What’s a Sunday morning without a few crazies parading through the neighborhood?
Empty indeed.
We got our share today. The first of three parades around San Miguel de Allende began at the Parroquia an Antonio de Padua around 10 a.m. and danced down Callejohn San Antonio before hanging a left on the Ancha and heading for Centro.
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Maybe if every place had a day when you could blow up life-size papier-mâché effigies of bad people, the world would be a happier place.
I was definitely in a happier place after watching San Miguelians blow up about two-dozen effigies on Easter Sunday. They call them Judases.
I know, not your typical Easter Sunday celebration. Just roll with it and enjoy.
All week San Miguel de Allende has been observing the tragic (or glorious) end of Jesus Christ, reliving his life and death in an almost real-time series of processions and pageantry. By Easter Sunday, the story is largely played out.
Time for some catharsis.
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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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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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Sometimes you do a thing over and over because it is simply fun. The next thing you know, years pass, and the thing you enjoy so much becomes a tradition.
Last night, David Mendoza’s annual Christmas concert solidly became a tradition.
Imagine our surprise in realizing that the stunning young violinist has been producing his family Christmas concert for three years now, in the garden setting of Tres Fuentes hotel. We — Rose Alcantara and I — haven’t missed a one. But, oh, how time flies. Three years!
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You want to know what makes my day?
“Wednesday.”
Not the day, necessarily. The movie series that is on Netflix.
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Let the Christmas movie season begin!
Contrary to first impressions, not all holiday movies this year are about:
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 