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.
Who ever heard of a parade starting on time in San Miguel de Allende? Well, ALMOST on time.
Last night’s official parade of the dead got off within 20 minutes of its announced time of 6 p.m. By our standards, that’s awfully good. And it caught a lot of Catrinas and Catrines by surprise.
The first band and mobs of gaily dressed skeletal creatures were out of the gate on Cardo like it was the Kentucky Derby and not Dia de Muertos. All of a sudden, a hundred bystanders with iPhones and Nikon cameras were scrambling down the Ancha to get ahead of the parade.
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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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Marigolds are everywhere in San Miguel de Allende this time of year. They are like a homing beacon for our departed loved ones. It is how we let them know we welcome their spirits back for a short visit. It is how we let them know that we have not forgotten them.
The marigolds are on ofrendas — the altars we build to remember our deceased loved ones and family. They are in our parks. and other public gardens. They hang from door frames of businesses and homes.
This year, the spirit of Dia de Muertos seems to be embraced more than ever. The list of events in hotels, restaurants, public squares, and cantinas is staggering. Everybody is in on the action and it seems to be working. The visitors are swarming to the city.
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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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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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I think that of all the parades we have in San Miguel de Allende, this is my favorite.
This one, during the Mexican Independence festivities, celebrates the school children (our future), first responders (our safety), police and military (our security), and equestrians (our history). It has it all. All that makes Mexico a beautiful country in which to live.
The parade began on Cordo and turned onto the Ancha before marching up into Centro on yet another flawlessly beautiful September day.
One of the worst things you can do is over-write a parade. It is all visual and emotional. So I’m going to leave it right there and just fill this page with pictures of beautiful kids and adults in uniform — and some in costume.
Enjoy.
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An old friend sent me a list today of all the former employees of the Wilson Publishing Company who would be attending a reunion in the next week or so.
The list spans more than 40 years. I was surprised to find that I know or recognize nearly half the names. Each name sent me into fresh reverie, triggered a sweet memory of another era.
My friend, Brian Mitchell, like me, was an editor of one of Wilson’s several weekly newspapers in Southern Rhode Island. Brian’s was the newest of the three and he got to create his paper from scratch – a most challenging and yet, enviable, task.
Mine was a hand-me-down, more than 100 years old but well-cared for – the flagship paper of the little Wilson empire, The Narragansett Times.
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In counseling the British writer Robert Graves on a possible move to Majorca, Gertrude Stein called it “a paradise – if you can stand it.”
And that is as good an explanation as any of the complicated relationship many people have with Jimmy Buffett. The man sold a brand of paradise. Millions bought at least some version of it – be it a beachy lifestyle, the music, a devotion to margaritas, Hawaiian shirts and sandals, sportfishing, sailing, and all the Margaritaville bars, retirement communities, casinos, resorts …
Buffett wasn’t the first to turn a lifestyle into a commodity but few seem to do it better. Maybe Donald Trump. These days you can be a cradle-to-grave Parrothead with apologies toward none. More than anything, we worship success and if a guy sells a million records or makes a million dollars, he will find no shortage of admirers.
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This is the San Miguel de Allende version of “Surf’s Up!”
Bougainvillea soars skyward on spindly legs during the rainy season and bursts outward like technicolor mushroom clouds, surging over walls as their own weight and gravity pulls the blooms toward the ground.
This one is one of San Miguel’s best displays of a bougainvillea canopy.
As it is every year. (Mostly bougainvillea. The blue flowers are something else.)
Only this year, the bloom seems more vivacious than ever.
It is between the Villa Santa Monica property on Jose Guadalupe Mojica (Calle Baeza?) and Calle Santa Elena — right across from Parque Juarez and close to the Lavaderos del Chorro.
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