An Afternoon at Casa Angelitos

 

 

Breathtaking!

 

Perched like a great eagle’s nest atop a hill overlooking San Miguel de Allende, the Casa Angelitos has an incomparable view. Though we have no dearth of boutique hotels here in San Miguel, this one stands head and shoulders above most in it’s warmth and beauty. Tastefully decorated with beautiful Mexican art and furniture, the architectural design is open, airy and built naturally into the cliff on which it rests.

 

 

And what a venue for a party! Last Sunday afternoon Todd and I were lucky enough to be invited to join in the celebration of Roger’s birthday. Having taken many pictures of Casa Angelitos, Todd is quite familiar with the property. For me however, this was my first visit and  the first time that I had met Roger Jones and his wife Rosana, the proprietors of Casa Angelitos. They welcomed us to their home with such warmth and charm that I was fairly bowled over.

 

 

Two of four or five dining areas offered at the party

 

 

No stranger to good food, Rosana runs the Vía Orgánica, an organic vegetable shop and restaurant in Colonia Guadalupe, here in San Miguel. For Roger’s birthday she put on a spread I can only describe as spectacular. Beautiful organic salads, (my favourite was the beet), three kinds of fresh sausage supplied by Antonio, our local creator of Italian and Sicilian style sausage, a wonderful tort with fresh raspberries, strawberries and blueberries that Roger had just brought back from the Lake Chapala area, and much much more.

 

This kitchen certainly inspires great meals

 

For dessert, among many other things, we were treated to cinnamon rolls that would put Cinnabon to shame, which Rosana told us her daughter Isabella had casually whipped up at the last minute. This all began with mimosas, then wine with lunch and I finished off with some nice sipping tequila. Life is good!

 

 

The house flows seamlessly from one section to another and one level to another.

 

 

 

The suites are elegant and spacious

 

 

And the décor warm and inviting

 

 

Roger, Rosana and Isabella, thank you so much for your hospitality, you are very gracious hosts.

 

As is often the case, all the photographs in this post are courtesy of the remarkable talent of my husband Todd McIntosh

The Thin Line

 

Robin Williams 1951-2014

photo by Wikipedia

They say that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. I believe that there is a thin line between sanity and insanity. The death by suicide of Robin Williams two days ago, has affected me, like millions of others, quite profoundly. There is no doubt that the man was a comedic genius and that such talent will be greatly missed, but clearly there was another side to his manic public personality.

It is this connection between great talent and emotional disorder that interests me. Most certainly I can lay no claim to any great talent but I am intimately familiar with emotional disorder. My mother suffered from depression, my cousin suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and I take a little pill every morning, without which I become psychco bitch from Hell.

Is there a relationship between talent, genius and chemical imbalance? I also wonder if that relationship carries even further to include addictive personality. Robin Williams not only battled depression but also cocaine and alcohol addiction. Is this simply an unfortunate side effect of living the life of a celebrity, or does it go deeper than that?

 

Judy Garland 1922-1969

Photo by Wikipedia

 

"When you have lived the life I've lived, when you've loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad -- well, that's when you realize you'll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you'd rather die first."

 

The pubic suffered another devastating loss in 1969 with the death of Judy Garland, certainly one of the greatest talents of all time. Although the official cause of Judy’s death was, “Barbituate Poisoning (quinalbarbitone), incautious self-overdosage, accidental”, the statement above does make one wonder. We know there was no dearth of emotional problems in Ms. Garland’s life and she, as well, counted drugs and alcohol abuse among her personal demons.

 

John Forbes Nash Jr.,

photo by Wikipedia

 

John Forbes Nash Jr. A beautiful mind. A mathematician, a genius, a Nobel Prize laureate and a schizophrenic of dramatic proportions. And he is not alone. There is some scientific evidence that there is a higher incidence of bipolar disorder in creative people such as painters, musicians, actors and poets than in the general population.

Writers Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway, composers Irving Berlin and Sergey Rachmaninoff, as well as painters Paul Gauguin and Jackson Pollock were all geniuses believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder. (Patient Health International). If there is a link between genius and creativity and psychological disorders, it seems sad to be given these gifts only to have to suffer for having them.

 

 

RIP

Kamikaze Cats

 

 

Thursday Morning Massacre

 

There has been a marked elevation in the level of destruction around our house lately. Maybe it’s a full moon. It can’t be Spring Fever, it’s August. Candles are being flung off the candelabra on the back patio. Large candles.

The poor harassed, tailless lizards that I find around the house and evacuate to the vacant lot across the street, are escalating in size. The one I found the other day was about six inches long, even with the lack of a tail. As I rescued the poor thing from under the bathroom cabinets, I noticed the malevolent gaze of three cats peering around the corner. Were they snickering?

 

“Don’t look at me, I don’t even have any teeth!” 

(not that that slows her down)

 

I swear the mice are getting bigger as well. I sure hope there are no rats in our back yard. Perhaps it is the lack of freedom during the night. Of late, we have been locking the cat door about the time it gets dark as our cats are not the only ones using the cat door. Firstly we can’t afford to feed the entire neighbourhood, and secondly not all the animals welcoming themselves into our home are cats.

