When it comes to advice about retirement, particularly by AARP publications, about 60 percent of it has to do with making sure you pile up enough money and the other 40 percent with health-related issues. So if you have as much money as Donald Trump, presumably without his comb-over or oxygen-depleting ego, and the body …
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.
Sherwood Forest delayed
In the beginning--as when the Spaniards arrived in this area during the 16th Century--the hills around San Miguel supposedly were densely wooded, including oaks, ash, walnuts, mesquites and other hard woods. But then, between the Spaniards cutting down trees to use as fuel in silver mines and Mexicans collecting wood to make charcoal, the hills …
Ready for Mr. DeMille
It was a terrific and generous offer and then it got complicated. Jim Quinn, a good friend of mine and a colleague at the Chicago Tribune, where he worked as a photographer, offered to do a "shoot" of our new house, which he and his wife Karen like a lot. What could go wrong with …
A brush with fire
After six months without a drop of rain the landscape is straw-dry and waiting to be kindled. Practically every day you see lines of low flames tumbling down some hill or marching across a parched field. San Miguel's rickety fire department may try to put out the brush fires particularly if they threaten someone's property, …
Mayan aluminum siding?
During the time of the Romans, architects learned how to build huge domed structures, the Pantheon in Rome probably being the most famous. Then all that technology and skill was lost during the Middle Ages, and Renaissance architects and engineers during the 1400s pretty much had to start from scratch when they set out to …
Desi to the rescue
In addition to his duties as gardener, painter and fixer-upper, our own Renaissance man Félix also works as watchman when we are away, spending nights in our house. Recently he's become more insistent, always politely, about his security concerns. Following our last vacation, when we went to watch whales in Baja California, Félix kept talking …
The limits of conservation
While still planning the construction of this house, we received a terrific piece of advice from our friend Roger: Make sure one of the bedroom windows faces east, so you can enjoy, while still in bed, the daily spectacle of a sunrise. We've since read that's a pretty standard consideration when siting a house but …
Yoga redux
When we first arrived at San Miguel five years ago, Stew and I joined a beginner yoga class held three times a week in the solemn setting of a 250-year-old former convent downtown. The room's 20-foot-ceilings, enormously thick walls and huge, creaky door seemed to fit the contemplative, ancient aura that I associate with yoga. …
Clash of the worlds
As you drive from our ranch, you'll go on a short stretch of dirt road, then take a right and travel for another three miles on a road that dead ends at a brand new highway. There you'll have a choice not only between turning right or left, or going to San Miguel or Queretaro, …
The annual rainless dance
The last time it rained was about four months ago and that's a literal not a relative or comparative statement: We haven't had a drop of rain for four months. On a few days we've awakened to a dense, almost tropical fog that hid mountains, trees and everything else to within twenty feet of the …
El Rancho Santa Clara 