I apologize for not posting any essays lately. I have been busy researching, writing, and tracking down props for my contribution to our church's Cultural Awareness classes.
Or, at least, for the one I am presenting tomorrow (Thursday) at 5 PM at the Costalegre Community Church in Villa Obregon. .
Any of you who are in town on Thursday are certainly invited. It would be nice to meet some of you. Meeting readers is always a pleasure for me.
My topic this year is the men and women that the Bank of Mexico has chosen to put on its banknotes. And. because they are representative of each era of Mexican history, we will have an opportunity to discuss Mexico's history and how it has formed the country where we live.
That is why I have entitled my presentation: "Who is that guy in my pocket?"
If you plan to attend, I suggest a bit of easy homework. Take a look at the Mexican banknotes you have at home, and bring one note of each denomination with you. The possibilities are:
$50
$100 -- 3 versions (we will only discuss two)
$200 -- 2 versions
$500 -- 3 versions
$1000
And bring your questions. I will do my best to answer them. If I do not know the answer, I will try to find an answer for you. I look forward to seeing you there.
Some mock us. Others amuse. Yesterday was an amusement day.
According to Sarah A. Lanier's Foreign to Familiar: Understanding Hot and Cold Climate Cultures, cultures can be reduced to a rather simple, if not simplistic, analysis. Hot climates are relation-based. Cold climates are task-based.
It all strikes me a bit like those pop psychologists who claim to fully understand the workings of a person's mind without ever personally treating them. You know the type. Hitler was not evil; he was just working out some Freudian mother issues. According to Lanier's argument, a woman raised in Alabama is culturally akin to a man raised in Barra de Navidad.
I do not know how scientific those claims are. But there appears to be at least a soupçon of truth embedded within it. At least, based on my personal experience.
Yesterday I found a treasure in my mail box. It was a post card from my English pal and former blogger, Gary Denness. He had not signed his name, but when I saw the London Eye on the front, I knew exactly who had sent it. For two reasons.
The first is that Gary is the only person who has sent me a post card since I moved to Mexico. I cannot remember the last time anyone has even sent me another post card. The medium seems to be something from an era of liveried footmen.
The last card from Gary was a portrait of a hip Elizabeth II (in a pickle with the queen). It still has a prominent place on my bedroom desk.
The second reason I knew it was from Gary was because he told me it was on its way. At the time, we had a quintessential cold-climate conversation. He was curious how long the combined forces of the Royal Mail and Correros de Mexico would take to get the London Eye from his fingertips into my hand.
The answer is: I don't know. I cannot recall the date he mailed the card. The Royal Mail answers that question for me, though. The very bureaucratic postmark is "22-10-18."
But I do not know when it arrived in San Patricio. Our postmaster usually marks all mail received with a large date stamp that obscures almost everything on the front of an envelope. Maybe he did not want to obliterate Gary's message or poke out the Eye. For whatever reason, there is no date of receipt on the card.
I could usually estimate the date based on the day I checked my box. But, because of my travels and the holidays, I had not been to the post office for about six weeks. My best estimate is that it arrived somewhere between 16 November and 4 January.
And there is a great example of cold-climate vs. hot-climate thinking.
Gary and I are the poster boys for cold-climate cultures. We both originate from places where a nice day is drizzly and overcast. And there is no doubt that we are task-oriented. Look at all of those numbers.
We cold folk seem to take a certain comfort in reducing life to a set of numbers. Dinner party conversations is peppered with commentaries on everyone's "numbers" -- those test results we hope that will make us immortal, or, at least, keep us amongst the living.
When I told Omar, a hot-climate boy, about the post card test, he looked at me as if I had dropped second gear. "Why?," he asked; the whole experiment made no sense to him. "Isn't it just OK for you to hear from a friend?"
He, of course, was correct. The primary purpose of any post card is to communicate something important to another person. Even if that "something important" is just to let the other person know we care about them.
In this particular case, Gary told me about the view of the Eye (and far more) from Galvin at Windows, a London restaurant with a Michelin star (which is far better for revenue than receiving one from Texaco). He also added a particularly witty political observation. One of the specialties of the English.
Omar had a point. All of our cold-climate numbers get in the way of what should be our purpose in life -- celebrating the relationships we have developed over our decades-long trek toward the grave.
