Mi Casa es Su Casa?

Since I moved to San Miguel de Allende 10 months ago, I’ve lived in my adorable casita. It was a find on the Guanajuato Craigslist and I took it sight unseen.  

My casita patio off the kitchen

Happily, the gamble paid off and both the casita and Eleanor, above whose house it’s situated, provided me a soft landing in Mexico.  The one-bedroomed casita with it's georgous patio was immediately home and Eleanor has been a font of invaluable help and information about living in Mexico (not to mention a supreme maker of margaritas!)

The casita came furnished and fully loaded, so I didn’t need to bring a lot of stuff with me. This enabled me to travel light: driving down from California with just a couple of suitcases and my little dog Henry. On account of me being Miss Adaptability – a veteran of four continent, five country, ten city,  and approximately 27 house moves – those suitcases contained just enough of what I needed it make any place home. My Bhutanese Buddha tapestry went up on the wall behind the sofa and my red silk drapes in the bedroom.

Buddha presiding over my living room

I whipped out my candles, photographs, a few special books, favorite mug, and French press coffee maker and supplemented them with finds from the flea market and yard sales; and voila, a nest.

The sun coming in through my bedroom window
wakes me up in the morning

I also fell in love with the neighborhood: Fraccionamiento Insurgentes.  Just a short number nine bus ride from el centro, it’s a world away from the lovely but bustling tourist mecca that is San Miguel. As much as I catch my breath every time I see the parrochia or stumble across one of the daily parades or fiestas, I’m equally happy when I crest the hill on the outskirts of town and feel the temperature drop 10 degrees and see the open rolling hills, vast sky, and little white-domed church in my neighborhood. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remind myself that I actually live here and don't have to go back to the rat race next week!

Aztecs and architecture: just another day in
San Miguel de Allende

There are no traffic sounds or overhead jets, so it’s quiet here, too. Except, that is, for the tweeting birds, barking dogs, copulating cats, crowing roosters, church bells, gurgling fountain, thunder storms, and frequent fireworks. But hey, that's just Mexico.

I recently met a gringa, married to a Mexican man, who also lives in Insurgentes. Now Eleanor and I can no long boast that we’re the only ones in the area. I suspect the locals regard us as the thin end of the wedge and are secretly thinking, "there goes the neighborhood." Nevertheless, they treat us with immense kindness. Eva, the lady who runs the laundry, always greets me with a toothy grin and a torrent of very fast Spanish that I nod and smile at. Saul, the guy who makes the best longanisa tacos, will bring them to the door if you call him up with an order. And his wife, Marie, who runs a little clothing shop not only loaned us some of her display racks for our yard sale but had them delivered.  

Our yard sale looked very professional
with Marie's display racks

A few days ago, Eleanor bought a piece of furniture from a consignment store - a lovely painted cabinet - that I brought back in my car. She corralled Adrien, a teenager from a few doors down to help us unload it. He spurned my attempts to take one end, hoisted it on his shoulder, and staggered into the house with it. When Eleanor offered him a tip for a cafecita or a coca, he politely declined it. He had enough money right now, he said.

The beautiful painted cabinet that
Adrien hauled in on his shoulder

I’ll miss all of this tremendously when I move out in a few weeks on to my next adventure, but whoever takes over my casita will be a very lucky person indeed for however long they are here.

How I Went Looking for Jesus on a Donkey and Ended Up a Mexican Movie Star

It started with a weekend road trip to Uruapan in the state of Michoacán, about 160 miles from San Miguel de Allende. I went with my friend, Eleanor, and we were planning to rendezvous with other friends who were going to the same destination by bus. We were all headed for the wonderful annual crafts fair there.



Ceramics at the crafts fair



Michoacán is the headquarters of La Familia drug cartel that has a penchant for beheading people. But it was the beginning of Holy Week, which is a big deal in Mexico. People spend a lot of time in church and in religious processions so we figured the narco traffickers would be too busy with all that to be committing mass homicide.

