Living in a beautiful place ironically can make you oblivious to the beauty that embraces you. It becomes familiar, you take it for granted.Our bedroom's two large windows are positioned to capture both the southern sun's warmth during San Miguel's coldish winters as well as its rise from behind the mountains on the east. If …
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.
A pain in the pompis in any language
About the only downside of our marriage in Massachusetts was that Stew and I both got sick with what felt and sounded like serious respiratory infections. We gulped syrups and other cold remedies to no avail and were ready to try anything, including a stop at a pharmacy in the North Mexico City bus station—the …
Service for an Age of Marriage Equality
The following were the words for the service at our wedding:THE MARRIAGE OFSTEWART HAMMER AND ALFREDO LANIERSaturday, September 28, 2013at The First Parish of Stow and ActonThe Rev. Tom Rosiello, officiantOPENING WORDSIt is my privilege to officiate at this wedding. Until just a few years ago,when two individuals of the same sex who loved each …
A Perfect Day: September 28, 2013
We got to the church an hour early, not that we were anxious or anything.Or maybe we were. I know I was, at the strange prospect of getting officially married by a minister, in a church, and not in a "commitment," "civil union" or other faux-marriage ceremony gay couples have invented over the years to …
Test Your Wildlife Management Skills
Here at Rancho Santa Clara, located almost in the very middle of Mexico (pronounced meh-HEE-ko by the locals, just so you know), keeping the local fauna at bay is a year-round challenge, particularly during the rainy season when many species sneak into our living space probably because they don't want to get wet any more …
Right between the eyes with drug prices
Following cataract surgery there's a lengthy list of prescription eye drops you have to use that will gradually help clear up your vision but whose cost might leave you cross-eyed. There's the Vigamox, Prednisolone and the Fluorometholone but the whopper is Nevanac eye drops, 1.0 ml solution, manufactured by Alcon Laboratories, Inc. of Fort Worth. …
Small-time crooks
He's a slight but genuinely Mexican man, so our gardener Félix is not prone to bouts of crying, blubbering, trembling or fear-stricken stammering—least of all in public—yet that is what he was doing when he came into my office ten days ago."Alfredo, they are going to kill my family!" he said without any preambles."Who, what, why?" …
Wedding bells and all that jazz
Same-sex relationships typically begin with a bump in the night and until recently never were allowed to rise above the furtive, the unmentionable, not something you'd bring up in church or at a Thanksgiving dinner, or expect to find celebrated in the local newspaper's social page.That mum if not explicit disapproval weighed on the relationships …
Mark your calendar
This week, the week of August 25, the MEGA supermarket in San Miguel de Allende started putting out Christmas merchandise. Considering Mexicans go on celebrating until January 6, this may be the longest holiday season in the Christian world.###
Attack of the recluses
For a semiarid patch of land that at first looks dormant if not barren most of the year—at least compared to my vision of a jungle alive with the nervous rustle and chattering of monkeys and birds—our ranch is in fact teeming with critters though not many large or colorful ones that would make you …
El Rancho Santa Clara 