Since his suicide in France two days ago, at age 61, there's been a torrent of well deserved tributes and retrospectives exploring Anthony Bourdain's amazing life and career except for one question: Did alcoholism contribute to his mental torments and untimely death?My husband and I became charter viewers of "Parts Unknown" since it premiered in …
Author: Alfredo Lanier
My husband and I live on an off-the-grid ranch outside San Miguel, along with the challenging but dear company of four off-the-street dogs and three cats. My interests lie in politics, writing, photography and sundry forms of spirituality.
Roseanne or Samantha? I pick neither
Just got back from a couple of weeks in South Africa, a vacation whose most relaxing aspect was being largely disconnected from the endless political skirmishes, conspiracies and name-calling back home. Most of the places we stayed at didn't even have working Wi-Fi. You just kept looking for zebras or leopards instead, which proved to …
Snapshots of a flash visit to Boston
The bell tower was as impressiveas Old South Church's history. For all its colonial charm and perfect climate, life in San Miguel can become claustrophobic and, hmm, even a bit of a snooze. A few days in big-city Boston last week were a welcome jolt, even if the reason for our visit was to attend a …
Reality spoils ending of my happy dog story
The story of Benji, the dog whose adoption by someone in the Centro we facilitated had a bittersweet ending, certainly not the one we expected.Still, it taught Stew and I how little we know about the ways of rural Mexico and also about the perils of hubris, that mythological Greek sin of arrogance—in this case how …
Continue reading Reality spoils ending of my happy dog story
Time finally came to bid goodbye to Paco
When he carefully laid Paco on the stainless steel examination table, Dr. Vázquez, almost in a whisper, said, "This is very difficult."I don't know if he meant for himself, us, or the emaciated cat we had brought in to be euthanized. In the end it was awfully hard for everyone.No one can accuse this gentle …
Bees buzz while vegetables snore
Late last year Stew and Félix checked our beehives and were alarmed. One hive was doing great, a second not so well and the third was totally kaput. A few weeks ago they checked again and found two hives buzzing with bees making honey, but the third was still empty.So last week we took off …
Call me by my (weird) name
At San Miguel's spay-and-neuter campaignsyou can find some peculiar monikersAfter volunteering for spay-and-neuter campaigns or "blitzes" for dogs and cats in San Miguel for eight or nine years, Stew and I have inherited the weigh-in station as our permanent post. After registration, each animal has to be weighed so that the vets down the line …
A Friday the 13th miracle
One way to dinner late yesterday afternoon, barely three hours after uploading my previous post, Stew and I spotted a grayish dog on the opposite side of the road who was panting, exhausted but determinedly trudging somewhere. It was Benji returning home.We called her name, she answered, and I loaded her into the car. She didn't …
A not-so-bad Friday the 13th, after all
This Friday the 13th dawned fully intending, it seemed, to live up to its bad-luck reputation. Benji, one of the stray dogs that live outside our gate—and whom we thought had been adopted—ran away from its new owner and disappeared somewhere in San Miguel late Thursday. We woke up worried that some horrible thing would happen …
Let it rain. Let it . . . Hey, it's raining!
I've always believed in the power of the written word but I had no idea. Since posting my yearly epistle a week ago about the lack of rain, we've had an inch of precipitation over two nights.Late Tuesday afternoon the southeast skies had darkened—auspiciously or ominously depending on one's point of view—and lightning sliced the …
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El Rancho Santa Clara 