Growing up, my diet was stunted by two major constraints: My father was a very picky eater—meat, rice and blackbeans, mostly—and my mom was a terrible cook who could turn even excellent ingredients into mush almost as if on purpose. At the foster homes where I stayed when I came from Cuba the fare wasn't …
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Bees-a-Buzzing
When Stew and Félix last checked, about a month ago, their two beehives, particularly Stew's, appeared to be in a state of deep lethargy. The bees were buzzing around alright—both Stew and Félix were stung seriously enough to require medical attention—but the bees didn't seem to be making any honey. The rectangular frames on which …
Profiles of courage and survival
What began as a relaxing retirement-type project, to digitize stashes of family photos and documents and convert them into an online photo book, has instead turned into a replaying of the hard times my family went through after the political whirlwind of 1959 and the subsequent installation of the Communist dictatorship in Cuba that survives to …
The imminent threat of illegal (children) coming across the border
Occasionally I read something and say to myself, "Damn, I wish I'd written that!"This is one of those cases, a post on Burro Hall, a blog whose author I don't know. I believe he lives in Querétaro, about 40 minutes from here.Check it out so you too can share the nationwide alarm about unaccompanied children …
Continue reading The imminent threat of illegal (children) coming across the border
Rand Paul for President!! Of Mexico?
Enchiladas, tequilas and mariachis we know, but who would have imagined Mexico as a living laboratory of free-market-to-the-max, let-'er-rip economic policies, a place where the heads of corporations and service providers can wheel and deal pretty much unregulated except perhaps for the long shot of an angry consumer coming after them with a gun?Rand Paul, …
Bunnies at the Gate
One of the two visitors.Weighing at least sixty pounds, our one-year-old dog Roxy is an awesome and beautiful creature. She can charm by simultaneously resting her haunches on the back seat of the pickup, her two enormous feet on the front console and her head on your shoulder while you drive, there to leave bits …
An Olde-Timey Fourth of July
How Olde-Timey you ask?So Olde-Timey that the guy dressed up as Uncle Sam was about the youngest person among the 200-odd attendees at the Democrats Abroad Annual Fourth of July Party in San Miguel.Uncle Sam's younger brother?So Olde-Timey that the large American flag hanging on the outdoor pavilion where this leisurely paced party took place …
A memorable gay day in Mexico City
If we may wade into stereotypes for a second, the organization of Saturday's Gay Pride parade in Mexico City was typically gay—that is to say, rather chaotic—and its punctuality typically Mexican—it started a couple of hours late. Next to the big-city Gay Pride parades in the U.S. that over the years have acquired glitz and …
On the road to The Other Side
Magdalena García is a fellow Cuban refugee and a Presbyterian minister who performed an act of kindness I'll never forget when my mom died twelve years ago. She organized and conducted a beautiful memorial service at her church in Chicago, with music, flowers and a moving eulogy, after the Roman Catholic parish to which I …
A killing, then a coronation
Killing the queen bee in your hive is nasty business, nearly as bad as cleaning the mess after putting the honey in jars. This little creature, about an inch long, spends a couple of years, maybe less, frenetically flitting around deep inside the hive laying thousands of eggs that engender the thousands of bees that …
El Rancho Santa Clara 