To a degree, culture is destiny. I doubt I will ever be able to pull away from the gravitational pull of checking the temperature, measuring my medical numbers, or obsessing about being on time to avoid inconveniencing others.
A couple of years ago, I was at a party here in Barra. Because it was a Canadian party, everyone had arrived on time or 15 minutes early. With one exception. An American man and his Mexican wife showed up about 45 minutes after everyone else arrived.
The American announced, in an irritated voice for everyone to hear: "You will have to excuse my wife for making us late. She does not understand that the time we are supposed to be somewhere is not the time she should start getting ready."
Maria looked at him indulgently, and very softly replied: "And John does not realize that a party does not last for the single second of being on time. A party is to enjoy the company of friends."
Mexico may be changing me. The fact that I could not remember the date that started Gary's experiment and that I no longer go to the Post Office daily may indicate I am starting to turn loose of some of my task-oriented culture.
And I am not certain if that is goo. I do have one task to which I must attend -- prepare my notes for my presentation on Thursday. Enhancing my relationship with my readers is very hot-climate. I need to cool down just a bit and get back to what must be done.
But I did not want you to miss one more joy of living in Mexico.
This week Amazon plopped another Instant Pot cookbook in my hands -- another recommendation from my blogger pal Jennifer Rose. She had earlier recommended Urvashi Pitre's Indian Instant Pot cookbook.
Pitre's Indian cookbook was a great buy. Not only did she provide a new palette for my palate, she taught me some clever techniques for my Instant Pot. She also gets points for honesty, candidly admitting that, unlike what some candle-bearing cowled acolytes chant, the Instant Pot is not a universal cooking tool.
When Jennifer suggested Pitre's The Keto Instant Pot Cookbook, I ordered it without hesitation. I am not a Keto fanatic. But the Keto diet does have some parallels with my low carbohydrate-high fat lifestyle.
As I have told you before, I do not use recipes to cook. I buy cookbooks to glean cooking ideas -- usually, mining fusion concepts out of unrelated recipes.
Pitre's recipe for ropa vieja -- caught my eye. It is a natural for the Instant Pot's pressure cooking mode. The Cuban dish is one of my favorites. When I am in Miami, I head directly to Versailles to get my stewed beef fix.
The recipe there is traditionally Cuban. Mine is not, though I do start with the usual combination of onions, bell peppers, garlic, tomatoes, and beef.
Pitre has a similar unorthodox approach to cooking. I suspect part of it comes from her ability as an Indian cook to juggle herbs and spices for their greatest impact.
Her ropa vieja uses ancho chili powder. Ancho are dried poblano peppers, and are quite popular in Mexican cuisine. Not so much in Cuban. That is what makes Pitre's recipe a bit eccentric.
But I take my fusion eccentricity to a different level. Instead, I added two serranos and an habanero to the sauce -- along with a cube of achiote paste (the spice traditionally associated with puerco pibil).
You may recall that one of my first dishes in the Instant Pot was ropa vieja -- back in November (ratting on steve). The two versions were quite different. The only major variance is the type of chilis I used. But both were successful.
I suspect I broke my culinary rule of never reprising dishes I cook because I had other things on my mind. And ropa vieja is the symbol of a decision I need to make.
My favorite local tour group, Mex-ECO Tours, has put together a trip to Cuba at the end of this month. I am tempted to go.
I last visited Cuba in April 2001 with my law school alumni association. I would not call it a fun trip, but it was certainly an eye-opener.
The infrastructure of Cuba was under great stress. The week we were there, an apartment building collapsed in Havana. It simply fell down from lack of care. Walking around Havana was disheartening.
I had agreed to slip some items into Cuba that were either restricted or forbidden. I had talked with Salvation Army officers there who had difficulty importing uniforms for their congregants. And a friend's cousin, who was an official in the Cuban Communist Party, needed a muffler for his car.
So, my sole suitcase was filled with uniforms and a car part. I carried one change of clothes in a backpack. Surprisingly, Cuban Customs showed no interest in the odd combination in my suitcase.
