The Instituto Art Fair - a lively, colorful happening

We’re far from novices anymore at doing art fairs both here in San Miguel and the states. They still take a lot of preparation and forethought in ramping up to the actual event, but we’ve become accustomed to the routine of applying and the inevitable check lists to make sure we have all the aspects of the events under control. There’s a heightened sense of anticipation going into them plus the usual anxiety, but it’s all familiar territory.

I had a different sense, though, in August as we set up our display panels the first day of the Instituto Art Fair. We were in the same spot as the July event so no worries about whether or not we were in the right place. I looked around as we pulled paintings out and began figuring out the best configuration for displaying them. Little by little other artisans began toting their work to their spaces and started the tedious process of getting all in place. The man with the handmade paper wall luminaries was back as our neighbor next to us in the corner along with his wife selling beaded jewelry and embroidered tapestries cattycornered across the aisle. Others, now familiar to us after so many Instituto art fairs, also began arriving – the short, energetic woman from Oaxaca with a single gray braid and crooked smile selling rugs, the two ever-serious young women selling Mexican trinkets, the German lady selling straw hats and Guatemalan scarves, the young man from Veracruz selling his handmade leather-bound notebooks.

The inner courtyard where the fair is held had a sleepy air about it, people quietly going about putting their displays and tables in order. Not a lot of chatter, just some street noise and birds making their morning twitterings as they flitted about looking for their first food of the day. As I made several trips back and forth from the car to fetch things for our set-up I felt the energy of my fellow artists and craftsmen. Less than two years ago I viewed all of these people as part of the exotica that I saw as San Miguel. But with several Instituto fairs under our belt, and becoming part of the routine, I suddenly felt a real connection to the artisan community. Moreover, I felt privileged to be offering my art alongside them.

While a good deal of what is offered by the artisans is produced for the tourist market, there is still real craft evident in much of it. Creativity is part of the fabric of Mexico in general, and so the hand-woven rugs, the beaded bracelets, the sweet, brightly colored paintings on small wooden panels all are reminders of the arts in everyday life here. Some of it is decidedly humble, but nonetheless it offers up the expressions of its people as a small celebration of their lives. Tourists are drawn to the color, the whimsy, the craftsmanship of the items perhaps not in small part because they are made locally by hand. Art of the people which touches us because it is just that, not high or lofty or cerebral. A celebration of the sweets of life.

This pig and his friends are here for a reason.

Scientists have discovered that it pays to grow up in marginally unsanitary conditions in order to tune your immune system properly. Children in western countries who grow up coddled and sheltered from every pollen grain or cat hair are understandably hypersensitive to such minor irritants as adults. Somewhere in this observation about the source of our currently epidemic levels of allergic reaction is a hard fact: Those dirty little snot-nosed kids you always complained about are all healthy, happy, strapping adults now. Except, of course, for that bully in my grade school class. He’s in jail. His freedom was denied due to a minor legal quibble concerning a gang-related hit contract. Still free of allergies though no doubt.

Or, to put that life lesson in a slightly different way … as my apple pickin’ buddy out in Washington State used to say at the crack of dawn; "Time to get up and get amoungst ‘em!".

It’s not just the immune system that needs to be taught how to discern minor irritants from the real deal. Getting out in that big old dirty world helps the mind differentiate whether other dangers are real or only perceived. When we prepared for our trip around the world last year some of our well meaning friends warned us about confessing our American citizenship to those we may meet. Turned out not to be a problem. We never dissembled on that fact and people always treated us with respect, like people everywhere should be treated; somewhere between friendly and indifferent. Never hostile. That’s only in the funny papers.

… it’s not just that they’re cute.

Now I know the statistics I read and you read in those same funny papers tell us that the general opinion of America is in the crapper. Due to many factors I suppose, one of which may be our current propensity to launch off and take care of military business wherever, whenever we so desire regardless of logic or other peoples opinions. So our American-ness may seem rude or dangerous to others due to some of these questionable decisions by our government. I just never saw that translate into personal animosity. Pity, maybe. And sometimes sympathy, like; "Yeah, I know … my President’s an idiot too…"

You see, pigs play in the mud.

