springing forward -- eventually

I always thought I was the Mad Hatter. 

But, I'm not.  I'm the rabbit.

And I suspect I will be perpetually stuck in the role.  For two reasons.


The first is that I have adapted very well to my mañana milieu.  Removing the urgency for almost everything lets me be 12-years old again.


But the second reason is far more pernicious.


I wrote about it in prepare to fall back last October.  The odd tale of how a city in Mexico can be in the same time zone as an American or Canadian city, and show a different time on its clock.


And here we go -- again.  It is now time to spring forward.  Or it was up north, and it will be down here.  But not right now.


Early Sunday morning, those states and provinces that have been beguiled by the questionable virtues of daylight saving time, moved their clocks an hour forward.


That will not happen in Mexico for three more weeks.  Not until 4 April.


For me, this is not an academic issue.


Later this week, I am driving up to Puerto Vallarta to meet friends who are arriving on a cruise ship.  We intend to have a great day ziplining over the canyons of Jalisco.


I say "intend" because the time-keeping on cruise ships often requires an engineering degree.


Under normal circumstances, a ship leaving Los Angeles will move its ship clock forward one hour when entering the new time zone at Cabo San Lucas.  When the ship arrives in Puerto Vallarta, the captain can reset ship time (because the marina is barely in the central time zone) or leave the ship clock on mountain time (to avoid bewildering the passengers with another time change).


Some ships do not bother taking into account the daylight-standard time issue.


I told my friends I would meet them in the Walmart parking lot at 10:30 AM (local time).  You see my problem, there could easily be a two-hour variance from ship time.


I suspect my friends will be clever enough to simply check a local clock when they disembark the ship.


Otherwise, Thursday will be a day to push that mañana envelope.

one plant at a time

King Cnut (and, yes, I have given in to the forces of historical spelling correctness) would have advised us to abandon our hubris, and accept the fact that water hyacinths rule the laguna.


But we six souls on Friday would hear nothing of it.  We decided to mount a frontal attack on the invading plants in the inlet just outside my gate.


The neighbor had cleared out a portion -- and it turned out to be a great spot for the crocodile to hunt.  We decided he could use some more room.


It turns out that water hyacinths are very easy to pull out of the water.  They spread by sending out shoots.  As a result, they form a large floating platform with roots extending into the water.  From a fish's eye-view, it must look like a jellyfish with chlorophyll.


They are easy to get out of the water -- only because they are not rooted.  But they can be heavy.


To harvest our "crop," we needed to position ourselves on a steep soggy bank.  We then used either a rake (for nearby plants) or a grappling hook (for plants beyond the rake's reach).  That plant was thrown on the malecon where it was loaded into a wheelbarrow and then dumped in a vacant lot.


After two hours, we six volunteers had cleared out a strip of the hyacinths that will give some of the wildlife an opportunity for open water.  (If you look at the photograph below, it is the water in the upper left -- looking a bit muddy.)  I suspect the snails, small fish, and frogs preferred the cover.  But there is still plenty for them.


With a couple of boats and a full crew, the inlet could probably be cleared in a week.


Even though my back objected on Saturday morning, I would gladly prove good old King Cnut wrong -- one plant at a time.


On another day.

lunch and a movie

Maybe I have enjoyed all of the cultural stimulation just a bit too much this week.

Fireworks.  Carnival.  Circus.  It is almost like watching Congress.

But, on Friday, I took it all a step further.

My upstairs neighbors were returning to Canada, and I volunteered to drive them to the airport.  I have thoroughly enjoyed talking with them, and extending my time with them was well worth the price of a few drops of gasoline.


The first conversation we had ranged from fiscal policy to Ayn Rand to Philip Glass to Stephen Harper to Aristotle to John Locke.  Good times like that are not to be easily forsaken.


The airport is almost half way between my place and Manzanillo.  On a whim, I decided to head on to Manzanillo after I dropped them at the airport, and drive the 30 miles south.


I had just been to Manzanillo earlier in the week to pick up my mail and to buy a few exotic supplies.  That made this trip a real extravagance because I had no real reason to go.


Expect one.


I had recently talked with a friend in Salem who had seen the new Alice in Wonderland.  He was very pleased with it -- especially Danny Elfman's score.


Manzanillo is no entertainment backwater.  It has a very nice multiplex that seems to receive first run movies about the same time they open in The States.  But I had never seen a movie there.


I had no way of knowing whether Alice would be there.  But, it topped the marquee when I pulled into the parking lot.


And my luck held up.  It was in the big theater.  With a great sound system.  In 3D.  In English with subtitles.