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: I love driving in Mexico. We sped south on the magnificent toll roads, mainly through immaculate farm land and occasional marshes that are home to otherworldly white herons.  We only had one uncomfortable moment when we thought we’d missed the by-pass around Morelia, the state capital. So we stopped at a gas station and asked two handsome and kind young men for directions. They led us in their pick-up truck to the on-ramp and waved us off with dazzling smiles.

The road climbed even higher into the Sierras then as we approached Uruapen dropped sharply down into a sub-tropical climate zone. Wending our way through the outskirts of the city I almost ran a couple of red lights as I’ve been living in a town with no traffic lights for the last nine months.  We checked into the fancy-pants Plaza Hotel (a whopping $52 a night each for bed and full buffet breakfast) and it was a good choice as it was on the square where the crafts fair was happening.

Lunch was first on our agenda and we certainly earned it. To get to the restaurant we had in mind, we hiked the length of the stunning national park that starts on the edge of the city and scales a large hill. It was lush with tropical foliage and waterfalls around every bend.

A waterfall in the park

Sweaty and low on blood sugar we finally reached the Urani Restaurant and plopped down at an outdoor table overlooking the park. Uruapen claims to be the avocado capital of the world and the macadamia nut capital of Mexico so we leaned into that: guacamole, macadamia encrusted fresh local trout with jicama and mango salad and cappuccino ice cream.  

Macademia nut encrusted trout.

The rest of the afternoon we made a start on the overwhelming display of beautiful craftwork and gaped at the gorgeous women in their ethnic costumes and waist-length hair. We topped off the day downing margaritas in the hotel bar with our friends from San Miguel.



Stunning fine embroidery work by these women



The next morning the big adventure began. This being Palm Sunday and knowing how Mexicans love a parade – especially a religious one - I was convinced there was going to be a procession with a man dressed as Jesus “riding into Jerusalem” on a donkey. I can’t get enough of that kind of thing so we left the hotel early and headed to the cathedral on the plaza. The entire sidewalk was lined with women making and selling intricate palm weavings to be taken into the church and blessed. I grew up Catholic and we always had a simple cross made from palm fronds but I’d never seen anything like this.

Women weaving palm fronds outside the cathedral

There was also a professional looking film crew setting up outside the church so I was more convinced than ever that Jesus was imminent. As we were hanging around a young woman with a clipboard approached us and explained that the crew was making a promotional film for the Mexican tourist board and would we be in it? “Hot damn, yes,” we said without hesitation. Next thing, my hair was being primped and we were being given our instructions by the handsome director, Sergio.

Our director, Sergio

Eleanor was at the bottom of a short flight of steps and I was at the top. We were both supposed to be buying the palm thingies and interacting with the women making them.  There was a camera dolly set up and when Sergio yelled “action” the camera rolled along the sidewalk as Eleanor and I crouched down and “bought” palms. It was all fairly simple but in true movie fashion we did take after take for over an hour.

My vendor, though a beautiful looking woman, was quite surly. I tried desperately to talk to her but she simply scowled at me. I learned later that this commotion was preventing her from selling her wares so I felt bad for her.

My "co-star" wouldn't crack a smile or even tell me her name

I was quite jealous because Eleanor, on the other hand, was having a wonderful interaction with her co-star. And the woman turned out to be a psychic who was telling Eleanor all about her life as they acted out the charade!

After it was finally a wrap and the releases were signed, we realized we didn’t have that long to take in the enormous craft fair so I sadly gave up any idea of seeing Jesus that day and we headed into the mass of tented booths in the middle of plaza. (And where, incidentally, Eleanor took the photo of me that I’ve made my new profile picture.)  As we were trolling the aisles full of ceramics and lacquer work and embroidered clothing, I heard singing.  It was the parade!  I knew it. Abandoning Eleanor, I took off bobbing and weaving through the packed crowd to the perimeter of the plaza where I thought the parade was headed. Nooooo! I missed Jesus! All I caught were the apostles as they headed into the church.

I missed Jesus!

Oh, well. This is only the beginning of holy week. We have a packed few days to come of a bloody and beaten Jesus dragging the cross from church to church – in some cases, town to town – as he’s flogged and then strung up on the cross (seriously, I’m not kidding about this). I’m truly sorry I didn’t catch him on his last good day, but in compensation, I finally became the movie star I knew I was destined to be when I was eight years old.

