Columns

(This column was first published June 13, 1987.)

Despite a long list of bad, reckless and downright dumb habits — including a general reluctance to go see a doctor — I’ve just had the happy experience of returning from the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, with a clean bill of health. Of course, there were a few exotic parasites making a home in my stomach — the result of eating at the kind of puestos I invariably tell gringo friends to pass by, on the street and in many market places. But the sawbones that inspected most of the functioning parts declared “I feel that your general health is excellent.”

(This is a rerun of a column first published June 10, 1989.)

The swan song of nature’s once-awesome predominance in our lives seems to grow fainter each day. Life drains from Lake Chapala before our eyes as condominiums push up the slopes above our heads, stripping all that’s living from the mountainsides.

He is known to have been a poet, philosopher, architect, designer and was hailed as a progressive leader.

In Mexico, nearly 50 years ago, Jocotepec photographer John Frost and I traveled to distant, tiny pueblitos, photographing well-trained horses, and experimenting with borrowed, clearly unfamiliar, tractors.

Horses. When living in the United States, my wife and I planned to come to Mexico early in 1960. I had encouraged some Army buddies to come to Los Angeles, after mustering out – where I’d lived before my induction. 

John Frost (no longer with us) was an impressively talented – and hard working – photographer of all things Mexican. He also had a keen eye for things distinctively rural.