It gets heavy use by neighborhood kids, and parents bring their toddlers from remote colonias to play here. It's a major municipal asset, adding greatly to the quality of life of our citizens. We could use more places like this.
Other neighborhoods can't afford nice playgrounds. This one is in Fracciónmiento Bella Vista, a modest but pleasant neighborhood on the wrong side of the highway to Celaya.
It doesn't seem to get much use, and no wonder. You have to pick your way through the weeds, there's no shade, and no water.
And there's fire ants. Or as they say in Houston, far ants. While taking this photo I suddenly felt stinging all up and down my legs. I was standing on an anthill maybe four feet across, disturbing the wa of some formic little beasts. They retaliated by biting the hell out of me.
I found a dozen or more huge anthills in the playground—reason enough to keep the kids away.
It would be nice to fix up the Bella Vista playground. All it takes is money. And ant poison. You could probably make it useable for a few hundred dollars, and five thousand, given our typical low construction costs, could make it into a real jewel. But money is hard to come by in Mexico.
Unlike in, say, Santa Barbara.
I'm guessing this Alameda Park playground cost hundreds of thousands of dollars: on the order of San Miguel's total municipal budget for restoration and construction.
I find it difficult to get my head around just how lucky—and rich—we Americans are. I'm sure that in a typical U. S. town, fundraising to fix up a place like Bella Vista Park would be a reasonable undertaking.
Not so in Mexico. Contributing to charitable organizations is not part of the culture. The vast majority of San Miguel's NGOs are funded by Norteamericanos. Mexicans are much less likely to contribute.
Why?
Well, poor Mexicans—the majority—simply cannot afford to. And with respect to their communities, rich Mexicans, dare I say it, have more of a sense of entitlement rather than one of duty. I'm guessing this is an attitude held over from colonial times: the aristocracy live well and everyone else lives the best they can.
You can earn an income tax deduction for charitable giving. But for a deduction to be useful, you have declare income. Most people don't. No tax revenues, no charities.
So there's no money to fix up Bella Vista Park. Unless one of us extranjeros (foreigners) ponies up. Sigh.
A plethora of small, independent sales and service shops offset some of these disadvantages.
Owned by knowledgeable geeks, they'll fix your machine quickly and cheaply, although you may wind up with a Spanish-language version of Microsoft Word. Or, if you want a new machine, they'll build you one from scratch. That way your computadora will have newer hardware, and the duty penalties will be smaller.
This place caught my eye because its name is intriguing.
Mayan Digital Technology? Was Silicon Valley anticipated in the Yucatan? Did tech companies spring up along the Puuc Road?
Who knows how far their science went. After all, they did have the most sophisticated calendar in the world until modern times.
I have an old out-of-warranty laptop with a bad motherboard. Dell will replace the motherboard roughly for the cost of a new computer. Mayan Digital Technology says they will repair the motherboard for maybe 25 bucks. They think it's just a bad solder joint.
I'm developing a real appreciation for Mayan technology.
Mexicans pretty much buy their fish the same way. But in San Miguel, there is a third option.
One of the more engaging aspects of life in Mexico is that people still come into town to sell stuff they gather in the countryside. It's quaint. It brings us back to an earlier, simpler time. It connects us with our roots.
Now, before you get too sentimental, I must note that these fish probably were caught in the Presa Allende, an agricultural reservoir so polluted that you risk contracting diarrhea even just looking at these pictures.
There's no way in hell I would ever eat one.
But someone does. I caught this fisherman on two different days. Presumably he manages to sell his fish 'cause he keeps coming back.
I guess I'm just a prissy Norteamericano. A wuss.
Up north, everything is franchised. Professionals create the look and feel of small businesses and stamp out hundreds of identical copies. But the price we pay for slick conformity is the loss of the lemonade-stand look.
Not so in Mexico.
A tapicería is an upholstery shop. The fish tells us that the owner is born-again and not afraid to let us know it.
But the name of the business is a mystery. Neither the owner's English nor my Spanish is good enough to convey its meaning. It transliterates as "Jehova Spin." ("Jhire" has the same latinate root as our "gyrate.")
