When I was growing up in Cuba and later in the United States, attention deficit disorder was no front-page news. I don't think many people had even heard of it and those who had probably weren't paying much attention to the phenomenon anyway.Still, I suspect that I had a touch, or maybe a big dollop, …
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.
To an unknown gay neighbor
A year ago, while looking for a huesera at one of the villages near our ranch, I ran into a bit of graffiti, I suspect left by a teenager, that was brief and moving: "Soy puto y qué"It's not exactly poetry and translates as, "I'm a fag, so what?" I took a picture of it that has …
Ode to Joyous
Stew and I are not big on attending memorial services but on Sunday we went to one for a local American woman who had been murdered a little more than a week before but whom we barely knew. We felt our presence would signal concern about the lengthening string of murders, assaults and other serious …
Spring's slow march begins
It sounds a bit off-key, if not altogether callous, to bring up this subject after all the hurricanes, wild temperature fluctuations and now a winter storm that have hit the northern United States recently. But I must report the news: About a week, maybe ten days, ago spring definitely began to stir around the ranch, …
Thinking about buying a gun
Paranoid chatter in the U.S. media about guns and mass shootings during the past several weeks shows you that if absurdities are repeated long and often enough they eventually acquire some plausibility. So much so that Stew and I, the ultimate firearm virgins, recently talked about buying a gun for self protection at our ranch …
Howlin' at the moon
When he took out our dog Domino last night for a quickie, Stew ran into a high, full moon and a limpid sky chuck-full of stars. Later that night I looked outside and noticed as well the eerie platinum glow that covered the landscape.A soundtrack accompanied the view. A myriad critters, among them coyotes and …
Housekeeping tips from Stew and Al
Since neither Stew nor I were raised in Downton Abbey-like splendor, we're not used to having permanent household staff. Having a couple of people working for us here in Mexico is a new experience that has entailed a bit of a learning process.In Cuba, during the hazy, pre-revolutionary days, I vaguely remember a woman who …
13,000 snips and tucks and still counting
Forty-five minutes before registration was to begin, at eight in the morning, dozens of patients of all sizes and fur shadings already were waiting in the front porch of the Independencia Dance Hall, located in one of the outlying barrios of San Miguel.Stew, our gardener Félix and I showed up around nine and set up …
Happy New Delusions
The new year, every new year, brings out the delusional in us. We resolve to meditate each morning at sunrise, perfect our tree pose in yoga or become devout vegetarians. Resolutions, delusions.My own and rather grand delusion, triggered every December by the arrival of seed and plant catalogs, is to plant a garden in which …
The predator within
On several occasions our gardener Félix, with a great deal of admiration in his voice, has described our dog Lucy as a “real ranch dog.” He loves Lucy almost as much as his own two dogs. At sixty pounds or thereabouts, Lucy is an impressive canine of undetermined pedigree. I see faint Labrador-ish traces on …
El Rancho Santa Clara 