My friend's cousin returned my generosity by showing me around Havana Old Town. He was holding forth on the evils of capitalism and how Cuba, unlike Mexico, did not have beggars, when as if on cue, an elderly woman sidled up to the two of us and asked for alms.
Without missing a beat, he dismissed her and claimed she was a parasite who had no need to beg. I had no interest in stating the obvious because we both knew the truth.
My gifts to the Salvation Army were received with a bit more grace and without the patina of Party dogma. I spent most of Sunday with them while the Party neighborhood cadre logged my comings and goings from the church building.
If I do return to Cuba, I look forward to seeing the officers again. I still have a dream of working with the Salvation Army in Cuba.
And I would also like to meet with one or two of the brave souls who are attempting to bring liberty to Cuba. That may be foolhardy on my part. Not because I am worried about my own safety; I would be concerned about their future. Police states do not take kindly to such contacts.
When I was in Havana over 18 years ago, we had dinner at one of the home restaurants (paladares). Because of my love for Cuban food, I had been looking forward to the dinner. Of course, ropa vieja topped the list.
It was a disappointment. The owner talked with us and apologized for the quality of the meal. The government was his sole supplier. Because some members of the Party were displeased at the success of the small home businesses, supplies had been cut to a trickle, literally starving revenues.
If I decide to take this trip, I will be incommunicado for the duration. Even though Cuba has internet, it is greatly restricted. And mobile telephone service is problematic. Even the Chinese Communist Party allows more access than that.
But, I did not have the internet or a cell phone in Havana in 2000. I can survive that.
The bigger question is whether I want to make another visit. After all, I almost didn't make another version of ropa vieja because I had made it before. If I am reluctant to reprise food, maybe I should be as reluctant to feather the nests of those who enslave their own people.
There are certainly better places -- freer places -- to spend my hard-earned capitalist dollars.
Even though Mexico is filled with noise, I usually wake up in the morning without any external stimulus.
Roosters. Dogs. Sound trucks. None of them will disturb my sleep.
This morning was different. A more insistent noise yanked me from sleep. The idling and revving of a large diesel engine. And it sounded as if it was in front of my house.
At first, I thought it was the garbage truck. During the Christmas and New Year seasons they often drive by slowly in search of seasonal tips. But this was different. Whatever it was had found business to do at my house.
And then I heard it. The distinctive sound of sliding rock. It was a dump truck delivering a load of gravel.
My good neighbor Mary had recently had a load of gravel spread in front of her house. It looked nice. Seeing hers reminded me the street in front of my house had once looked like that. She said she could arrange a load for me.
I did not think anything of it until yesterday when she introduced me to Daniel, the man who helps maintain her home when she is here and when she returns to Michigan for the summer. We struck a deal. He would buy gravel, have it delivered, and then spread it for an agreed-upon price.
The arrival of the gravel was my reveille this morning. By the time I went outside, the dump truck had left. But Daniel and his nephew Luis were hard at work performing what looked like one of those tasks for which the Army is famous -- moving a large pile from one place to put it in smaller piles in another.
You may wonder why Mary and I bother with the expense of gravel. The answer is rather simple.
The street in front of our houses turns into a good-sized stream when it rains. The builders of our houses were smart enough to build on a small elevation. Our houses are noticeably higher than the house across the street. When it rains, the waters flow away from our side of the street.
The gravel is an additional prophylactic. Because the street itself is compacted sand, it erodes easily when the runoff rushes our way. The gravel helps to stabilize our side of the street.
That is the practical answer. There is an aesthetic one. Having gravel in front of the house makes the street visually far more presentable.
The arrival of cars and guests is always announced by the comforting crunch of gravel. The same sound that speaks the contentment of television country costume dramas with the arrival of weekend guests or the milling of participants preparing to ride to hounds.
Like all things in life, this load of gravel will cycle into death. Its predecessor did -- with the help of a teenage son and his motorcycle. But, even without him, the earth has its way of reclaiming its own. Dust to dust is not only highly accurate, but poignant, in this case. One day, we will all go the way of the gravel.
Daniel and Luis are still spreading. Today I had planned on starting my list of payments that need to be made in January in person (postal box rental; property tax; water, sewer, and garbage; car registration). But they will wait until I can get the SUV out of the garage.
