The following were the words for the service at our wedding:THE MARRIAGE OFSTEWART HAMMER AND ALFREDO LANIERSaturday, September 28, 2013at The First Parish of Stow and ActonThe Rev. Tom Rosiello, officiantOPENING WORDSIt is my privilege to officiate at this wedding. Until just a few years ago,when two individuals of the same sex who loved each …
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A Perfect Day: September 28, 2013
We got to the church an hour early, not that we were anxious or anything.Or maybe we were. I know I was, at the strange prospect of getting officially married by a minister, in a church, and not in a "commitment," "civil union" or other faux-marriage ceremony gay couples have invented over the years to …
Test Your Wildlife Management Skills
Here at Rancho Santa Clara, located almost in the very middle of Mexico (pronounced meh-HEE-ko by the locals, just so you know), keeping the local fauna at bay is a year-round challenge, particularly during the rainy season when many species sneak into our living space probably because they don't want to get wet any more …
Right between the eyes with drug prices
Following cataract surgery there's a lengthy list of prescription eye drops you have to use that will gradually help clear up your vision but whose cost might leave you cross-eyed. There's the Vigamox, Prednisolone and the Fluorometholone but the whopper is Nevanac eye drops, 1.0 ml solution, manufactured by Alcon Laboratories, Inc. of Fort Worth. …
Small-time crooks
He's a slight but genuinely Mexican man, so our gardener Félix is not prone to bouts of crying, blubbering, trembling or fear-stricken stammering—least of all in public—yet that is what he was doing when he came into my office ten days ago."Alfredo, they are going to kill my family!" he said without any preambles."Who, what, why?" …
Wedding bells and all that jazz
Same-sex relationships typically begin with a bump in the night and until recently never were allowed to rise above the furtive, the unmentionable, not something you'd bring up in church or at a Thanksgiving dinner, or expect to find celebrated in the local newspaper's social page.That mum if not explicit disapproval weighed on the relationships …
Mark your calendar
This week, the week of August 25, the MEGA supermarket in San Miguel de Allende started putting out Christmas merchandise. Considering Mexicans go on celebrating until January 6, this may be the longest holiday season in the Christian world.###
Attack of the recluses
For a semiarid patch of land that at first looks dormant if not barren most of the year—at least compared to my vision of a jungle alive with the nervous rustle and chattering of monkeys and birds—our ranch is in fact teeming with critters though not many large or colorful ones that would make you …
It's raining vegetables! Hallelujah?
After two seasons of lackluster performances, this year our raised beds and the other vegetable garden at one corner of our ranch finally put on a show. It's a bit overwhelming, like sitting front row center at a vaudeville extravaganza, with chorus girls, clowns, comedians and jugglers all coming at you at once.There's been nothing …
Countryside tour, includes dead body!
The church Stew and I attend, a non-denominational enterprise with a sketchy doctrinal corpus but a strong commitment to good works in small villages surrounding San Miguel, had organized an outing to Fajardo de Bocas, located about ten miles from our ranch, to inspect a domestic gray-water treatment plant some members had built at a …
El Rancho Santa Clara 