I have been asked today to discuss the proper way to traverse the Erie Canal, the 363-mile waterway that links Albany, New York, to Buffalo and the Great Lakes.
Before we go any further, it is important for you to know that I was asked to deliver this talk in a dream.
I know.
It shocked me too.
San Miguel torch singer María Sánchez gave a stunning concert under the trees near Parque Juarez on Saturday, backed by the talent-rich Usual Suspects including Julián Arcos, Rubén Olivera, and Victor Monterrubio.
She is a wonderful singer for whom, my wife says, I carry a big crush. “He moans when she sings,” she tells friends.
Maybe so, on both accounts.
María Sánchez with her beautiful new granddaughter, Olivia, after her performance.
Her singing does something to me. I can’t deny it. But I am mature enough to separate the singer from the song, from the real person beneath it all. I think. I mean, I was wondering “What on earth is María Sánchez doing singing outside, and at 1 p.m.?” So my imagination does slip in through the backdoor when she sings.
In my mind, she is a torch meant to burn only in the night when the heart and soul are at their darkest and most lonely. Obviously, I do have fantasies about María Sánchez.
Rather than spoil her concert by trying to describe it, below is the story that wrote itself as I sat in the bright sunlight, listening to her sing. Any relationship to people living or dead is strictly coincidental. Blame it on mescal: Continue reading
View from the deck of our bungalow in the jungle canopy at Anse Chastanet on St Lucia, our home for two weeks in 2011, exactly eight years ago this week. Rose is teaching yoga at Jade Resort, up the mountain from us and at Anse Chastanet, right on the beach. My first visit to the Caribbean and it is off to a fantastic start. (Rose taught here five years ago.) The peaks in the distance are the Pitons, also the name of the local beer, a light lager, perfect for the tropics.
Here’s the situation:
You know that you are going to get married on February 12, 2012. In Los Barriles, Mexico, a quiet little fishing village just 40 kilometers up the coast from the craziness of Cabo San Lucas.
The invitations have already been sent out.
It was a photograph with the inscription, “If you can make it, you’re invited.” More than 40 family and friends took us up on that offer. But that is another story. (See the invite at the bottom of this page!) Continue reading
A friend came over to dinner the other night and we subsequently discovered that her mother’s family and I share the same last name: Hawkins.
It happens.
I also share the same last name with a number of terrific athletes, musicians, and celebrities going back to the great basketball player Connie Hawkins.
In fact, if you go to Ranker.com, there is a list called “Famous People With the Last Name Hawkins.”
I am not on it. Continue reading
The current contents of the Cobblestone Museum pouch.
Welcome to Cobblestone Pocket Museum, the traveling collection of tiny found objects which may or may not have magical properties.
The museum is housed in a gray felt pouch big enough to hold one pair of sunglasses. It does not because sunglasses even if found would never qualify as “tiny.”
The bag has a zipper at one end and the rubber tab on the zipper says “Jet Blue,” which I used to fly whenever possible when the airline first launched. Continue reading
The Atlantic Ocean stretches before us at the mouth of the Rio Douro, as the moon begins its descent. We are about to make a sharp right and finally head north toward Santiago.
Day 1: Porto to Vila do Conde (35 km)
Twice on this journey, we have left Porto and twice a voice in my head is saying “Your work is not done here.”
I think it may be the voice of the good people who bottle 10-year-old Tawny Port.
More likely, it is just the soul of this venerable old city’s siren song, calling me back to discover more of its hidden pleasures. Continue reading
A piece of birthday cake from the staff at Hank’s in Centro, San Miguel de Allende.
Well, the Rose Alcantara Birthday Season has closed the books on another year.
Whew.
Since the day she was born — on Sept. 7, mumble … mumble– the world has often felt a rather frenzied uptick in activity and happiness in the week’s preceding this event.
Long before I met Rose, her birthday season was filled with road rallies, theatrical skits and dancing, scavenger hunts, magical enterprises and most importantly, lots of friends and family.
My idea of a birthday celebration is the sound of the escaping hiss from a single can of beer in an otherwise vacant and monastically enshrouded livingroom. Or on an empty beach. It is in April and usually, that means a cold and rainy and empty beach. Continue reading
Immortality is mine!
Bwahahahaha!
Well, that’s the way the old newspaper joke went. Something about “as long as I am in print, I’ll live on forever ….”
Then you’d get a picture of fish wrapped in old newsprint. Or newspapers lining the bottom of a canary cage. There’s some immortality for you, chump.
Ok, wait a minute. Continue reading
See those people clustered around the blue Volkswagon microbus? None of them is me. The reason being that, given the choice of going to Woodstock or spending the weekend in a remote Pennsylvania forest, I chose the latter.
I was 19 the summer of the Woodstock music festival and lived less than 275 miles from the Bethel, N.Y. site of the concert that shaped my generation.
So, it is important to note, as the 50th anniversary begins today, that I did not attend Woodstock.
No freaking way. Continue reading
Walking around Blackadore Caye on my birthday in April, 2016, enjoying the splendor of a deserted island — with 20 of my best friends!
Did I ever tell you about the time that my wife threw me a surprise birthday party on Leonardo Di Caprio’s private island off the coast of Belize?
I know what you are thinking so let’s clear that up right away: No, Leo did not attend the party. Was he invited? I don’t know. Should have been. It was his island, after all.
But 20 of my closest friends on Ambergris Cay, where we lived, did show and that was party enough for me.
In fact, it was on a Sunday. I sat on the porch reading the New York Times online when a boat filled with laughing and shouting people pulled up to our dock. They started singing “Happy Birthday.”
That’s when I learned we were going to spend the day on Blackadore Caye.
Wow! Imagine the shock of looking up on a Sunday and see the C-Monkey loaded up with friends ready to help celebrate my birthday on a deserted island! They had party horns, food and drinks aboard, too.
For a newspaper writer who is a trained professional observer, it is pretty easy to pull off a surprise anything on me. My wife, Rose, did it again this year on my birthday here in San Miguel de Allende, just as she did the first year we were together, at Lake Tahoe.
(Which reminds me, her birthday is coming up in early September. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated! But keep it between you and me ….)
We all boarded one of our favorite island transports, the C-Monkey and an hour and a couple of cold rum punches later, we were on the island.
Blackadore Caye is three miles long and barely a few hundred yards wide. If you were to make a movie about being stranded on an impossibly beautiful and deserted tropical island, this would be the place.
You can see pictures here and read a bit about the party.
The landscape on Blackadore Caye hasn’t changed since this visit in 2016.
I am writing this is because my old friend and Belize blogger Rebecca “Scoop” Coutant just posted yet another blog about Blackadore. I say “yet another” because over the years she and I were constantly posting stuff about Leo’s plans for turning the island into a high-end, environmentally-responsible, resort and residential paradise.
Rebecca recently re-visited the island and reports that it is virtually unchanged. You can read her latest account here.
Frankly, it may never get developed. The more Di Caprio’s partners tried to be responsive to local concerns and be responsible guardians of the environment– well, the deeper into the muck sank their plans.
The whole dream development has been shelved.
Meanwhile, as Rebecca points out, some incredibly shitty and sleazy developments are moving forward at the speed of many a greased palm. That’s just life in a corrupt Caribbean nation, I suppose.
I feel bad about Blackadore. It could have been one of those showpiece developments that define a whole country and could have set the bar high for all future projects. Of course, it would have become a place that I couldn’t even dream of visiting.
As it is, thanks to Rose and a bunch of great friends, we’ll always have Blackadore — as it is now.
Thanks for the memories, Leo.
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 