What’s a Sunday morning without a few crazies parading through the neighborhood?
Empty indeed.
We got our share today. The first of three parades around San Miguel de Allende began at the Parroquia an Antonio de Padua around 10 a.m. and danced down Callejohn San Antonio before hanging a left on the Ancha and heading for Centro.
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Guitarists walk down Callejon de los Suspiros on a warm San Miguel de Allende morning.
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Wow. Talk about landing on your feet, if only for one Saturday.
Last week, the popular Mercado Sano took a hit when an outside electrical fire forced its closing, through this weekend apparently.
What to do with the hugely popular TOSMA market that occupied the back parking and cavernous storage buildings?
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Maybe if every place had a day when you could blow up life-size papier-mâché effigies of bad people, the world would be a happier place.
I was definitely in a happier place after watching San Miguelians blow up about two-dozen effigies on Easter Sunday. They call them Judases.
I know, not your typical Easter Sunday celebration. Just roll with it and enjoy.
All week San Miguel de Allende has been observing the tragic (or glorious) end of Jesus Christ, reliving his life and death in an almost real-time series of processions and pageantry. By Easter Sunday, the story is largely played out.
Time for some catharsis.
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They’ve got it all backward.
The Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City ought to start with the collection of medical harnesses and contraptions that the artist used to alleviate the pain, to stand upright, to obtain a modicum of normality in her life.
Instead, the very devices that she so cleverly hid beneath her layered dresses and shawls come at the end of the journey. They are shocking, horrifying.
They make you, finally, grasp the essence of the pain which dictated and influenced so much of her life and art.
It is only at the end that the courage, the determination, the resilience, the bravery of Frida Kahlo come into the clearest focus.
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It seems hard to imagine, but there was a time when writers in San Miguel de Allende had no platform on which to read their works and no outlet to sell their books.
The “dark ages” were barely two decades ago.
Two women – one who is strong on organizing and one who has the vision – noticed the void and decided to do something about it.
And so, in 2004, Susan Page and Jody Feagan (now of Santa Fe) organized a modest literary sala where local writers could come and read from their works and talk about their craft.
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The 67th feast of flowers, new seeds, fertility, fertilizers, plants, and pots — La Feria de la Candelaria — has begun in Parque Juarez. The event continues through February 15.
A walk through the park this morning was truly transformative — for the park, and for me. How can you not be moved by the sheer enormity of gorgeous vegetation on display throughout every pathway, corner, and roundabout in the park?
While some of the 40-plus nursery exhibitors were still populating their corrals this morning, this is clearly the biggest Feria De La Candelaria to date.
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Happy 254th birthday, Don Ignacio de Allende y Unzaga, Lieutenant Colonel of the Insurgent Army and hero of the revolution.
San Miguel de Allende, named in part after its favorite son, has been celebrating all week with music, cultural dances, and more — and today, the annual parade which is a most interesting merger of military might and marching school children. The parade also celebrates first responders, marching bands, the conservation corps, civic leaders, beauty queens, and equestrians.
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Tried a CBD oil concoction for enabling sleep last night, then I ended up on the roof, mesmerized by the lighting around Parroquia San Antonio de Padua. I couldn’t stop staring at it, so I took this photograph.
The church is about a block away. When celebrations call for fireworks, as they often do, this is a great rooftop patio on which to be.
If the church looks other-worldly, it may be because my head was in an other-worldly place.
My sleep didn’t improve. Not yet anyway.
Though my dreams were weirder than normal, which, if you know my dreams, is saying a lot.
We’ll see what tonight brings.
Or doesn’t bring.
Meanwhile, sleep well. Embrace the new day. Do good works. Think kindly of others. Embrace second chances. Never shirk from responsibilities. Choose the right outfit for the occasion. Never take the last of the yogurt, even the store-bought kind. Don’t second-guess motivations in people who seem meaner than you. Smile and make eye contact with everyone. Frequent more than one bakery. When you tip someone, surprise yourself and go big. Try to remember the name of at least one person you meet this week.
Now, say good night.
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Well, the first day of 2023 ended quite nicely here in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
We had the pleasure of joining some of our Belize Diaspora pals for Sunday dinner and this was the view from their patio, looking west toward Pressa Ignacio Allende.
At first, I was quite taken with the “God rays” on the horizon, streaming down from the heavens. Mike, who has been admiring sunsets from his patio on the outer fringes of the city for several years now, nodded appreciatively. “Just wait a little bit,” he said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
He wasn’t kidding.
My own sunset view is pretty cluttered with tall buildings, church steeples, and gobs of spaghetti cable strung from street poles. Wide open vistas, it ain’t. That’s just life in the city. It has plenty of other benefits, however. I’ll take the tradeoff.
But being out in the unobstructed country was a real treat and the heavens accommodated us.
I’ll just take this sunset as a harbinger of good things to come for all of us in 2023.
I mean, just today I learned that Season 3 of “Ted Lasso” drops in 10 weeks.
Already, the year is looking up!
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 