Speaking of which; rude is when a drunken guest belches in your face as he leaves the party. Dangerous is when he then demands his car keys so he can drive around the neighborhood. Right now the world sees us driving around out there with a full tank and a tall boy in the cup holder.

So perceptions of danger all relate to where we stand, and who’s looking dangerous. Many of our danger meters vibrated right off the dial a few years ago. But it’s important to re-calibrate them by testing them occasionally against the real world. Is the world a scary place? Yes, sometimes. Doesn’t mean we can’t approach it with subtlety and flexibility. Appropriate action (or reaction) depends on realigning our perception of danger to reality. Our danger meters busted years ago after the needle jammed all the way up there. Probably time to get it fixed and stop living our lives based on the same reading we get every day; "Life is Currently: EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!!!".

… and in the street…

Maybe that’s one reason we did the trip around the world. Might even help explain what we’re doing down here in Mexico. Meter repair.

We face perceptions of danger every day. One of the most common for many people is their financial situation and we’re no different there. Not enough capital inflow to offset the drainage and the evaporation. A little like our reservoir out in Alcocer now that you mention it. That’s getting real low too these days. The lack of rain has caused the small lake to recede to a large puddle. But the rains will come. And we’ll keep making that art until it forms up into vast thunderheads that open up to bless the dry plains of financial desolation. It’s actually raining right now… real rain. Might be a sign but I don’t want to push it because I’ve already chased that image out and beat it with a stick. Just rain …okay?

… and their mother lets them.

Well then so what if we’re not yet making our fortunes with our art. We’re still far from broke. My immune system registers only a minor irritant. Nothing for my T-cells to get excited about. Good thing my mom let me play kick the can out in the alley as a kid. .

My day begins usually with my cat, Paintbrush, stepping on my feet and legs to wake me up for her morning ration of canned salmon cat food. I don’t have an alarm clock (or I do, if truth be known, but it doesn’t work. And that’s a whole other blog in itself.). The day begins more slowly than in my work-a-day world past. But there are many things that are missing in my life here in Mexico that I used to take for granted back in the States. Some of those absences have proved a blessing while others, well, I’ve just learned to work around them.

Still it’s amazing when I consider all those things that I used to have that I thought were indispensable and now find were mere conveniences. Such as. There is a TV in our house but it resides in mute fashion in our living room atop the credenza against the one wall without an electrical outlet. It was put there purposely to more conveniently use our electrical sources for our art work tables. We don’t watch TV since we refuse to pay for cable in order to get English-speaking channels. However, I must admit that we’ve belatedly connected the TV to our DVD player (liberated from our storage locker after one of our trips north this year) and strung an extension cord to bring it to life for the occasional DVDs. One must have some sort of enlightened entertainment, after all, if only to carry on up-to-date conversations on the latest releases.

There is no dishwasher in the house. Or at least no mechanical one. Both of us take turns doing the honors by hand after meals. I find it to be contemplative and not that time consuming. Go figure. In cool weather the hot water on my hands is a pleasure, making me feel warm inside.

Walking is a lot easier than trying to drive most places, traffic and the lack of parking spots being what they are in San Miguel. In the time it takes to maneuver through the circuitous routes of one ways streets through Centro in order to find that illusive parking spot, you may as well have walked from home, as your car is likely not to be much closer for the effort.

Voila! I made it! In a Mexican kitchen

While we do have the use of a washer and a dryer (the latter considered a particular luxury in this land of sunshine) our kitchen is absent many a modern gizmo. There is no blender, food processor, or electric mixer. We slice and dice by hand, and such things as the hefty lime squeezer have been known to be pressed into service as a nutcracker when duty calls.

Which brings me to the lemons. Our gardener, Gabriel, gave us a dozen or more lemons the other week, given to him by a neighbor. Limes are the more common commodity here (we have two trees of different varieties), and so lemons are a real treat. But 12 lemons all at once require that you have some use in mind if you’re not to forfeit them before they shrivel and go bad. Lemonade came to mind, but just as rapidly, that was displaced by visions of lemon pie. Chiffon, to be exact. But having never made one of lemon chiffon I was soon researching wildly on Google for an appropriate recipe. And there I hit a roadblock. No matter the variation, all of the recipes seemed to require either meringue on top or beaten egg whites folded into the filling. I don’t have a mixer, as noted above, in my kitchen. What to do.