The Magic of Pozos

So picture this scenario. You’ve driven close to an hour to a remote ghost town 7,500 feet up in the Mexican alto plano with a couple of friends. You park and get out of the car. As you breathe in the crystalline air you realize an odd sound is encroaching on the silence – and it’s coming from your car. The engine is running. In one sickening moment you realize that your engine can only run with the keys in the ignition and you distinctly remember locking the car door from the inside when you got out. That’s what happened to me on Saturday.

All the facts are true; but that’s only part of the story.

We were in Pozos: to use its full name, Mineral de Pozos (Mineral Wells). It is a ghost town but not the kind you typically see in Westerns, with a saloon, a jail, and hitching posts.

The area is rich in minerals and since 1540 has had a checkered boom-and-bust history as a succession of peoples have exploited its silver and gold. By the late 1800s, there were reportedly 500 mining operations fueling a city of more than 70,000 people. It was the first city in the region to have a railway and electricity and boasted a “model school.” But the early 20^th century dealt Pozos a one/two punch as the Mexican Revolution siphoned off workers and then disastrous floods rendered many mines unworkable. The wealthy mine owners packed up their picks and shovels and abandoned the place.

An Abandoned Mine

Now the hills are strewn with their detritus. There are hundreds of fabulous stone ruins of mining operations, haciendas, homes of the wealthy and poor alike; and municipal edifices in various states of decay and reclamation by nature.

Nature Gets Back

The fabled railway station and model school are massive hollow shells: the first for sale and the latter reportedly sold for developing into some kind of art school: because a place so historic and hauntingly beautiful cannot stay forsaken for long.

The Old Railway Station (it could be yours)

Consequently, Pozos is now experiencing yet another renaissance. Some years ago, it was put on the National Registry of Landmarks. A few charming bed and breakfast inns and restaurants have been fashioned from the ruins and the town square has been spruced up. A lavender farm as been established by a group of women. The population has crept up to about 2,000, about 200 of whom are ex-pat Americans and Europeans.

I was taken there for the first time a few months ago by renowned Australian sculptor, John Osmond, who lived in Pozos for 15 years, and who provided an invaluable guide to the history and people of the town.

John Osmond and one of his sculptures

Those who have gravitated towards the rarified air of the ghost town tend to be of a more pioneering and intrepid ilk even than those who land in near-by San Miguel de Allende. Understandably, many of them are artists.

And that brings us back to the story. Barbara, Wendy and I were in Pozos for an art walk. The little town was packed as buses had been laid on from San Miguel. There were 12 official galleries on the map, but it seems like many other places participated. We stopped in on the family that makes pre-Columbian musical instruments; the women’s collective that dresses dolls in traditional Mexican costumes; and the roadside stand selling local crystals and geodes.

Entrance to one of thegalleries in a fixed-up building

The three of us enjoyed a leisurely lunch and a margarita at the posh Hotel Posada de las Minas before getting back on the art route. The last stop of the day was at a remote gallery – an artist’s studio actually – a little way out of town. We bumped along a barely-there road and pulled up outside the small stone building. That’s where I locked my keys in the car

Almost simultaneous with realizing what I’d done, the following thoughts flashed though my mind: this is the worst possible place this could have happened; I’m an idiot; why did I even lock the car in such a remote place; I’m an idiot; I’ve stranded two other people out here in the wilds and we’re all going to die; I’m an idiot; I should call John Osmond and ask who in Pozos could help me but none of us has a phone plus I don’t have his number with me; I’m an idiot; the only way out of this is to break a window. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed. Barbara, who is lovely and gracious and with the hint of a South Carolina drawl turned out to be the epitome of a Steel Magnolia. The only saving grace was she and I both had left our front seat windows open by a couple of inches. While I swung on mine with all my weight in a futile effort to push it down further (well done, Toyota), she went into the studio and asked the artist in residence if she had a coat hanger. As chance would have it, the artist actually had brought a change of clothes with her from her house for later that night and her dress was on a wire hanger. Barbara straightened it out, got it through the window and with me guiding her – down a bit, to the left a bit – actually managed to unlock the door! Thank goodness I have an old car; it wouldn’t have been possible with a more sophisticated lock. The entire incident had transpired in less than ten minutes.