But what does it really mean? Maybe one of you can tell me.
(By the way, I love the artwork and lettering in his sign. You won't find originality like this in Franklin IN.)
Here are some young Mexican students at the Plaza Civil sketching the heroic statue of General Ignacio Allende on his charger. They want careers as artists, to support themselves as artists.
Norteamericanas fly down from LA or Greenwitch, CT for art study tours.
They have better gear. Their easels cost more than a Mexican student's budget for an entire semester at the Instituto Allende. Their tours cost more than the annual income of an average Mexican. In a week they'll go back to LA or Greenwitch, CT and resume their shopping careers.
One of the Mexican students may become a prominent artist. Neither of these women will. But at least they'll show us more leg.
Ho. Ho. Ho. Chuckle. Aren't we slightly ashamed of ourselves.
(Golden Girls was pretty lame, if you ask me.)
Mexicans generally are a modest people. Okay, I realize that variety show hostesses flash a lot of skin, but your ordinary citizen covers up. In decades of observing Mexicanos, I have never caught a glimpse of a butt crack. It would be unthinkable.
This bricklayer is the exception that proves the rule.
It's hard to imagine how he could have let this happen. There are no women about, so he's not being coy. I can only conclude that he is careless about his dress and person.
This photo makes another point: the Golden Girls are wrong. This man is not wearing a tool belt.
No. The reason we men accidentally reveal our butt cracks is because we don't have any hips. So our pants slide down.
(The writers for the show either must have been all women or men who remained seated all of their lives.)
One could argue that trousers are, for men, a poor solution for covering behinds. Dresses would work much better, suspended from broad, manly shoulders. It's women, with their protuberant hip bones, who are ideally adapted for wearing pants.
Who wears them in your family?
They're annoying.
The constant repetition as they practice grinds grooves into my brain. I find myself helplessly humming along with the inane tunes. After listening to them for three years, I probably know the music better than they do.
The buglers only are able to achieve four notes on their instruments, so all of their numbers have to be played in the same key. Since the available permutations of those four notes are few, the tunes blur into tedium. Like Bluegrass, a little goes a long way.
All this would be bad enough if they actually were good musicians. But they're not, as the clip below reveals:
Puts a real cramp on my afternoons.
How are these young people selected to join the band? What are their qualifications? Take this drummer:
His appears not to be a demanding position. Bang on the drum, simply, repetitively.
I guess anyone can apply. You certainly don't have to demonstrate actual musicianship.
I can tell you one thing: This guy sure as hell will never qualify as a bugler. Air leakage, you know.
There's gotta be dozens of drum and bugle corps in San Miguel. They show up for civic events and parades and fiestas. They have spiffy uniforms. They take themselves very seriously. They stand at rigid attention. They march with precision. Some goose step, like little Latin American storm troopers.
They appear to provide the sole source of music instruction for a vast majority of young Mexicans. Once I attended a concert of the new San Luis Potosi Symphony Orchestra. The city had hired a Russian maestro who came to Mexico with a group of young violinists, cellists, flautists and the like from a conservatory in St. Petersburg. Mexicans were represented in the orchestra as well. They played—you guessed it—trumpets and drums.
Mexicans are militaristic. They love uniforms. They love marching. When marching in their uniforms, they salute each other a lot. For a race that loves children and fiestas and music, they sure are warlike. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Mexican national anthem. One verse translates as:
War, war without truce to any who dare,
To tarnish the country's coat of arms!
War, war! Take the national pennants,
And soak them in waves of blood.
War, war! In the mountain, in the valley,
The cannons thunder in horrid unison.
And the resonant echoes
Cry out—Union! Liberty!
Sheesh!
Makes you wanna stay out of their way. Until you consider that they lost every war they've ever fought.
(Not counting revolutions where they fought each other, of course. Those they both won and lost.)
The anthem was written shortly after they were defeated in the Mexican American War (1846-48). To make them feel better about themselves, I suppose.