A vision, but not lemon

I do have a stylish black, rather modern-looking whisk, but I dismissed it off-hand as too time-consuming and likely to wear me out before stiff peaks appeared in my egg whites. Still, the idea of a pie would not abate and the lemons were sitting forlornly, if fragrantly, on my counter. What the heck, I decided to give it a go, as the Brits are wont to say, and set about making my lemon chiffon. I creamed the butter and sugar (with fork and knife), added the lemon juice and zest, milk, flour, and egg yolks, and then took up the bowl of whites as my challenge. As I stood with my deep plastic mixing bowl in hand, beating frantically away at the egg whites with my whisk, I suddenly had a long-forgotten memory of my mother doing virtually the same thing in our long-ago kitchen. Except that her whisk was wire, in a shape not unlike a snowshoe, flat like a spoon with loops of wire threaded across the frame. The whisk had belonged to her mother and was the proper tool for beating egg whites in a matter of minutes back in the day. I’d watched my mother work them from their slimy yellowish state to a froth with effortless, efficient strokes, and then magically into white, thick foam, and finally into stiff peaks. This could be done! I’d seen it! How could I have forgotten?

Dove of Peace, Lamb of God - To Tom

Too many conveniences sometimes get in the way of some simple pleasures. We sometimes forget that we don’t need them to have what we want. Like a lemon pie. And doing without can actually give us time to remember many things too long forgotten.

And, yes, the pie (with stiff egg whites!) turned out fine.

Sometimes the biggest obstacles are internal… as in internal combustion. Our well-traveled vehicle gave us great service and no surprises on the trip to Chicago and back over Christmas. Such is the case with aging autos that recent history provides no guarantees for future performance as our second major trip began less auspiciously. We left San Miguel for Florida in the early morning darkness and began to notice the windows fogging up, a problem that was eventually diagnosed as being related to a failing water pump. In between San Miguel de Allende and the border at McAllen, Texas we spent some quality time with two mechanicos who helped stitch the old Toyota Rav4 together with various temporary rigs (some of which may have included actual bailing wire) just to get us to Los Estados Unidos. We spent an extra night in Monterrey at a sweet little fleabag while we weighed our options after enduring a second rig job by the highway. The trick for these guys is to get you moving again as quickly as possible with the best fix they can devise, after siphoning off as many pesos as possible from their grateful unfortunates. I shouldn’t sound ungrateful since they are extremely resourceful and without them we’d probably still be broken down by some Mexican highway. By Monterrey we were zeroing in on the water pump issue after a few wrong turns down thermostat and head gasket dead end lanes. With the previous rigs in place we only had a small leak to managed by packing extra water and stopping every hour or two to cool down and refill the radiator. In that fashion we finally limped across the border into Texas. The car spent about 28 hours in the Toyota dealer’s shop in McAllen where we had them fix the water pump and change the timing belt, which was about 40,000 miles overdue for replacement.

The "Golden Crunches" along the Gulf Coast

We left McAllen, miraculously just a day behind schedule. Driving through part of Katrina country we saw plenty of twisted and broken trees, and blue tarps covering roofs still in need of repair. The commercial property came back the quickest of course but there were still many tall blown-out signs visible from the highway. Remarkably normal though, considering the magnitude of the disaster and the fact that this monster storm ripped through here just six months ago. The causeway bridge at Pensacola east bound on I-10 is in the process of being replaced and we inched along across the old, patched up structure. Our Super 8 in Baton Rouge was still pretty trashed out, not from the storm directly but instead from the refugees who crowded into these rooms and made a provisional life here for quite a while. That whole place may need a gut rehab after the punishment it took from being a full-time family housing facility for five-plus months. There were even some displaced people still living there in the process of sorting out their lives.

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Stefanie’s watercolors on display at Ft. Pierce, Florida

After another overnight in Tallahassee we drove down to Sarasota for the first art fair where I got to hang my batiks on our newly fashioned display panels for the first public showing. Stefanie and I began the first of many discussions we would share over the course of the next four weeks regarding the look of our display. We were very pleased with the panels themselves, crafted in Mexico as a team project between a local metal fabricator and us. We got lots of compliments from other artists who were curious to know where we got them. The other features of the overall presentation will be refined over time, adding nice name plaques, sign banners outside the tent, maybe even some accent fabric to add color and a friendly softness. All in good time of course. This trip was the great shakedown cruise though Florida, to “learn by doing,” to see what worked and what needs to be improved.

