I can't prove this of course, but there can only be one explanation for Raimondo's omnipresence: he has a lookout stationed on the roof of his wax museum. We walk the high road into town and there he is with a big smile, a hug for Anna and a hard hand shake for me. We are good friends, and he misses us when we don't pass him at least once a day. He wants to know where we are going and nods sagely in agreement with our stated plans. When we return half an hour later we repeat the ritual and he will say: "¡Ah, si! You did get the mail." Would we lie to him? He stands outside his museum and chats up the passers-by, hoping to entice them. Sometimes he nails an entire busload of tourists, but nothing can shake him in his conviction that business is bad. At home he adds to a chest full of pesos. He bought the museum three years ago, when his career in the government accounting office promised no more than a certain future. Now he dusts old heroes of the Mexican revolution, waxed into five peso immortality. I have never been inside his museum and will not confess this to Raimondo. He would insist on a personal tour. Sometimes we walk up to the door and greet his wife Anna. For it is she, obscure in the hallway's semi-darkness, who collects the five pesos for a peek at eternity. Last week Raimondo came running down to the street with a gift in his hands. Normally he patrols a few square yards at the steps to his kingdom, but that time he abandoned his station. He had asked a friend to bring real Chiapas coffee for us. It is very touching. But how do we tell him that we don't drink caffeinated coffee? We had to make it up: a report on the high quality, the uniqueness of flavor of this brew. He is already planning future shipments. What draws him to us?

And so we fall victim to friendship, for I do not know of a way to reject a gift that will not keep on giving because we don't know what to with it. Raimondo touches his chest where his heart is beating strongly with goodwill and friendship for us. He was in tears when Anna baked him a flan. Many friendships have survived the crossing of thinner ice.

We have exchanged gifts and cleared the path to well intentioned friendship. We pat our chests to let him know that our hearts beat in unison. Sometimes we make a detour and avoid him. He speaks English and asks for translations of tourism-related phrases to help him in his business. He forgets his English faster than I do my Spanish.

Manuel, on the other hand, is not stationed in front of anything. He patrols a couple of hundred feet of sidewalk along the Alhóndiga where we pass daily. He is a retired miner, in his 80s, and I do not recall how we made his acquaintance, but now he comes running up to us and embraces Anna with suspicious (well, not really) fervor. He is immensely proud of his physique, and we cannot continue our walk without touching his chest or arms in adoration of his muscles. And indeed, his bones are clad in solid steel. One day, when a cold wind swept the street and we shivered on our way home, he unbuttoned his shirt and proudly proclaimed that he, with that chest full of hair that is the pride of a young man, would never be cold. Anywhere else he could have been arrested for indecent exposure.

The city itself became the focus of national and international ridicule when the mayor issued an ordinance making public kissing an offense subject to fines. The newspapers loved it. The city famous for its 'Callejon del Beso', the Alley of the Kiss, an attraction prominently featured in all tourist publications, had outlawed what had brought fame to Romeo and Juliet. The Callejon del Beso, where not young lovers exult in the moment but retired couples come to relive their past. The callejon celebrates the day when two young lovers, thwarted by their parents unwilling to accept a social divide, were able to reach each other's lips from their respective balconies across a very narrow alley.

Now, some months later and duly chastised, city council has put up a very large billboard depicting artistic kisses and heart warming embraces, assuring us that Guanajuato is open minded and in full support of public bussing. And of course it always was, as is continually demonstrated by hundreds of young people. They do not show reticence in public (and most likely do not find much privacy at home) in their urgency to express desires they later know to have mistaken for romance.

Meanwhile the trash is not picked up, many schools are still waiting for books unexplainably detained in the maze of bureaucracy and graft, entire plazas are torn up to beautify a city already rich , politicians accuse each other (and with good reason) of squandering public funds with municipal elections coming up in June. As the Germans say: Alles schon da gewesen. They had a way with words once they figured that there was nothing new under the sun.

It is easy to be an outsider and criticize. It is not as if the US is a paragon of virtue or a caring nation (Texans will disagree with that). No place is. We have been spared the awful violence of the border regions and of those states where the drug routes carve a path of atrocity on their way to the US border. It is the great irony that this violence is not the result of a domestic drug culture, but of cross border, US, drug consumption. A fence has been built, tunnels have been shut down, patrols have been reinforced, in some places militias have taken the law in their own hands, and laws have been passed. But the real problem is drug addiction, the real damage is done by the increasing demand for drugs, and by the poverty of so many Mexicans. There is so much money involved in the narco trade, so much influence that can be bought with it, so many guns that can be bought in Arizona. Free market forces at work: Mexico exports drugs in exchange for guns from the US. I don't make excuses for what the Mexican cartels are doing: it is awful. But there is a context.

Guanajuato, in sharp contrast to the border states, is tranquil. I believe this has a lot to do with the geography of the city. There are definitely break-ins here, and we are careful to lock our homes, but there is very little crime against persons, let alone shootings. The city is built in ravines, and there are only four roads out of the city, easily blocked by police patrols. Anyone starting serious mayhem here would have a tough time getting out. And narcos don't walk, they use SUVs with smoked glass windows and out of state license plates.

We read daily accounts of murders, torture and decapitations. Of heads found in ice chests along the highway, of policemen shot on their door steps and the death toll is in the thousands. There are voices urging the government to step back, to stop the campaign against the cartels. It is thought that the violence started when Calderón became president and declared war on the cartels. Up until two years ago there had been a silent pact between the governments, both national and state, that amounted to a 'don't ask don't tell' policy. I don't know if that is true, but a fact is that there was little or no violence.(A few months ago a shoot-out occurred in nearby León, when a convoy of criminals encountered a re-enforced police patrol intent on stopping them. The enforcement arm of a drug cartel – the Zetas – were fleeing from nearby Zacatecas state, on the way to Michoacán. At the Guanajuato border they called the governor and demanded free passage through the state, invoking an old 'understanding' with the previous government. The governor forcefully declined the accommodation, resulting in the middle-of-the-day-on-the-main-boulevard shoot out. But that is generally speaking as close as we get to violence,)

It will not become peaceful here for some time, and I certainly have no idea how to resolve these issues. But it has to give everyone pause when you read that most of the captured gunmen and kidnappers range in age between 14 and 25. Kids, in torn T shirts and worn-out sneakers. A lot of girls and women. They kill for a couple of dollars, living ten to a room without furniture. (The Mexican historian Enrique Krauze wrote an Op-Ed piece for the NYT – 3/25/2009 – titled 'The Mexican Evolution', in which he argues that the distortion by the US press adds to the despair on both sides of the border. That, yes, there is violence, but that the country should not be judged by that alone, just as the Chicago Prohibition era violence was not representative of the US as a whole. Personally I don't agree with this 'white wash': Al Capone was not killing at the same scale, did not exhibit the extreme cruelty we see here, would not go after public officials and police, unless they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor did that violence spread much beyond urban centers. Prohibition brought with it serious criminality. But it never led to the undermining of government with the very real threat to democracy (violence against anti-cartel candidates, intimidation at the polls, even threats against election commission officials). There should be more measured US reporting on these Mexican issues, and in that Krauze is right.)

Next week is Semana Santa, Holy Week. This is a very big deal here, more so than Christmas. Processions, re-enactments, flags and banners, services: the city is preparing itself. We decided to stay here and experience these, so Latin American, religious holidays. The city will be crowded with the tens of thousands of Mexican tourists who will come here, because Guanajuato has a reputation for putting up quite a show. Its re-enactment of the Stages of the Cross, its exuberance in celebrating the meaning of Easter, are unique to Latino-America. At the beginning of Lent, some weeks ago now, devout Catholics filled he streets coming from church and daylong pastoral ministrations, with ashes on their fore heads. It looked as if the clergy, in order to meet demand, had resorted to the use of rubber stamps roughly in the shape of the symbol we used to associate with fall-out shelters.

