Except perhaps for the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Roman Catholic Church's grip on Mexico and particularly San Miguel de Allende, is never firmer than during Holy Week.It actually begins a week before Palm Sunday, when hundreds of chanting pilgrims come to San Miguel carrying a statue of a flagellated Jesus—ghoulishly bloody …
Tag: mexico
To an unknown gay neighbor
A year ago, while looking for a huesera at one of the villages near our ranch, I ran into a bit of graffiti, I suspect left by a teenager, that was brief and moving: "Soy puto y qué"It's not exactly poetry and translates as, "I'm a fag, so what?" I took a picture of it that has …
13,000 snips and tucks and still counting
Forty-five minutes before registration was to begin, at eight in the morning, dozens of patients of all sizes and fur shadings already were waiting in the front porch of the Independencia Dance Hall, located in one of the outlying barrios of San Miguel.Stew, our gardener Félix and I showed up around nine and set up …
Great Border Crossing Plus Seven
Stew, with his remarkable recall for dates and events, casually mentioned on Sunday that November 7 would be the anniversary of the Great Border Crossing. I, the one with a far foggier grasp of birthdays and most other significant historical markers, replied: "The what?"Indeed Wednesday was the seventh anniversary of our voyage from Chicago to Mexico …
At a real Mexican county fair
San Miguel's annual county fair, which runs for three weeks around the time of the month-long Mexican independence celebrations in September, attracts thousands of locals but hardly any foreigners. That's too bad.It's not the monster state fair in Dallas, or the dazzling, open-air Cirque du Soleil spectacle Stew and I were lucky to see in …
Looking for a (good) Mexican clip job
Some people may say that as guys get older haircuts become less important because the luxuriance of one's mane is inversely related to age. I'd argue the opposite and not just because, at 64, a fair amount of my follicles are still merrily fornicating and reproducing on my scalp.If anything, as you get older regular trips …
You call that a garden?
Midlife crises evoke dreams of a new career and in my case, about fifteen years ago, of becoming a landscape designer. After a few night courses at the Chicago Botanic Garden, a tentative verdict about my abilities came back from the teachers: I had a good eye for plant combinations but needed to double down …
Motorcycle diary
Back in March when I wrote about getting a motorcycle, Phil commented about the exhilaration of riding a bike, the freedom you feel, the wind whistling through your helmet and other Easy Rider-type folklore I suspected could be a bunch of hoo-hah.Now that I have been riding the bike for awhile, I'm starting to agree …
Wedding bells dilemma
Weddings have always made me uncomfortable but surely the fact that I can't dance is the least of it. I perceive them as foreign rituals like Hindus bathing in the Ganges or Muslims going 'round and 'round their holiest-of-holies in Mecca. I never quite know what to feel or do at weddings, particularly if I attend with …
Desi to the rescue
In addition to his duties as gardener, painter and fixer-upper, our own Renaissance man Félix also works as watchman when we are away, spending nights in our house. Recently he's become more insistent, always politely, about his security concerns. Following our last vacation, when we went to watch whales in Baja California, Félix kept talking …
El Rancho Santa Clara 