Joseph Wambaugh offers this advice, “When you despair of what passes for storytelling in today’s dumbed-down video ‘culture’… Turn on some Gershwin, Ellington, Cole Porter, curl up, and open to the first page of a John D. MacDonald novel. You shall be restored!” Most of us older folks living here in Mexico are familiar with […]
Continue ReadingTo Part One The previous night Michael had started carrying María Elena’s big metal pot of atole to the plaza as she walked beside him carrying her steamer of tamales. What a rich drink, he thought, made of that same corn dough they called masa and also of those curious little cones of piloncillo, a raw sugar, and of […]
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As Michael stepped off the bus at the edge of Refugio de María, he felt clean, enthusiastic, like a boy on a new adventure. He threw the straps of the large green pack over one shoulder and began trudging the dusty stones toward town. When he finally found a couple of rooms to rent for […]
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“A story filled with sex, violence, and drugs, even love, a story of treachery, where only power and money ultimately are valued.” Author Belden Butterfield was born in Argentina, educated in the United States, sent to Mexico by Time Inc. and now lives in San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City. In his new novel, The […]
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AuthorHouse (Bloomington, Indiana), 2009 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback Temples of the Mist is for teenagers and about teenagers. Seventeen-year-old Caleana and her thirteen-year-old brother Marsh were part of a happy family, a California beach-town family that had a “deep longing to make a difference in the world,” a family where the mother practiced yoga and wrote […]
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HarperCollins Publisher, 2009 Available from Amazon Books: in Hardcover, Softcover, and Kindle “Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime.” […]
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Adoro Books, 2009 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback The back cover of Sweet Spot tells us that author “Linton Robinson was a journalist in Mazatlán and other Mexico cities for years. And played a little ball in his time.” His protagonist and narrator — Raymundo Carrasco — likewise was a journalist in Mexico for years. And played a […]
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iUniverse, 2009 Available from amazon.com (In Hardcover and Paperback) For years, I have been curious about “the isthmus,” or more formally “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” perhaps in part because Frida Kahlo loved so much the traditional clothing of this rarely visited section of southern Mexico, or perhaps because I love the Zapotec rugs that come […]
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Available from Amazon Books: Paperback A while ago, I reviewed for MexConnect another useful book by Mike & Terri Church: Traveler’s Guide to Mexican Camping, 3rd Edition. LINK That book — in 512 packed pages — covers all of Mexico, and even Belize. Eighty pages are devoted to the Baja. A few months before that, I reviewed another book […]
Continue ReadingU.S. President, Barack Obama, recently received The Nobel Peace Prize, the most recognized award in the world, because he has given the people of the world “hope for a better future” and for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Only three other U.S. Presidents have won, all of them “peacemakers:” […]
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