The Mexican Constitution is adamant about the separation of church and state, and until very recently priests and nuns were forbidden to wear their clerical garb and habits in public. Given the history of the (Catholic) Church in this country, this is not surprising. But the people, publicly adhering to the law (and, I believe, understanding the need for the separation), kept their faith. Faith pervades life, and people walk past churches and shrines (the Virgin of Guadelupe is everywhere) and cross themselves almost automatically, the habit flowing from the mother's breast. It is not uncommon, certainly not these weeks, to see families carry large representations of Jesus on the Cross, not just as reprints of church paintings, but made of wood and often of considerable dimensions. There is no bus, no taxi here whose driver is not guided by the Virgin, and who does not invoke a prayer for a safe journey. Faith, perhaps more than religion, is a part of life here.

The jacaranda trees are in bloom. Large clusters of flowers obscure the branches, bare of leaves after the winter. The small flowers, individually, are of many-hued tones ranging from lilac to purple, tending towards opalescent lilac. But seen from a distance the flowers lose their individuality and become flowing sheets of color, hard to define. During the North American fall and winter the Guanajuato mountain sides are brown and barren, but the summer and early fall rains give color to the ranges, yet garden plants bloom year round. No rain from September until April-May, tropical climate afternoon rains the rest of the time. Meanwhile, there is the sun, and babies wrapped in blankets until the mercury rises to the 70-degree mark. Street vendors unfurl large umbrellas against sunshine or rainfall. The streets offer the same face year round, regardless of weather.

This weekend we'll have a party to inaugurate our new patio. This is of course nothing but a thinly veiled excuse to get together. As our friend Jan asked the other day: "When did you arrive here last year? July? When? We must have a party to celebrate." Anna, of course, is the guiding spirit in all of this. I was thinking of maybe 10-12 people, but the guest list has grown to 30 or more. I had no idea we counted so many as friends. But indeed, we move into a constantly growing circle of friends. I guess we'll just have to get more wine and noshies. We have no parking anywhere near us, a fact we never fail to include in invitations. Actually, there is one space in the alley above us, but anyone with a car larger that a Beetle would have trouble getting out of there, having to back down, making a difficult turn in front of our house, and then inching his way down to the main street. But since most of our friends know of this one space and count on using it, it is safer to announce that there won't be any parking at all. I'd hate to think of people getting stuck up there. Quite a few have picked up a scratch late at night. Wine might have been involved, sometimes even tequila. You know the reckless life we lead.

(I am a slow writer, and I insert this paragraph after the party. We had a great time, with 30+ guests and a shameful number of empty wine and beer bottles….).

A while back we bought an iPod to bring all of our CDs together in one small gadget and save valuable shelf space. We asked our friend Cuautemoc, the Symphony flute player with strong ties to the University radio station, to see if the station would be interested in having our collection. Great idea, he said, and introduced us to a young woman with a role in the radio operation. That was five months ago. We ended up giving the whole collection to Federíco, who is enthusiastically copying it all, passing on tracks to friends. Véronique, the owner of Le Midi, a small French restaurant on the Plazuela San Fernando, now enjoys not my French collection but old Ray Charles recordings. We have all music down-loaded on our computers and frequently exchange tracks with friends.

There is no sense in copying DVDs: we buy movies of excellent quality for about a dollar apiece. Totally illegal of course, but you'd have a very hard time finding original DVDs here. I read that crime syndicates have a lock on the pirated CD and DVD market and have made it very clear to 'legal' merchants that they are not interested in copy right laws. Contradictory behavior in my case. In the college bookstore I would not, even for Anna, copy and sell at cost copyrighted material for her classes without paying royalties to the authors and their publishers. Anna ignored my 'ethical' objections and had her secretary do it. Sheer exploitation of the working class which I tried to avoid.

San Fernando, this small square, so like Paris, was the subject of heated debate in the city. The many small restaurants lining the perimeter all fight for space, and attempt to put as many tables and chairs in 'their' space. The neighborhood complained, seeing private enterprise usurp public space. Some tables and chairs were removed to comply with permits. Meanwhile one more eatery opened. I am convinced that the removal is temporary: those tables and chairs, for now out of view but close at hand, will make a comeback. Our local paper, the a.m., reports daily on new civic outrages, ranging from sewer issues to wasteful spending of fanciful projects that seem to serve no purpose. One outrage a day, seven horror stories a week (like car wreck stories in 'The Shipping News'.) All of these exposés will end up in that civic landfill of corruption, until the bulldozers of a new regime will inevitably unearth them as if proof of past corruption were essential to proper government. In Chiapas a local government published its annual report, boasting of seven completed public works which had not yet made it to the planning stages. The accusing finger of the press is accurate but wields no power.

Mexicans love to eat, and obesity is a problem. As is diabetes. But what temptation! Food is everywhere, and Mexicans eat on the street at all hours of the day. Hamburgers at night, tamales in the morning, everything else in between. There is a rhythm to the offerings, linked to the hours of the day. All food vendors have a permit, allowing them a certain number of hours of the day (or night) to sell food. Once gone, their place is immediately taken over by other vendors, selling a variation of the same food offered earlier. Lots of grease, corn, meat of dubious provenance and quality, great sauces, onions and peppers: what an aroma they combine to create. Le Midi, really, is the only place in town that offers food that can be thought of as better than average. We are 'foodies' but are relegated to the cooking skills of Anna and some of her friends.

Like Allentown where there is a Walgreen, bank or CVS at every corner, we have our share of hardware emporia, convenience stores and pharmacies. Our street alone has five hardware stores, seven pharmacies and who knows how many mini-supers selling almost food-like substances wrapped in cellophane or plastic. Indestructible stuff, stored for the long haul without fear of spoilage. No lettuce in the OXXO. But lots of 1000-mile chips. I have my own hardware store where we bought a hot water boiler, an action which led to close ties between us and the owner, his brother, his son, his uncle and nephew. In their emporium they play roles of changing importance. Four boilers later, and quite a few tips for the guys (re)-installing them, we now wave at them, and no transaction between us, no matter how small, can proceed until we have solemnly shaken hands. The old man in the news kiosk at the bottom of our alley smiles a three-toothed greeting in the morning and takes my seven pesos for the a.m. newspaper without bothering to check the coins. We are that close. His wife, a wonderful woman who does not fail to send greetings to Anna and enjoins me to buy her flowers and to kiss her often and publicly. She must have had bad experiences with middle class Mexicans, for she does not fail to assure us that we are much nicer than 'them'. In my case that only means that my Spanish is not good enough to give expression to whatever feelings of superiority I might harbor (I don't). Given the great accomplishments and skills of the people who live in this country, their tenacity to make life work, the focus on relationships and family in the country where I have chosen to spend my days, given all that and more, it is unlikely that I would feel anything but admiration.

People move into, and out of, our life. Many friends maintain another life back home. Back home, in the United States. It seems so far away. We give them a big hug the day before they fly or drive back and say that three or four months will fly by. And those months do fly by, and we relate to them the judgment of others whose experience had taught them that, in the long run, you can't maintain two lives: one here, one in the States.

Gord is one. Gordy they call him in Canada, which is his home. Gordon, he was born with. A piano player, a serious one, practicing every day on intricate fingering and passages in places where pianos have come to neglect. Gordon who is a scientist, a tennis player and writer of technical manuals to make a living: never at rest. A few weeks ago he played modern Russian music at the Cervantes museum. Sitting down with Isir, a Cuba pianist with whom he was to play quatre mains, I saw him freeze as Isir's hands were coming down to the keys, her body ever so slightly tensing in anticipation of their collaboration. In front of him were two sheets of blank paper. No staphs, no notes. He looked up and smiled a shy smile: 'Momentito, por favor', he said and ambled offstage. It would have crushed a lesser person.

