, ours are barely the width of a pencil) and pickling cucumbers, which if they actually plan to produce certainly are taking their time.

Then there's the fuggedaboutit group of vegetables, most surprisingly the chiles. We planted serranos, jalapeños, habaneros and two other varieties whose name I don't remember and it really doesn't matter since none of them grew. The only thing resembling a chile is one pimento plant that's about eight inches high.

The chile failure is a mystery. We're in Mexico and I figured we'd have enough chiles to loosen our dental fillings and those of our friends. The serranos and habaneros peeked about an inch above the ground and then vanished. The others didn't even make a showing. Félix seemed particularly frustrated, as if his being Mexican made the failure a personal affront.

His patience and affection toward other beings--his two-year-old daughter Alondra, animals and plants--is a wonder to watch. He brings the little girl to work occasionally and carries her across the ranch in the wheelbarrow along with a pile of dirt, with much giggling by the two, or lets her grab the garden hose though she gets more water on herself than the plants.

Félix also seems to have a special connection with animals. When he shows up in the morning with his two dogs, our three run up to the gate to give him a thunderous welcome that turns into a dust cloud moving up the driveway. Stew and I suspect our dogs, including the latest arrival Desi, probably pay more attention to Félix than to us.

His good karma extends to plants. Planting seeds or transplanting seedlings is not a mechanical exercise but a very personal one that has him hunched over the raised beds, his nose a foot away from the ground, almost as if he were whispering to the seeds.

If there's a down side to Félix's intimacy with plants is that he refuses to give up, even when there's no place to put them or they are clearly dead. In the back of the house he's set up what amounts to an intensive care unit of pots with wretched-looking twigs he's trying to revive. Quite often he succeeds, which only encourages him.

That lack of selectivity, on his part and mine, is one problem with our gardening efforts. We planted way too much mustard greens, kale and chard. Stew dug up recipes for all three, frying them in bacon and onions and various other concoctions, some of them good. We even tried serving them to guests most of whom politely pushed them aside with their forks. In the end we had so much of the damn stuff we could have started a soul food restaurant.

Other vegetables we planted simply because someone gave us plantlets or a packet of seeds winked at me while going through the check-out line somewhere.

So we have broccoli coming up. They seem to be very large plants, about three feet across with a head of the edible stuff developing in the middle. No doubt they'll be delicious and laden with vitamins, minerals and other life-enhancing nutrients. But the reality is that we live in a part of Mexico that from the air must look like a wall-to-wall carpet of broccoli. Huge trucks full of broccoli ride up and down the highways, most of them headed for the U.S. We don't need any more broccoli around here.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment so far has been our inability to grow big, fat, luscious American-style tomatoes, the kind that every gardener in the U.S. almost takes for granted. So far we have some cherries and also Mexican yellow tomatoes, which are tasty but not enough. We want beefsteaks and Russian blacks and other heirlooms.

Tomato deprivation is reaching desperation. The only tomatoes available at the grocery stores are Italian plum and a variety the size of softballs, both of them insipid. Chiles we can do without: You can survive on one habanero a week but tomatoes can be eaten three times a day.

Costco, about an hour's drive, has many perfect vegetables and fruits in neat plastic packages but most of them have a nightmarish carbon footprint. Some strawberries, for example, apparently are grown in Mexico and then sent to California to be placed in their pretty plastic containers with English-language labeling and then shipped back to Mexico. Environmentally speaking eating those strawberries is a sin comparable to driving a two-cylinder East German car.

Looking toward the second half of our growing season, there are some skills Félix and I need to hone. One of them is greater appreciation for the laws of supply and demand: Just because you can grow five bushels of broccoli and kale doesn't mean that you should.

Upon hearing that our peach, apricot and cherry trees are doing well a friend suggested we should start an orchard, which sounds good until you consider what are we going to do with a truckload of fruits? Spend countless hours canning, freezing and making jams? I'll mention it to Stew.