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…she didn’t have to wait long for the crowd

As for the show itself, it actually turned out well for me. We talked with many people who were fascinated with my approach to batik-making. Many of the guests who came in to chat were exceptionally knowledgeable about the batik process and art in general, really a sophisticated art fair crowd. At the very end of the show on Sunday a couple came back for a second look at my “Market Watch” batik. She wanted to know more about how to care for the piece and, since it is not framed with glass, how it would fare. I reassured her that it would not be a problem; I told her to keep it out of direct sunlight, and that it was treated with water-resistant spray so any accidental moisture would just roll off. She said she really loved it and her husband said, “Take it down!” Of course I was tickled to hear that since it amounted to my biggest single sale ever at $2,200. In the process of wrapping it up and completing the credit card transaction I asked what they did for a living and he said he was a “storm chaser’, working at construction contracting in the hurricane corridor along the Gulf coast. While we initially had concerns about the amount of discretionary funds available for art purchases due to all the hurricanes, that sort of turned it on its head. Depends on which end of the stick you sit I guess. By now “Market Watch” is probably well settled into its new Victorian home in Alabama.

A Lesser Blue Heron goes after lunch near the shore

That was the major highlight of my two art fairs since the second show in Tampa provided absolutely no sales. I met another painter named David in Sarasota; he also showed his work at the same Tampa art fair. He offered good counsel for me with tips on improving various aspects of my presentation. He told me that the no-sale shows (called “zeros” on the circuit) come with the territory and over time you begin to sort out the promising shows from the not so promising. The goal, of course, is to have more of the former than the latter. Ultimately, it’s all a crapshoot since it all falls to the luck of the draw and a profitable show one year can be a bust the next. A sculptor in the booth next to us in Sarasota said that after ten years doing these fairs he was still trying to figure it all out.

A White Ibis in a high perch at Ding Darling

Stefanie’s shows in Marco Island, Fort Pierce and Holmes Beach garnered some sales and she sold her beautiful watercolor “La Maceta” to a lady who teaches with her sister. That piece has been a favorite of mine since she created it. I told the buyer quite sincerely that she has excellent taste because I really think it is one of Stefanie’s best pieces.

Two Great Blue Herons look to filch fish on the beach at Captiva

So, our first spin through the Florida art fair circuit is over. Our relatives in Ft. Myers were gracious and generous hosts for us in the days between shows. The weather was spectacular with no rain and very little wind (the bane of Florida art fairs). Our little art fair travel kit held up well and with some small repairs will be ready to go in the fall. We even got in some quality wildlife viewing time with a memorable day spent on Sanibel Island viewing various critters at the spectacular wetlands reserve called Ding Darling.

We’ve returned to our casita in San Miguel now, seeking forgiveness from our emotionally starved kitty cat, getting on with the next phase of our lives here. That will include some long hours happily creating more art, completing our small house on our land in Alcocer, and attuning our senses more acutely to this life we have in Mexico.

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Stefanie standing at the threshold…

Be careful what you wish for, as they say. That didn’t stop us from wishing for a piece of land in the hopes of building a house here in San Miguel. All came true in due course. And now our wall is going up around the property, looking enough like it belongs on some grand estate to make me wonder who we are. Indeed, that’s probably what our neighbors wonder.

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Mixing cement by hand

Another part of our dream, another wish really, is to have a home base in Paducah, Kentucky, all the better for staging our art business to parts far and near around the country. We sent our proposal to the Urban Renewal Board last week for their February meeting. If we’ve crossed all our T’s and dotted all our I’s then we’ll have deed in hand for the empty lot we’ve requested. And we’ll have the right to build our second house. The first being our cozy casita down here in San Miguel, scheduled for construction to start within the next month. So what that means is that at some point this year, most likely the midpoint, we’ll have two separate constructions going on simultaneously. The gods must be crazy. Perhaps this is a test of our mettle or maybe it’s meant to be a comparison of the two processes. In San Miguel we’ll be our own contractors, a way of saving money and entirely do-able, we’ve learned, from building the wall. We hope to continue with our crew of five locals from our village of Alcocer when the casita begins. They’re steady, dependable workers and skilled craftsmen to boot. Paducah will be a different story, requiring a builder to do the honors of coordination and running the regulation/inspection gauntlet. We’ve already found our man, an easy-going but businesslike kind of guy who’s not intimidated by long distances and communicating his progress to us via e-mail. This will definitely be the year of the house.