A few nights ago we attended the weekly Symphony concert, with an all- Wagner program. A composer I would not normally sit down and have a beer with, but for Branko the closest you can come to Walhalla – and Wagner certainly was greatly inspired by the place where Norse gods dwelled. Branko and his Vincent have spent the last year preparing for the Wagner festival this fall in Seattle, reading everything from learned discourses on tonality to psychological insights into the dramatis personae of his great operas. There we were last Friday, the auditorium fairly packed, and Branko wanting to sit by himself but willing to exchange pre-concert pleasantries with us. He had brought us the copy of a book on the symbolism of Siegfried's death in the opera 'Twilight of the Gods' and his very being wanted us to understand and share with him this mystical experience. Two people sat down next to him as the lights dimmed and he moved away. At intermission, after some passable music, he felt that the performance was adequate, but that the main course was still to come. At the conclusion, on our way out of the theatre, the musicians with their instruments mingling with us and off to another life, Branko was close to tears: the director had not understood the tragedy of Siegfried's betrayal and death. He had murdered a man already dead.

If only I could lead a life so intense.

I have been exploring aspects of my past: music, literary readings, even whole plays available on uTube, (or is Utube? – doesn't that look like the name of an African dictator? Utube, the young corporal emerging from the forest to reclaim his ancestral lands? - I am so not connected, but know where to find things). Dutch is an awkward language, spoken by people concerned with a desire for intimacy, yet word-wise incapable of conveying that emotion. Dutch language uses diminutives to chain the word to the speaker, as if he or she had discovered an entirely new meaning. I have never liked my native language, perhaps because of the difference between the written and spoken word. I know of no country where the coarseness and carelessness of daily life so devalued the richness and history of language, where the desire to be 'equal' to others so erased a culture. Scrolling through websites I look for grounds where to drop anchor, but mostly find those ghosts that make up memory. Perhaps it is the distance in years and miles which urge a different perspective and impose a re-interpretation. For sure, time colors memory and easily seduces you to rationalize past deeds. Anyway, how good it is to re-live those parts of the past that are undemanding and pleasurable. Like French chansons we labored so hard to understand with our High Scholl French, the cabaretiers whose names were household words. They were stand-up comedians, commentators on social and political issues, interspersing long monologues with song. How surprising to find that the music readily comes back, and that words and entire verses spring to life again. Perhaps this all has to do with growing older, becoming (a little) less intolerant and accepting the nostalgia that is harder to keep at arm's length. I am thinking of making one more visit to the country of my birth.

March 30, 2009

I can't prove this of course, but there can only be one explanation for Raimondo's omnipresence: he has a lookout stationed on the roof of his wax museum. We walk the high road into town and there he is with a big smile, a hug for Anna and a hard hand shake for me. We are good friends, and he misses us when we don't pass him at least once a day. He wants to know where we are going and nods sagely in agreement with our stated plans. When we return half an hour later we repeat the ritual and he will say: "¡Ah, si! You did get the mail." Would we lie to him? He stands outside his museum and chats up the passers-by, hoping to entice them. Sometimes he nails an entire busload of tourists, but nothing can shake him in his conviction that business is bad. At home he adds to a chest full of pesos. He bought the museum three years ago, when his career in the government accounting office promised no more than a certain future. Now he dusts old heroes of the Mexican revolution, waxed into five peso immortality. I have never been inside his museum and will not confess this to Raimondo. He would insist on a personal tour. Sometimes we walk up to the door and greet his wife Anna. For it is she, obscure in the hallway's semi-darkness, who collects the five pesos for a peek at eternity. Last week Raimondo came running down to the street with a gift in his hands. Normally he patrols a few square yards at the steps to his kingdom, but that time he abandoned his station. He had asked a friend to bring real Chiapas coffee for us. It is very touching. But how do we tell him that we don't drink caffeinated coffee? We had to make it up: a report on the high quality, the uniqueness of flavor of this brew. He is already planning future shipments. What draws him to us?

And so we fall victim to friendship, for I do not know of a way to reject a gift that will not keep on giving because we don't know what to with it. Raimondo touches his chest where his heart is beating strongly with goodwill and friendship for us. He was in tears when Anna baked him a flan. Many friendships have survived the crossing of thinner ice.

We have exchanged gifts and cleared the path to well intentioned friendship. We pat our chests to let him know that our hearts beat in unison. Sometimes we make a detour and avoid him. He speaks English and asks for translations of tourism-related phrases to help him in his business. He forgets his English faster than I do my Spanish.

Manuel, on the other hand, is not stationed in front of anything. He patrols a couple of hundred feet of sidewalk along the Alhóndiga where we pass daily. He is a retired miner, in his 80s, and I do not recall how we made his acquaintance, but now he comes running up to us and embraces Anna with suspicious (well, not really) fervor. He is immensely proud of his physique, and we cannot continue our walk without touching his chest or arms in adoration of his muscles. And indeed, his bones are clad in solid steel. One day, when a cold wind swept the street and we shivered on our way home, he unbuttoned his shirt and proudly proclaimed that he, with that chest full of hair that is the pride of a young man, would never be cold. Anywhere else he could have been arrested for indecent exposure.

The city itself became the focus of national and international ridicule when the mayor issued an ordinance making public kissing an offense subject to fines. The newspapers loved it. The city famous for its 'Callejon del Beso', the Alley of the Kiss, an attraction prominently featured in all tourist publications, had outlawed what had brought fame to Romeo and Juliet. The Callejon del Beso, where not young lovers exult in the moment but retired couples come to relive their past. The callejon celebrates the day when two young lovers, thwarted by their parents unwilling to accept a social divide, were able to reach each other's lips from their respective balconies across a very narrow alley.

Now, some months later and duly chastised, city council has put up a very large billboard depicting artistic kisses and heart warming embraces, assuring us that Guanajuato is open minded and in full support of public bussing. And of course it always was, as is continually demonstrated by hundreds of young people. They do not show reticence in public (and most likely do not find much privacy at home) in their urgency to express desires they later know to have mistaken for romance.

Meanwhile the trash is not picked up, many schools are still waiting for books unexplainably detained in the maze of bureaucracy and graft, entire plazas are torn up to beautify a city already rich , politicians accuse each other (and with good reason) of squandering public funds with municipal elections coming up in June. As the Germans say: Alles schon da gewesen. They had a way with words once they figured that there was nothing new under the sun.

It is easy to be an outsider and criticize. It is not as if the US is a paragon of virtue or a caring nation (Texans will disagree with that). No place is. We have been spared the awful violence of the border regions and of those states where the drug routes carve a path of atrocity on their way to the US border. It is the great irony that this violence is not the result of a domestic drug culture, but of cross border, US, drug consumption. A fence has been built, tunnels have been shut down, patrols have been reinforced, in some places militias have taken the law in their own hands, and laws have been passed. But the real problem is drug addiction, the real damage is done by the increasing demand for drugs, and by the poverty of so many Mexicans. There is so much money involved in the narco trade, so much influence that can be bought with it, so many guns that can be bought in Arizona. Free market forces at work: Mexico exports drugs in exchange for guns from the US. I don't make excuses for what the Mexican cartels are doing: it is awful. But there is a context.

Guanajuato, in sharp contrast to the border states, is tranquil. I believe this has a lot to do with the geography of the city. There are definitely break-ins here, and we are careful to lock our homes, but there is very little crime against persons, let alone shootings. The city is built in ravines, and there are only four roads out of the city, easily blocked by police patrols. Anyone starting serious mayhem here would have a tough time getting out. And narcos don't walk, they use SUVs with smoked glass windows and out of state license plates.