When Jean and I first moved here, we'd set our clock radio to the University of Guanajuato FM station. If we set the alarm for anything earlier than seven, we'd catch the sign-on when they played the national anthem.
To call it stirring would fail to do it justice. All I can say is you didn't want to stay in bed when it was playing.
I really can't describe this song adequately. You have to hear it for yourself. You can find a a great if somewhat startling clip here (You Tube).
But I haven't written much about the beauty of this country. And it truly is beautiful. This morning I was at the Mirador (lookout) on the Salida de Querétaro and snapped these photos.
San Miguel is situated on the west-facing side of a bluff, yielding views of the presa (reservoir) and the lovely Guanajuato Mountains in the distance. The city is full of trees; laws discourage cutting them down. Sometimes it feels like living in a park.
The historic center is marked by several large churches. The gothic-looking structure is the Parroquoia, a San Miguel icon. The stonecutters who built it lived in my house while they worked here. Full scale drawings of the columns and ornaments were painted on the front of my house for use as patterns. Sadly, they have faded and when my neighbors paint the front of their house in a few days, the last vestages of these images will disappear for good.
My house is located (approximately) in the lower left corner of this picture.
I walk the streets of San Miguel every day as part of my exercise regimen. The beauty that surrounds me never fails to inspire, whether it is a fantasy mansion in Ojo de Agua...
... or wildflowers blanketing a slum hillside in Colonia Olimpo.
For lunch today, Jean and I went to an excellent seafood restaurant out by the Pilipa glorieta: Don de Nacho.
This place embodies many of the things about Mexico that I love. The tables are outdoors, mostly under a roof. The atmosphere is very informal. It's cheap. The food is excellent and unique.
There's only one problem: It doesn't offer much seafood. For a seafood restaurant.
Apparently, the original concept was to recreate the beach here in the Mexican Midwest. The restaurant originally was called Señor Playa—Mr. Beach.
Yep. Shrimp, tacos and volleyball.
Out front was a sandy area with a volleyball net—a pathetic beach simulation. The menu primarily offered seafood, but you could get arrachera (steak) tacos and carnitas as well—sort of as an afterthought.
People came in for the seafood. I mean, where else can you get ostiones (oysters) on the half shell?
After tasting the carnitas and arrachera, nobody bothered with the seafood. Especially the ostiones. And nobody played volleyball, either. Somehow, a stomach full of pork boiled in fat isn't conducive to vigorous net sports.
"Hey! How about some volleyball?"
"Oh God. I think I'm gonna spew..."
Señor Playa is an example of a typical Mexican business founded more on inspiration than on market research. But the owner is nothing if not adaptable. The menu changed. Out came half the seafood, the carnitas got top billing and the name of the place changed.
One might, if one was a gringo, think that nachos would be on the menu. One would be wrong.
The word Nacho is also a nickname—probably a diminutive of the name Ignacio. Don, besides being an honorific, is a word that means "gift" or "talent."
So "Don de Nacho" means something like "Ignacio's forte" or "Ignacio's offering."
Consistent with Mexican tastes, Nacho's sign displays anthropomorphic food images: a happy shrimp complete with head and antennae, and a resigned-looking pig, both wearing bow ties.
The carnitas are excellent. I once saw them being prepared here. Into a huge copper pot of boiling oil went large hunks of pig, bones and all. Several good-sized pieces of limp white skin also went into the pot. Sounds gross, but skin mixed with the well-done pork helps with the dryness you get in the loin. For flavor, oranges and onions and herbs were added, and the whole thing boiled for hours.
Don de Nacho makes fresh corn tortillas to order. A woman puts balls of masa (cornmeal dough) into a tortilla press and then cooks them on a griddle. You have no idea what a tortilla tastes like until you've had them like this: delicate, flavorful, tender. They're infinitely better than the cello-wrapped kind. It's just like the difference between a fresh loaf straight from mom's oven and wonder bread.
Carnitas are sold by weight. You get a foil-covered plate with your half-kilo order.
Chopped onions and cilantro and a selection of salsas accompany your meal. You take a fresh, warm tortilla, put some pork on it making sure you include a little skin, salt it and season it and off you go.