The second is to pay more attention to the weather. The season for frisee and bib lettuce is past and now we should concentrate on romaine lettuce, which is growing beautifully and like weeds. One idea is to plant herbs where the bib lettuce used to thrive.

Two final traits I need, and which I had mentioned in previous blogs, are humility and acceptance. Maybe the reasons cantaloupes don't grow here are soil chemistry or the lack of humidity, which are difficult to control. If you hanker for Texas watermelons, or Georgia onions, you are going to have to get on the car--if you don't mind burning all that fuel.

But I will not give up on the tomatoes. Life is too short to live on those tasteless Mexican imitations. Time to send for more seeds from the States.

And so, what do we do now?

2011-04-21T11:34:00.023-05:00

When it comes to advice about retirement, particularly by AARP publications, about 60 percent of it has to do with making sure you pile up enough money and the other 40 percent with health-related issues. So if you have as much money as Donald Trump, presumably without his comb-over or oxygen-depleting ego, and the body of a 30-year-old sprinter, you're good to go into a happy retirement.

After five years of retirement though, we've discovered another, possibly more important ingredient: Having a passion or some sort of unfinished business to fill all the free time retirement brings. Quitting work is not enough, as odd as that may sound to someone still slogging to work every day.

Some folks try to beat that "what am I going to do after I retire?" quandary by staying on the job until they croak at their desks or younger colleagues complain about their incoherent mumbling and/or unsightly drool stains on their ties. Ahem, it may be time to retire, Jack.

On the other hand, some federal legislators and financial whizzes want to "solve" the Social Security financing problem by gradually raising the retirement age to, say, about 90, so the government doesn't have to pay out any benefits except to a few Jack LaLanne-types who refuse to die. Jack died at 96 and probably pulled his own hearse to the cemetery with his gums.

There are also a few people who love their jobs, or say they do, and fewer still who make a ton of money at it. Retirement is out of the question. God bless 'em.

But most people don't want to work until they die yet haven't quite figured out what do when they quit. No matter how much planning they've done, the first day of retirement is a bit a shock, like someone pulling the plug on an fan that's been faithfully whirring along for 40 or 45 years. What is a fan to do if not whir? Even if you loathe your job, the routine of going to work catapults you out of bed every morning and provides you with a ready answer to the question of how you will spend the next eight, or maybe ten or twelve hours of your life.

A job can also provide an identity and an often false sense of importance. "I'm in personnel, sales, journalism or whatever" has a ring of purpose lacking in, "I'm retired in Mexico." This is particularly true for Americans who are more defined or driven by work than Europeans who on the contrary, can't imagine life without five weeks of vacation sipping cappuccinos.

When I tell someone I'm retired, the next question most often is, "Hmm, well, what did you use to do back in Chicago (when presumably you had some purpose in this world)?" A few times I've felt like responding, "Well I did nothing in Chicago, so you're going to have to take me for what I am doing right now."

When Stew and I first arrived here we both went through our own post-retirement crisis, complicated a hundred-fold by the day-to-day challenges and surprises of life in a different country--the Mexican subsidiaries of Costco and Office Depot notwithstanding. No matter how many times you've vacationed in Mexico or eaten at Taco Bell, it doesn't quite prepare you for the feeling of foreign-ness you find during the first several months here.

I can speak Spanish, which is always helpful if I need a bathroom pronto. Even then, mine is Cuban Spanish which is immediately detected by Mexicans. During our first year of retirement we used to visit a non-profit home for the elderly to play dominoes with the residents and help them pass their time. When I spoke to them, even those who had completely lost their marbles would look at me, pause and ask: Cubano? Stew thought it was hilarious that my efforts to "pass" were detected even by these thoroughly compromised minds.

We've also watched fellow retirees in San Miguel struggle to figure out what to do with their time, even if none would complain about too much free time. Most often you'll hear they are deliriously happy and hadn't looked back for a second.