We read daily accounts of murders, torture and decapitations. Of heads found in ice chests along the highway, of policemen shot on their door steps and the death toll is in the thousands. There are voices urging the government to step back, to stop the campaign against the cartels. It is thought that the violence started when Calderón became president and declared war on the cartels. Up until two years ago there had been a silent pact between the governments, both national and state, that amounted to a 'don't ask don't tell' policy. I don't know if that is true, but a fact is that there was little or no violence.(A few months ago a shoot-out occurred in nearby León, when a convoy of criminals encountered a re-enforced police patrol intent on stopping them. The enforcement arm of a drug cartel – the Zetas – were fleeing from nearby Zacatecas state, on the way to Michoacán. At the Guanajuato border they called the governor and demanded free passage through the state, invoking an old 'understanding' with the previous government. The governor forcefully declined the accommodation, resulting in the middle-of-the-day-on-the-main-boulevard shoot out. But that is generally speaking as close as we get to violence,)

It will not become peaceful here for some time, and I certainly have no idea how to resolve these issues. But it has to give everyone pause when you read that most of the captured gunmen and kidnappers range in age between 14 and 25. Kids, in torn T shirts and worn-out sneakers. A lot of girls and women. They kill for a couple of dollars, living ten to a room without furniture. (The Mexican historian Enrique Krauze wrote an Op-Ed piece for the NYT – 3/25/2009 – titled 'The Mexican Evolution', in which he argues that the distortion by the US press adds to the despair on both sides of the border. That, yes, there is violence, but that the country should not be judged by that alone, just as the Chicago Prohibition era violence was not representative of the US as a whole. Personally I don't agree with this 'white wash': Al Capone was not killing at the same scale, did not exhibit the extreme cruelty we see here, would not go after public officials and police, unless they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor did that violence spread much beyond urban centers. Prohibition brought with it serious criminality. But it never led to the undermining of government with the very real threat to democracy (violence against anti-cartel candidates, intimidation at the polls, even threats against election commission officials). There should be more measured US reporting on these Mexican issues, and in that Krauze is right.)

Next week is Semana Santa, Holy Week. This is a very big deal here, more so than Christmas. Processions, re-enactments, flags and banners, services: the city is preparing itself. We decided to stay here and experience these, so Latin American, religious holidays. The city will be crowded with the tens of thousands of Mexican tourists who will come here, because Guanajuato has a reputation for putting up quite a show. Its re-enactment of the Stages of the Cross, its exuberance in celebrating the meaning of Easter, are unique to Latino-America. At the beginning of Lent, some weeks ago now, devout Catholics filled he streets coming from church and daylong pastoral ministrations, with ashes on their fore heads. It looked as if the clergy, in order to meet demand, had resorted to the use of rubber stamps roughly in the shape of the symbol we used to associate with fall-out shelters.

The Mexican Constitution is adamant about the separation of church and state, and until very recently priests and nuns were forbidden to wear their clerical garb and habits in public. Given the history of the (Catholic) Church in this country, this is not surprising. But the people, publicly adhering to the law (and, I believe, understanding the need for the separation), kept their faith. Faith pervades life, and people walk past churches and shrines (the Virgin of Guadelupe is everywhere) and cross themselves almost automatically, the habit flowing from the mother's breast. It is not uncommon, certainly not these weeks, to see families carry large representations of Jesus on the Cross, not just as reprints of church paintings, but made of wood and often of considerable dimensions. There is no bus, no taxi here whose driver is not guided by the Virgin, and who does not invoke a prayer for a safe journey. Faith, perhaps more than religion, is a part of life here.

The jacaranda trees are in bloom. Large clusters of flowers obscure the branches, bare of leaves after the winter. The small flowers, individually, are of many-hued tones ranging from lilac to purple, tending towards opalescent lilac. But seen from a distance the flowers lose their individuality and become flowing sheets of color, hard to define. During the North American fall and winter the Guanajuato mountain sides are brown and barren, but the summer and early fall rains give color to the ranges, yet garden plants bloom year round. No rain from September until April-May, tropical climate afternoon rains the rest of the time. Meanwhile, there is the sun, and babies wrapped in blankets until the mercury rises to the 70-degree mark. Street vendors unfurl large umbrellas against sunshine or rainfall. The streets offer the same face year round, regardless of weather.

This weekend we'll have a party to inaugurate our new patio. This is of course nothing but a thinly veiled excuse to get together. As our friend Jan asked the other day: "When did you arrive here last year? July? When? We must have a party to celebrate." Anna, of course, is the guiding spirit in all of this. I was thinking of maybe 10-12 people, but the guest list has grown to 30 or more. I had no idea we counted so many as friends. But indeed, we move into a constantly growing circle of friends. I guess we'll just have to get more wine and noshies. We have no parking anywhere near us, a fact we never fail to include in invitations. Actually, there is one space in the alley above us, but anyone with a car larger that a Beetle would have trouble getting out of there, having to back down, making a difficult turn in front of our house, and then inching his way down to the main street. But since most of our friends know of this one space and count on using it, it is safer to announce that there won't be any parking at all. I'd hate to think of people getting stuck up there. Quite a few have picked up a scratch late at night. Wine might have been involved, sometimes even tequila. You know the reckless life we lead.

(I am a slow writer, and I insert this paragraph after the party. We had a great time, with 30+ guests and a shameful number of empty wine and beer bottles….).

A while back we bought an iPod to bring all of our CDs together in one small gadget and save valuable shelf space. We asked our friend Cuautemoc, the Symphony flute player with strong ties to the University radio station, to see if the station would be interested in having our collection. Great idea, he said, and introduced us to a young woman with a role in the radio operation. That was five months ago. We ended up giving the whole collection to Federíco, who is enthusiastically copying it all, passing on tracks to friends. Véronique, the owner of Le Midi, a small French restaurant on the Plazuela San Fernando, now enjoys not my French collection but old Ray Charles recordings. We have all music down-loaded on our computers and frequently exchange tracks with friends.

There is no sense in copying DVDs: we buy movies of excellent quality for about a dollar apiece. Totally illegal of course, but you'd have a very hard time finding original DVDs here. I read that crime syndicates have a lock on the pirated CD and DVD market and have made it very clear to 'legal' merchants that they are not interested in copy right laws. Contradictory behavior in my case. In the college bookstore I would not, even for Anna, copy and sell at cost copyrighted material for her classes without paying royalties to the authors and their publishers. Anna ignored my 'ethical' objections and had her secretary do it. Sheer exploitation of the working class which I tried to avoid.

San Fernando, this small square, so like Paris, was the subject of heated debate in the city. The many small restaurants lining the perimeter all fight for space, and attempt to put as many tables and chairs in 'their' space. The neighborhood complained, seeing private enterprise usurp public space. Some tables and chairs were removed to comply with permits. Meanwhile one more eatery opened. I am convinced that the removal is temporary: those tables and chairs, for now out of view but close at hand, will make a comeback. Our local paper, the a.m., reports daily on new civic outrages, ranging from sewer issues to wasteful spending of fanciful projects that seem to serve no purpose. One outrage a day, seven horror stories a week (like car wreck stories in 'The Shipping News'.) All of these exposés will end up in that civic landfill of corruption, until the bulldozers of a new regime will inevitably unearth them as if proof of past corruption were essential to proper government. In Chiapas a local government published its annual report, boasting of seven completed public works which had not yet made it to the planning stages. The accusing finger of the press is accurate but wields no power.

Mexicans love to eat, and obesity is a problem. As is diabetes. But what temptation! Food is everywhere, and Mexicans eat on the street at all hours of the day. Hamburgers at night, tamales in the morning, everything else in between. There is a rhythm to the offerings, linked to the hours of the day. All food vendors have a permit, allowing them a certain number of hours of the day (or night) to sell food. Once gone, their place is immediately taken over by other vendors, selling a variation of the same food offered earlier. Lots of grease, corn, meat of dubious provenance and quality, great sauces, onions and peppers: what an aroma they combine to create. Le Midi, really, is the only place in town that offers food that can be thought of as better than average. We are 'foodies' but are relegated to the cooking skills of Anna and some of her friends.