Instead, Daniel and Luis have given me the gift of sitting here patiently and sharing my morning tale with you.
May your day prove as restful as mine.
I just realized I have not wished any of you a happy new year. And so I do now.
May this year hold the blessing of contentment for all of you.
As an old sailor, I know "red skies in morning" is more than an adage. It is what Solzhenitsyn called gray beard wisdom. Back in the long-forgotten past of 2018 (two days ago), I wandered off on my evening walk. One of the disadvantages of trying to keep up my 4 MPH walking pace is that I do not have an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the daily delights Mexico serves up on her botanas plate.
On Sunday afternoon, I decided, it was a good day to go shooting. So, I pulled out my adult camera (my trusty Sony NEX 6) and modified my pace from long-distance walker to short-term photographer.
The enticement was in the sky. At the end of December, our skies hosted a series of interesting cloud formations. Admittedly, they were not as dramatic as the cloud shows in the Mexican highlands.
The beauty was far more subtle. San Miguel de Allende serves up Paco Rabanne shows. Our cloud formations are a cross between Coco Chanel and Christian Dior.
When I thought the day could not be better, those little black dress clouds decided that the relative humidity had just about had enough.
If you have been loitering in these parts, you know what my idea of a perfect weather day is. 55 degrees. Overcast. Drizzle.
Well, Sunday was not a trifecta. I had my drizzle and overcast. However, we just do not see 55 degrees here. As Meatloaf would say (and did), two out of three ain't bad.
Our cooler weather here has been a boon for me. It is cool enough to accomplish most (or all) of my daily miles in one outing. And, best of all, the nights are crisp enough to enjoy a full night's sleep.
I usually switch off the fan in my bedroom for the winter. But I still sleep on top of the covers. Not this past week. When slipping under the sheet proved to be inadequate, I borrowed a thin bedspread from my brother and sister-in-law's room.
Mind you, we are not talking of the bone-chilling nights of San Miguel de Allende or Pátzcuaro. I am almost ashamed to admit the temperature that drove me into hedgehog mode was in the mid-60s.
But it is cold enough that my Mexican friends look as if they are auditioning for roles in Nanook of the North. Parkas. Scarves. Even gloves. What I call crisp, they call freezing.
When Omar heads off to work in the morning, he wraps himself in his leather jacket. Even his friend Lupe wore a sweatshirt to ward off the icy blasts when he delivered his mom to my house. The temperature was almost 70.
The real test has been the swimming pool. In the summer, the temperature of the pool hovers in the mid-90s. This morning, it was 74. Unless I want to acclimate myself for a potential Titanic reenactment, I will be avoiding the pool until we have more Annie days. (Yeah. Yeah. I know. First world problems in a first world country.)
With that sole exception, this has been the best weather I have experienced in Barra de Navidad. Not everyone agrees with me. There are plenty of people who have have moved here or are visiting because of the warm weather. They did not sign up for Steve's Perfect Weather Day.
They just need to wait. The Tlaloque have their cycle. My pool will soon be hot tub-ready. My walking sessions will be split between morning and night. And I will be sleeping atop my sheets being cooled by that trusty ceiling fan.
If all goes well, I might even shoot a photo or two of a warmer Barra de Navidad. And, since I mentioned him, here is a slice of Meatloaf.
You know the type. The squire who has taken to his bed with what may prove to be his final illness.
In my case, there is no final illness. Just the need to block out time to prepare my history lecture for the first cultural awareness class on 10 January.
Last year, props, costumes, and script took me quite a bit longer than I had intended. Whenever I agree to these presentations, I always underestimate the preparation time.
I had hoped to outsmart myself this time. I have given three history lectures over the past few years, and I still have all of my research notes. I was simply going to re-work the material.
One of my favorite Anne Lamott quotes is: "If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans." I could hear chuckling the moment I devised my shortcut.
And I know why. Since my lecture last year, I have run across several interesting historical tidbits that I want to include in this year's presentation. But that also means I need to do some supporting research. So much for shortcuts.
I am now on my third draft. Not surprisingly, I ran out of printer paper this morning.
When I first moved here, I bought paper the same way I did when I lived in Salem. By the case. From Costco. Here, that meant making a four-hour drive to Puerto Vallarta.