There were six tables of four when we were there. The only food on any table was carnitas. I'm betting it won't be long before the shrimp come off the menu.
Rosita the Boston Terrier is particularly fond of tortillas and of carnitas.
Here she is lobbying Jean for a bite.
That's another plus for Don de Nacho; they allow dogs.
[From Lords of the Logistic via Neatorama.]
I got Montezuma's Revenge anyway. But then again, I've gotten Hirihoto's Revenge, and Napoleon's Revenge, and today, when I travel in the U. S., I get Bush's Revenge. Seems like all those emperors have their own particular supply of bugs to punish foreigners for crossing their borders.
Of course, we all know know that a bout of Travelers' Diarrhea is sometimes the price you pay for the rewards of seeing new and exotic places. Local gut bacteria mount an attack on your benign intestinal flora, and until the issue is decided, you suffer collateral damage.
But in developing countries, the water supply really can carry nasty disease organisms. So we have to be careful.
San Miguel de Allende treats its water—chlorinates it. So the water supply should be as safe as it is in, say, Santa Barbara. In fact, there are drinking fountains in San Miguel's parks and schools, unapologetically connected to the municipal water system. The city takes the position that it's safe for our children to drink the water.
Underscoring the presumption of safety, the San Miguel Garden Club installed these drinking fountains four years ago, and you know they wouldn't want to harm children.
So long as they stay on the paths. And don't pick the flowers.
However, almost no one ever uses the fountains in the schools and parks. Almost no one drinks tap water. Why?
Well, one reason is, our tap water tastes bad. It's well water with lots of minerals and strongly tasting of chlorine.
More importantly though, people still believe you can get sick from it. Some of this may be bad memories from the days when the water wasn't treated. But the real threat is from sporadic but very real failures to maintain water purity. In Mexico, stuff works most of the time. But nothing works all of the time. Things break. There are few standards of maintenance, workmanship, and quality control, so accidents do happen.
That's why you don't drink the water.
—§—
San Miguel de Allende was founded in 1542. (That's only 50 years after Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.) One reason why it was founded at this particular location was because there were springs here.
This one is called Ojo de Agua (Eye of Water). People still draw water from it with plastic buckets. Doesn't look very wholesome, does it?
Other springs were brought into service as the community grew.
This one is at the foot of Colonia Atascadero, in an area called Los Arcos.
Today these springs surely are polluted, surrounded as they are by marginal sewage systems. The city now gets water from deep wells.
A couple of hundred years later, water was being piped into the city and distributed via public fountains.
This one is photogenic , but it's no longer functional. On the other hand, the one below works and is still used occasionally. Some time ago I watched a campesino dip his pail into it to water his string of burros.
The burros drank gratefully. But I noticed that the campesino didn't. He must have read the same advice I did. Don't drink the water.
—§—
Today, the water supply is not always reliable. It's sometimes inexplicably interrupted, cut off, and in any event, is supplied at low pressure. So every home stores water against supply failures. To solve both the supply problem, as well as the pressure problem, storage tanks, called tinacos, are placed on rooftops.
This photo is of the old-fashioned variety. In his excellent if somewhat dated book, Live Well in Mexico, Ken Luboff tells of climbing through the access port on top of his tinaco to clean it, only to get stuck at the waist when trying to emerge. The access port had been sized for more diminutive Mexican men. His description of the impromptu fiesta that spontaneously formed around his house while people tried to extricate him is hilarious.
Newer tinacos are made of plastic. With bigger access ports. (Mexicans are getting bigger, too.)
If you can't afford a manufactured tinaco, you improvise. This guy used a couple of 55-gallon plastic drums.
Tinacos are ubiquitous. But recently, some gringos, intolerant of trickling low-pressure domestic water, began installing cisterns underneath their houses, with submersible pumps feeding pressure tanks.
Aaahh. At last—a real shower.
—§—
Of course, we still don't trust the water purity. The other day, I watched as a backhoe dug through a water main and a sewer line. Fluids from both pipes quickly mixed with one another, filling the hole and running into the downstream end of the water main. Anybody drinking water from taps in that neighborhood was certain to get a surprise. Moreover, any tinacos downstream would be storing diluted sewage for the indefinite future.