Like Allentown where there is a Walgreen, bank or CVS at every corner, we have our share of hardware emporia, convenience stores and pharmacies. Our street alone has five hardware stores, seven pharmacies and who knows how many mini-supers selling almost food-like substances wrapped in cellophane or plastic. Indestructible stuff, stored for the long haul without fear of spoilage. No lettuce in the OXXO. But lots of 1000-mile chips. I have my own hardware store where we bought a hot water boiler, an action which led to close ties between us and the owner, his brother, his son, his uncle and nephew. In their emporium they play roles of changing importance. Four boilers later, and quite a few tips for the guys (re)-installing them, we now wave at them, and no transaction between us, no matter how small, can proceed until we have solemnly shaken hands. The old man in the news kiosk at the bottom of our alley smiles a three-toothed greeting in the morning and takes my seven pesos for the a.m. newspaper without bothering to check the coins. We are that close. His wife, a wonderful woman who does not fail to send greetings to Anna and enjoins me to buy her flowers and to kiss her often and publicly. She must have had bad experiences with middle class Mexicans, for she does not fail to assure us that we are much nicer than 'them'. In my case that only means that my Spanish is not good enough to give expression to whatever feelings of superiority I might harbor (I don't). Given the great accomplishments and skills of the people who live in this country, their tenacity to make life work, the focus on relationships and family in the country where I have chosen to spend my days, given all that and more, it is unlikely that I would feel anything but admiration.

People move into, and out of, our life. Many friends maintain another life back home. Back home, in the United States. It seems so far away. We give them a big hug the day before they fly or drive back and say that three or four months will fly by. And those months do fly by, and we relate to them the judgment of others whose experience had taught them that, in the long run, you can't maintain two lives: one here, one in the States.

Gord is one. Gordy they call him in Canada, which is his home. Gordon, he was born with. A piano player, a serious one, practicing every day on intricate fingering and passages in places where pianos have come to neglect. Gordon who is a scientist, a tennis player and writer of technical manuals to make a living: never at rest. A few weeks ago he played modern Russian music at the Cervantes museum. Sitting down with Isir, a Cuba pianist with whom he was to play quatre mains, I saw him freeze as Isir's hands were coming down to the keys, her body ever so slightly tensing in anticipation of their collaboration. In front of him were two sheets of blank paper. No staphs, no notes. He looked up and smiled a shy smile: 'Momentito, por favor', he said and ambled offstage. It would have crushed a lesser person.

A few nights ago we attended the weekly Symphony concert, with an all- Wagner program. A composer I would not normally sit down and have a beer with, but for Branko the closest you can come to Walhalla – and Wagner certainly was greatly inspired by the place where Norse gods dwelled. Branko and his Vincent have spent the last year preparing for the Wagner festival this fall in Seattle, reading everything from learned discourses on tonality to psychological insights into the dramatis personae of his great operas. There we were last Friday, the auditorium fairly packed, and Branko wanting to sit by himself but willing to exchange pre-concert pleasantries with us. He had brought us the copy of a book on the symbolism of Siegfried's death in the opera 'Twilight of the Gods' and his very being wanted us to understand and share with him this mystical experience. Two people sat down next to him as the lights dimmed and he moved away. At intermission, after some passable music, he felt that the performance was adequate, but that the main course was still to come. At the conclusion, on our way out of the theatre, the musicians with their instruments mingling with us and off to another life, Branko was close to tears: the director had not understood the tragedy of Siegfried's betrayal and death. He had murdered a man already dead.

If only I could lead a life so intense.

I have been exploring aspects of my past: music, literary readings, even whole plays available on uTube, (or is Utube? – doesn't that look like the name of an African dictator? Utube, the young corporal emerging from the forest to reclaim his ancestral lands? - I am so not connected, but know where to find things). Dutch is an awkward language, spoken by people concerned with a desire for intimacy, yet word-wise incapable of conveying that emotion. Dutch language uses diminutives to chain the word to the speaker, as if he or she had discovered an entirely new meaning. I have never liked my native language, perhaps because of the difference between the written and spoken word. I know of no country where the coarseness and carelessness of daily life so devalued the richness and history of language, where the desire to be 'equal' to others so erased a culture. Scrolling through websites I look for grounds where to drop anchor, but mostly find those ghosts that make up memory. Perhaps it is the distance in years and miles which urge a different perspective and impose a re-interpretation. For sure, time colors memory and easily seduces you to rationalize past deeds. Anyway, how good it is to re-live those parts of the past that are undemanding and pleasurable. Like French chansons we labored so hard to understand with our High Scholl French, the cabaretiers whose names were household words. They were stand-up comedians, commentators on social and political issues, interspersing long monologues with song. How surprising to find that the music readily comes back, and that words and entire verses spring to life again. Perhaps this all has to do with growing older, becoming (a little) less intolerant and accepting the nostalgia that is harder to keep at arm's length. I am thinking of making one more visit to the country of my birth.

Cervantino festival and other days

It has been a while, but I have a good excuse: for the last 3 weeks we have been attending daily concerts as part of the annual Cervantino festival. It has been a wonderful experience: we attended classical ballet, ballet folklorico, jazz, symphonic works, medieval and baroque music. At lunchtime today we took the bus to the Templo Valenciana, where 14th-16th century music was performed by an American and Mexican group, in front of one of the richest altars I have ever seen. Pure magic.
It has been an amazing experience and we are in awe of the organization behind it. Every day, every day for three weeks five to six events were staged in different venues, and it all came off without a hitch. The logistics for such an undertaking must have been staggering. We constantly meet new people and our life is the richer for it. Louis stayed with us for 10 days, and he had to hit the ground running. We had gotten him tickets too. Last week, for his last three days here, we went to Morelia and Patzcuaro, not too far away, unless you get lost as we did. Morelia is an old Spanish colonial city, much more so than Guanajuato, which is essentially a late 18th-early 19th century town. We walked around, shopped in the lookie-lookies and puttered on to Patzcuaro, where we stayed two nights in an old hotel (like all Spanish buildings, it had several courtyards) right on the main square. A lovely city, laid out in the Spanish style: a strict gridwork of streets, the main square ringed by all the symbols of power: the church, the governor’s palace, city hall, filled in by arcades with lively outdoor cafes. Lively, that is, until 9pm, when, as if heeding a silent call, everything shuts down. Having gotten used to late evening dinners it took us by surprise. The first night we ended up in a small Mexican restaurant with a simple menu. The owner was sitting by himself a table away, and ordered the waiter to serve us a glass of tequila ‘on the house’, and we sipped some of the very good stuff that comes from a Don Pablo bottle. Before we could finish our glasses, he offered an other shot. In short, when the evening was done and we had shut down the place, the bottle was empty. In that we were helped by a Chilean couple with whom we joined forces and tables that night. An unexpected encounter and pleasure had it been Allentown that night, instead of Mexico.
At a concert we met Martin and Mary, Irishmen, who had chosen to live in Perth Australia, and were now traveling for three months in Mexico. Mary is a linguist at the U of Dublin, on an extended stay, and Martin a physical therapist. They had traveled all over the world, had taught and worked in Japan for 5 years, trekked the Himalayas etc. Funny and warm as Irishmen are, and we spent a few lovely evenings together at our house. They left for Oaxaca and further adventures. Someday I would like to figure out how people in their early 40’s can afford such a life. If I do I will pass it on to those of you not unredeemingly beyond that age.
We did some great shopping in Patzcuaro and surrounding villages and unashamedly filled the car trunk. If you are a shopper, Guanajuato is not the best place to flash your credit card. Not much good art stuff, lots of cheap goodies for the tourist trade, with the Mexican penchant for gaudynesss in mind. But talk about Morelia and Patzcuaro! Angels, some beautiful prints and embroideries, books, some clothes and all those little things that are so irresistible when you cruise through the markets. Born shoppers know of what I speak. A whole new set of dishes, weighing a ton. (Ruth, a 97-year old friend, wondered: are these weapons? when she lifted her plate during a farewell lunch for Branko a few days ago. We will miss him).
We have become friends with Djamilia, first viola in the Guanajuato Symphony and, like all members of the University of Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra, a full-time faculty member, and like almost a third of the members, a Russian. What a lovely woman, sweet and unpretentious, delighted to meet Anna and learn that she is historian: her daughter wants to continue her studies in history and Djamilia believes that Anna can be a very influential example. We now know a few members and feel very much like the ‘in’ crowd. Of course, everybody knows people in the orchestra, but for us it is a new experience.
After a very informative evening with Federico, the papermaker, I have decided to concentrate more on photography and learn to stay away from taking postcard pictures. Federico has a very good eye and an intuitive sense for composition and color (he is trained graphic artist). Federico, being Federico with the Italian side of him coming to the surface, was already talking about an exhibition. Most, most flattering. But, he warned me, he was going to show samples of my pix to other artists, who might not be as kindly disposed as he is. I’ll see.
We have been here for two months and that is hard to believe. Time has flown by and in fact we have been so busy that we decided to take a few days of rest next week, with puttering around the main dish on the menu.
We have to start thinking of the work in and around the house we want to have done while we are away. Plan for a smooth half year before we will return next June. Anna’s last semester, the end of a long teaching career. She is a woman who is more than ready. After next semester we will no longer have work obligations that can mess with our plans and calendar (work is such a nuisance, isn’t it?) and we’ll take it from there. No fixed plans yet, lots of ideas.
The town is filled with tourists, mostly Mexicans, and the various arms of the police forces are well represented on the streets to keep things smooth and orderly. You drink on the street, you pee in the corner, you disobey a traffic sign and it is the caboose for you. And it is amazing that with thousands and thousands of people out on the streets, food vendors every 10 yards, that the streets and squares are virtually spotless. The Sanitation department works 24/7 here (literally) and it shows. Had this festival been held in Allentown you’d be wading ankle deep through the trash. Hats off, for sure.
Early November Anna will take over the teaching duties of her friend Karen for a week. Karen is the local head of a CIEE study abroad program at the U of Gto. In November too we expect a 4-day visit by an old friend of Anna’s. And then it’ll be time to begin packing and what-not for the return home, perhaps just in time for the birth of my daughter Lynn’s first child, who will join her sister’s son Bentley as the pair of grandchildren of a proud grandfather (how old is a man like me?)
No pix in this blog. I posted two albums on the web, which you can access by typing : http://picasaweb.google.com/adriaan41 in your navigation bar. Perhaps you feel tempted to contemplate a trip to Mexico, but I must warn you: if you are not a good and sturdy walker, Guanajuato is not your kind of place. Lots of walking here, and even terrain was only achieved by sacrificing local labor in the past, until they ran out of Indians I guess. In any event, for Guanajuato you must be in pretty good shape.
(And Anna goes to yoga class three times a week, at 8 am!, as if we don’t get enough exercise.) ‘No yo’, as we say in my part of the garden where the wine is served.

