A moving ceremony even if the young participants didn't fully appreciate its meaning First Communion is one of the holiest and most important initiation rites in the life of a Roman Catholic, as the bread and wine consecrated during the Mass represent the continuing presence of Jesus on earth. Yet I'd bet pesos to doughnuts …
San Miguel is increasingly pricey but expat generosity is hardly the chief culprit Last Sunday Stew and I stopped at Querétaro's "Mercado de Flores," a hangar-size paradise of all things gardening located next to the city cemetery, that sells plants, pots and other supplies at noticeable lower prices than nurseries in San Miguel. If you …
Continue reading Is paying higher wages bad for Mexican workers?
After three years of masks, tests, vaccines and boosters, the pandemic just won't away We spent Christmas in New York, where it was very cold. Its eight million residents, plus probably another million tourists like us, appeared to be dashing between restaurants, cinemas, theaters, museums, subways, buses and any place that promised shelter and warmth. …
Consuming lots of news can make you a more informed citizen—or a neurotic zombie If there were a Twelve Step program to alleviate an addiction to news, I might qualify for membership. I already have had to deal with two types of addictions—booze and nicotine—so it's not much of a stretch that my well-nigh obsessive, …
In this tiny Mexican town with an unpronounceable name, Christmas is a serious year-round business If you get to visit this lovely town, and you should, you need to remember two things. Its name is Tlalpujahua and that's pronounced something like "Tlal-poo-háh-wa." Practice, so if instead going through Atlacomulco on the way to Tlalpujahua, you …
Are the usual pieties of putting an animal "out of its misery" sometimes self-serving? Stew and I seem to be on a sad streak lately in the pet department. Our Alpha dog Lucy died about eighteen months ago, quietly and I should add mercifully, because she spared us the decision of having to put her …
Our bees buzzed double-time during the lockdown Partial view of our state-of-the-art processing plant. After a hiatus of more than a year, Rancho Santa Clara's honey production is back in business, with a bumper harvest of dark amber honey that is also light and particularly sweet. The pause in production was caused by our manager …
It continues to thrive while its neighbors remain mired in violence, poverty and corrupt politics This tiny Central American country can charm as well as puzzle you. Its dazzling biodiversity, which attracts 1.7 million tourists and $1.7 billion dollars in revenues yearly, is irresistible. The other, more surprising side of Costa Rica is how it …
Continue reading Costa Rica: A bird of a very different feather
A reader alerted me to a YouTube video of a "train" of Skylight satellites crossing the sky. Pretty amazing. I hope you can play it. The structure on the left looks like a pyramid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgysWWwESfU
He's a tad weird, but also a genius Right from the git-go, there have been two missing links in our off-the-grid living adventure. One is a lack of reliable internet service, the other a growing scarcity of water. A solution to the first arrived on Tuesday, from a warehouse somewhere in Mexico, in the form …
El Rancho Santa Clara 