I had never watched a 3D movie with Spanish subtitles.  It is a bit disconcerting for the Spanish words to lunge off the screen about chin level. 


Not surprisingly, I did not get to read much of the Spanish text -- though I found some very interesting translations.


I doubt I would have read much, any way.  Tim Burton packs his films with enough action and interesting dialogue that reading anything can be rather difficult.


And this film was a tour de force.


Someone made the decision to play this Alice as a 19-year old liberated woman.  That was a clever way to avoid all of Lewis Carroll's pedophile subtext.


The wisdom of that decision was apparent with flashbacks to a child Alice.  Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter leer worked well with the older Alice.  With the 8-year old Alice, the skin crawls.


The choice also gave the film team the opportunity to skew adult society as up-tight, repressed, hypocritical, greedy, adulterous, and just plain weird.  And Burton took each of those opportunities.


In that sense, his 19-year old point of view gets the advantage of both worlds -- a child's vision and an adult's protection.


I saw Avatar in 3D on one of my trips to Oregon.  The technology amazed me.  It convinced me I was on another planet.


Burton used a slightly different system.  For his purpose (building a dream world) it worked just as well -- if not better.


But I fully agree with my friend in Oregon.  Danny Elfman's score is one of the stars of the film.  From the pieces I have listened to on line, it stands alone quite well as a very good piece of music.


This trip to Manzanillo taught me that there are all sorts of resources nearby.  One hour is not too far to travel for a movie -- even when I have to drive home in the dark.


Something else to go on my list when I return next November -- or so.

llamas -- and tigers -- and bears -- oh, my!

Another circus is in town.

And I have been sucked into its vortex  -- front row, center.

The animals did it. An elephant.  A tiger.  A bear.  Baboons.  Monkeys.  Camels.  And llamas.  Enough llamas to mount an expedition to Machu Picchu.

So, there I sat.  Once again, amongst all of those childhood memories I wrote about in another opening -- another show.

I approached this circus with higher hopes than the circus I attended in January.

The tent was much larger.  The animals were impressive.  The facade worthy of a Barnum show.

But when I arrived, something was lacking.  A crowd.  It was sparse.  No.  That is unfair.  It was simply missing.  Maybe they were all at St. Pat's on-going bash.

Some of my hopes disappeared the moment I stepped inside the tent.  The interior was as sparse as a Fellini set in search of a circus.  Lots of space.  Little filling.  Third degree investigation lighting.  And piles of rubble.

But circuses are about acts.  Not scenery.

And acts there were.

Let's get something out of the way.  This was not the cirque du soleil.  It is a Mexican family-run circus.  Of course, I did not pay $250 (US) to see it, either.  $40 (Mx), if you please.  And worth every centavo.

The acts used every family member -- right from the grand opening with the full cast led in by two beautiful young women twirling batons (Yup!  Batons.), and dressed as Las Vegas show girls. 


That was followed by a trampoline act with some very talented children and two adults.


An animal act involving llamas, a camel, a pony, and a dog.


Two beautiful women (the aforementioned show girls) and a little girl dancing with hula hoops.


A clown -- clowning with children from the audience.


A tiger with the useful fire hoop and whip act.


Another clown with a robot dog.


Another animal act with a small bear, a huge horse, and a dwarf horse with a severe limp.


And finally, a very nice trapeze act with three guys, a clown, and a young boy.

Then, it just stopped.  It was over.

Cheesy.  Sure.  Cheesier than a quesadilla.  But just as fun.  And that is all anyone can ask of a circus.

And it certainly fit in with this week's high celebrations.

But I really need to tell you a bit more about those fireworks.

And I will. 

blowing its top

San Patricio knows how to celebrate a saint's birthday.

Carnivals. Bombs. Crowds.

And fireworks.

We have been hearing the percussive explosions, rocas (or what I call "bombs"), that thrill young Mexican men. These are not firecrackers. I am talking about explosions that sound as if they could take down a 10-story building.

And they can come at any time of the day or night. 2 AM seems to be just the right time to wake up a patron saint for his birthday.

But those are not the fireworks that draw crowds.

On Tuesday night the local church was decked out as if a space shuttle was to be launched from San Patricio -- for the first of a series of celebratory gatherings.

The "guest of honor" was a 20 to 30 foot structure made of what looked liked bamboo. Looking a bit like an insect sculpture gone bad.

But we were there not to worship form. We wanted function. And we got it.

The structure is called a castillo, and its sole purpose is to act as a framework for fireworks.

Up north, we have a tendency to be awed by fireworks of the rockets' red glare variety.  Mexicans appreciate their fire art to be a bit less bombastic and more artistic -- not to mention, up close and personal.