September

Much has happened. In the grand scheme of things they are trivial, but for us daily life is still full of surprises.
One night, with Jose and Estella for dinner, we mention that the gates to the parking area are sagging and hard to operate. Jose is the man who takes care of our house. ‘No problema, Hank’ he says and we nod wisely. We know all about ‘No problema’. The next morning Heremina and Don Jose come to the house for the weekly cleaning (what a luxury!) and we leave for a leisurely breakfast at the Plaza San Fernando nearby (They play Dave Brubeck in the serenity of an early morning). We return home and find two men messing around with our exterior fuse box. Instant panic: we remember the guys with wire cutters ready to disconnect us. However, these men are connecting their arc welder to a 220 Volt line. Three hours later the gates are back in operating position. New braces, new supports. No problema. The next morning!
A long-standing wish to replace the ugly plastic chairs on the patio took us on a bus trip to Dolores Hidalgo. We wanted ‘equipal’ (sticks and leather) chairs, only made in Guadalajara, and very, very hard to find around here. We arrived and asked around. Anna found a shoe store (where else?), and was given the address of the store where to buy them. We took a cab, found the place and were informed that perhaps mid-October a new shipment of chairs would arrive. But: ‘go back to the traffic light, turn right and 300 meters down the road you’ll find Arte Mexicano.’ It was a long walk at mid-day, but Arte Mexicano had stacks of the desired chairs. In no time we placed our order and asked about possible delivery to our house, more than an hour away. ‘No problema’’, we’ll be there today. At 8:30 that evening the owner and his wife showed up, their van loaded with seven chairs. Is there any place on earth where you get that kind of attention? We sit back in awe and count our fortune cookies.

September 16 was Independence Day in Mexico. The day when the ‘Grito’ is read all over Mexico. The ‘Grito’ (the ‘Shout’) is the call for Independence, issued in 1810 by Padre Hidalgo on the steps of his church in Dolores Hidalgo. The ‘conspiracy’ to overthrow by force the Spanish colonial regime was betrayed and Padre Hidalgo, one of the leaders, prematurely issued his call to rise up and defeat the Spanish. Ultimately the leaders were captured here in Guanajuato and beheaded. At 11 o’clock at night, allegedly the time of his grito, and every year since 1940, his words echo all over Mexico.


Our neighbors, part-time residents here, who, as a family of three sisters, own a beautiful hacienda above us, had invited us for the celebration. ‘What time shall we come?’ we asked. ‘Eight o’clock would be fine.’ We know about 'la hora Latina’ and arrived at nine. ‘We thought you wouldn’t come’, and were the first ones to arrive. The extended family, gathered here for the celebration, dribbled in during the next hour. Wine and tequila, and lots of good talk. Anna and I left them at 10:30 to go to witness the reading of the grito. Thousands and thousands of people were packed in the square, flags waving, a mariachi band blasting music, keeping spirits high. Babies on shoulders, people jostling for a better view. The wonderful (and seductive!) smell of greasy tortillas con carne filling the air.
The grito was read: at every call, at every exhortation thousands shouted ‘Viva!’, and when the Mayor had done the deed, we were covered by foam spray from pressure cans. Who knows where that tradition started? Fireworks erupted, and we pushed our way back through the crowd,
The neighbors had invited us back to their house afterwards, and served a four-course dinner at midnight. At one o’clock, tired and with too much to eat, we staggered home. Mexicans know a lot more about living than we do.

We walk and walk and get to know the street vendors; notice the small things of daily life. Where to get avocados and ripe figs. Where to buy a drill bit, where to find flower pots. Walking is not easy here. Mexicans have no sense of order, and will cut into any line as a matter of fact. Not using elbows, simply inserting their bodies into any open space. Hugging the wall on the corner, they find space between you and a stone wall. There is no such thing as walking on the right side of the sidewalk and holding a steady course: navigating your way people cross in front of you and force you to the left. Mexicans seek the opening, although their pace is slower than mine. They come to a sudden stop to chat with friends, and you almost crash into them. Meeting friends is so much more important than rushing down the street. A few days ago we were on a bus which stopped for no apparent reason. Anna and I were on our way to meet friends, and sort of in a hurry. ‘Go man, go’, I wished, but the driver had seen his girlfriend on the street and exchanged some warm and very hearty embraces with her. And, really, why not?
As a gringo in this country there is much to learn. Much to learn about the quality of life; about the pace which is slower than mine.
If I am slow to add to the blog it is a testament to life here. Mañana is not a word without meaning. But you have to live it to understand. More or less daily we read the NYT headlines online, and really, how much has changed since we left? So why spend a lot of time worrying?


We removed more garden fences and added flowerpots to improve both appearance and safety. The garden looks so much better! The geraniums are on steroids; the oleanders and bougainvilleas are in bloom. A long row of lavender plants is enjoying life and is spreading. The kitchen feeds on fresh herbs, with oranges (sort of sour) and limes for the picking. And just when we needed him the burro-man appeared . The man and his two burros, the man walking, the burros trudging. The burros laden with bags full of composted soil, 50 lbs each for 40 pesos. The mules were smiling in relief for we are impetuous buyers. Four days later he was back: more mules, more bags. Do we eat this stuff? He knew a good thing when he saw it.
He is convincing, and the thought of the long road back for him and his burros tugged at the heart strings. At this rate we’ll be selling dirt to our neighbors.