I'm sure many of them are but occasionally these protestations didn't ring quite true. Stew and I stopped drinking about 25 years ago but had stopped attending AA meetings. In San Miguel I started going again and was surprised (and somewhat relieved) to find a thriving all-gringo, English-speaking AA meeting house that was jam-packed for all sorts of meetings almost round the clock. Folks often complained their drinking had re-started or spiraled out of control since they'd retired, something that, mercifully, neither Stew nor I experienced.

San Miguel also seems to be a mecca for the wu-wu crowd--you know, shamans, incense-burners, pseudo-spiritual gurus, Eastern religions, shantis, crystals, new-fangled meditation techniques and other quacky time-fillers. I've always had a weakness or curiosity about the world of wu-wu, particularly during my senior year of college when I was stoned a good deal of the time. But most of the stuff here is beyond me: This is more like wu-wu-wu.

Volunteer work is the traditional time-filler for retirees. San Miguel is fortunate to have more charitable organizations per capita than probably any other city north of the equator. Almost all these groups have been founded and are staffed by generous retired gringos wanting to help with all the poverty and suffering so evident in Mexico. And it is lots of gringo money and time that keeps all these groups going: Mexican involvement in them is woefully lacking.

But often volunteering is not a passion but a pasttime, a distraction to fill empty days, like playing shuffle-board aboard a cruise that goes on and on. So in San Miguel the good works of volunteer organizations sometimes are clouded by the eye-scratching infighting and squabbles among the members who behave like piranhas trapped in a ten-gallon fish tank. The needs of orphans, hungry families, abandoned animals or homeless old people become secondary to the desperate need of well-heeled ex-pats to have something to do or find a reason to get dressed and comb their hair in the morning.

We also have friends however, for whom retirement has meant up-shifting their lives rather than coasting to an inevitable stop. Carol and her partner Norma, who live strictly on Social Security, have developed a website and blog, and written a couple of books, precisely around the challenge of retiring in Mexico with not a lot of cash. Her website has become a more credible source of news and reporting than the English-language weekly.

Billie, whom I think used to work in personnel—but who cares what she did before?—continues her real passion as a brilliant photographer and recently announced in her blog that she had completed the installation of three (3) external storage drives, with a capacity of 550 gigas. Or something like that. She must have more pictures than the Vatican.

Then there’s George, whom I don’t really know all that well, except he used to be a professional violinist. We still see him driving his 30-year-old Oldsmobile up and down the hills of San Miguel, hands firmly on the steering, his eyes peering just over the dashboard with the determined look of a Navy Seal on the trail of the rest of al-Qaeda. His wife says George keeps coming up with complicated projects as if there’s no quitting time. He’s in his mid-90s. [June 1: Just got word that George Bell, the "George" mentioned above, died in his sleep last night; he was almost 95. His was a great run and a peaceful way to go.]

That leaves me. The first couple of years of retirement were aimless and difficult. There definitely was a withdrawal period.

Building this terrific house snapped both Stew and me out of those retirement doldrums. It was not only the design, construction, animals, trees, gardens and other chores associated with property ownership, but the creation of what some people call a forever home, reflecting our tastes and joys, not merely an address or shelter.

A passion I’d like to develop is from-the-heart writing, even fiction. My previous career at a newspaper I feel put me in a straightjacket of “objectivity” and formula writing. I’ve always been fascinated and envious of fiction writers, and even poets, who write about worlds and people only they know.

Photography is another piece of unfinished business. In high school I shot pictures for the school paper and was pretty good. Someone even approached me about a job as a assistant-cum-slave for one of the photographers at Sports Illustrated. I never particularly cared for sports but have always wondered about that road not taken.

What has never occurred to me so far is going back to full-time work. A former colleague from Chicago visited us recently and excitedly talked to me about a possible journalism gig back there. I don’t think I answered, but my are-you-out-of-your-mind look must have been enough of a response.

“I guess not,” he said.