Knowing this, some of us have installed water purifiers.
Here's ours. The big blue object is a pressure tank. To its right are two blue sand and silt filters. Above them, two horizontal stainless steel tubes contain intense ultraviolet lights which are suppose to kill bacteria. In addition, we put colloidal silver pellets in our cistern to kill any bacteria harbored there.
Belt and suspenders.
So with all that, our water is safe to drink. I think. But we still don't do it.
Instead the nice Santorini man comes by the house every day or so and brings us a five-gallon bottle of "pure spring water." Restaurants too provide only bottled water. Adults carry water bottles or drink Coke. In fact, Mexicans drink more Coke per capita than any nation on earth.
Schoolkids don't drink from those convenient drinking fountains. They carry water bottles in their backpacks. Or they drink from the Santorini bottles provided in every classroom.
Nobody drinks the water.
These are pictures you just wish would get lost.
Oh God! It's Dad and his stupid blog again. Now what the hell?
So, young man. Exactly what kind of job do you have?
Humph. I've seen some good weddings. This sure ain't one of 'em.
Oh man! Would you get a load of her dress!
Lockwoods and Woods react to Jean's singing.
Ooom.
Douche with Listerine and you'll never offend!!!
Yes he's cute. And he's all mine.
Why yes, I'd like a gumdrop.
My God! A perfect high "C."
Mommy! Make them all go away.
Why yes. I am related to a dentist. How did you know?
Two dentists flank the perfect smile, dismayed at the potential loss of fees.
What was I thinking? Dad! Get me out of this!
Take this sign, posted in Alice Keck Park in Santa Barbara. It deals with the environment.
Why do we need this sign? Would you avoid Alice Keck Park if it was missing?
"Gee, Honey. I don't know. Do you think they use pesticides here?"
Immediately across the street we have Alameda Park. This park sure as hell isn't pesticide-free. Earl here, running the world's largest lawn mower, don't have no truck with them eco-freaks. Got cinch bugs? Sod webworms? Hose 'em down with Diazanon. We'll pick up the dead robins later.
If you think Alice Keck Park is pesticide-free, you don't understand the word, "overspray."
So why the misleading and useless sign? Well, Santa Barbara is a tree-hugger hotspot, a center of the Sierra Club wing of the Democratic Party. Any politician who wants to advance in city government is gonna make sure his constituency knows he's on the side of the ladybugs.
(Now, before you get the wrong impression, you should know that I think we should never cut another old-growth tree, all dams should be demolished and all motor vehicles should be banned from National and State Parks. So get off my ass.)
—§—
The environment isn't an issue in Houston. But liability is.
Yep. Everybody's freaking out about one health risk or another. Here we have an expensive baked-enamel-on-steel sign informing the public that they found a rabid bat.
What a surprise! Let's see now. Rabies is endemic to the wild animal population. Bats are wild animals that have wide foraging ranges. Ergo, some bats are rabid.
We need a sign to tell us that?
We are asked to leave the area if we see bats. Eek! A bat! Run away! Run away!
If one of us comes into contact with a bat, we're instructed to call the City of Houston Health Department, to get assistance from the government, I suppose. Think about that.
The Houston Parks and Recreation Department erected this sign so that teenagers, while smoking cigarettes and enjoying sex without the inconvenience of condoms, will be vigilant about the miniscule threat to their health from rabid animals. They put up the sign because their lawyers told them to.
The only thing worse than a kid getting rabies is getting sued by the kid's parents for failing to warn him.
The other community issue in Houston is the intelligence level of George Bush-admiring Texans. Ya gotta tell 'em everything. For example, it's not uncommon to see signs that say, "Don't bring your gun into this restaurant."
Here's another HP&R gem, specially placed to inform the mouth-breathers:
"Whut's thet over there, Buford?"
"Wull, hail, them's wildflars, RayAnn. Cain't you see thet sign?"
