Category Archives: Writings

photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Clean sweep

That must have been some party.

Early this morning, the limpia crew was all over the square in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel de Arcangel with brooms, buckets, and tanks of water. The bucketers would scoop and splash water on the stones and the sweepers descend on the water like hungry birds, sloshing it left and right, until only clean damp stone remains.

Splash and repeat. In the early morning breeze. The first in what feels like months.

While this is cleaning writ large, all over San Miguel de Allende in the morning, women (mostly) wash the sidewalks and streets in front of their homes. Same routine — water, bucket, and broom — as they have been doing for centuries.

Why the public square on a Sunday morning? I can’t say.

A messy party? Too much spilled and melted ice cream? Too much dust? In anticipation of the arrival of a wedding princess or social media queen? Simple hygiene?

You just never know, do you?

Unless you ask.

But why spoil the fun?

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

The perfume of sweaty youth and stale beer that was Hussong’s Cantina

Hussong’s Cantina on Ruiz Street in Ensenada, Baja, is one of those checklist places that anyone from San Diego had to visit at least once.

An original Caesar salad in Tijuana (or one of the more unsavory attractions), a margarita at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, a stop for lobster and a pitcher of margaritas in Puerto Nuevo, and a night at Hussong’s, ebbing and flowing with the tide of drunken masses.

Now that was a pretty good weekend.

Hussong’s was unique among cantinas. It wasn’t artificially constructed as some faux Mexican fantasy to pull in the tourists with campy decor and T-shirts. Hussong’s holds liquor license No. 2 in Ensenada and is in the same building John Hussong bought and gussied up in 1892.

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

When the chips are down, ‘Listen to your body,’ they said.

A few days ago, I watched a documentary on the human digestive system. One thing these scientists and nutritionists kept repeating when asked about food choices: “Listen to your body.”

OK, what does that even mean?

Since puberty, “listen to your body” has been the siren’s call leading me down a path to only one place, a place filled with regret, remorse, shame — and maybe a little “wowzer!”

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

Rites of passage in Colonia San Antonio

Today was an important one at the Parroquia San Antonio de Padua here in Colonia San Antonio.

Families brought their sons and daughters — boys in white suits, girls in white dresses — for the religious rites of first holy communion and confirmation. I am guessing it was for both, given the range of age and height of the children.

Your heart can not help but swell as you watch the families approach the church. The mothers, fathers, grandparents, and siblings surround the child in white — who is practically floating above the ground. They walk quickly toward the steps of the church where the children gather in white clusters as the parents sit on the walls nearby.

I have come to see these affairs as private family moments and am reluctant to run around taking photos — me the stranger, the gringo, in their midst. I no longer take photos unless I am encouraged or invited.

Today, my friend Jim Gramprie and I were walking up the Ancha toward Mercado Sano and this pickup truck pulled up beside us in slow-moving traffic.

How could you not smile?

I shouted “Felicidades!” and clapped my hands in case my Spanish was more horrible than I imagined it to be. They smiled and waved and shouted “Gracias!”

This happened three more times in the stop-and-go traffic and finally, I couldn’t resist.

“Con permiso, una fotografia?”

They were all for it. especially the two young ladies on their high thrones in the back of the family pick-up truck.

Traffic suddenly picked up and they were on their way — to a beautiful family fiesta, I imagine.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Healing art of Bellas Artes: Know them by how they have suffered

On Wednesdays, I have about an hour between appointments, time I would normally spend sitting in the Jardin with a cup of coffee and a pastry, watching people pose in front of the Parroquia, marveling at how easily alliteration springs from my fingertips.

Not today. Something inside me said I didn’t need the coffee. (The previous three cups?) Or the pastry. (The spreading waistline?) As I reached Calle Hernandez Macias a decision needed to be made.

Ahead of me was the pastry, park, Parroquia, and people. To my left was the Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramirez El Nigromante — Belles Arte for the more mellifluously inclined.

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA, Writings

SMA happenings March 10-16: These are a few of your favorite things ……

The story this week is probably what I didn’t get to. Oh, well. There’s something here for everyone, especially the Lord of the Column procession at the end of the week. To repeat what I said below, the procession is moving and wonderful to watch — but — do yourself a favor and walk over to Independencia on Saturday evening and watch as scores of devotees create beautiful murals of colored sawdust in the streets.

In the morning, Roman soldiers, priests, acolytes, processioners and all will walk slowly through the sawdust, sending the art into oblivion. Following behind will be a legion of city sweepers with bags and brooms and within minutes it will all be the stuff of a dream. So, go see the dream being created on Saturday evening.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

If a tree falls in the Chorro … the sound of one hand clapping?

“Tree down’s just another word for nothing left to lose …” — singer unknown.

Well, not much of a tree. More like a very dense collection of termite tunnels encased in a very mulchy tree-like substance.

The tree had been topped long ago. Which is good, because the abbreviated trunk barely grazed the exterior wall of Casa Liza hotel on Bjd. de Chorro # 7 in ZonaCentro. Imagine one of those towering trees in the park doing the same.

There is just enough room by the Casa Liza wall to squeeze by. The very agile can scoot beneath the trunk, as did Moppit the Philosopher dog on this otherwise serene Sunday morning.

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA, Writings

This week in SMA: World-class bicycle races, concerts, jazz, International Women’s Day — and two Leonards to speak of!

Man, I’m exhausted just thinking about what’s ahead this week (March 3-9). As always, these are just some highlights. There are dozens of weekly shows by our own world-class musicians, performers, writers, painters, and the like.

To find out WHAT ELSE is going on, as usual, I recommend the Big 3:

DiscoverSMA: https://discoversma.com/events/events/

Lokkal Events: https://www.lokkal.com/

San Miguel Live: https://sanmiguellive.com/events/

Feel free to share this with your friends. Pick a night. Go out together. Have fun. Get out of my hair. Without further ado, let’s dig in. We’ve got some booking to do. (Click on any image to enlarge it.)

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Lord, what a conquest

All day today, since sunrise roughly, colorfully costumed dancers, drummers, and musicians have been filing into the central jardin of San Miguel de Allende. They fill the four corners of the park in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel with trancelike dances to the steady beat dozens of drums.

For visitors and expats, the pageantry has been extraordinarily colorful and thrilling but there is a deeply religious foundation to it all that goes back 450 years. Centuries ago the statue called the Lord of the Conquest arrived in the region. Señor de la Conquista is a life-sized Christ and one of the most revered images in this World Heritage City, and not only because of its antiquity.

Many of these dancers began their journey on Thursday evening with an all-night vigil of music, ceremony, chanting in preparation for the grueling performances today. I will leave you with these images but if you want to know more, please visit the Facebook page of my good friend Efrain Gonzalez.

He has written extensively on this and the many other cultural events with which San Miguel is blessed.

Be sure to click on any image to expand it.

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San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized, Writings

Lessons learned: Thriller author Chris Pavone finds that everything is material for his next novel

For a writer of well-received international mystery thrillers, Chris Pavone can sound hilariously parochial. As a dutiful househusband in Luxembourg — the exact location of which he had to look up on a map — Pavone struggled with the oven dials because they were written in German. (He’d studied French in preparation for the move.)

A day trip to Germany to buy a clothes dryer for their apartment was a bust. (“We were unprepared for how much German there’d be in Germany …”).

No matter. After a month of working with a clothesline in the guest bedroom, Pavone discovered that the washing machine was also a dryer. He found out as he was translating the two-dozen settings on the machine. One of them said “Dry.” (What? Not “trocken”?)

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