The other night one of the motion sensor lights along the side of the house was activated and spotlighted on the wall outside the window was an opossum the size of a small Labrador retriever. Imagine the fray, not to mention the smell which would permeate the house, if our kamikaze cats laid into that beast in our kitchen.

 

“What? I didn’t do anything!”

photo courtesy of Todd McIntosh

 

The day before yesterday I relieved Kashmere, pictured above, of a small dead bird. He was not impressed. Perhaps that was the catalyst ( no pun intended ) for this morning’s debacle. I awoke to find the living room rug full of feathers. Following the feather trail into the kitchen and out the cat door ( no I did not go out the cat door, only the feathers did ) I discovered the site of what could only be described as a massacre.

 

Oh my, this can’t bode well.

 

As I peered in confusion Todd explained that before I got up this morning our three charming kitties had taken down a full grown pigeon. A really large, full grown pigeon. The pigeon now resides in the trash can out front awaiting pickup on Friday. The cat’s are carefully monitoring the trash can, probably waiting for a chance to haul out and eat their kill.

 

   “Yah, I did it, so what? Yawn”

Right now I would trade all three of them in for a dog.

Kids, Ya Gotta Love ‘Em!

 

 

In the Biblioteca

 

Children are universal creatures. To them culture is not important. Language is not important. Appearance is not important. They understand each other on some basic level at which, as adults we can only marvel. To us, who can never return to that blissful state of naiveté, their enthusiasm is infectious. They are our future. They are our last hope of a united world. So let’s try not to f_ _ k them up!

Where is all this coming from you ask? Well it began with an English class that I began teaching today for a group of kids at the local library, and for some reason I was reminded of my step-son when he was very young. He used to bring his friends home from school, of course, like every other kid. But it struck me one day while a group was visiting, that perhaps I was witnessing the beginning of an era of tolerance.

 

Alexander McIntosh

 

The school kids were from a VERY diverse background. There were kids who stemmed from Iran, India, China and a couple of indigenous kids in his group of friends.What was brilliant was that to them, they were just all Canadian. It occurred to me then that if the world were integrating at such a rate, then perhaps I really was seeing the beginning of something wonderful.

That was over twenty years ago. My step-son Alexander, is now thirty years old, married, living in Australia and about to have a child of his own. And what has changed in that time? Not much that I can see. Oh I imagine that the children of the upcoming generation will be raised with more tolerance than those of generations past, due to the integrated upbringing of their parents, but is that enough?

I had completely forgotten my ruminations of that day, many years ago, when I watched Alexander and his friends playing around the pool in our apartment complex in North Vancouver. I suspect I would have been surprised and disappointed to discover then how little the world would have changed in over twenty years.

 

 

Today I looked into the happy innocent faces of these Mexican kids who welcome a different appearance and a different culture with open curiosity and enthusiasm. Oh they are aware that the world is full of haves and have nots, and I am sure it seems to them that the world is conspiring to see that the have nots don’t get any. But still their eyes are filled with joy, hope and expectation and they have yet to develop the biases and bigotries that come with experience. 

 

Children make me happy!

 

 

I can’t help but think of the sad, desperate parents here that send their children north alone in the hope that if they survive the journey, they may have a chance at a better life in the USA. I’m sure it never occurred to them that the kids that actually made it that far would be met with rejection and refused entrance to the great US of A. What kind of a message is that sending the youth of this country? Not to mention the kids in the US.

Many countries in the middle east are still trying to blow each other off the map, Africa is…..I don’t even want to go there, and passenger planes are being shot out of the sky over the Ukraine.

I think it may take several more generations of integration before my naïve expectations of a more tolerant world come to pass. I do still believe, though that our children and our children’s children will be our salvation. That as they interbreed our differences will minimalize. If we can just stop poisoning our kid’s minds long enough for them to accomplish this we may just make it.

As is becoming the norm, all the photographs in this post are courtesy of Todd McIntosh.

Chicken, Chatting and Chess

 

 

 

On Thursday afternoon Todd and I were invited to a BBQ at the home of local artists, Joe Miller and his wife Pat. Todd knows Joe, Pat and their gorgeous home well as he is the photographer for the San Miguel de Allende House Tour and the Miller’s home has been on the tour many times. However I had never met these lovely folks or seen their amazing house.

Among other works of art Joe makes giant chess pieces and has a huge chess board set up in his back yard that you can just see at the bottom of the photograph above. Being the airhead that I am I forgot to bring my camera and I am very lucky that Todd has some wonderful pictures of the Millers property.

 

All set up and waiting for players!

 

The day was beautiful and warm, but not too hot, perfect for backyard chess. Although I love to play chess, I didn’t actually play as it is a little hard for me to move the pieces around the huge board with my walker, but I enjoyed watching some of the other guests playing a round or two. We had  barbecued chicken and ribs, slow cooked baked beans and couscous salad, all of which was finger lickin’ good.