Building the rock foundation for the wall

In the meantime, we continue our preparations for art fairs in Florida during the months of February and March. This is our introduction into the Florida art scene and we’re filled with anticipation, though it requires another very long road trip north. Our confirmed schedule to date is as follows:

February 22 – 23, Marco Island Arts & Crafts Fair at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church – Stefanie;
February 25 – 26, The 16th Old Hyde Park Art Festival, Tampa, FL – Dave;
March 11 – 12, Springfest Festival of Fine Arts & Fine Crafts, Holmes Beach, FL – Stefanie

Dave takes the weekly orders for supplies

Stefanie enjoys the progress of the project

We’re still waiting for confirmation for fairs on the weekends of February 18 – 19 and March 4 – 5. Look for an update of our confirmed schedule on our website homepage.

The corner castillo being formed

Both the art business and our home building will require a magnitude of planning in this new year. We’re hoping for smooth sailing but know better than to believe that all will fit so neatly into our plans as scheduled. But we’re crazy enough to give it our best shot and wise enough, we hope, to build a wide margin of flexibility. Stay tuned for more high-flying adventures!

The horses were first to water in Alcocer

I’m sitting in Benito Juarez Park (Parque Juarez), a place newly fashioned into a prime venue for Sunday afternoon lounging. When we first came to San Miguel this park had a ragged, abandoned look. Those features were pronounced in daylight and truly intimidating at night. Now, thanks to the determined efforts from friends of this park it has been reanimated: new paths, benches, greenery tended with care. As a result the life has returned. The young lovers cling to each other on park benches as before, but now their furtive glances are placed appropriately, towards the interest of their affections and not towards the old gloomy surroundings.

A trench comes before a wall

Today is Revolution Day and as a result the park is busier then normal. During the morning I watched parades of school bands, cheerleaders, small boys dressed as armed campasinos, young girls in prime early-century senorita dresses, fill the streets heading for the Jardin at town center. Now it’s afternoon, the brass has stopped blaring, the drums are silent, and the park is full of loungers like me. Groups of young people talk and laugh as they stroll. Families do what families do in parks everywhere; sit, talk, eat, play. I noticed the food kiosks were more numerous today, many providing extended food service with a hot grill on the side for making delicious-looking stuffed gorditas. It’s the middle of November, and the air is cool, but fresh, not chilly. The crisp night air this time of year is banished every day by the salubrious Mexican sun.

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Stefanie sits in the courtyard at Museo Allende outside the gallery

This placid setting provides a moment for me to report to you about our recent eventful weeks. We closed on our purchase of land in Alcocer about two weeks ago. That marked nearly a year since we first made the decision to build a home here. Stefanie and I are very happy with the result, about a half-acre of land by a small lake in the old rancho of Alcocer, four kilometers or so from San Miguel. It’s really an odd turn that brought us out there. Earlier prospects fell through or were non-starters. A moment came last summer when we began to re-think the whole plan. That was right after the piece of land we waited to buy for six months disappeared in a cloud of dust on the heels of some high-rolling Houston developer. We picked ourselves up though and got back on that horse. It took us to Alcocer.

The gallery door, upstairs from the courtyard

We were really fortunate. The land we now own is much better for us. I’ve been spending a lot of time out there recently. Last week began by getting the boundary lines marked out and finished with eight hours of backhoe work, digging the trenches for the wall and holes for cistern and septic. I get to be county road crew supervisor. They work, I watch. For some reason I come home dead tired every day. Early in the morning by the lake I watch a solitary Great White Egret feed by the shore, or else track a group of cattle egrets as they swoop the lake, settle, then start again. One morning a formidable herd of cattle lowed and trooped to the lake to drink, chasing about ten horses who had had first dibs. Every day flocks of sheep and goats head through the creek valley that traces the now dry gully down from the Picacho Mountains behind Alcocer, as they make their way up the slopes to feed.