Sherwood Forest delayed

2011-04-13T10:31:00.015-05:00

In the beginning--as when the Spaniards arrived in this area during the 16th Century--the hills around San Miguel supposedly were densely wooded, including oaks, ash, walnuts, mesquites and other hard woods. But then, between the Spaniards cutting down trees to use as fuel in silver mines and Mexicans collecting wood to make charcoal, the hills were effectively denuded.

Today, looking at the hills from our windows there's more brown barren land than trees, and the latter are mostly huizaches, cacti and other vegetation typical of semi-desert locales. Particularly during the dry season the landscape looks like it has the mange. Nothing like a forest or a woody area.

Perhaps, or probably, because of the loss of vegetation, there's been considerable erosion. Rocks, some damn near the size of riding lawn mowers, are all over our land. There's some black soil, in some places about 18 inches deep or so, but any effort to dig a hole to plant a tree inevitably involves a mano-a-mano combat with rocks.

The are patches of commercial agriculture around San Miguel, and larger and very green valleys farther away, where lettuce, garlic, broccoli and other crops grow, with the help of considerable year-round irrigation.

When we first arrived at this land--architectural plans in hand and gardening fantasies in my head--I envisioned a systematic replanting of mostly native trees that would stave off further erosion, soften the desert-like views and also provide a visual barrier from people who might build around us. A noble and visionary plan indeed.

Nearly 18 months and about 100 trees and shrubs into this project, the results are not exactly promising. It's not hopeless but anything resembling a wooded area around the house is going to take considerably longer.

Some of the problems were man-made, starting with the self-serving advice one often gets when buying saplings or bushes from local nurseries. "¿José, is this a good tree for sunny or shady spots?" The short, cheerful reply more often than not is "¡Sí!" Translation: "I just want to sell this baby and will tell you anything you want to hear to close the sale."

So we planted some trees out in the open that were unsuitable for the location. One example is the "Cow's Foot" or "Orchid Tree", which has large leaves shaped like a cow's hoof and once a year explodes with beautifully intricate, orchid-like blooms. Ours struggled for nearly a year until we moved it two months ago inside the front patio, where it's protected by walls on all four sides. It's now thriving. Some of the trees and shrubs we planted outside just croaked without even bidding a quick "adios."

The other human error was improper planting. Our first wave of 12 or 15 trees was installed by an older guy with a drinking problem and irregular working habits, who didn't dig big enough holes. That's a bad combination. Particularly in this harsh terrain you need a hole that is at least four times the diameter and depth of the original root ball, filled in with good, loose dirt improved with compost. That way the tree can develop a strong root system before taking on the native mix of dirt and rocks.

So Felix is now digging up some improperly planted trees, including two jacarandas, enlarging the hole and replanting them. When he dug up some Pepper Trees and Jacarandas that were nearly dead he found the roots coiled around themselves, unable to penetrate the existing soil. The originally holes were only about 10 inches wide, barely big enough to accommodate the root ball, let alone allow for expansion. The trees were choking.

We also underestimated the relentless power and harshness of the terrain. Nature can be a beneficent mother but also a bitch. The location of our ranch, according to Google Maps, is approximately 6,900 feet above sea level, or about 150 feet higher than downtown San Miguel. And compared to in-town locations which are shielded by buildings and warmed by the reflection of the sun on cement and other man-made surfaces, our ranch if fully exposed on all sides.

Then there's the wind, which kicks up usually late in the afternoon and aggravates whatever weather conditions there are: If it's cold or freezing, it can add to the wind-chill factor; if it's hot and sere the wind can make you feel like you're under a blow drier. During the past few days we've had temperatures in the mid-90s and humidity in the 10 percent range.

It's far preferable than 95 degrees and 95 humidity, Miami-style, but still hard on the vegetation. Félix, Stew and I made a rough census about ten days ago, and about 15 or 20 trees and bushes have either died or are extremely unhappy.