I like the two exclamation points. Underscores the excitement, don't it?
Every evening he returns and picks up the carts. His vehicle is a familiar sight around town. It's not pretty, but it's a paragon of extreme repairs.
What you do in Mexico when something breaks is you fix it. You don't throw it away.
When your pickup truck breaks, and you want to repair it, you don't take it to the dealer. If you get a dent in your door, you don't have the body shop replace it with a new one. It costs too much and besides, nobody has insurance. Instead, you improvise.
Mexico is the Bondo and bailing wire capital of the Western Hemisphere. This pickup truck has seen a lot of it.
Consider the driver's side of the cab. You got the old serape serving as a seat cover. You got the rear view mirror that, years ago, was welded back on. You got the wudge of duct tape reinforcing the upper hinge on the wing window.
And then there's the windshield.
Here, lots of windshields are cracked. If a California Highway Patrol Officer sees you with a cracked windshield, he'll give you a fix-it ticket. In Mexico, the Federales won't even notice cracks in your windshield, they're so common. (They won't notice, that is, unless they're looking for a pretext to extort a little mordida.)
This windshield is way beyond cracked. It has a hole in it.
The only sensible thing to do when you get an actual hole in your windshield is to replace it. This guy doesn't think that way. Two pieces of plexiglas, a couple of machine screws, a glob of clear silicone caulk, and, why, it's almost good as new. Stops the wind from blowing in your face, doesn't leak much and you can see through it—sort of. Probably cost less than five bucks.
Waste not, want not.
—§—
Our driver, Manuel, picked us up at the airport and drove the camino sinuoso to San Miguel.
As he left the airport parking lot, the smell of burning electrical insulation wafted through his cab. He surreptitiously reached under the dashboard and wiggled something. The smell went away.
Manuel is a warm, friendly guy, and a skillful driver. I never experience anxiety when he drives us: not while passing trucks, not while dodging animals on the road, not even when his cab is on fire.
—§—
While we were away, Patti, our contractor, began construction of our asador (barbecue).
In planning this project, we must have taken leave of our senses, because we thought that by being gone for five and a half weeks, that the asador would have been completed when we got back. As a courtly gentleman once told a rude gringa who was staying with us, "Señora. You forget in whose country you are."
Yeah. We forgot. The asador will get done when it gets done. No point in asking for a status or a schedule. Patti will undoubtedly give us one tomorrow when we meet, but it'll simply be out of courtesy, and our actual results, as they say, will vary.
—§—
Wildflowers are at their peak in October. The rainy season is nearly over. Walls of girasoles (sunflowers) line the highways, towering overhead. Tomorrow morning, I'm taking Rose out into the countryside to photograph them. Here she is at Parque Landeta a couple of years ago.
This is what the campo looks like now—like something out of Arizona Highways Magazine.
Below, a steer munches mirasoles (cosmos). They grow here as weeds.
Santa Barbara is very beautiful—and very manicured. Mexico, too, is very beautiful. But it looks like the rural U. S. a century ago. Fields and fields of wildflowers, and lots of unfenced land to walk in.
After three years of living here, visiting the U. S. has become foreign travel. Mexico is now home. It's good to be back.
And surely it was The Great Occasion of Sam's and Kip's lives.
The park was beautiful. The guests were beautiful. The wedding party was particularly beautiful. The bride and groom were almost too beautiful to look at.
The ceremony was moving. I didn't get to see the procession because it started, by design, while I was driving Samantha to the foot of the aisle in a convertible. I somehow managed to remember to walk around to the passenger side and open the door for her. Then I walked her up the aisle, feeling the joyful grin that was splitting my face.
The ceremony was written by Samantha's friend Karen, who officiated. Kip and Sam didn't know what Karen was going to say until she said it. The result was a ceremony that transcended that Hallmark moment that so often passes for weddings these days.
Karen talked about a marriage as part of a community, of the indispensability of support from friends and family, about the reality of marriage, even in times of trouble. She made them promise to stick it out when things got rough. She reminded them that their vows were being witnessed, the unspoken predicate being that they would be accountable not only to each other, but to everyone else present at the wedding as well.