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Our opening at Museo Allende

Tomorrow we start building. A crew of four will be there to begin at around 8am. The first project is to build a small shed for supply storage before they begin with the masonry on the wall and other infrastructure projects. It will be a real treat to finally see brickwork appearing, after a wait that sometimes seemed eternal.

David and Stefanie with our neighbor Barbara from Atascadero

The other main event these last weeks has been our two-person show at the gallery near town center. We opened “encounters/encuentros” on Friday, November 4th. We had an evening of wine and conversation, surrounded by friends enjoying the artwork we’ve created, most of it in the last year and a half. We met so many enthusiastic people that night who were generous with their support. Sales have been somewhat slow but Stefanie and I both feel this early period will be one of getting exposure and recognition and it would be a mistake to assume that massive sales will result immediately. If I’m saying the same thing two years from now I might need a reality check. Now is time for patience and more work. We take turns during the month-long run of the show, sitting in the courtyard full of bougainvillea and orange trees outside our gallery door. The gallery itself is above the old stable in the former home of Ignacio Allende. Where horses once fed we can offer to humans a treat for the eyes.

In a week we will begin our first real exhibition here in Mexico and the third joint show we’ve had together. We’ve busied ourselves over the past month with putting together all the promotional materials – postcards, posters, an article for the Atencíon as well as an ad. We found a caterer to pour the wine and refrescas we’ve ordered to be delivered to the gallery from one of the local liquor stores, and we attached labels to our postcards with translations of their copy so that their message is appropriately bilingual. Did I mention we’ve also been painting since we got here in May?

It’s a different story doing the art thing on a full time basis. The show is just one of several balls we have in the air right now. We’re in the midst of applying to about 8 different art fairs in Florida for the months of February and March 2006. That has required us to make slides for most of our new paintings as well as slides and duplicates of our tent and displays of our art. Because we’d never taken slides of the tent with everything displayed, it meant that we had to put up the tent and some of our art work to take slides of both Dave’s and my work separately when we were in McAllen in late August. Texas summer heat made for an early morning start on the task and bucking a not-so-gentle breeze that started up soon after we got things in place. Our to-do lists have expanded and shrunk depending on what next big project has loomed on the horizon.

I don’t mind juggling multiple “balls.” All my past professional life has served me well in that regard. One learns to simultaneously manage a dazzling array of tasks as a nurse, that is if you’re to stay effective. But ferreting out the shows, designing promotional strategies, seeking grant funding all must happen alongside the act of inspiration, the thing that makes and keeps us doing the art in the first place.

I admitted to Dave not so long ago that I had come to realize I hadn’t anticipated that part of being an artist full time. The part that requires that in spite of show rejections, gallery rejections, grant rejections, and low sales I still need to find inspiration. Painting is a breeze when things are coming your way. All that positive feedback by way of sales, acceptance into shows, and other accolades serves as a magical lubricant to the creative juices. I’ve not had the happy experience of this phenomena regularly, but the sporadic sales and elation of getting into a show have always tantalized me with their heady possibilities. But when “no” is the more common phrase one hears it’s easy to get caught up in the questions that buzz around your brain attacking your intensions, your efforts, and finally the work itself. Is it good enough? Will it ever be? Am I up to this? Do I have what it takes?

Being successful as an artist is usually equated with regular sales and consistent acceptance into shows, and most times gallery representation on top of all that. While there may still be rejections from time to time they are fewer and less frequent. For now we’re still struggling to achieve that height. So until then, we keep buggering on, as Churchill and his fellow Englishman are famous for saying. Keeping up the good fight with faith that what we have is more than enough, and that with effort we’ll finally get to that happy place of recognition and all that it entails.

(On the eve of the World Series, I just had to include this letter I wrote to my dad, a life-long Cub fan, from his son the White Sox fan. I answered his e-mail which offered up some kind words of support just after the Sox won the American League Pennant.)