Next week we’ll rent a car and bite the bullet. The last car we rented here in February had a worn-out clutch. If you have seen, or can imagine, the steep slopes of the city, you’d know what that means. But a car will allow us to go to Leon, a serious shopping mecca. Guanajuato has no box stores: no Home Depot, Walmart, Sears nor Costco. It is a matter of civic pride to say: Oh! Those stores? They are in Leon! And people are right, they represent a manner of civil contamination. But Leon is an hour away.
I have a long, long list for Home Depot.
There is no such thing as “I want it now” when it comes to consumer goods. To want is to say: I can’t do without it, while the store is miles away and you can wait. The goodies (in the American sense) are available within a 50-mile radius, but never here. Guanajuato is the place where inventiveness and ‘no problema’ rule. It is one of the great attractions of the city. But sometimes you just lust for the Home Depot aisles: ready in a box with instructions not in Serbo-Croatian; no fuss, no drawings or designs of what you’re looking for. Ready in a box, what a concept. Who’d have thunk it?

Bureaucracy rules: the streets are full of people clutching manila folders. To not have a folder is to commit life without protection. Paperwork, adorned with seals and signatures to accomplish even the most mundane: to enroll your child in school; to obtain water service; to sell cactus leaves on the street. It’s all about documents. It’s all about standing in line, getting a number. It’s all about having a number and no place to go. On the other side of the counter a woman smiles at you and sends you home. One more piece of paper. Preparation does not help, for the rules change. (An American in the Immigration Office in San Miguel, waiting for his visa, said it well: “There is nothing more satisfying than to hear the sound of a rubber stamp coming down on your papers!”).
The system keeps a lot of people busy, and that, most likely, is what it is all about. Don’t disturb a way of life that has been afloat for centuries.
It is never about the papers in your hand, it is about the Kafka’esque process. And in that I fail. I wish to establish a process and run into Eskimos who are told to build igloos with bricks. It does not work that way. And, if you know the Mayor, well, of course, ‘no problema’. I don’t know the Mayor and for that reason we do not disconnect the TV, telephone or Internet when we leave. It was hard enough to get connected. Don’t mess with what works: it’s worth the extra pesos.

We are awaiting Louis’s arrival next week, and will attend as many events of the Cervantino festival as we can. A 3-day trip to Patzcuaro and Morelia is planned. Late October Anna’s old friend Valerie will visit us for a few days, and then we’ll have come close to the end of our stay here. How quickly the weeks go by!

MEAT

The butcher down the street is a nice man with a beautiful smile. He keeps on the somewhat-less-than-clean countertop enormous sheets of chicharrón (fried pork skin) which he offers with a napkin to his customers. Yesterday, I went for ground pork to make, I told him, chiles enogada. He was impressed at my tackling that complicated dish. We chatted about cooking while I took miniscule nibbles of my chicharrón and wondered how to get rid of it. After I had wrapped it in a napkin explaining that I wanted to save some for my husband, he ripped off another huge sheet for my esposo. We continued to chat about various Mexican dishes. I said I would like to make cochinito pibil one day and how do you say pork butt in Spanish. Well, he wasn’t sure that pork butt was what I wanted. He opened his refrigerated show case, brought out a hunk of meat and laid it on the still not-so-clean counter. This he said is the butt. Then out came another, laid next to it. These are the lower ribs. Next the upper ribs, the shoulder, a leg. “Look at this beautiful tenderloin. It comes from here.” Soon the entire pig was on the counter and I was treated to his idea of how to best cook each of these cuts. After about 45 minutes, I thanked him for the anatomy lesson, a kilo of chicken backs for soup, that he insisted was a “regalo,” and the chicharrón, my piece of which was starting to cause grease stains on my pants pocket where I had shoved it earlier.

Santa Rosa

On Friday we were going to Santa Rosa, half an hour from here, higher up, much higher up in the mountains. But then we didn’t because the plumber came. Not just a plumber to replace the kitchen sink, but a man armed with hammers and chisels, and an assortment of pipes, faucets and connector rings. It all started with Anna saying to Jose Gutierrez, our realtor and house manager, that she’d like a bigger sink. No problema, Anna, I have a big sink for you, deeper and with two basins. He just happened to have one, or thereabouts. He knew a plumber and, as we are fond of saying: Bob is your uncle. Days later we encounter dust on the second floor. The kitchen counter was constructed with German bunker blue prints as a guide: 3 inches of cement, braced with rebar. It took some hacking and sawing, but six hours later water flowed onto seamless stainless steel, no water dripped from the connections and we could not have been happier. One day, from conception to completion! Only in Mexico! It never fails to amaze us.

Before that we had more railings cut down in the garden, unfortunately also a small section that was the anchor for the alley-side wall.. Now we need a welder to put it back in again. Jose assures us that he can get us someone. ‘And don’t think about the small section of wall you want to build’. Words as sweet as honey.
Then we did go to Santa Rosa, on a dreary day, in the comfort of a long-distance Mercedes Benz bus, leaning back in our first-class airplane seats, climbing and climbing on a twisting mountain road, until we arrived at the Santa Rosa stop, shivering at near cloud-like altitude.
Santa Rosa is at first glance like all other small Mexican villages: a solitary dog on a deserted street, forlorn decorations from a past fiesta, half finished houses a testimony to dreams not realized.

But you walk around, avoiding rivulets of water after a heavy rain, and see the plants and flowers in gardens, patios, and on rooftops. You take in the sweetest smile of the young woman in the small restaurant, and smile in turn when someone says ‘hi’ to you in the street in response to our ‘buenos dias’. A small tienda, a cooperative of five women, with heavenly smells around. What smells so good? we ask, and are led to the working area of the store where walnuts are roasted with sugar. Two bags, for sure, you don’t want to run out. And a jar of that mango jelly.
We had heard of a pottery in town, and found it easily. Hundreds upon hundreds of plates, vases, cups and dishes, as far as the eye could see. Made for export; big cartons with markings that said ‘Canada’. Pretty ugly stuff though, if you ask me, but we did find a small dish we liked. What can you do? Here we are, two gringos, walking into this deserted store, stretching out over three levels, a young and hopeful woman hovering around, ready at the first suggestion of interest? You buy something, that’s what you do. The small square dish now sits on the living room table. Five years from now we will look at it and say: ’Remember that day we went to Santa Rosa?’
Santa Rosa stays with you. The cathedral rises above all, across from the garage and feed store. On our way we shared the ride with several old women, holding large bouquets of flowers. We found them again in the church yard, waiting for a funeral. We looked into the church (its doors were still closed), and saw inside the simplicity of a Shaker or Moravian church. Plain benches, a table with green cloth serving as altar. Old women who had come to pay their respects. This you can not ignore: the passage of time. Mexicans do it better than we do. In that, I think, lies the appeal of a village like Santa Rosa: the continuation.

Santa Rosa has power but no running water. Children and old people bring buckets to the street and fill them with water gurgling out of rubber hoses, mostly buried below the pavement. If no one is there to fill a bucket, a drum is placed to receive the water, which will serve as reserve supply until the next bucket. There is only one Pepsi Cola sign, and it is right behind the Elementary School. At the edge of town, where the pavement of rough stones is losing the battle against eroding rain waters, where old cars wear out their clutches on the steep incline, a young boy bursts forth from a small house to greet us. He had seen us from his garden.

