Tag Archives: San Francisco

#smwc2020, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera: Tell someone today, ‘You have a beautiful voice’

IMG_0213

Poet and author Juan Felipe Herrera reads from one of his 30 published books at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival #smwc2020 on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020.

Prologue: Juan Felipe Herrera was Poet Laureate of the United States 2015-17. He is an artist, a teacher, the author of 30 books across all genres, and he plays a mean harmonica.

As a keynote speaker at the 15th annual San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival, Herrera put the harmonica to good use. He also introduced plenty of “participatory poetry,” goading on the audience to share the load as he read his poems.

Herrera’s commentary is every bit as poetic as his published works. In fact, it was hard sometimes to see where his beguiling banter ended and a poem began.

Herrera’s life was a rough one from the start. His family traveled up and down California in the migrant labor trucks, from harvest to harvest.  Continue reading →

Standard
Rants and raves, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Hedrick Smith to i3 audience: U.S. political reform can happen but it is up to YOU, not somebody else

smith1

Hedrick Smith speaks to a full house on “Reforming our ailing political system.”

Is there anything better than Nancy Pelosi tearing up the text of President Trump’s State of the Union speech as he basked in the golden shower of applause from Republicans on Tuesday night?

At the moment, no.

But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith brought some good news to San Miguel de Allende on Tuesday night: All is not lost.

In a brief speech and documentary presentation titled “Reforming our Ailing Political System,” Smith said to look to the hinterlands, to the grassroots, at the state level,  to see where real reform is going on.

And after three years of crisscrossing the United States, Smith reports that a real revolution is going on  — and it is transcending political parties and racial and economic divides. And it is being overlooked by most of America’s major media outlets. Continue reading →

Standard
San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Sam Donaldson agrees: The ‘warm-up band’ (Alison Wright) stole the show

IMG_2166 - Edited

Photographer Alison Wright and ABC newsman Sam Donaldson share a moment after delivering their talks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, on Feb.29.

While globe-trotting photographer Alison Wright billed herself as “the warm-up band for Sam Donaldson” and begged the audience not to boo her off stage with shouts of “Sam! Sam! Sam!,” the retired ABC newsman had a whole other take on the evening.

Wright and Donaldson were co-headliners before a packed Literary Society house in the HRM Ballroom in San Miguel de Allende on Wednesday, Jan. 29.

When Donaldson stood up to speak, he was clearly awed by the sometimes harrowing tales and stunning photographs presented by Wright, a featured National Geographic photographer.

“I’ve always believed that you don’t follow dogs or children onstage,” intoned Donaldson, “to which I’ll add, ‘Don’t follow Alison Wright!’ “ Continue reading →

Standard
San Miguel de Allende, Writings

In the face of so many who died, ‘I am not resigned. I am not resigned. I am not resigned’

img_9851I have never been good with deaths, weddings, baptisms, or birthdays. Even holidays. Christmas always felt designed to highlight my personal ineptitude at selecting presents for people I love but should get to know better.

Lately, deaths seem to overshadow all else.

I don’t know about you, but I lost an awful lot of good colleagues and friends in 2019. Continue reading →

Standard
Memoirs -- fact and fiction, Uncategorized

Flashback: Halloween on St Lucia, but with tricks and treats you wouldn’t believe

pitons-room (1)

View from the deck of our bungalow in the jungle canopy at Anse Chastanet on St Lucia, our home for two weeks in 2011, exactly eight years ago this week. Rose is teaching yoga at Jade Resort, up the mountain from us and at Anse Chastanet, right on the beach. My first visit to the Caribbean and it is off to a fantastic start. (Rose taught here five years ago.) The peaks in the distance are the Pitons, also the name of the local beer, a light lager, perfect for the tropics.

Here’s the situation:

You know that you are going to get married on February 12, 2012. In Los Barriles, Mexico, a quiet little fishing village just 40 kilometers up the coast from the craziness of Cabo San Lucas.

The invitations have already been sent out. 

It was a photograph with the inscription, “If you can make it, you’re invited.” More than 40 family and friends took us up on that offer. But that is another story. (See the invite at the bottom of this page!) Continue reading →

Standard
Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized

Rose’s birthday season draws to a close … whew!

 

rose-pre-birthday2019

A piece of birthday cake from the staff at Hank’s in Centro, San Miguel de Allende.

Well, the Rose Alcantara Birthday Season has closed the books on another year.

Whew.

Since the day she was born — on Sept. 7, mumble … mumble–  the world has often felt a rather frenzied uptick in activity and happiness in the week’s preceding this event.

Long before I met Rose, her birthday season was filled with road rallies, theatrical skits and dancing, scavenger hunts, magical enterprises and most importantly, lots of friends and family.

My idea of a birthday celebration is the sound of the escaping hiss from a single can of beer in an otherwise vacant and monastically enshrouded livingroom. Or on an empty beach. It is in April and usually, that means a cold and rainy and empty beach. Continue reading →

Standard
Memoirs -- fact and fiction, Uncategorized

A hint of immortality comes in the mail

20190824_142504Immortality is mine!

Bwahahahaha!

Well, that’s the way the old newspaper joke went. Something about “as long as I am in print, I’ll live on forever ….”

Then you’d get a picture of fish wrapped in old newsprint. Or newspapers lining the bottom of a canary cage. There’s some immortality for you, chump.

Ok, wait a minute. Continue reading →

Standard