We hear that a lot now that there is no longer a weekly newspaper in San Miguel de Allende. (Not that the newspaper was all that informative. But it was better than nothing.)
The other thing we hear is “I didn’t know that was happening? How did I miss it?”
Easy. Stuff to do is all over the place. Sometimes in your Facebook feed. Sometimes in your e-mail. Sometimes on websites dedicated to local stuff. Sometimes by word of mouth. Sometimes by a poster pegged to a local bulletin board.
Nesting season has begun for the egrets, in the public laundry park just above Parque Juarez, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
But, with their watering and feeding habitat in Pressa Allende bone dry, I wonder what impact that will have on the annual trek to the trees in El Chorro?
Near the entrance to The Spa Wellness Center is a framed photograph lightly faded of around 80 abuelas in shawls, aprons and long dresses and a handful of bewiskered abuelos grouped on the steps of a Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel courtyard. Some hold canes and walking sticks. Many have woven shopping bags.
In 2003, I walked out of a San Diego theater struggling to explain the movie I had just seen. This was bad news in a way because I’m pretty sure that I’d been assigned to review it for the newspaper.
Maybe not. Reviewing movies was not my full-time gig with the paper. But I knew I had to write about it.
“It’s like … It’s like.” I stopped. Closed my eyes. Inhaled.
Cheer up all you ink-stained wretches of a dying breed, Molly Ringwald finds editing sexy.
Well, to be specific, she finds standing over the shoulder of her husband, the writer-editor Panio Gianopoulos, and watching him edit is very sexy. Well, close enough. Maybe not enough to bring back editing in the Artificial Intelligence Age, but comforting just the same.
Somebody out there likes us!
Come to think of it, Molly Ringwald is pretty easy to like, too.
Today, I realized that I’ve been looking at the flowers all wrong.
The ones that have filled the wood aisles of Parque Juarez for the annual Candelaria Festival. Nearly every pathway is filled with flowers, succulents, cacti, saplings, herbs, seeds, soils, exotics, and verdant things indescribable by a casual traveler like me.
The Parroquia San Antonio de Padua is just a block away and you could hear the momentum building all morning — trance-dancing, church services shot out to the courtyard through loudspeakers, cohetes exploding overhead, church bells, primal cheers …
It builds and builds like a head of steam in a boiler until it all bursts out on Callejon San Antonio and dances, trips, oozes, roars, and flips down the street toward the main drag, The Ancha. Like festive lava flowing at a Mardi Gras party.
This photo has drawn a lot of attention on Facebook. I took it on January 25, from the upper balcony of the home of our friend Lorna Reutner. Lorna, Cat Silver, Rose Alcantara and I had climbed up to this airy perch in her Colonia San Antonio home for dessert and a little post-dinner wine and conversation.
Needless to say, the full Wolf Moon got our attention pretty quickly. All conversation stopped as we stood agape at the spectacle over San Miguel de Allende. What wasn’t lit artificially was set aglow by this moon.
I pulled my iPhone out and whipped off a few shots before returning to the table — shouldn’t be a rude guest, after all.
A photographer friend from the United States had a kindly suggestion: “Nice moonlight shot. Clean your lens well and you won’t get those streaks.”
Well, yes. Sometimes accidents are the best thing about photography. I don’t think it would have had the same impact if the image were nothing more than another iPhone full moon/pin-prick on the horizon.
I’d say this photo, streaks and all — Solar flares? Random refractions? — creates an emotionally accurate tableau. It is not exactly how it looked, but it is exactly how I felt looking at that moon.
But he’s right. I’ll try harder to keep my lens caps squeaky clean.
Future photographic accidents will be on purpose …
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 