Category Archives: Writings

fiction, Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

The last Christmas movie you’ll ever have to read

News headline: Hallmark has created 42 movies for the holiday.

Subsequently, House Beautiful magazine gushed about the  “comforting predictability of these flicks … No matter which title you switch on, the best thing about a Hallmark holiday movie is knowing that pretty soon you’ll be watching a happy ending.”

I don’t know if people who watch all 42 of these movies get a participation medal or a stay at the sanatorium. And Hallmark isn’t the only one flooding the zone. Somebody, noticing the overwhelming whiteness of characters in Hallmark movies, began putting out ethnic versions with the same insipient stories.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

San Miguel is one giant living Christmas card

Walking Moppit the Philosopher Dog this morning and she was adamant about turning up Aldama as we left the main entrance to Parque Juarez here in San Miguel de Allende.

Normally we engage in a powerful battle of wills.

Moppit will want to go left when I want to turn right.

She wants to turn around and head home for a doggie treat while I want to press on for a few blocks more.

She wants to stop and sniff every pee-drenched corner when I don’t want to break the rhythm of my steps.

She wants to stop at Cafe Hortus for a croissant while I prefer walking over to Panina for a rosemary and raspberry scone.

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

Lessons learned from watching every Christmas TV commercial for 2023

Tis the season.
For what?
Commercials, of course.
Holiday commercials, filled with tinsel and snow, all merry and bright.
Urging you to get your Christmas shopping just right.

We’re here to help you, they say, with nary a snarky grin.
You see, we know what trouble you’re in with your kin.
The right presents can bail you out.
Listen to our adverts, Bubba, in case there is some doubt.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Breakfast by the Jardine

They’re mostly gone now, the visitors, the tourists. Swept away by a late-season burst of rain and the chill in the air. Out with the marigolds and Catrinas and jacked-up prices — “make hay while the sun shines.” In with the hint of calm and solitude, if only for an eye-wink.

It is quiet for a moment. The so-called high season begins shortly, as the first dusting of snow transforms parts north and the occasional residents descend for the winter rounds of social gatherings, fine dining, concerts, and art exhibitions.

People coming and going in San Miguel are kind of like seasons all their own.

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

Catrina grand finale

Don’t go looking for her. She is gone. I’m glad I stopped to make her acquaintance before heading next door to Cafe Murmullo to meet friends for breakfast.

In the time it took me to down waffles piled high with blackberries and raspberries with a drizzle of strawberry compote and two cups of chai latte, she was gone.

Women like that, so fickle. Here one moment, big hat and bangles. Gone the next.

Maybe next year. Same time, same place?

I will wait for her. Grateful for what little time we had together. (About five minutes this morning, to be honest.)

Meanwhile, the murals remain, of course. In the entrance to Instituto Allende on Calle Ancha de San Antonio 22. And they are beautiful. Are they not? Stop by and peek in the door. Murals are meant to be seen and appreciated.

Catrinas, too. But their time is short.

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photography, Writings

Gallery: San Miguel’s Night of the Catrinas – not quite a parade, definitely a promenade

Gaily costumed and made-up men and women just sort of filtered into the plaza last night in twos and fours. If there was a grand parade from any of the private Catrina parties around San Miguel de Allende, it was after I left.

By 8 p.m., I’d seen enough. And what I saw was delightful.

(Catch up with Thursday night’s official parade here.)

There were lots of traditional Catrinas and Catrines but there were spinoffs, too. Like the two cowboys, the bishop, the woman in the illuminated cape, and the tyrannosaurus rex. Yes, a dinosaur. It is just that kind of year.

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

Re-birth of the Calla Lily

Late last night as the light drizzle kissed the courtyard foliage, a lone Calla Lily peeked its chaliced bloom through the broad green leaves.

It has been dormant for some time, so this was a delightful surprise as has been this late season rain.

The beaded drops upon the velvety white bloom were irresistible. As dark as the night happened to be, I had to risk taking a shot. It seems to have worked out okay.

I read that the Calla Lily in Mexico is associated with death and funerals and in Greek and Roman times with festivities. How appropriate as we approach Dia de Muertos. The flower’s symbolism serves our times and culture well.

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fiction, photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

She came with the house

She was in our house when we moved in five years ago. She’s been here much much longer than that. I venture to guess that she has been on this planet longer than we have.

She is an old-school Catrina. Her wide-brimmed chapeau with the enormous winged and flowered bow on top looks like the one José Guadalupe Posada, drew on his original “La Calavera Garbancera” back in 1910. So does the hairstyle.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Princess in the park

Tuesday evening the basketball courts in Parque Juarez thrummed and thumped with exuberant kids who shouted back and forth to teammates while jutting and cutting up and down the blue surface, looking for an open shot.

It was a different world next door at the stately old gazebo. A fairy tale was unfolding. Like all good princesses, she would allow only a tantalizing glimpse of her face. The air of mystery was exquisite.

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San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Parables from the life of Elsmarie Norby: Her memoir is the bible on how to be a good ex-patriate

“Go sit on a rock, and children will find you.” That’s the simple counsel of Elsmarie Norby, the founder of Ojalá Niños, a rural San Miguel de Allende program that encourages scores of children to explore their artistic side.

In Elsmarie’s case, it wasn’t really a rock. “I opened my gate,” she says.

Elsmarie moved to the rural community of San Miguel Viejo in 2007 and built a house like no other in the community. It had floors. It had windows. It had furniture. It had a kitchen with modern appliances. And it had a front gate.

Nowadays she says she was “a very strange person” to the residents. Especially strange to the children who would peer into her yard through the front gate. She didn’t know she was such an object of curiosity, an outlier, really. Not at first.

Elsmarie recalled the first time she invited the neighborhood kids in. “They stood frozen at the entrance … then entered wide-eyed. They had never seen a refrigerator, furniture, art on the walls …”

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