Around the Corner with Clara

Today I am back in Cuernavaca, which is a relatively casual town in terms of fashion and image. But once in a while the large retiree community and ex-pats leave their linen shirts and sandals at home in exchange for more formal attire. Today's occasion is a fundraiser put on by a group of women who are building a breast cancer screening clinic in a nearby town called Tepozt l á n. The clinic will be called Tepoz Rosa ( rosa for the pink colour of the breast cancer awareness campaign).  My mom is on very familiar terms with the fundraising coordinator and also as a breast cancer survivor herself, she is very enthusiastic about the cause. Even more exciting was the fundraising activity itself. A $37 ticket bought limited seating at a talk about Mexico's art, food, and culture as well as a gourmet brunch in a very impressive setting. My mom reserved 3 tickets, one for each of us plus her sister, my Aunt Guadalupe who lives in Mexico City but was thrilled to make it to Cuernavaca...

And now for something completely different: A while back I delved into the unforgiving world of online dating. I sincerely never thought I would be fishing in these waters, but also I never thought I would become a widow at age 50. When I joined my bereavement support group for loss-of-spouse, in October 2019, I met 13 beautiful souls who supported each other, listened to one another, laughed together, and of course cried together. Out of the 14 of us, only 2 of us had experienced instant, sudden loss of our spouses, and of course, the loss was way too soon. It's been more than 2 years since our bereavement group met regularly for a course of 9 weeks, and yet we are still there for each other no matter what. It's a nice feeling to be able to pick up the phone and call on my girlfriends Pat or Barb and know that their understanding is like a warm hug. Others in the group are also like family, and during the pandemic, we have been hell-bent on keeping in touch through zoom meetin...

Mexico City is home to endless architectural marvels and today I decided to view some of them from the vantage point of the second story of double-decker  Turibus .  My feet were still tired from pacing the museum and walking the day before, and I was also getting a bit impatient about having to wear a mask every single second I was outside, so the hop-on-hop-off bus seemed like a good compromise.  The Turibus has 4 routes that loop through different parts of the city. I walked 20 minutes from my longtime friend Jaime's apartment where I was staying and caught the bus at the World Trade Centre. Even though the Turibus website says the cost for an adult during the week is $160 pesos ($16 CAD), I was charged $185 pesos and got $20 pesos back when I gave the clerk a $200 peso bill.  He also told me that each of the 4 routes was about 45 minutes, but really they are 2-2.5 hours each. Since I had a meeting at 5:30 that evening at one of the destinations on the other sid...

My father, Dr. Charles R. Wicke, was a very humble man. He died in 2012 at the age of 84, but before he started to deteriorate I convinced him to put together an online version of his memoir. In it, he shared some of his early experiences in South  America and Mexico as an anthropologist/archaeologist in the 1950s-60s. By the time he met my mom in 1964 at Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology he had been in Mexico 10 years, published a book on one of Mexico's oldest civilizations, and had mastered the Spanish language. He also had earned the trust and respect of the anthropological academic community. I've known all this for years, but once in a while, more fascinating facts are unearthed from the past in serendipitous ways.  With Marco Vigato in Mexico City Today I met the person responsible for one of those new discoveries. Marco Vigato is an Italian independent researcher living in Mexico City with his wife and two kids. A few months ago I received an unsolicited emai...

Today is Halloween and Mexico City has shut down its main avenue, Paseo de la Reforma , and environs to make way for a huge parade spawned by the 2015 James Bond film, Spectre . The parade was featured in the movie, but it didn't actually exist so when Mexico City's tourism officials began to get inquiries about it, they decided to make the parade official. I plan to check it out from as much a distance as I can, but since it starts at noon my longtime friend, (and former colleague) Jaime, and I will enjoy a leisurely breakfast at a cheap and cheerful restaurant chain called Sanborns. Jaime knows of a particular Sanborns near his place which has an open solarium filled with plants and tropical birds. So he asked me if I was a bird person and I said yes, and next thing you know I am wearing my Catrina hairband and veil, Mexican blouse and sash, and sipping a cappuccino among the evil shrill of overstimulated birds. Very apropos for Halloween I would say! Dressed for Halloween s...

Growing up as the daughter of an art historian, I had the privilege of constantly being surrounded by art. Of course, we had many paintings bringing life and colour to our whitewashed walls, but also my dad had several pre-Columbian artifacts and small sculptures which inhabited bookshelves and niches within the home. Most of the art was Mexican or Spanish and even though I am not an academic like my father was, I learned to appreciate the basics thanks to his unsolicited lectures at the dinner table. On several occasions I remember as a young girl living in Victoria, BC, friends would come over and comment, "Why do you have a painting of a naked lady in your house?" They were referring to replicas such as Francisco de Goya's Nude Maja . At the time I didn't know my reaction to my friends' comments was a feeling of appreciation for having been exposed to art from a young age and knowing the names of all the ladies, clothed or otherwise, who formed part of our bic...