Giddy with relief I twirled my keys on my finger and joked that this had happened because Pozos didn’t want me to leave. Indeed, like many places rich in minerals and crystals, Pozos seems to exert a strange magnetism that you feel either drawn to or repelled by. I’ve been drawn there five times now, twice this week alone and once by accident when I was on my way to somewhere else!

Stay tuned.

You Don't Need a Weatherman ...

San Miguel de Allende is one of those places that draws boasts from people who live here about having the perfect climate. Although it’s in the tropics, it’s also at 6,400 feet so altitude cancels out latitude. Most of the year it’s warm to hot during the day; cool to cold at night. There is a distinct dry season when the sky is an impossible cobalt every day; and a rainy season when it clouds up building to late afternoon thunderstorms.



The thin air and clear days equal crazy blue skies



It’s perhaps a good thing that the weather is so predictable, because we don’t have a six local TV stations with dedicated weathermen giving us blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute up-dates on what’s going on right outside our windows. If I want to know if I should put on a jacket in the morning when I walk my little dog Henry, I stick an arm out of the door.

I’d recommend this technique to those people (and I’ve met many) who complain bitterly because forecasters sometimes understate the anticipated high temperature by a couple of degrees or the estimated arrival of rain by a few hours. “Those weathermen are so useless,” they whine.

Are you freakin’ kidding me?

There was a time when people had to depend on the color of the sky, grandma’s arthritic knee, or some old fisherman’s ability to smell a storm on the wind to know if one was blowing in. Even if they got it right, they had no idea of the intensity or exact time of arrival. People died in droves when they were caught off-guard by a hurricane or torrential rains that resulted in a flooded river.      

Livingstone, the African town where I spent my early childhood, had a tropical climate: hot, humid, and given to spectacular thunderstorms that dumped an average of 30 inches of rain a year on the region. The rain fell in summer and it would usually come as a blessed relief right after the most blistering part of the year. “Long term forecasting” meant we could literally see a storm coming from a distance. When we spotted the steel gray curtain reaching from the sky to the horizon line, shot by jagged streaks of lightening, my mother and I would sit on the veranda and hope—pray—the storm was moving our way.

As it approached, we’d watch its progress with anticipation tinged with a little fear. First we’d begin to hear the rumble of thunder, becoming louder and more synched to the lightning as it neared. Next we’d catch a whiff of the unmistakable smell of rain wetting the parched, red earth. The sky would darken as we heard the sound of the fat drops first drumming on the hard ground and the broad leaves of the pawpaw and mango trees. Then it was overhead, pounding on the corrugated tin roof. Often the lightning struck trees or wire fences outside the door and the thunder rattled both the windows and our nerves. The storms were fast moving and they’d pass over within minutes.

That was a typical year. But there were times when no rain came and we went into drought mode. Other years we’d get more than usual rain. The hydroelectric power plant located in a Zambezi River gorge at the foot of the Victoria Falls would flood and we’d be without power for weeks.

The Victoria Falls in full flood: the power station
was down below in the gorge

We had no television and got only crackly radio signals from the BBC World Service so weather reports were not part of our lives. Consequently, most people were caught flat-footed, without sufficient supplies of kerosene for their Tilley Lamps or dry fuel for fires to cook on.

This was the early 1950s. But even in later in the 60s, when I lived in England, we used to get weather forecasts from ships at sea sent by Morse code. If you carefully turned the dial—yes, the dial—on the radio, you could sometimes pick up the signal: dah, di di di, dah. Weather balloons, telegraphs, and human weather observers were about as technical as it got.

Now we’ve got weather satellites, Doppler Radar, and long-range computer forecasting. We can have an idea by October if it’s going to be a wet December by the temperature of the ocean currents. We can plan a weekend picnic on Wednesday with some assurance that it’s going to be sunny on Saturday.