We attempted to get money out of an ATM. All of that started with the desire to simplify our life. Jose had told us that we could pay our utility bills directly via our bank, a great idea, given that our power had almost been cut off two weeks before for non payment. It seemed like a good idea to put some pesos into our bank account, but our bank’s ATM was out of commission (or out of money). Next door, behind Alcatraz-like bars, we found another ATM. There are very few variations on our experiences with Mexican banks and offices, and we should not have been surprised. I enter the amount I want (need is another story), and nothing happens. Except that the receipt shows that the money was taken out of our account. We know how to grin and bear it. Eventually it all worked out, after meeting some very solicitous and unwaveringly polite managers.
Tomorrow, Monday, we’ll go to San Miguel de Allende for a few days. Our friends Gill and Jerry Schofer were more than generous in offering the use of their house while they were away, and we will put it to good use. We’ll go shopping for garden furniture, and spend endless hours in the Immigration Office, trying to figure out what papers (and how many copies) we will need to re-new my Mexican visa.
Meanwhile we wait for a delivery of garden plants from Julie and her architect husband Pepe, and we’ll wait until their VW bus is running again.
Pepe is a Gaudi, the wilder the better. In California he built a houseboat for himself and Julie, floating on Styrofoam. It rocked like crazy. An office he built in the top of concrete palm trees, and the birdcage in their nursery is constructed from a wheelbarrow, toaster lids, chicken wire and a carfender. A man of great and playful imagination, We hope they can fix their van and we'll have them over for drinks and dinner.

On the bus home from the Telmex office we are joined by a man, no more than seven years old. He positions himself against an empty seat next to us, displays his randomly arranged teeth in a mirthless smile and produces the tools of his trade: a ribbed piece of wood and a metal hair pick. Not much music can be produced with such. He does not really try, this old man. Where is his mother? With a tenuous grip on the three-note scale he sings his way from bus stop to bus stop, one eye on the 2-peso coin in my hand. Religious fanaticism marks his work for three stops, blandly segueing to torrid goings-on in the bushes between a young man and his amour. He collects three pesos and is replaced by a young man handing out leaflets, which Anna takes for political propaganda. Not. You accept the paper, you listen to the spiel from the back of the bus, and you are asked for a donation. How much change can a man hold in his pockets?
Telmex, a never-never land where the brothers Grimm found their inspiration. Ostensibly a telephone office, yet full of surprises. We talked of that before.
Blog. What a strange word. It evokes images of a deep-sea world. But then, ‘table’ is a strange word too: say it out loud five times and it looses all meaning. I blog with only the faintest notion of what it is supposed to look like.
We have shopped and decorated, talked with Jaime who frames pictures for us; Jose Louis the welder who will cut fences and install them in Branko’s house. Don Bernardo, who sells us flowers and brings Anna plants for the garden; the newspaper vendor, too old and dignified to exchange names with, and who accepts my ‘buenos dias’ every morning when I exchange 6 pesos for the A.M. newspaper. The tamales lady on the corner of Dos Rios, who smiles in recognition and sells us a very occasional tamale, mindful as we are of the bundled-in calories.
Guanajuato is seductive: it takes a while to take her in, but once you do she is part of you. I don’t write travelogues; magazines and newspapers do a much better job of it. If you want more pix and history try this Guanajuato site orthis site
Joan and Lud left Monday morning to go back to their lives in Allentown. As if the town were ours, we showed them around with the pride of ones responsible for it. Just as we open the front door to walk them down to the main street to catch a cab for the airport, two pleasant men in blue overalls are preparing to cut off our electric power. To this end they have a clipboard with instructions (#1), and a serious pair of wire cutters (#2). In utter panic I stumble through the niceties of meeting strangers and call out for Anna. A man needs to know his limitations. ‘Buenos dias’ all around, in that we do not fail. The fruits of a good upbringing. But the wire cutters are not holstered. Lud and Joan are ready to leave while disaster looms. Just last week we finally got full power back after five days of service requests, and here are representatives of that same outfit ready to cut us off. The clipboard lists an unpaid bill, hence their unfortunate mission. Unpaid? Not possible, we say. Yes, unpaid. We plead and promise greased lightning. We are on the way to the Electric Co office, right now. Please don’t cut us off. (The night before we met an acquaintance who had forgotten to pay her bill upon her return from a trip home to the US. She was cut off and implored the company for a week to restore service. She finally resorted to an illegal hook-up by a local electrician). ‘Don’t tell the office that we were here, because we have orders,’ said the men. These are the words of Kafka: an unseen authority, unknown but heeded. We promise and we don’t. In the taxi we wonder if this isn’t some sort of scam they are trying out on gringos, and in retrospect I wonder if I should not have whipped out my wallet right away.
Inside the office we stand in line for half an hour. While Anna waits and two men are running around unchecked with cutters, I run to an ATM to arm us with sufficient funds to bribe an ethicist. Our turn comes, and one minute later we stand outside in the blazing sun, on a sharply sloping street. We owe 51 pesos, less than $5. Apparently Jose Gutierrez, who takes care of our bills while we’re away, had failed to notice this insignificant amount. Do you have any idea how menacing wire cutters can be? Very.
How fortunate we are not to hear rap music. We do hear ‘Los Tigres de Norte’ at a very early hour, blasting from the hill side across. Or, 60’s music from the French painter who lives across from us. Federico adds classical cello music (“It is a great day,” he says walking by’ “a great day to live!”). I sit on the patio and hear at first a cacophony, until all music blends into a mélange hard to describe, a composite sound that is the daily backdrop of our lives. Yesterday, when Anna was cooking a fabulous meal, I wondered what it would take to capture both visual and olfactory images in one medium. It would mean a whole new technology, somewhat analogous to image and sound in the ‘talkies’. There are novels describing food, and reading them we taste and smell.




We don’t really know her, this French woman, but her name is Claude and her dog is called Bonnie. Federico, the paper maker below us, claims she is a wonderful painter, but then, Federico is given to exaggeration. Claude comes home late at night, and her dog (is he a companion or merely a defense from amorous Mexicanos?) sets off the two German Shepherds who live their lives under our bedroom window, locked in behind fences, surrounded by their own excrement.
There is rain and then there are downpours of biblical proportions. The last few days we have experienced the latter. Hurricane Dean wends its way across Mexico, its tentacles spreading wide and far. No wind, just menacing dark clouds filling the sky in the Guanajuato valley. The city declared an emergency, a full-blown red alert for flooding. The presas (reservoirs) above the city are in danger of overflowing, and send floods into the lower downtown. Schools were closed for the day (much like Allentown, where a mere snowflake causes massive interruption of public services). Nothing happened. We follow the news about the Yucatan where serious damage was inflicted. Again, we thank our stars having left the Tulum beach.
In the garden the ficus tree sheds great numbers of berries. Like hail they clatter on the paving stones and bounce off the glass-top table. We are the fortunate owners of a female tree. Who would have thought? It is clear to me that the tree itself has no faith in its own ability to procreate: why else drop so many berries?
Jerry and Gill visited us yesterday: they came for a few days to San Miguel de Allende (SMA), where they have a house. Anna and I hop aboard a plane once in a while, and we think of ourselves as quite the travelers. Compared to them we are pikers! They generously offered us the use of their house in SMA, which will allow us to spend more time there to go shopping. Gto is wonderful and pleases all of the senses, but it cannot satisfy our deeply rooted shopping urges. A circular power saw (me), garden furniture (Anna) are high on the list. And, who knows, some artesanias? You can never have enough artwork. Our mechanism for justification is well-oiled.
Distance provides perspective. Distance between Allentown and Guanajuato.
Here, looking out the window as I write this, the randomness of the city contrasts with the order of the Pennsylvania Dutch. It seems to me that life in Allentown (or the US for that matter) is more angular, more sharply defined: There I react to events, to the larger life around me, and define myself that way. I am a democrat, I disagree with the local politics, I hate the war. My experiences are defined by what I would want to see differently.
In Gto I have lost that need to judge, to push off against that which I experience as a system and a construct. I read the local paper, read of the shenanigans of the political parties, of the venality of city council, and think: so what? What is different? And why should I worry?
Anna and I are finding a different rhythm, finding a life that has more to do with us. Are we growing old?
I attach some random images of what surrounds us. Perhaps you will get a sense of life here.
By the way: I had no idea how prophetic the title of my last blog was. ‘Figs are to die for.’ Literally. Be careful of what you wish for, or heedlessly consume.