Spanish views from a small town

This morning, as I was returning home from visiting a couple of shops in our town, I saw a horse-drawn carriage backing up traffic on the incoming lane. It was a fine, light grey horse (I don't know the names of the different horse colors) trotting and pulling an open cart that would have looked at home doing the pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgen del Rocío down in Huelva. It was open, with a pole at each corner, holding a tassled canopy over the cart. The horse was wearing blinders. Nevertheless, I slowed down as much as possible when I passed it, if only to look at its splendor. The car coming behind me at a length didn't do much of slowing in the way of courtesy, but the horse wasn't rattled; it was used to trotting along with motor traffic. I have no idea where they were from, and what they were doing coming into town like that. In normal times, this Saturday would have been the first day of our festival of the Virxe de Guadalupe . Perhaps they came because they we...

What is a symbol? A symbol is a representation of something else. We are sur round ed by s y mbols. Our minds work with symbols every day. Even letters are symbols, properly speaking. Symbols are necessary for us, without the m our communicat ion would not be as fluid and underst a ndable. Somet imes, they are emotional , an d we are trained from babyhood to have a knee-jerk reaction to them as soon as we see them. I remember while in primary school in Boston, every morning we st ood and recited the pledge, hands over hears, facing the American fl ag in the co rn er. We were taught it was the symbol of a great country, a proud country, our country. I still remember, I pledge allegiance to the f lag of the Unite d S t ates of America, and to the Republic, for whi ch it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, wi th liberty and justice for all . Every morning, twenty-odd chi ldren and their teacher, in every class, unanimously rec iting th e same words to a symbol. We were taught...