Think about it. There’s this bucket of bolts and wires and some special kind of camera up in space circling the planet and letting us know whether to take an umbrella to work the next day.



This picture was taken just about when I was
writting this blog! Wow!


When I lived in Southern California, the weathermen would tell us four days out that a storm was on its way. I’d sit on the sofa in my living room watching pictures from space on TV of the big, white swirling mass out in the Pacific Ocean and a computer simulation of how it’s projected to come ashore north of us and travel down the coast bringing two to four inches of rain, depending on whether you live on the coastal plain or in the mountains. When we’d had fires over the summer, leaving mountain sides denuded and prone to mud slides and flash floods, people who lived in those areas would strategically place sand-bags and build drainage channels. And can you imagine the chaos if nobody had known how severe the recent blizzard of the century was going to be? This is something we wouldn’t have had opportunity to know in the dark ages, say about the time I was sitting on an African veranda, storm watching.

Personally, I think being able to forecast the weather so accurately is a nothing short of a miracle. So they’re not100 percent correct all the time. That’s because all the sophisticated equipment in the world can’t second guess Nature: she’s one capricious, perverse, moody mother.

This whole weather thing is just illustrative of what a bunch of entitled bellyachers we’ve become as life has gotten easier, more comfortable, and a whole lot safer. Even as we complain that all the technology that serves our lives doesn’t work well enough to make us unequivocally happy, we simultaneously bemoan a “simpler” time when we weren’t the proverbial slave to it all.

You know, the “simple” life hasn’t actually gone anywhere. You just have to shut off your computer, turn off the TV, take the plugs out of your ears, and sit on the veranda. Or take a walk. But remember to take an umbrella just in case: you won’t know if it’s going to rain.     

The Zen of Underpants

Ever since I moved to San Miguel de Allende, I’ve begun to appreciate the art of doing nothing.  I don’t mean in the formal sense like meditating. Nor do I mean in the Seinfeld sense of making a big to-do out of daily trivia. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say the art of not doing anything in particular.

I have three favorite places in which I practice this high-powered inertia. The first is the jardin, San Miguel's town square bordered by the rose colored parroquia, side-walk cafes, and vendors selling everything from fresh fruit to dried flowers. I go into town a few days a week to pick up my mail. Then I head for the jardin and take up residence on one of the wrought iron benches in the sun or in the shade of one of the manicured laurel trees, depending on the day. I get through my mail, mostly junk forwarded from the states, pretty quickly. Then I just sit there.

The parroquia bellringers don't do anything
in particular between bonging out the hour

Lots of other people just sit there, too. There are locals, gringos, young, old, single people, couples. Occasionally, some over-achiever will strum a guitar. But it’s the little kids who are truly unclear on the concept. Apparently unaware that they could be home sitting in front of the TV doing nothing, they rebelliously play with balloons and bubble makers or other low-tech toys.

Their parents sit watching them: not talking on the phone, listening to their iPods, texting, or tweeting. What’s the world coming to?

The second place I don’t do anything in particular is the local botanical gardens. I tend to picture Kew in England and the Huntington in California when I think botanical gardens: formal, pretty, landscaped. But El Charco del Ingenio is more of a large, enclosed wilderness area. A nature reserve with three different zones – high desert, canyon, and wetlands – it’s home to lots of waterfowl and is a winter stopover for Northern birds. One of these days I’m going to take the Audubon tour so I can learn to identify all the vibrantly colored birds that I see darting among the cacti, but that would be doing something. Right now, I go there an hour before sunset and just walk.

I suppose walking is technically doing something. But I’m not also wearing a pedometer or heart rate monitor, one of which I would always have on when I walked in California, where walking had a purpose. My favorite route in El Charco is along the banks of the presa, the man-made lake.  Ducks are great at not doing anything in particular. They just … float. When I get to the dam wall, I walk out along it and stand in the middle, facing the canyon and watching the setting sun get all crazy on the horizon.  I saw a beautiful fox doing the same there once.

When that gets too hectic, I switch to the lake side and wait for the big fly-over. At dusk, the water fowl take to the skies as one.  Hundreds of them head off towards the north, the whirring of their beating wings breaking the silence.  I don’t know where they’re going; probably to the big lake on the other side of town where they tuck in for the night, exhausted by all that floating.

