Tag Archives: Mexico

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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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Adorable Aldama door: La Puerta de la Muerta Roja

The crew was just finishing up this door frame on the iconic street Aldama in Centro at 7 a.m. Sunday morning. They were replacing an older one that was all-silk red roses.

I think the skulls are a great touch. How about you?

It is that time of year when “framed art” takes on a special meaning. All over San Miguel doorframes, especially for commercial establishments, are going super-creative with floral arrangements, giant skeletons, woven baskets, dried flowers, geraniums …

… Just about anything artsy that you can think of will be garnishing a doorway somewhere.

This is my favorite, so far. It is simple and clean, yet striking. The blood-red flowers with a touch of orange over each skull just scream Dia de Muertos and Halloween. And the chromed skulls with black sunken eyes — ultra cool and scary too!

This is the handiwork of Pau Gómez Floral Design & Event Creator. And it isn’t every day that you get to see the creators of some of the many wonderful door decorations in action!

That’s Paulina Gómez in the center. With Julio Perez and Oscar Vega. They’ve decorated several doors around town this season. (Need some door art? You can reach them at dspaugomez@outlook.com)

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San Miguel de Allende, photography

Chasing entrepreneurial dreams across dusty back roads of rural San Miguel de Allende

I just spent a half-day rambling around some dusty backroads in the regions around Antotonilco chasing hopes and dreams with a dozen other like-minded people.

Not our hopes and dreams.

No, we were in pursuit of the hopes and dreams of budding entrepreneurs – a beauty salon owner, the owner of a market stall in Antotonilco, the owner of a tiny produce and dry-goods tienda in an indigenous village, an Otomi women’s collective that makes herbal remedies and natural cosmetics, an Otomi embroidery business, and a woman who sells corn-on-the-cob at local football games on Sundays.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

Happiest parade in San Miguel de Allende

You’re carrying a big and colorful star on a stick that you can wave and twirl to cheering crowds while surrounded by insanely peppy music and joyfully crafted mojigangas.

How can you NOT smile and laugh as you bounce up and down on the streets of San Miguel?

This is the Reseña de La Alborada de Estrellas — a preview to an even bigger and happier parade coming next weekend, at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

An Independence Day parade to celebrate the best of Mexico

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

Encore for the Queen

Some of the literature says that the cactus known as Queen of the Night (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) blooms only once or twice a year but if that is the case, we may need to rewrite the book.

Our Queen just does not want to leave center stage.

That is the endearing attraction of this ivory bloom: It opens up one night in a spectacular display and with the morning’s light, all that remains is a drooping shallow resemblance of its formerly glorious self.

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San Miguel de Allende, Writings

‘You have a soul that never ages and a heart that grows to fill every moment’

Rose Alcantara spending a Belizean birthday at Victoria House on Ambergris Caye.

As a writer, I don’t think I’ve grown less creative over the years. As the husband to Rose Alcantara, I don’t think I’ve grown less ardent in my love and appreciation.

Still, I wrote this declaration on her birthday (which is today) during our first year in San Miguel de Allende, and I don’t think I can improve upon it: 

“Feliz cumpleaños, Rose Alcantara, el amor de mi vida! Cada año creces más hermosa. Tienes un alma que nunca envejece y un corazón que crece para llenarse en cada momento. Estoy tan agradecido de que estés en mi vida. Te amaré por siempre.

Happy Birthday, Rose Alcantara, the love of my life! Each year you grow more beautiful. You have a soul that never ages and a heart that grows to fill every moment. I am so grateful that you are in my life. I shall love you forever.”

Nothing has changed.

 If anything, my sense of wonder grows as I see Rose through the eyes of others, as I see how passionately she prepares for her every Pilates class, as I see her smile lift a whole room of weighted souls, as I see her love for her children and mine played out daily, as I see her planning our next adventures, as I see her embracing life as something to live and not just abide, as I see her response to every act of kindness, as I see her own compassion, as I see her. 

Yes, simply, as I see Rose. 

Not just be with her, but, see her. See inside. See the love. See the pain. See the hurt. See the worry. See the desire. See the happiness. See the vision. See everything that she has overcome to be the dancer, be the teacher, be the mother, be the wife, be the friend.

Once again, the gift today is mine. Thank you for traveling this path with me. Thank you for teaching me how to really live, that just abiding is not enough.

While I can only give you words, you have given me life.

Happy birthday, Rose.

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

A heartbreaking song on a permanent loop

The voice is young, sweet, innocent and yet, broken in a way only love’s betrayal can scar.

She accompanies herself on a guitar, languidly strumming. Not living, not dead. In the between. In the neverland of a broken heart. The vocalist drags out the last words of each line, as if groping toward a precipice. It may be in Spanish but it feels very French.

The singing is coming from an upper patio of the building next door.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Colorful cascade

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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Colonia San Antonio, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Biblical downpour, biblical outpouring

Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. “

And the rain pours down

Like on no day before.

My Rose takes our red umbrella

And hangs it over the hummingbird’s nest.

.

And the rain pours down

Like on no day before

But the three tiny eggs

And their mother stay dry.

.

And the rain pours down

Like on no day before

But my Rose thinks only

Of the frailest among us.

.

My heart fills with love

For a woman who thinks like that.

Let the rain pour down

Like on no day before.

Postscript: There are now babies in the nest and Rose lets me place the umbrella up when it starts to rain. Sometimes.

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