Whew!
It was way more than five minutes in front of a preacher. When it was over, it was clear that Karen had torqued down the head bolts, that this marriage was off to a solid start.
—§—
The flower girls nearly stole the show. 
Part of the ceremony involved acknowledging Cassie as part of their union. Samantha gave her a heart pin as a symbol of their love. As Karen talked about bringing Cassie into our family, my granddaughter Kiely spontaneously put her arms around her, a total aawww moment.
Kip was the first to cry, standing there in front of everyone with Sam. This put him at the absolute top of my list of truly fine men.
—§—
In the photo below, Jean is directing her husband, a task for which she is well-practiced, thank God.
Jean's dress was perfect; elegant, but not overdressing the mothers of the bride and groom. I am wearing a tuxedo for the first time since I was a Junior in High School.
—§—
Besides walking my daughter down the aisle, I got to make the first toast to the new couple and to have the second dance with Mrs. Lockwood.
I know this is the dream of a lifetime for Kip and especially for Sam.
It was for her father, too.
I found this object in the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. What is it?
I've never seen a sundial like this one—a very clever design that surely must have been known in Isaac Newton's time and probably much earlier. But it's not the kind of thing we science students got to study in the 20th Century. It's all new to me.
The dial itself is about 15" in diameter. It's made of brass. The gnomon (the fishtail shaped hook) can be rotated, moving the two arrows that point to the time.
To tell the time, you rotate the gnomon until the shadow falls on the figure eight-shaped curve engraved on the curved plate—the one that has the names of months alongside. You make the notch in the shadow line up with the section of the curve that corresponds to the current month, in this case, October.
This alignment causes the arrows to point to the correct position on the time dial. Here I have aligned the notch to fall precisely on the winter side of the curve.
Note that there are two arrows, one for Daylight Saving Time, revealing that despite its patina, this is a modern sundial.
The figure eight shape is called an analemma and is a curve generated by the tilt of the earth's axis and the fact that its orbit is elliptical, not circular. Here's the analemma for London, England.
By incorporating the analemma into a precisely crafted and sufficiently large sundial, it's possible to read the correct time to better than one second on any sunny day of the year.
An analemma is not just some abstract mathematical curve. It's an actual pattern made by the sun in the sky, and it has been photographed by opening the shutter on a fixed camera at the same time of day once a week or so for an entire year.
This pattern was known to the ancients, but to this modern-day semiconductor engineer, it was a mystery until today.
A century ago, kids were taught stuff that gets skipped over today. Can you multiply two large numbers by casting out nines? Can you extract a cube root by hand?
I can't.
This couple is dining alfresco. A breakfast picnic. Nothing like a cup of coffee under the morning sky. Or a cup of whatever it was they found in those trash cans. Life is good.
The families of the bride and groom—at least four families, ('cause we're Californians)—will meet tomorrow morning for breakfast. Then we'll do the ritual last-minute frantic running around, doing all those things left undone, that ought not to be left undone. Rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner will be tomorrow night.
Saturday morning will be spent practicing mild hysteria. That afternoon, we'll hold a minor 20-minute ceremony followed by five hours consuming vast amounts of mind-altering fluids and a couple of soft drinks.
As the official FOB, I won't be taking any photographs. It would be unseemly. But at gatherings like this, you can't keep Jean away from a camera, so we'll have all the embarrassing moments to share on Monday.
Wish us all luck.
They are one of the city's defining characteristics, and they create a pleasant ambience. Seems like every other street has its tall trees.
Ancient roots crawl over curbs, making Santa Barbara look much older than it is.
While the huge old Magnolia below is not a street tree, the city owns the park it's in. Makes Jean look like a Hobbit.
Trees like this don't happen by accident. They are the result of decades of careful pruning. The tree pictured below is one that has been recently pruned—and, I might add, by experts.
All this work is performed by a full-time crew that wanders up and down the streets, year after year, shaping and thinning. They have all the cool gear: a chipper, a big truck for the chips, razor-sharp chain saws and a humongous cherry picker. I'm guessing this one reaches 40'-50', and it can be positioned rapidly and delicately. What a tool!