A bit of good news is that the three peaches, one apricot and one apple we planted are doing very well. I suspect the cold snaps we had during the winter might have helped them. Maybe that's it: Maybe we should just plant dozens of fruit trees and start a jelly or apple sauce operation.

So what is to be done? For me, tranquilizers might be a good start along with a humility-inducing drug if there is one. Improving this land both visually and substantively will take years and years. If we bump into a drought or other climate mishap, it might take longer.

Second, Felix is on the right track to replant some of the constipated trees and hope that better soil and the upcoming rainy season will give them a new start.

Third, dust off my books about xeriscaping, or dry-climate or desert gardening. For one thing, in a desert or semi-desert landscape, all vegetation of necessity will be sparse and therefore needs to be chosen carefully. I will research and choose my trees more carefully too, and pay less attention to the local nurserymen's advice about what goes where.

Also we're seriously considering a drip irrigation system that will water trees regularly during the long dry season.

Finally I need patience, lots of it. As I write these lines there are gray clouds hovering overhead that look like water balloons ready to burst. But then we've had the same clouds, and even some thunder, for several days in a row and all we've received are brief spits of rain, just enough to mix with the flying dust and mess up the windows Felix so methodically cleaned three weeks ago.

I've tried staring down those so-promising clouds, and urging them on: "Come on, come on, let it rain." But they don't respond. I guess I'll just have to wait.

Ready for Mr. DeMille

2011-04-11T16:14:00.017-05:00

It was a terrific and generous offer and then it got complicated. Jim Quinn, a good friend of mine and a colleague at the Chicago Tribune, where he worked as a photographer, offered to do a "shoot" of our new house, which he and his wife Karen like a lot. What could go wrong with such an offer from a great photographer?

We soon found out when we asked Anne, also a friend and interior designer who has helped us with the furniture and finishes of the house, to help us with some "staging."

We didn't really know what "staging" meant until a few days later we saw a television show about how a designer "staged" an empty apartment in New York to help sell it. This imperious and annoying New York City designer/stager brought in truckloads of furniture and ordered everyone around as if she were Scarlett O'Hara tarting up "Tara."

Not to worry, our friend Anne is not that sort of person and she wouldn't tear the place apart. After all, she bought or designed most of out furniture. Still, "staging" turned out to be a weird experience that involved basically fumigating our entire house against any signs that human beings lived here.

Out went all family pictures, travel souvenirs, silly but to us meaningful tchotchkes, magazines and books. Stew's kitchen--usually a pretty neat place--almost became a magazine spread with Mexican jars, cookbooks and towels artfully placed here and there. All pet pictures and recipe clippings were removed from the refrigerator along with any hints that actual cooking ever took place in that space.

On our large dining room table Anne installed the only thing she brought, which was a Mexican-type runner and a huge flower vase with wooden curlicues that added up to a four-feet tall centerpiece. Beautiful and stunning but not exactly reflective of Stew and Al's lifestyle--remember, we're the only two gay guys missing the interior decorating gene.

The office and the bedroom were similarly sanitized of any personal items and even the towels in the bathrooms were moved around.

Stew's blood pressure rose quietly but measurably. "It looks as if we're moving again," he muttered, while I just basically stayed out of the way and drank decaf on the terrace. I did my own muttering though during the next couple of days when I went to look for stuff and couldn't find it.

Anne appreciated Stew's concerns and reassured him the home could be returned to normal living after the photo shoot.

It didn't take that long. Anne left a couple of hours before Jim arrived with a van full of photo equipment. And psst, while Jim was setting up, Stew and I went around replacing some of our personal stuff and photographs. Jim also did some of his own de-staging by making sure that our decidedly non-designer cats got in some of the pictures.

Anne did a great job and the photos look great but the experience was strange. Attached to this blog are some of the beautiful shots Jim took. Thanks go to Jim and Anne and our photogenic cats.

For the complete slideshow, visit:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=Jamesfquinn&target=ALBUM&id=5589291580451063121&authkey=Gv1sRgCJ7-o4bzu9OlHw&feat=email