Monthly Archives: August 2025

photography, San Miguel de Allende

With cohetes ringing in our ears, a taste of things to come

All of San Miguel de Allende knew something was up today, if only because the cohetes exploded us out of our slumber at 5 a.m. and hardly stopped for the next two hours.

That’s way more spiritual pyrotechnics than a minor saint receives, most mornings.

This morning heralded the Festival of Saint Michael the Archangel and the patron saint of San Miguel de Allende. Granted, the festival is not until the weekend of October 3-5, but we are not above having parades to announce future festivals.

Indeed, today’s procession through the community is called La Reseña de la Fiesta Patronal, and it is both an announcement to the community and an invitation to participate in the celebration.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Take a gander at these birds

PENNSYLVANIA — A gaggle of geese threads its way slowly up the Clarion River, paddling against a lazy and shallow, but persistent, mid-summer current. There are 10 geese, all mature. Long, elegant black necks, white wings. No fuzzy goslings.

They zig and zag, snatching bugs from the air and small fish from the river. Between the feasting and the faffing and the current, their progress is slow.

One by one, they follow the leader into the leeward side of a small rock outcropping. In the calm, they gather strength for the arduous upstream paddle ahead. Deeper, faster water awaits the geese.

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