A city needs money to create this kind of beauty. With the average homeowner kicking in $5,000-$10,000 in property taxes, Santa Barbara can afford it.
Mission revival in style, the building fulfills a function never imagined by mission-building padres.
The theater shows movies and presents live shows.
Look at that ticket window. Arches beckon within.
I'd like to post a photo of the interior, but we didn't go inside. I recall from a previous visit, the remarkable ceiling inside. Around the periphery, silhouettes of the Santa Barbara skyline are backlit. The ceiling itself is indigo, with pinpoint lights set into it in the exact pattern of the night sky. You can make out all the familiar constellations.
Only a few of the old '20s theaters remain, but fortunately, they're being saved and restored.
Little known fact: The Arlington also serves as Santa Barbara's missile defense system.
OK. I made that up.
Actually, this is a sculpture of a hypodermic syringe.
Mexicans are among the most well-groomed people on earth. From the time they're babies, they're primped and dressed to look their best.
Beauty parlors, called esteticas, are everywhere, and most are small and informal businesses. No Supercuts in San Miguel. Thank God.
This one, Carol's, opens at 3 PM. At least that's what's painted on the wall.
(I like the s-shaped figures surrounding the lettering. Mexicans have used design elements like those for centuries. I think it's in their blood: Got a wall? Put a little squiggly design on it.)
Carol's offers cuts, tints, streaking and something called bases. Near as I can tell, bases have something to do with roots. Maybe one of you knows.
On the edge of town, you find more primitive places.
At least with Carol's, you know where the entrance is. Getting into this salon requires exploration.
The "No Name Beauty Parlor" uses its valuable signage not to list services provided, but to make sure everyone understands the hours of operation. Probably because you can't make appointments. Probably because there's no telephone.
Like Carol's, it opens at 3 PM. Looks like a trend. I'm guessing the salon operators' day jobs last until three, and the clients' jobs last until then too—so there's no point in opening earlier.
This much more upscale place discloses its Mexican heritage by the amateurishly hand-painted sign. Every letter is in upper case except the "h" in mechones. Looks like a typo.
What are mechones, anyway?
But Julie's is in Santa Barbara! The other day I was missing San Miguel so I routed my walk down the south end of Milpas Street, where the inmigrantes live.
Mexican women learn early about makeup, hair care and dressing attractively. Their appearances get high priority. Just ask seven-year-old Teresa.
Look at those eyelashes! In 2015, teenaged boys are gonna be toast.
Kip is taking the written test.
Here, Sam is displaying the Marriage Instruction Manual. Being her father's daughter, she of course won't read it.
The Department of homeland Security requires the swearing of an oath that the parties are not members of a mosque, do not know the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin, and in fact don't even like Moslems.
Aawww. Aren't they cute. Sam is checking to see if Kip's heart is actually beating, not wanting inadvertently to marry a non-living person.
The Brown Pelican could not be built today. Various special interest groups would hang it up in legal challenges for decades. The California Coastline Commission would never allow it.
But many years ago, someone bought a little beachfront lot just above the high tide line, in a declivity in the near-continuous line of coastal bluffs. They built a restaurant when regulations were few, and today, the place is grandfathered.
The lot is worth tens of millions of dollars, but only its original use is permitted, so no hotel, no condos, no mansion.
Tables are scattered under umbrellas on a pleasant patio. Palm fronds rattle in the gentle, warm breezes specified by the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce.
Jean and I went there for lunch. A surfer dude came over and said, "Hi. My name is Chad. I'll be your server today."
I wanted to smack him.
On the menu were all kinds of fresh fish, so naturally, Jean ordered a salad and I had the clam chowder, enabling us to get out of there for $25 instead of $50.
I photographed Jean, fork in hand, sitting beside a gorgeous ocean view.
Perhaps more gorgeous than Jean realized. The view beside our table was, for me, very distracting.
There's no place like Southern California. Sunny, warm, laid back. Nobody works after 2 PM. All out working on their tans.