The third place I don’t do anything in particular is the roof terrace of my casita. This is dangerous territory because it’s in such close proximity to where I should be doing something; namely working at my computer.  I can see it from where I write, and it exerts a strong pull. Sometimes I just gaze out there looking for inspiration then figure if I'm not doing much I may just as well be out there as in here.  

There are a number of different seating options and views on the terrace. Sitting one way, I can commune with the neighbor’s dog, Carmela, who recently had a litter of puppies so we know what she’s been doing.

Sitting another way, I can watch the full moon come up over the wall.

Sometimes, though, I just watch my neighbor’s underpants drying in the breeze.

The Streets of Laredo

I just got back from a 3-night, 2-day trip to Laredo, Texas, a city bisected by an eight-lane highway that has one-way streets lined with box stores, motels, and chain restaurants on either side of it. The Laredo visitor’s bureau website yielded an empty “events” page. The “to-do” page recommends the mall – famous all over South Texas, it claims. I know there's a historic center; but I never found it, mainly because the 40-degree weather and bitter rain were hardly conducive to exploring. I wasn't even inclined to take pictures.

The only picture I took on the streets of Laredo

What I did spend a lot of time looking for was a cup of coffee at breakfast time. There is a Starbucks in the mall’s food court, which doesn’t open until 10am. A sweet check-out girl at Target told me there was another and while I was driving around searching for it, I spotted a red neon Krispy Kreme sign glowing through the drizzle. They open at 6 am; make a decent latte; and if you arrive at the right moment, they give you a free donut warm and fresh off the assembly line! Just to add icing to the fritter, there was a tableful of cops there chowing down on donuts. That experience was the highlight of my entire stay.



I love you Krispy Kreme

Laredo was doubly disappointing because mostly what I’ve heard about it is that old ballad, The Streets of Laredo. It’s a lament about a young cowboy who’s been shot and the most haunting version is by an ailing Johnny Cash made just a few years before his own death. I got the impression from it that Laredo was some kind of dusty Texas frontier town on the banks of the Rio Grande, right out of the pages of Lonesome Dove (the sequel to which was called Streets of Laredo.) I should have known better because I’ve been disappointed by songs about cities before.

When I was a kid growing up in Africa in the 50s and 60s, we had great radio stations that kept us up-to-date on all the latest music from both England and the United States. We lived in an entirely British ex-pat community so the English music seemed more familiar and accessible. Also, we’d get bundles of newspapers and magazines from family back home that would come by sea mail. They’d arrive about six week out-of-date but would fill us in on the life and times of the singers, not to the extent of today’s tabloids, but still I knew what Cliff Richard’s favorite color was. Cliff was my first crush and before you watch these videos and snicker, a little pop trivia: John Lennon was a fan and The Beatles four-man line-up was based on Cliff’s backing band, The Shadows, who became stars in their own right.

Cliff Richard. Eat your heart out Justin Bieber

Cliff notwithstanding, the American music and musicians were way more intriguing to me than the British ones. It was all so foreign and glamorous. They used cool sounding expressions like “see ya later alligator” and “hot diggity, dog ziggity.” (Did anyone really ever say that?) They sang about proms and drive-ins and cars called Mustangs and Thunderbirds. No one ever mentioned genres so I didn’t know country from blues from gospel from pop. It was all just music and I either liked it or didn’t.

Mostly, I loved those songs about places. My mother’s sister had married an American soldier during World War II and had sailed out to New York as a G.I. bride. Now I had five American cousins who lived in some incredibly exotic sounding place called Wildwood, New Jersey. I was sick with envy since my parents had dragged me off to darkest Africa! How lame was that?

Anyway, I was enthralled by the idea of Chuck Berry’s Memphis, Tennessee, Fats Domino’s Walkin’ to New Orleans, and Marty Robbins’ El Paso among others. More than anything, I wanted to go to those undoubtedly fabulous places.

