Airports often mirror a country's overall atmosphere and state of mind. On June 15, 2025, I was flying with United Airlines from Queretaro, Mexico, to New Orleans, for a knee replacement surgery. Our flight ran into a problem when the plane ran out of fuel while circling Houston, leading us to land in San Antonio amid a storm. Lightning flashed, reflecting in the growing pools of water around the aircraft. Due to safety regulations, the ground crew couldn't refuel the plane during lightning storms, leaving us stranded.

What soothes your heart, lowers your blood pressure, cancels out diabetes, and counteracts depression?

What allows more balance and confidence to those with Parkinson’s disease? And gives people with Downs Syndrome a way to solidly inhabit their bodies with more grace and precision? What unites your psyche with knowledge of the body, inspires your endocrine system with endorphins, and multiplies your chances of a longer and much happier life? Without Alzheimer’s. Argentine Tango.

In October of 2012 I suffered a catastrophic event that changed my life, my dancing, and my work. A neurosurgeon had an “accident” during my surgery and dripped bone cement into my spinal canal. I was paralyzed on the right side from the waist down.

I have worked very hard to recover movement, and in so doing, I appreciate my very physical life of teaching yoga, practicing and teaching Argentine tango, hiking, ice skating, horseback riding, and cross-country skiing. I have an excellent personal trainer in San Miguel who has helped me tremendously, and I have discovered that tango is offering me an invitation to recovery.

I’ve been dancing tango since 1998. But I have been a tango dancer since Sunday March 2, 2014. Something new happened. Argentine tango* takes a voracious appetite for the unknowable, the undoable. One must thirst for the music to enter the ears and brain, and then allow hearing to translate the melodies and rhythms into movement with the ease of an oyster slithering down the throat.

Last week, a friend and I went to Mexico City for the weekend, and added on extra time and one night in the town of Valle de Bravo. I had been curious to visit this place for many years, as I had heard it is cool, forested, higher elevation, and has a large population of equestrians and horses.

I was delighted to find that many Mexican tourists of 20 -something age were enjoying the arts and crafts market and the plaza area. I did not hear one word of English from anyone on the street, nor in shops. Living in San Miguel de Allende, I hear English constantly. If I don’t hear it from foreigners on the streets, then many of the Mexican business folk are learning English, and they may insist on practicing.