That soon stopped. I started buying my paper at Office Depot in Manzanillo -- in the days when I would drive to Manzanillo every week to pick up my mail.
Breaking shopping habits is hard. But I have changed this one. A few items are still hard to find locally. Paper has never been one. There are paper stores aplenty here in Barra de Navidad and Melaque. My favorite is about five blocks from my house.
It may cost a bit more than in Manzanillo (120 pesos -- or $6 (US) for a ream), but I far more enjoy the experience of chatting with the clerk about local doings. She always finds my Spanish to be confusingly amusing. And I get to ask about her family. My few extra pesos spent in her shop are certainly worth the relationship I get out of it.
If I keep using draft paper at the rate I currently am, I may need to visit her at least one more time before the curtain goes up on another of my takes on Mexican history. This presentation has piqued my interest on the shaft tomb culture of western Mexico. We will see where that interest leads.
For the next nine days, I have cleared my social calendar (something my Mexican friends find a bit annoying) to give me time to justify the slaughter of some trees.
On 11 January, I will re-emerge as a squire whose health has been fully recovered. I hope.
I am certain she has others, but this particular peeve gets pet status in her house -- people who walk down the middle of the street in Melaque or Barra de Navidad. Usually, northern tourists.
There is no denying that it happens. During this Christmas season, out villages have been packed with people seeking the surf and sand of the Costalegre. And it has been a double bonus for our local merchants.
Beginning in November, northerners (primarily Canadians) start their trek south for their extended stays. By mid-December, it is a steady flow of migration.
Melaque and Barra have also long been a holday destination for Mexicans. On weekends, summer vacation, semana santa, school vacation, and, of course, the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year's day.
The Mexican vacation trade has noticeably increased during the past two or three years. When I moved here, Mexico's economy was mired in one of those economic flus that plague Mexico whenever The States get a cold. It was a tough times for the local merchants.
Our beach towns have long been magnets for people who come for day trips or short-term stays by bus. And there have been plenty of buses this year filled with large families accompanied by coolers and bags of groceries.
There is also a newer holiday crowd. The Mexican middle class. Many of them, who live most of the year in Mexico City or Guadalajara, also own homes here. They have been coming for years. They certainly are not new to the area.
But I have met a different set. Middle class families who once spent their vacations in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta, and who want something less crowded. I talked to a couple families who are reconsidering their stays here because our coast is getting too crowded for them.
And crowds there are. I thought Christmas was busy. I had lunch today at Papa Gallo's on the beach in San Patricio. If the beach was not packed, it was certainly well-populated. When I returned for dinner, the highway was bumper-to-bumper with cars and buses leaving town.
I thought I would easily find a parking place. I was wrong. While I was gone, more buses and SUVs had disgorged their occupants onto the streets.
And that brings us back to Elke and her pet peeve.
For some reason, visitors seem to think our streets are pedestrian malls. They are not. In fact, there is an incredible amount of traffic that squeezes its way through our narrow lanes. Lanes made narrower by the increase in double-parking. And often made impassable by milling pedestrians.
But there are reasons why there are now people walking in the streets. The first being the most obvious -- there are more people than the sidewalks can bear. Roaming family bands turn into not-so-mobile topes.
The crowds tie into a second factor. Our sidewalks are customarily littered with debris that would be unexpected on northern sidewalks. Shops set up merchandise that causes potential customers to stop and look at what is on offer.
Motorcycles, bicycles, and even the random car are parked on the pavement damming up pedestrian progress.
And, then, there are the hotels and family homes with a living room's-worth of furniture dragged onto the sidewalk to create the semblance of a drawing room on the public pathway.
People do what is natural. They take the easy detour into the street. Where they are greeted by a honking Audi.
So, I understand why people are in the street now. But the habit will continue after the Christmas-New Year crowd heads back to the Mexican highlands. And most of the remaining offenders will have homes north of the Rio Bravo.
Here is my suggestion. Next week, give Elke a break. During most of the year, our sidewalks are perfectly adequate for walking. It is true that walkers need to be vigilant for potholes and drop-offs below and awnings above. But we are certainly up to paying heed to our surroundings.
As most of you know, I try to walk 15 miles each day. And most of that is on sidewalks. It can be done.
