At the mere clang of the ranch's gate opening, they leap over the neighbor's stone wall, crawl out from under this or that bush or whoosh from down the road in a cloud of dust. On a banner day, there might nine or ten barking and yapping customers. On weekend mornings, though, only three or …
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A medical dilemma or a horror story?
Not a week goes by without Félix, with his usual uninflected delivery, tells us a shocking life-in-Mexico story that strikes Stew and me with the force of a blow to the side of the head."How can that happen?" we ask, while Félix's response to such day-to-day tragedies and outrages—a reaction I find quite common among poor …
Escape from Tacoland
Most gringos in San Miguel, even those who profess to be so hip to the local Mexican milieu that they're ready to change their last names from Lynch to López, in fact live in a culinary rut of tacos, enchiladas, tortilla soup and arracheras, the latter a marinated flank steak about as ubiquitous as corned …
Who should be afraid now?
When Stew and I visit the United States we can count on one tedious question to come up: "Aren't you afraid to live in Mexico?" Over lunch, when we visited Chicago in October, a friend asked us that and it struck me as odd, considering I'd just read in the local newspaper there had been …
Refugees are knocking. Let 'em in.
Stew and I have just returned from a one-week drive through the immensity known as Texas, where we visited relatives of mine in Houston and in Austin—all of whom, like me, came from Cuba as refugees.Our visit coincided with the media and political furor against Syrian refugees, who've been battered and demonized mostly by Republican …
The tale of the Hens and the Ostriches
In a shocking demonstration of how reality can resemble folklore, a 78-year-old American woman was found murdered in her San Miguel home on October 26, a week before the big Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead. Road to heaven: Locals on the way to the cemetery pick upthe traditional Day of the Dead …
When technology crushes do-it-yourselfers
Stew prides himself in his supernatural do-it-yourself skills which permit him to repair things lesser humans would toss in the trash or the back of the closet. His brother Greg is even more confident of his technical abilities: He often buys things that are already broken, and really cheap, counting on being able to fix …
Memorial for someone we didn't know
Sally lived in San Miguel but, for Stew and me, she was a bedridden unknown. We inquired about her periodically, but her brother Doug, one of our best friends here, would only mutter, predictably, "Oh, she's about the same."Sally, 77, died on September 28 from the multiple sclerosis that had kept her barely conscious, in …
Happy Mexican Independence Day!
Mexican Independence Day cavalcade riding past our ranch
A place where May comes in September
In one particularly poignant entry in her "Diary", which Stew and I recently reread in anticipation of a trip to Amsterdam, Anne Frank talks about her remedy for unhappiness, loneliness and fear: "The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, …
El Rancho Santa Clara 