Allyn Hunt

The Guadalajara Reporter Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper

Advertising

Trying for a clean bill of health: The surprising results of seeking and following good advice

(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.”

Dry season’s final days: As progress topples nature, bits of mountain wilderness come down to visit us in the night

(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.

A little-known poet king formed canny political alliances and took what he wanted

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

First slaughtered, then milked, finally ridden, domesticated horses appeared 5,500 years ago

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.

Where did the horses of North America come from? Escaped mounts of Cortez’s Spanish troops

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.

Off the familiar tracks, finding ways of doing odd things well, learning and earning a living

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.

Beltran de Guzman, an unrelenting application of evil: a cruel tangle of anti-church, anti-Cortez, anti-Indian

A Spanish settler’s repeated attempts to find a satisfactory physical location was only part of its marred, repetitive attempts to drive down permanent roots.

More Articles ...

Page 7 of 49