I took off for the states for the first time when I was 21. In those days, you could get a $99 Greyhound Bus pass that gave you unlimited mileage for three months. So I flew to Ottawa to first spend time with my Canadian friend Judy.

Beautiful 70s girl Judy on that trip to Canada.

And still beautiful in 2010
Just proving that great songs and great friends
never get old

Then I set off alone and “went off to look for America;” which along with mention of other cool places like Pittsburg, Saginaw, and the New Jersey turnpike are lyrics from the Simon and Garfunkel song, America. Because by then – 1971 – there had been an entire new crop of songs come out to whet my wanderlust.

American cities in the early 70s were for the most part at the peak of the urban blight years and far from song-worthy. There had been a big out migration to the suburbs leaving city centers prone to decay, crime, and graffiti. It was also a jittery time. The passing of the hippie era was leaving a lot burn-out cases in its wake. I remember New Orleans, in particular, to be characterized by stoned, aggressive young pan-handlers everywhere on the streets. Vietnam War protests were still going on and Kent State had happened the year before. The women’s moment was cranking up and the Black Panthers were scaring everyone to death. In Washington D.C. I was surrounded by a group of young black men with huge afros. “You know what you are?” they taunted me. “Ugly. And you know why? Because all white girls are ugly.” Their rage left me shaken and sick and is still vivid in my mind 40 years later.   

By now I was little more educated about music. In Memphis I went to Beale Street looking for the birthplace of the blues. It was largely run-down and boarded-up.  I also took the bus tour to Graceland. Elvis lived there and you couldn’t go in. As we drove through the grounds, the guide pointed to a young dog scratching its armpit on the lawn. “That the ol’ hound dog E-vis wrote about,” he said.

Little foreign girl in the back of the bus piped up, “No it’s not. It’s way too young and in any case, Elvis didn’t write Hound Dog.” When 40 furious Elvis fans turned to glare at me, I slunk down in my seat and kept my counsel through the rest of the misinformed spiel.

Lest it sounds like I’m being excessively negative, I did leave my heart in San Francisco; I think Chicago is a rockin’ town, which might be the same as a toddlin’ town but I don’t know for sure; and New York is so great it deserves to be named twice (although I tended to like the sleazy 70s Times Square more than the current Disneyfied one).  

Pictures from The New York Times of 70s New York

I also love LA. My mother recently reminded me that I used to sit in my room repeatedly playing Santa Monica Pier by Noel Harrison (son of Rex) in the 1960s – long before I ended up living in Santa Monica for 16 years.

However, to be on the safe side, I’m never going to Biloxi, Mississippi. By far my favorite place name song is Biloxi by Jesse Winchester. I first heard it in the mid-1970s and have never once listened to it in all the years since that it hasn’t given me goose bumps and made me tear up. Although about Biloxi, the lyrics are so evocative of people and places and experiences I was having at the time the song first came out that I find it almost painfully nostalgic. I originally had the song on vinyl but couldn’t find it in any other format for years. Then when I was in Austin (a city Texas does get right!) a few years ago, I found it in one of their fabulous music stores on CD. It’s now on my MP3 player.

Jesse Winchester is one of the best songwriters our generation (Bob Dylan said it so it must be true), but his own singing career was pretty much derailed when he fled the US for Canada to avoid the draft. Biloxi is such a beautiful song I wanted to share it. But I searched the internet high and low all I could run across was a recent poorly recorded version that really doesn’t do it justice.  If you’re inspired to track it down, you can find it on Pandora.

I went to Laredo to renew my temporary car import license for Mexico and will have to do it again in six months. Laredo is not calling for a second visit but another option is to go to Brownsville, Texas. And there is that great Bob Dylan song, Brownsville Girl … 

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Lists

Almost every time you tap into the media this week, you’ll hear how the first baby-boomers are turning 65 this year. And just as frequently, you hear how this generation is re-defining aging and retirement. Today on one of the morning television shows, some psychologist was talking about how we should all be making our “bucket lists;” a term I’ve come to have an aversion to.