A very generous interpretation of events from you, my dear lifelong north-sider. I’m still not exactly sure what went wrong during the pedagogical phase, maybe nascent rebellion (at ten?), maybe it was the performance of the two teams in my formative fan year of 1964. Maybe I was just following the hype (Sox missed the pennant by one game that year, Cubs were 17 out). I do know that brother Pete went to a Sox game in ‘63 or ‘64, so I can remember being eager to do like my big bro’. My case was thoroughly hopeless in short order since modeling tends to fix permanently at that stage (if I got my “Child Psyche” right).

And hopeless was certainly the word for over 40 years, lost in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey (many locusts with small spoonfulls of honey in ‘83, ‘94 and 2000) until Sunday, October 16, 2005 rolled around. Stefanie and I were curled up down here in Mexico around the softly glowing computer screen watching the updates flash on our play-by-play scoreboard screen, all the while listening to ESPN Sox Radio chime in a half-beat later with the audio accounts (all via mlb.com). When it came down to two outs in the ninth and the scoreboard on our screen read “ball in play, out(s) recorded”, we both went over to my desktop where the audio had been cued up and cranked the volume for the words I’ve waited to hear since I was ten, “The Sox win the pennant! The Sox win the pennant!”.

Hours later after soaking my long-abused loyalties in the sweet balm of victory, I went to bed repeating those words. I tried them out again this morning and they still sound highly unusual.

It was quite a run. How can this team that was gasping for air down the stretch turn on a dime and run off twelve out of thirteen? And against the Indians, Red Sox and Angels, three of the four strongest Al contenders in September? My only regret is that we couldn’t mangle the Yankees a little bit while we were at it.

I’m glad you can enjoy, crazed Cub fan I know you to be. I know I’d be on your bandwagon if the roles were reversed. As for those Sox fans who still are inclined to freeze out Cubs fans for enjoying this, I say just let it go. At this point in time we’re supposed to be patronizing, not CRUEL! This one’s for the whole city! Getting to the World Series is a battle in the trenches. Once you win the pennant I say, pitch the big tent and invite everyone in.

I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with a pathetic (but comparatively more rewarded) Cardinals fan friend of mine. He has been warning me about the obstacles presented by Astros pitching for several weeks now. I would dearly love to see those Cards win tonight and get on a roll so we could face them in the World Series. Maybe beating them would pour us a dram of sympathy from the those supplicants to the Wrigley Shrine. Then “my enemies enemy is my friend” can be the pivot as long as Cub Fans can remember who the real pains in their keester are.

You’re right about the personalities on this team. A nice ethnic mix. No superstar hydocephalia (yet). A heavy current of ice water flowing in veins of guys that give every indication they don’t realize what the fuss is all about. And Ozzie. My favorite player in the late 60’s was Luis Aparicio. In the 90’s it was Ozzie. And now this inflection-impaired goof returns to Chicago and promptly dumps a World Series in our lap.

If I’m dreaming don’t wake me.

Dave

Where do I begin with all this? Of course this Katrina situation calls for somber appraisals and a good deal of finger wagging and shaking of the head. Believe me, I’ve tried chastising but I come off as someone firing from the hypocrite. I’ve tried the philosophical route but I keep seeing old Hegel back there with a megaphone shouting, “You’re taking on water!”

Where do we start when it seems like the whole world could basically use a good spanking. Me included. I’m no big fan of corporal punishment but maybe just this once it might be justified so that we’d all WAKE THE HELL UP! I don’t think we’d suffer any lasting emotional scars.

Yes, we’ve been naughty (some of us more than others of course). Some of us have skated on our responsibilities as citizens. And sure New Orleans is a Party Town. But that doesn’t mean Katrina was some big ham-fisted house-frau bringing a willow switch down across the Big Easy’s bare bottom. I mean she struck Biloxi too! Most of those folks only head for the riverboats on the weekends.

So that’s not it. I noticed even Pat Robertson kept his mouth shut this time.

Maybe it’s a wake up call then (the people down at the desk are usually pretty darn good about doing that). That’s a much less punitive image for me than that old proverbial lightening bolt from heaven. Too incomprehensibly arbitrary. More like that friendly little phone call from the hotel’s computer where you pick it up half asleep and know you got your wake up call just about the time you realize nobody’s there.

Let’s hope we’re all in the shower by now. I could’ve used five more minutes.

