When the Latin America Relief Fund holds a benefit for ABBA House at the Mask Museum (once or twice a year), you come for the good cause and stay for the sunset.
To me, the second-floor balcony offers one of the prettiest views of San Miguel de Allende. Everything seems in scale — the towering church spires, the luscious blooming flowers, the sweeping mountains on the horizon. And the sunsets.
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The elderly man pushed the wheelbarrow full of dogs up the rutted dirt road in the Corralejo community to where Rosey’s Wish Sterilization Clinic was set up for the day. He also had with him a half-dozen puppies crammed into a flour sack.
The dogs were not theirs. Technically.
The street dogs had found their way to the man and his siblings, and their 94-year-old father, and they just couldn’t turn them away. The aging family lives in a cobbled structure that barely stands in good weather, leaks mercilessly in the rainy season — water pools on their bare concrete floor and on their beds — and offers no comfort from wind or cold, nor in hot summer months.
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I must say, the Dia de Los Muertos parade was spectacular this year. It felt more like a parade than a very compact promenade. As it has in the past.
If you follow me on Facebook, then you’ll find nothing new here. I posted all these photos right away to Facebook, and it has become one of the busiest and best posts I have ever hosted on my page.
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For more than a week, San Miguelians have been parading and dancing nightly in celebration of the Feast of Saint Michael. When it’s your namesake, you go all out. Right?
And on the last day, you put it all together in the “Grand Desfile de Danzas Locales y Foraneas” — the Grand Parade of Local and Foreign Dances.
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Today’s celebrations of San Miguel Arcangel only theoretically started at 3 a.m. They have been running non-stop for the past week here in San Miguel de Allende. All through last night, the sounds of music and fireworks drifted over the moon-kissed night skies from all directions.
At 3 a.m., the Alboradas converged on the plaza in front of the Parroquia San Miguel de Arcangel. These are the colorful giant twirling stars — one of the happiest sights you’ll see as processionaires dance and twirl their way into the square with marching bands and mohigangas in tow.
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All of San Miguel de Allende knew something was up today, if only because the cohetes exploded us out of our slumber at 5 a.m. and hardly stopped for the next two hours.
That’s way more spiritual pyrotechnics than a minor saint receives, most mornings.
This morning heralded the Festival of Saint Michael the Archangel and the patron saint of San Miguel de Allende. Granted, the festival is not until the weekend of October 3-5, but we are not above having parades to announce future festivals.
Indeed, today’s procession through the community is called La Reseña de la Fiesta Patronal, and it is both an announcement to the community and an invitation to participate in the celebration.
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PENNSYLVANIA — A gaggle of geese threads its way slowly up the Clarion River, paddling against a lazy and shallow, but persistent, mid-summer current. There are 10 geese, all mature. Long, elegant black necks, white wings. No fuzzy goslings.
They zig and zag, snatching bugs from the air and small fish from the river. Between the feasting and the faffing and the current, their progress is slow.
One by one, they follow the leader into the leeward side of a small rock outcropping. In the calm, they gather strength for the arduous upstream paddle ahead. Deeper, faster water awaits the geese.
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Yes, those were definitely drums. Not the assertive, muscular, rhythmic pounding that fuels many a procession and parade here in San Miguel de Allende.
These were tentative little thumps, like someone was trying them out for the first time. A test ride. Coming from somewhere near the intersection of Correo and Recreo. Hortus restaurant, on the corner, blocked my view from the Jardin. But you could feel a sort of energy building as the drums grew louder, bolder, more assured, more assertive, rhythmic.
Yes, definitely.
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Eduardo Adame’s gigantic sprawling, eclectic, cultural “potluck party” is about to begin.
A “potluck” is how Adame described the third edition of the two-week-long Festival of the Arts San Miguel de Allende (FASMA) in May, when he was pulling together global and homegrown artists, musicians, singers, actors, poets, photographers, craftsmen, and the like for the showcase.
“Everyone is invited to bring the best that they can do – and invite their friends,” he said back then, expanding on the analogy
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I’m done with “push” content from newspapers, substacks, pods and podcasters, bloggers, social media platforms, conspiracy boosters, angry MAGAs, fundraisers, revolutionists, ah-has and ma-ha’s, political shamans, alarmists, talking heads, Chicken Littles, grim reapers, Beltway pundits, scribblers, cartoonists, and diatribe specialists.
Or as another noted crank once put it, I’ve had it up to here with “Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.”
All I am saying is don’t give push a chance.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 