Category Archives: photography

photography, Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Frida Kahlo’s Hall of Pain museum in Mexico City, the artist’s own Graceland

They’ve got it all backward.

The Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City ought to start with the collection of medical harnesses and contraptions that the artist used to alleviate the pain, to stand upright, to obtain a modicum of normality in her life.

Instead, the very devices that she so cleverly hid beneath her layered dresses and shawls come at the end of the journey. They are shocking, horrifying.

They make you, finally, grasp the essence of the pain which dictated and influenced so much of her life and art.

It is only at the end that the courage, the determination, the resilience, the bravery of Frida Kahlo come into the clearest focus.

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

Jay, Jim, me and 10 bags of chips

Jay Leno autographs bags of chips in 1987 at his Beverly Hills home. I’m the terrorist-looking guy behind him. Photos by Jim Skovmand.

Recently, my old friend and colleague Jim Skovmand was searching for some papers on his computer when he came up with these photos, which he sent to me on Tuesday. What a great way to unlock a memory!

Jim and I joined the Copley Press organization around the same time, he in the photography pool and I with The (San Diego) Evening Tribune. The photo pool then was more like a deep lake – more than 50 photographers, editors, managers, and lab staff serving the Tribune and the rival morning paper, The San Diego Union.

As Jim recently pointed out, it took five years before we had an assignment together – that’s how big the new-gathering organization was in those days.

This was the assignment we shared and it was a doozie. 

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Dancing their hearts out

It doesn’t look like a funeral, does it? But it is.

Up ahead of all the wildly costumed dancers is a more somber scene — the black hearse, mourners dressed in white shirts and blouses, somber and agonized looks on their faces. They walk at a painfully slow pace down Calle Insurgentes. The pace only enhances the sadness of the moment. In the front row, one mourner carries a picture of an all-too-young man. Beside him, another carries a stone urn with smokey incense.

I do not know who they mourn. I wish I did. It was not my place to ask during such a moment. I only know he had been a member of the Krazy Boyz crew.

Those are the dancers who follow the funeral entourage. You’ve seen them in scores of San Miguel de Allende parades and processions and celebrations. And yes, now, even a funeral.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized

Candelaria! Candelaria! Candelaria!

The 67th feast of flowers, new seeds, fertility, fertilizers, plants, and pots — La Feria de la Candelaria — has begun in Parque Juarez. The event continues through February 15.

A walk through the park this morning was truly transformative — for the park, and for me. How can you not be moved by the sheer enormity of gorgeous vegetation on display throughout every pathway, corner, and roundabout in the park?

While some of the 40-plus nursery exhibitors were still populating their corrals this morning, this is clearly the biggest Feria De La Candelaria to date.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Happy birthday, Ignacio Allende!

Happy 254th birthday, Don Ignacio de Allende y Unzaga, Lieutenant Colonel of the Insurgent Army and hero of the revolution.

San Miguel de Allende, named in part after its favorite son, has been celebrating all week with music, cultural dances, and more — and today, the annual parade which is a most interesting merger of military might and marching school children. The parade also celebrates first responders, marching bands, the conservation corps, civic leaders, beauty queens, and equestrians.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

Howl’s Moving Castle it isn’t

Tried a CBD oil concoction for enabling sleep last night, then I ended up on the roof, mesmerized by the lighting around Parroquia San Antonio de Padua. I couldn’t stop staring at it, so I took this photograph.

The church is about a block away. When celebrations call for fireworks, as they often do, this is a great rooftop patio on which to be.

If the church looks other-worldly, it may be because my head was in an other-worldly place.

My sleep didn’t improve. Not yet anyway.

Though my dreams were weirder than normal, which, if you know my dreams, is saying a lot.

We’ll see what tonight brings.

Or doesn’t bring.

Meanwhile, sleep well. Embrace the new day. Do good works. Think kindly of others. Embrace second chances. Never shirk from responsibilities. Choose the right outfit for the occasion. Never take the last of the yogurt, even the store-bought kind. Don’t second-guess motivations in people who seem meaner than you. Smile and make eye contact with everyone. Frequent more than one bakery. When you tip someone, surprise yourself and go big. Try to remember the name of at least one person you meet this week.

Now, say good night.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Sunset: Fire in the sky

Well, the first day of 2023 ended quite nicely here in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

We had the pleasure of joining some of our Belize Diaspora pals for Sunday dinner and this was the view from their patio, looking west toward Pressa Ignacio Allende.

At first, I was quite taken with the “God rays” on the horizon, streaming down from the heavens. Mike, who has been admiring sunsets from his patio on the outer fringes of the city for several years now, nodded appreciatively. “Just wait a little bit,” he said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

He wasn’t kidding.

My own sunset view is pretty cluttered with tall buildings, church steeples, and gobs of spaghetti cable strung from street poles. Wide open vistas, it ain’t. That’s just life in the city. It has plenty of other benefits, however. I’ll take the tradeoff.

But being out in the unobstructed country was a real treat and the heavens accommodated us.

I’ll just take this sunset as a harbinger of good things to come for all of us in 2023.

I mean, just today I learned that Season 3 of “Ted Lasso” drops in 10 weeks.

Already, the year is looking up!

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

It’s Tuesday: To market, to market to buy a blue suit; home again, home again, jiggety-scoot

I do not shop. I do not wander into stores and glide up and down aisles looking for just the right … thing. I don’t compare prices. I don’t compare similar products. I don’t read labels. I don’t calculate the savings between the Jumbo and Family sizes. I don’t clip coupons.

I buy local because I’m too lazy to walk to a cheaper store. I shop to survive, not to find pleasure.

But you don’t have to twist my arm to get me up the hill to the Tuesday Market.

I love the hustle and bustle. I love the jockeying for position at a tabletop clothing dump. I love to hear the shouts of “Barata! Barata! Barato!” and “Venta! Venta! Venta!” I love the smell of the food, the fish on ice, the produce, the fresh piles of strawberries. The piles of hardware and kitchenware and racks of hats, and row upon row of shoes, and … well, just name it, there’s a pile of it somewhere.

And such a deal I have for you.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, Rants and raves, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Hey, buster, who are you calling the ‘friendliest city in the world’?

News item: Conde Nast Traveler names San Miguel de Allende the “friendliest city in the world.” It beats out Dublin, Lisbon, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Mexico City, and Bruges among others. The media company previously named San Miguel the “best small city in the world.”

This can’t be good.

I was asked to respond to all this by an otherwise sharp and responsible newspaper colleague. And so …

All right, the next guy who says San Miguel de Allende is the friendliest city in the world gets a punch in the nose, see?

A city with a reputation like that could get itself hurt, see? A city could pick up a rep-u-tation with talk like that, and not the good kind, see?

Other cities start thinking it’s a patsy and start aping all that friendly stuff and the next thing you know, you’ve got a six-way tie for the friendliest city. 

And that ain’t good for nobody, see?

Why, if everybody is friendly, then what’s this world coming to?

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

At San Miguel de Allende’s alpha creche, all is calm and bright, all is ready for Christmas Eve

At this time of year, you can’t pass a window or a storefront without stopping to admire the Nativity scenes. One of the charms (this time of year, at least) of houses that are right up against the sidewalk, is that you are practically walking in your neighbor’s living room. You learn not to casually glance to the right for fear of invading someone’s privacy.

Except for now.

Residents and businesses put their Nativities in the front windows for all to admire, reflect upon, and appreciate the aesthetic spectrum. The Nativity is an expression of art as much as an expression of devotion or mythos appreciation.

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