And artistic it was. A series of fire wheels spun furiously in varying colors -- one flew off and lodged itself under a parked pickup's gas tank, threatening a reenactment of shock and awe over Baghdad.

But the finale is always the same. And awe-inspiring in its consistency.

At the very top of the structure is a crown -- corona. When it is lit, it starts spinning until its attains lift-off speed. It then shoots into the air a few hundred meters -- until gravity pulls it back to earth. Or, more accurately, back to the middle of the crowd.

On Tuesday night, it chose to alight in the back of the same pickup that had earlier escape its inferno.

Anyone with a bit of spark in his heart would have enjoyed the night's performance. I stood by a couple who said they had not seen anything like it. They were as enraptured as children.

But, then, so was I.

Give me a carnival and fireworks, and I can be as sentimental as -- well, me, I guess.

New York may think it celebrates Saint Patrick's Day. But they don't know even how to begin celebrate our hometown boy: St. Pat.

hey, rube!

I can't remember where I first heard that aloha-like yell.


My memory fingers a childhood favorite book: Amigo. The story of a circus palomino. I do recall the book teaching me the appropriate funeral rites for a dead parakeet.


But that universal carny call for assistance popped into my head Monday afternoon.


I noticed a carnival was setting up in the vacant lot behind the local school. Not one of your fancy Brazilian carnivals, mind you, with over-decorated floats and under-dressed women.


This was the type of carnival I remembered as a boy. The type of operation that would show up at the county fair.


Bottles to knock over with a baseball. Ring toss. Coin toss. Almost any way imaginable to toss pesos from rubes to carnies.


And the rides. All the way from tykes imagining they were motorcycle thugs to teens proving to their mates and girlfriends that macho is not merely a myth.


Up north we still have similar rides -- or vestiges of the same rides after they have been re-engineered in the hopes to limit trial lawyers to BMWs rather than Maseratis.


Not so in Mexico. The rides here are still fun because they feel dangerous. I saw one ride operator use a hammer to open the safety release bar. The entrapped teens simply laughed.


When I stumbled onto the carnival on Monday afternoon. they were still setting up. I was a bit surprised to see this island of frivolity in the midst of Lent in a small Catholic village.


I asked one of the workers why they were there -- in my north-of-the-border journalist quest for facts.


He looked at me quizzically, and responded: "We are here because we are here." A Zen master could not have summed it all up better.


I later discovered the carnival is in town to help us celebrate the birthday of San Patricio's patron saint -- Saint Patrick. And the festivities started on Tuesday night.


But that will be a post for tomorrow -- taking a peek at how saints are celebrated in my small fishing village by the sea.


Until then, I will leave you with this photograph:

new ways to dream

I am starting to feel like a snowbird myself these days.

For the last few days, I have noticed that summer is starting to sneak in amongst our little thatched huts here on the Pacific coast.  Since about mid-November, our days have been warm; our nights comfortable.

Not so on Monday.  I began my day late.  I usually get up in the morning and walk to the village to do my daily food shopping.  During the winter months, I arrive at the grocery store feeling as if I have had a refreshing workout.

On Monday I didn't start my walk until 2PM.  And the sun and humidity were doing their best to prove that Melaque is a tropical town.  My shirt was soaked half way through my walk.  Those extra pounds I re-gained while in The States didn't help.

As I sit here writing this post, the temperature is still 79 degrees with 73% humidity.  It is not William Faulkner writing weather.  But it is close.

Maybe it is the change in weather, but I sought a bit of culinary adventure on Monday evening.  I had bought some carrots, zucchini, onions, and a yellow pepper at the market.  I stir fried the vegetables and added some grilled chicken and rice I had left over from my Saturday dinner.

That, obviously, was not the adventurous part of the meal.  I usually add in a pepper sauce for taste.  Instead, I modified an Italian sweet and sour sauté sauce.


It is very simple.  Just three ingredients.  Chopped fresh mint.  Cider vinegar.  Honey.  Equal measures of honey and vinegar.


It turns out that I had no cider vinegar.  So, I dipped into my oriental kit and used rice vinegar.  I need to remember that substitute.  It is better than the original.


But it may be the last time I will use that recipe.  The meal is a bit heavy for these hot days.


If I were not heading to Oregon in six weeks for the summer, I would be watching the palm trees disappear in my rear view mirror as I headed off to the Mexican highlands.


And I will let a little chauvinism show here.  I am looking forward to summer in Oregon -- where some of the best summers in the world can be experienced.


After making all of those snowbird comments the day before yesterday, it appears I may be spreading my own little wings.