A Place I Always Wanted To Visit - The McNay

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

Starting off, I have noticed a magnified amount of views on the blog.  I've it's in the thousands now and it is not normal.  If you have noticed anything different, please let me know.  Also I am using a new grammar checker and the font may be changing off and on.  

Another one of our visits was lunch with our long-lost friends Terry and Lupe.  We worked together at Datapoint/Intelogic Trace for many years.  Lupe was a facilities manager and Terry worked in the Planning department.  At times, we had our ins and outs with work-related matters but always managed to maintain our friendship.  

After work, I would go to aerobics class and then slip next door for happy hour.  Yes, a bit of an incongruency, but it always seemed to do the trick for stress relief.  As I mentioned in the last post, it was very stressful towards the end.  We would meet at a place called Scandals.  It didn't matter what level you were, from director down to warehouseman, we would all go there and have a blast.  Sometimes, it was too much of a blast.  Disagreements and agreements were settled and made there.  Good laughs and good times.

Nowadays, all four of us are retired.  We talked about where we ended up and what we are doing now.  The girls live out on Canyon Lake.  Their lives took a turn for the better after the company closed.  Many didn't have it so well.  One very close friend of our group, Becky, is now in a nursing home and suffers from early-onset dementia.  We wanted to go see her, but Terry attempted to have a phone conversation not too long ago, and it didn't go well.  But, here we are, and we were happy to have shared a wonderful lunch.  It is a Brazilian espada restaurant.  Excellent service and they keep bringing the swords with different cuts of meats and sausages along with a top drawer salad bar.  Prices are also according to the service and the menu 😅

That was a full day and we went back home to do what I do best.  A one-hour nap.  We had Roku service on the boob box.  I never figured it out and we watched mostly news from every other city except San Antonio.  I could never find it.  We're not cable guys and use YouTube for everything including live news and shows. 

I was so naive when I first moved there.  I had spent previous years in California just working and going to "discos" in L.A. at the time.  When I moved to San Antonio, my first apartment was four blocks from this artistic wonder and I never gave it a glance, although I had heard about it.  Finally, we made it a point to visit, and I'm glad we did.

 

The house above has been maintained in its original design with little to no changes.  A new wing was added in 2008.  The gardens are spectacular with sculptures throughout.

I'm glad the guard was reading a book rather than using a cell phone but I couldn't get the big lug to budge.   

The next day we headed off for the McNay Museum.  The building itself is worth the visit.  The museum was founded by Marion Koogler.  She was an art teacher and painter.  Her parents died early on, leaving her a fortune from oil investments.  She traveled and married a rich person.   In the 1920s, she had the mansion above built.  As a widow later in life, she fulfilled her dream of creating a space for the arts in San Antonio.  She passed away in the 50s after having suffered pneumonia.

The museum is highly rated for a modern art museum but doesn't compete with the likes of the Louvre.  There are works by Picasso, O'Keefe, Gauguin, and a rare Van Gogh. 

Van Gogh, Women Crossing A Field

Christ in Exstacy by El Greco 16th Century

Aristide Maillol The Nymph 1911

(I would never do it, bu it did cross my mind,head and arms)

Guess who?

There is also some great local sculpture on display.  

Too much to post but it is well worth the trip.  For us it was half a day and if they didn't charge we would have divided it into two days.  I like to read and research what I am seeing and get some background on the artist or the art.

Today's news is about huachicol.  If you don't know what it is, it is wreaking havoc in the world of Mexican corruption.  Huachicol had its start back in the fifties with the adulteration of alcohol.  Buying, adding ingredients and reselling.  

Millions and millions of liters.

Modern day huachicol started in 2019 with the oil industry.  The president denied it was happening, but we were in Lagos de Moreno when all the gasoline stations shut down.  A duct used for transporting gasoline was tapped and created an explosion that killed 137 people.  After the duct had been illegally tapped and a tanker filled, the locals went running with buckets, jugs, even 1 liter bottles to collect as much gasoline as they could.  It ended in tragedy.

For the last seven years, to avoid fiscal responsibility, tankers fill up at PEMEX refineries and travel to international waters before returning.  It appears as if they are coming from another country.  The paperwork is falsified and the contents of the tanker labeled as residuals or additives.  The tax is much lower and the fuel makes it back to a Mexican port where it is then sold.  

It has been in the news now for years, denied although proven by good investigative reporting.  Top marine officials have been paid 1.7 million pesos per tanker that they allow into a port to unload.  When the first pictures of a tanker unloading onto a line of oil tankers appeared, the official answer was that the photographs were faked.  

This week, the story has officially broken and two nephews of a retired admiral have been detained.  A whistleblower has been killed by someone, another one committed suicide the day before yesterday.  The dominos are falling, but it is still a coverup.  PEMEX is so deep in debt at this point (110 billion U.S.) that this will only break the back with government funding and investors.  How many people are involved?  This goes all the way up the ladder and may include the last president who denied its goings-on.