Here in Napa, we don’t always feel connected to the outside world.

I have spoken with Napans from many walks of life about how close-knit people are here, how isolated — for better and for worse — we can be from the teeming megalopolis less than an hour away.

But of course local connections to the greater world go back more than a century, at least to George Calvert Yount’s westward drift from North Carolina in the middle of the 19th century.

Today, the many Italian names gracing wineries and vineyards speak to the arrival of Italians last century — as do lovable local customs like the tasty malfatti available at Lawler’s Liquors and Clemente at Val‘s.

The graves of Chinese laborers on a hill in Tulocay Cemetery, as well as the better-marked graves of Nordic peoples who arrived earlier, speak to cultural upheavals and transformations from a very different time.

Yet the first part of the 21st century appears to have deeper global connections than any other. People, products, political ideas and money are moving all around the globe at a dizzying pace.

When I lived in Washington, D.C., I was amazed to see, meet and work with some of the many natives of Africa who were part of the thriving city.

New York, where my grandparents lived after their families arrived from Russia, has been the melting pot for European immigrants coming to the United States in successive waves for more than 200 years.

San Francisco is home to one of the largest populations of Chinese people outside of China.

San Jose is home to tens of thousands of relatively recent arrivals from Southeast Asia.

Every place has its story of new arrivals and the balance between new and old ways -- which brings us to the Napa Valley and the state of Michoacan, Mexico.

Nearly two years ago, Register photojournalist Lianne Milton began to focus her attention on a major link between Napa Valley and the outside world. The product of her efforts begins to appear today in the Register and on napavalleyregister.com.

Milton met, spoke with and began taking photographs of Napa Valley residents who retained close ties to small rural communities in the state of Michoacan, west of Mexico City and perhaps 2,000 miles from Napa. They were from hamlets with names such as Chavindas, El Capricho, Churintzio — and the two towns that are the focus of this series — El Llano and Patzimaro.

In December 2007, when many returned to their hometowns in Mexico, Milton went along. She lugged a camera and video camera and stayed in El Llano and Patzimaro as the towns hosted holiday festivals and family reunions, the time when the connection between Napa Valley and those communities is most strongly felt.

Today Milton, with the help of Register colleagues Carlos Villatoro, Brian Kennedy, Diane Montanez and Kelly Doren, illuminates the ties that bind the Napa Valley to a place called Michoacan, especially the towns of El Llano and Patzimaro.