Tag Archives: Photos

photography, San Miguel de Allende

Parque Juarez transforms into a colorful Garden of Eden for the 66th annual Candelaria

It seems cruel to talk about Spring and plants and flowers at the end of January, but here we are.

In a week or so, we celebrate the 40th day after the birth of Christ, the day on which the Mother Mary took her child to the temple.

In tandem with this religious celebration, many gardeners, growers, plant suppliers, and others gather in a San Miguel park for a week and turn it into a veritable Garden of Eden. Hundreds of people flock to the park to buy flowers, cacti, bushes, fruit trees, herbs, ornamentals, vines, ground covers even giant earthen pats to contain them all. If it grows, it goes.

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

What Hermann Hesse taught me

Street scene in San Miguel de Allende. The guitarist paused on his way to work to pick up a snack from the street merchant, who clearly has her hands full. This has nothing to do with my story, except that both occurred on the magical streets of San Miguel in the same week.

To the man whom I almost knocked over rounding the corner of Nemesio Diez and De Los Suspiros, thank you for reviving my interest in a novel that I put down many decades ago but never forgot its influence.

Early Tuesday evening, Moppit and I were walking on Nemesio Diez, past the public parking lot at the corner, heading for home at a brisk pace. Brisk for an old man and a dog with very short legs.

As we reached the corner of Suspiros, a man walking at about the same pace nearly collided with us. Or we nearly collided with him.

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

I love a parade … and a circus, and a rodeo, and a county fair, and a horse race … but mostly a parade

So sue me. I’m a sucker for a good parade.

Well, these days, I’ll take any parade — or a procession. You know, the kind we used to bump into on what felt like a daily basis back in the good old pre-Covid days.

Parades say “This is who we are. This is what we believe. This is the best of us, otherwise, why bother having a parade?” And, oh, we’ve had some wonderful parades in San Miguel de Allende.

Haven’t we?

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San Miguel de Allende, Writings

The pensive princess in the park

One shot. That’s all you get.

Magic abounds in San Miguel de Allende.

But it can be fleeting.

An open door.

A loving embrace.

A child’s smile.

A musician’s final note.

You are there. You happen upon the moment.

And you either lock it in your memory or …

… god forgive me, you pull out your camera.

The princess sat in Parque Juarez, near the gazebo.

Her face went to that place that princesses so often go to

When men dressed all in black with lights and baffles and screens

Scurry around her, trying to capture the fading light at dusk.

Her eyes turn inward, her thoughts go to … where?

A mantra? A shopping list? A party invite? A lover?

A magic spell to cast over her portraiture minions?

A first glimpse of her is through the vee

In this ancient split-trunk pine.

She could have been a woodland fairie,

Queen of the forest,

Mistress of the mystical realm.

Mab, Titania, Oonagh, Gloriana, Diana

The Queen of Elphame.

Meliae or Dryad, those Greecian nymphs of ashes and oaks.

But, more, a beautiful woman with sadness about her

As she waited for that special moment.

To come alive,

To conjure enchantment, and send it to the lens.

Immortalizing the fairie princess in her sylvan realm.

Real. Not real.

Magical, all the same.

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

Restaurant preview: Climbing a stairway to heaven

Climbing the stairs to Hachmans restaurant on the roof of the new Amatte hotel in San Miguel de Allende.

If first impressions are all that important, facing the entrance to the brand new Hacmans restaurant in the even-newer Hotel Amatte (Amatte Wellnest Community) – which has yet to open – is a daunting one: 71 gleaming white stairs leading seemingly up to the sky.

Yes, count them: seventy-one.

Of course, there is a glass-box elevator off to the side, but what’s the fun in that? 

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Sunday morning in San Miguel: Tale of two churches

Templo De San Juan de Dios on San Antonio Abad, Zona Centro, San Miguel de Allende, prepares for Mass in the times of Covid and social distancing. Just before 9 a.m., as Moppit and I walked by, the church courtyard was filled with temporary outdoor seating. Not comfortable, but functional.
Meanwhile, at Parroquia de San Antonio de Padua in Colonia San Antonio, a New Years Day tradition was resurrected on Saturday, the sawdust art pathway to the church. Seen here on Sunday morning, around 9:30 a.m.
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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Happy New Year from San Miguel de Allende

Just some photos from San Miguel (and one from the San Diego Zoo)that lent themselves to messages for the new year. Thank you for reading Muses and Magic! Keep the magic alive in 2022.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Merry Christmas and the happiest of holidays to one and all — join our Christmas Eve stroll

Walking up Aldama to the Parque Principle on Christmas Eve, when the last of nine nights of the Posada is about to begin.

Here’s a short stroll through Centro in San Miguel de Allende on Wednesday night and Christmas Eve. It is always magical this time of year.

We’re taking our traditional stroll tonight, Christmas Eve, to witness the final Posada procession and take in the lights, the sounds, the people gathering about the community tree.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Ballpark Posada celebration is a home run for San Miguel kids, parents & ex-pats alike

One minute a bunch of San Miguel youngsters are rounding the bases and heading for home in a lively baseball game against their parents. Moments later, they are rounding the same bases in single file, carrying a creche on a platform and singing the traditional songs of the Posada.

And shortly after that, the kids were back swinging a bat — only this time at a candy-filled pinata.

In between the Posada and the pinata?

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

At Bellas Artes, listen to Frida, Che, and Emiliano: Wash up, wear a mask, vaccinate

Ok, you won’t listen to me or your brother or your doctor. Then try listening to a few icons of Mexican culture, like Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, and Emiliano Zapata. During 2021, the artist Enrique Díaz has harnessed iconography and linoleum engraving art to deliver the ultimate survival message.

His works — this is only a sampling — is on display in Belles Artes, the recently reopened Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez El Nigromante at Calle del Dr Ignacio Hernandez Macias #75 in Centro.

Extra: Masked art — like these 10 murals — has been with us since the pandemic began

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