I dislike it for the same reason I’ve never bought that book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz, which has been a best-seller for years now. The title is certainly compelling and when it came out I thumbed through it several times in the bookstore. Undoubtedly it has a certain Arabian Nights appeal: “Sorry, Grim Reaper, you’ll have to come back another day; I haven’t seen Angel Falls yet.” But I resisted buying it or any of its many spin-offs.  I figured the pressure would be just too great. The book would sit on my shelf making me feeling guilty for vacuuming the rug or walking the dog instead of exploring the Kasbah or hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I have to confess, though, I did make a photocopy of the Mexico section of the book in the library before I left California. There are 20 entries, including the town of San Miguel De Allende.

Our lovely town of San Miguel de Allende
made the 1,000 Places list

Apart from that, I’ve experience two of the others: the market in Oaxaca and a Mexican Day of the Dead. I’ve never really paid much attention to the other 17 as I don’t want to limit my experiences here to a check list.

Day of the Dead

I frequently had out-of-town visitors in California. Nothing made me crazier than people who refused my offer to take them on a guided insider’s tour but would say, “We’ve ‘done’ Hollywood; now we want to ‘do’ Malibu.” They were often so busy keeping score and peering through a camera lens that they missed the essence of the place.

I’m not sure if Schultz’s book and that Bucket List movie are responsible, but there’s also a big craze for people to make lists of 100 things to do before they die which show up all over the internet. Most are singularly unimaginative: if everyone who claims they want to sky dive actually did, the heavens really would be raining men.



Was Magritte thinking about his bucket list, I wonder?


And to the person who has “make soap” at number 12, I say, “Did you know there’s a whole aisle full of it at Walgreens?”

Others provide fascinating reading. You have to admire the lofty ambition of the person who wrote “learn the meaning of life,” and the baser goals of the one who aspires to “fart in a crowded place.” I particularly appreciate the whimsy of the listee who wants to “hide a dollar where a kid will find it.” But I was stumped by “go snout hunting.” I wondered if it was a hunting method or whether a snout is some poor critter that’s unaware its demise is number 98 on a to-do list. However, when I Googled it, I discovered that it’s a fishing thing. When trout raise their noses out of the water to catch flies on the surface of the river, fishermen know where and when to cast for them. The things you learn on the internet: I could have gone my whole life without knowing that and I bet you could have, too!

But I digress.

While one hundred to-dos seem more manageable than one thousand, I worry about what happens when you finally cross off number 100. I’m too Irish and too superstitious to tempt fate that way. Besides, contemplating all this makes me aware of my mortality, and who wants that on a daily basis? I’d rather put the emphasis on being alive.

For my part, while I do think that to be truly alive, I need to keep having novel experiences, challenging myself in fresh ways, making goals, and thinking about how to improve my sense of well-being, not every experience needs to be a list-worthy event. I think when I focus on the big-ticket items, I stand to miss those little special micro-moments that occur every day. And lord knows, San Miguel de Allende offers those opportunities in spades. Every day here is something of a magical mystery tour if you just go with flow.

Take this day for example. I decided to go along for an early morning ride with a couple of friends, one of whom was looking for a gadget for his gas heater. Before we got to the store, he needed to stop off at Senor X’s house. Senor X turned out to be fabulously wealthy and his “house” was a mansion, practically a castle, filled with exquisite antiques and art. Yes, folks, there was a Picasso painting leaning against a sofa because there was no room for it on the walls.  We had breakfast in his kitchen and after a tour of the breathtaking property, Senor X insisted we accompany him to an old hacienda he was restoring.  After a wild ride into the countryside we arrived at the beautiful, half-ruined ancient compound.

A 200-year-old yucca tree in the
courtyard of the hacienda

One of the rooms that was finished was the bar! More people joined us and by 11am we were having a tequila party. I was introduced to a new drink: a charro negro, which is tequila and Coca Cola. (Someone really ought to write a song about it.) Then it was time for comida.  We all piled into (now chauffeur-driven!) cars and went to a nearby town that I hadn’t been to before. We had a long, leisurely meal in a lovely courtyard restaurant. More people came and went as the afternoon spun out. Our original little group got home about eight hours after we left on our errand: and no, my friend never did get his gadget!

 Now whoever would have put a special day that on a list?