 

 

Even the front door is an intricate piece of art

 

Todd and I only knew a couple of people there which always makes for an interesting time, chatting with new people and learning about their lives. The guest list was made up of several visitors to San Miguel as well as some long time residents. The wine was abundant and the conversation was lively and fun.

 

 

The inside of the house is extraordinary with every room a gallery unto itself. Large and airy with an open floor plan, it houses an eclectic array of beautiful art and furnishings that somehow blend effortlessly into a whole that is striking, yet also warm and welcoming.

 

The rooms are alive with colour and light

 

 

 

Every little nook and cranny has been used to full advantage to showcase the Miller’s unique and creative collection of art.

 

 

 

 

We had a wonderful afternoon, met some delightful people and I felt privileged to have been included. We are so lucky to live among so many talented people here in San Miguel.

 

Canada Day in San Miguel de Allende

 

 

 

July first was Dominion Day, or Canada Day if you prefer, in our native country, but it also made quite a splash right here in San Miguel. The party was held in the beautiful Antigua Villa Santa Mónica. The Canada Day Committee, (who knew there was such a thing!?) organized the heck out of the affair, and the result was a terrific party in a beautiful venue on a warm sunny afternoon. Even the Canadian Consulate put in an appearance.

 

Tons of great info from the Canadian Consulate

  

Rene and I getting ready to hand out name-tags before the party began

 

Courtyard/Dining Room of the Hotel Santa Mónica

 

Even though so many of the “snowbirds” are north of the border at this time of year I think we had 50 or 60 people in attendance. I didn’t realize that we had so many Canadians living here until the party. I even met someone that used to swim at Princess Park, across the street from the house where I grew up in North Vancouver, when we were kids. I’m always surprised when that kind of thing happens, it really is a small world.

 

Red and White were the colours of the day

 

 

When it came time to gather and sing the Canadian  Anthem we were led by our  compatriot, Juno Award winner, Johnny Favourite. Johnny who is the owner and operator of the La Noche Piano Bar, lives here in San Miguel but hails Newfoundland, Canada.

 

Johnny Favourite

 

What a great day it was. Todd and I don’t usually get involved in this kind of thing, but I think we may have to rethink that. Now I’m looking forward to Canadian Thanksgiving!

 

* I am getting very lazy being married to a great photographer and all the photos in this post are courtesy of Todd McIntosh.

The Power Of Community

 

 

In my last post, On The Wings Of Women, I talked about the efforts of some wonderful women in Patzcuaro working to improve their community. Now I feel I should give San Miguel de Allende it’s due and share an amazing community project here. El Camino de la Paz.  The Path of Peace.

This passage, an alley really, in the San Antonio area behind the Café Monet was a dangerous spot. Dim and urine soaked, ideal for thieves and muggers, it twists and turns with many dark nooks and crannies in which to hide. There are a few businesses that front on the alley, one of which is a B&B and Holistic Center called Lifepath, http://www.lifepathretreats.com/.

One day Dr. Beverly Nelson, the owner and operator of Lifepath decided to change all that, giving the alley a much needed make-over. Beverly rallied the community to help with this transformation and the new pathway became El Camino de la Paz. The first step was the cleanup. Gone was the scent of urine and the dark cubby holes created by overgrown plants. Lights were added every few meters and cameras now survey those who stroll the alleyway.

So many people donated their time and money to this project! After the cleanup came the beautification. Many local artists contributed their time and expertise to create something truly magical.

 

     

Joan Columbus and crew               

 

Joan also supervised and painted most of the doors and windows that were painted at intervals along the path, giving the alley a feeling of neighbourhood and community.

 

 

 

             

 

             

The Mandala

 

Linda Lainos, another talented local artist, was responsible for the mandala. A perfect addition to the project, the mandala is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism which metaphysically or symbolically represents the cosmos.

 

The Peace Pole

 

The Peace Pole is the brain child of artist, Michael Latriano. It is a mosaic tile post proclaiming in English, Spanish and Nahuatl (the indigenous language of Guanajuato) “May Peace Prevail”. The angel mosaic on the left says peace in each path, and when the sun is setting it lights the angel’s halo.

 

The genius of Carlos Caban 

                              

Carlos Caban, painter, muralist and wonderful man gave the project “The Goddess of Seeds”, a spectacular mural on one of three panels created for the purpose. I look forward to seeing what he will paint to grace the other two panels.

 

The Goddess of Seeds

 

The inauguration of the new Camino de la Paz took place, appropriately, on Earth Day and there was a Peace Walk, attended by hundreds of people, from Parque Juarez to Aldea where the Path begins. The celebration continued in the walkway with local dancers and more paintings from Carlos Caban. The transformation of this dangerous spot to a beautiful community area is nothing short of miraculous!

 

All of the photographs in this post and the following video are curtesy of Todd McIntosh

Camino de la Paz - San Miguel de Allende from Todd McIntosh on Vimeo.