In today's toxic political climate, not knowing what's going on may be the best way to retain your sanity.By all rights those of us who have retired in Mexico behind the Tortilla Curtain should be spared the political chatter and acrimony that permeates even conversations at strip bars back home.But even here, seven hundred miles south of the …
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.
An early symphony of rain
The rainy season began last night. Maybe. The sis-bam-boom of thunder and lightning, and the crescendo of fat raindrops pounding the skylights, was a welcome spectacle last night, assuming it was the overture to this year's rainy season.The all-night rain ranged from furious to gentle and back again but it never seemed to quit. Our cheapo …
Foraging through San Miguel's retail haystack
Americans may brag about their huge, brightly lit, centrally located markets, but in San Miguel we have something far more interesting and fun yet: An endless collection of hole-in-the-wall family enterprises, scattered mostly along cobweb streets that radiate from the two central markets, and where you typically transact business under a fifteen-watt bulb.You need to …
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How near is your End?
For several days in November, after he turned seventy, Stew grew glum and picked up the annoying habit of starting sentences with "I've been thinking..." without ever getting to the predicate.Thinking about what exactly?Apparently Stew was bothered by visions of a Piper Cub flying overhead pulling a banner that said "The End is Near. Do …
How free pets become expensive
All of our pets are foundlings that we espied by the side of the road or by our front gate, and most notably Felisa, a rat-size puppy with an eclectic bloodline that Félix found under a bush.All dogs have some startup costs, such as sterilization and shots, but in the three years we've had her, …
Hooray for America! (Really!)
During the past months the travails of waking up—our two cats Paco and Fifo agitating for food and our aging joints refusing to move—have been compounded by daily dollops of news about the political mud wrestling in the U.S., delivered to us bedside via our Kindle tablets and internet radio.Then last week Cassini came to our …
Getting ready for the annual rain dance
Non-San Miguelites, particularly those hapless folks recovering from yet another winter in places like Chicago or Montreal, may view our climate enviously: Current forecasts call for overnight temperatures in the mid-fifties, noontime highs in the mid-eighties, and brilliant sunny skies as far as anyone can predict.Indeed we haven't had any measurable rain in months. Great, huh? Not …
Filling up at San Antonio's collection of historic gas stations
The expressway construction craze that began in the 1950s was not kind to traditional downtown districts, including that of San Antonio, Texas. Monster expressways slashed through the heart of the city, redirecting much of the downtown's residential and business blood toward the booming suburbs. Hundreds of old buildings were razed to make way for the …
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Memories of press censorship
"The first thing dictators do is put an end to the freedom of the press, they establish censorship, there's no doubt that freedom of the press is the first enemy of a dictatorship." *The author of this admonition was none other than Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, shortly after taking power in Cuba in 1959. And …
It's time to dust off the Bible
And, behold, on the week before Palm Sunday, a small miracle took place: Stew and Al found themselves reading and highlighting passages from Scripture.I hadn't opened my college Bible in so long that its pages are starting to look as yellowed and fragile as folios from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And alas, Stew's Bibles are …
El Rancho Santa Clara 