Forget the old "April showers bring May flowers" ditty. In San Miguel that seasonal sequence is backward; summer heat comes early in the year, anywhere from March through May, and the springtime showers, and the flip-of-a-switch greening of the landscape and burst of wildflowers, don't arrive until late June. This year the rains started in late …
Continue reading Early spring brings blessings along with caution
Driving to San Antonio, a 12- to 14-hour tiresome but otherwise unremarkable marathon, takes a grim turn as one nears the Colombia International Bridge over the Rio Grande, the last stretch before entering the U.S. Up to that point, the roads are mostly first-class expressways, particularly Mex 85, north of Monterrey, recently resurfaced though repair crews can't …
Continue reading Sad migration stories from the U.S.-Mexico border and closer to home
This man-meets-dog story began with a puppy in a rusty birdcage. While I volunteered at the Sociedad Protectora de Animales, a local animal shelter, an impatient young Mexican woman walked in and matter-of-factly placed the birdcage and the puppy on the reception desk, as if it were a FedEx package. She said she had found a cardboard …
Compared to the worldwide suffering wrought by the Covid pandemic during the past year, our personal complaints may stand as frivolous, even self-indulgent: Stew and I miss traveling. So albeit a poor substitute, Stew and I have turned foreign television serials and movies into a vicarious travel jamboree. So far we've visited Brooklyn, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, …
Continue reading Travel during the pandemic on the Netflix Express
This morning, around seven o'clock, I drove to town and noticed heavy, slow-moving masses of dark clouds tightly hugging the tops of the mountains on the horizon. In other locations or under different circumstances, the sight may have been considered an ominous sign of imminent thunderstorms or other inclement weather. My first reaction, though, was one …
On Friday, about a year to the day after the World Health Organization officially upgraded the Covid-19 "disease" to a worldwide pandemic, the Mexican government's vaccination campaign rolled into San Miguel to an expectant and excited popular reception you'd expect for the arrival of the circus. The local Mexican media was abuzz and flyers went …
Continue reading Wait for the Covid vaccine is over, but followed by still more waiting
Don't you love the peace and quiet nowadays when you wake up in the morning? Ever since the Former Occupant's departure from the White House on January 20, we can safely open our IPad or Kindle tablets and read the news without fear of getting knocked over by reports of demented overnight tweetstorms from the White …
A few nights ago, while at La Frontera restaurant, an expat hangout, we were reviewing current events and gossip with some friends and someone mentioned that a local couple had actually chartered a private plane to take them back to California to get vaccinated for the coronavirus. The couple had almost hermetically closeted themselves at …
Continue reading A second Covid panic, this one over vaccinations
Damn. Punxutawney Félix was wrong in his prediction, which I announced in my previous post, that spring had arrived at the ranch. I should have instead paid attention to the real Punxutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog that a couple of weeks ago predicted we were in for six more weeks of winter. Judging by the weather reports of blizzards, …
Continue reading You can't hurry love, or the arrival of spring
Yesterday morning Punxutawney Phil, the weather-prognosticating groundhog wizard, came out from wherever he hides in Pennsylvania, looked around, and saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter. That's bad news for the people in in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., already buried under several inches of snow. At our ranch, we've received mixed signals …
El Rancho Santa Clara 