I heard it was “just one of those things” and indeed it was, if by that you mean, “I have absolutely no clue”. I really wish I knew why some of “those things” happened but if I did I’d probably have a whole lot of explaining to do to some very pissed off people. I’ll understand it a lot more when I watch the Hurricane Katrina special on the Nature Channel. They can break out the old “awesome power of Mother Nature!” and “nature’s fury” to help me capture the moment.

I prefer to think of it as “One of life’s little Category 5 mysteries.”

The whole inept response by the designated governmental agencies was painful to behold. But then they were caught off guard. Maybe our expectations were too high. You know its one thing to be screwed slowly over the course of a lifetime by faceless bureaucracy. Its another when the whole thing happens on a weekend.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to minimize the suffering. My attempts at humor here can be read strictly as survival mode after a very traumatizing experience. I’m only just now re-emerging from a dark bunker. While my eyes get adjusted to the light I’m acting kind of giddy with the thought of having survived. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you suffer (I think that’s right…). Anyway, I heard some really stupid things while I was down there. Come to think of it, there was a bit of an echo…

A tiny green tree frog came to visit the other night, just one of the many improbable creatures that are here amongst us that I seem to be focusing on these days. Turning on the light in our bathroom I caught the quick blurred movement of a greenish spot no bigger than a thumbprint. Looking more closely, I spotted a bright green frog clinging to the wall, flattened and in a disk like one of those tin clickers you get for parties. I gathered him up in my hands but he squirted out a couple of times before Dave could open the front door for his release to freedom into the night.

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Our blessed casita

Similarly, a small praying mantis startled me when I sniffed a large pink rose blooming along our front property wall. He moved from behind the blossom just as I brought it to my nose, putting us eye-to-eye. After such a rude introduction he ambled off onto the rose leaves where his sweet green blended more perfectly, awaiting other more fruitful encounters, no doubt.

"Our"palacial veranda -percs with our rental casita

The grapevines outside our door, I’ve found, are home to a couple sphinx moth caterpillars. Big as a man’s thumb and about 3 inches long, their grayish-brown skin with diagonal stripes along their sides makes them difficult to spot as they glide along the thick vines. Our maid’s little boy, Eddie, pointed them out to us as we stood last week contemplating whether or not the peaches on the tree outside our front door were ripe enough to pick. After Marta swept them off the vines with her broom I had to convince her that the mariposa nocturna (moths) that these rather frightening creatures would eventually morph into were worthy of saving. Their horn spot, meant to look like an eye, gives them the appearance of a Cyclopes, though in reality they are blind. I picked one up and placed it back on the woody vine and Eddie followed my example with the other, though not before menacing his mom with the little wormy.

Horseplay at the side of the presa in Alcocer

The improbable indeed has seemed to have crept into our lives of late. Weeks of looking at property around San Miguel after our hoped-for lots in Colonia Mexiquito fell through made our prospects of finding something reasonable within our price range and specifications seem all the more questionable. We were turning over every rock but finding little to inspire us. Worse, our time frame to get underway seemed to be slipping rapidly away from us. Obviously we could not go on indefinitely looking for property without consuming the very funds we would need to build our house.

Our little bit of paradise in Alcocer

After some days in a funk over our situation, we began to hash out the possibilities before us. Maybe San Miguel wasn’t right after all, we wondered. But the question always came back to where, if not here. Paducah, Kentucky crept into the conversation. It seemed a likely candidate because of its central location and its artist relocation program. Our trip there last summer had piqued our curiosity but hadn’t quite convinced us. But now, with the sands seeming to shift under our feet, it deserved another look. A peek at their website showed promising progress within the community with new artists and intriguing houses at reasonable prices.

Toward the presa from our property

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Flocks of sheep graze the slopes of the Picachos

It’s funny how when a decision is finally reached, especially one that seems almost inspired, doubly when it’s been within arms’ reach all along, that the rest of the puzzle falls into place. Realizing the rightness of Paducah for this point of our lives as a home base for establishing our art careers in the States, within hours we also found the right piece of property to suit us in San Miguel, a place to fulfill our dream of an artists’ retreat. One that is a mere fraction of the price and twice as big as anything else we’ve looked at in all these past months. And if all that weren’t enough to convince us, the charm of the surrounding village of Alcocer and the bucolic countryside trumped the deal. Like the little green tree frog, the improbable and unexpected had landed in our laps.