I am interested in the culture of Guadalupe. Since I live in an neighborhood where the neighbors are mostly Mexicans, I put a picture of Guadalupe on the front wall facing the street. The picture frame was hanging from a nail.

This morning I found the frame down on the ground, separated from its contents---the back board and some prints of my drawings that were used as padding in the frame. The picture of Guadalupe was nowhere to be found.

Then I remembered that my font fence door was wide open when I came back home at 10:30pm yesterday. I normally lock the fence door but the lock was unlocked and put on top of the fence pole. I thought I must have forgotten to lock it, a rare situation.

Now seeing my Guadalupe picture missing, I wondered if hanging a picture of Guadalupe on the front wall of the house violated some taboo and someone might have entered to take it away.

Then as I lift my eye, I saw the glass of the frame standing on the thin rim under the window. The picture of Guadalupe was there alright.

Now I think the frame must have been blown off the wall by the wind days ago. I cannot understand however how come the glass landed on the rim that is only about one cm wide from the wall and did not fall to the ground and got broken.

The only reason, I thought, was that Guadalupe exercised a miracle to protect the glass.

Or, a more secular interpretation is that the frame has no bottom edge. The glass and everything else was inserted from there and the frame was supposed to stand on a desk rather than be hanged on the wall. So pulled by the gravity of the earth, the glass and other contents must have fallen straight down along the wall and the glass, having some weight, landed on the frame and stayed. The fall toppled it over and caused it lying on the wider side, but the glass stayed there anyway. The light frame, now devoid of the glass and other contents, could no longer stay on the nail anymore.

So Lady Guadalupe did not perform a miracle and no one had entered my yard to take the frame down. To make sure, I googled “Guadalupe，taboo"， ”Should the picture of Guadalupe be put on the front wall of the house", etc and etc and did not find any taboo as to where one should put Guadalupe's picture in and around the house. One can even find Guadalupe painted on bicycle wheel fenders.

So I am going to find a better frame and a better picture of Lady Guadalupe and put it back on the front of my house.

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