Undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are nothing if not versatile. They can mow the grass in Long Island, pick apples in Michigan, work in slaughterhouses in Iowa and Minnesota, clean houses in California, and perform a myriad other job Americans don't want to do.They do all that and more, while earning less than Americans …
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Belting oldies in English and Spanish, Gloria Gaynor shows she has survived
San Miguel de Allende is not even close to the road between Hollywood and Broadway, so when a recognizable headliner, even an oldie, shows up in town, it's reason for some buzz.An oldie but still definitely a star.So it was with Gloria Gaynor, a disco queen from the seventies, who put on an awesome show …
Continue reading Belting oldies in English and Spanish, Gloria Gaynor shows she has survived
How the F-bomb in films went from offensive to really annoying
When "Gone With the Wind" was released in 1939, Clark Gable's use of the D-word, as in "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," caused a minor stir, for even such gentle cuss word was considered risqué. Today, "damn" wouldn't even be noticed in the torrent of profanities that routinely course through movie dialogues.In …
Continue reading How the F-bomb in films went from offensive to really annoying
The GOP, shocked and maybe awed
While it worked, for more than thirty years in fact, the Republican political strategy of divisiveness—the use of "wedge issues," to pit social, racial, religious and political groups against each other in order to gain political advantage—worked quite well.Southern white voters abandoned the Democrats in favor of the Republicans, even if they brought brought with …
Where the Caribbean invades Mexico
The first thing to know about Tlacotalpan is its summer heat. It's a soppy heat that wraps itself around you and won't let go. Even an hour before arrival, our car's dashboard thermometer fibrillated between ninety and one-hundred degrees, before it finally stabilized at ninety-seven degrees, with humidity to match.I complained about the heat and …
On the first day of full dignity for gays
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision today, legalizing same-sex marriages throughout the United States, comes six days after Stew and I celebrated our forty-third anniversary together, on June 20.The date is somewhat imprecise, as we didn't have—indeed, we were denied—the benefit of even the most modest civil ceremony or other recognition of the beginning of our …
How I lost my faith in prayer
Over the past eighteen months, a random chain of events has effectively wiped out my faith in the power or even the sense of prayer.Chief among these events was, ironically, our attendance at a newly organized church in San Miguel. Then came the death of a contemporary named Louie, whom we knew only briefly but came …
How to bring back Havana's faded beauty
Media coverage of Cuba is so intense and breathless nowadays you'd think the island had emerged from the bottom of the Caribbean six months ago.Even Gentlemen's Quarterly, in its current issue, has a fashion feature—spectacularly vapid even by GQ standards—showcasing some Cuban-American actor I'd never heard of, modeling clothes no normal man can afford, against …
Gringolandia's joys and laments
Almost ten years after Stew and I retired in Mexico most of our expectations have been fulfilled. We built a beautiful all-solar house to satisfy both our needs and whims and for much less than the project would have cost in the U.S.With some exceptions our living expenses are lower and the nearly perfect climate …
Social media way too social for me
Not wanting to be left behind by the rush of the "social media," which was sparking revolutions in the Middle East and turning Hollywood ciphers into celebrities, I created my own Twitter and Facebook accounts about six years ago.It didn't take long for the trickle of tweets in my Gmail inbox to turn into a …
El Rancho Santa Clara 