AROUND TOWN
Meetings& Lectures
UU Fellowship Service
Professor Marybeth C. Stalp discusses women’s art and the importance of understanding women as cultural actors and producers in the context of quilting in colonial times at this Sunday’s Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Service.
Once regarded as a traditional craft, quilting has broken through the barriers of history, art and commerce to become a global phenomenon, an international multibillion-dollar industry and a means of gendered cultural production. Stalp explores the place of quilting in women’s lives and how it affects the family and personal identity issues such as marriage, childcare, friendship and aging.
Professor Stalp is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Northern Iowa whose research centers on the intersection of gender, culture and leisure. She is the author of Quilting: The Fabric of Everyday Life.
The UU Fellowship meets every Sunday at 10:30am at La Posada de la Aldea, Ancha de San Antonio 15 and welcomes people of all ages, races, religions, sexual orientation and gender identity. Visitors are invited to attend the service and then join the UUs in the hotel restaurant for brunch.
Behind the doors of San Miguel
San Miguel-based photographer and writer Robert de Gast again presents the popular slide show and lecture based on one of his books, Behind the Doors of San Miguel. De Gast photographed hundreds of private scenes in all parts of town—sunstruck, shade-dappled courtyards, seldom-seen roof gardens and little sanctuaries of peace and beauty. More than a hundred of these photographs are featured in his book. This time he shows hundreds of other images: not only the gardens and fountains of rich and famous expatriates, but also the delightful patios of our Mexican neighbors, sometimes bizarre, but always interesting and often beautiful. In these photographs, we glimpse the lives and traditions of a unique and magical place.
De Gast, born in the Netherlands and a long-time resident of San Miguel, is the author of nine books, lectures frequently and conducts photography workshops.
The one-hour presentation is Tuesday, March 18, at 5pm, at Teatro Santa Ana in the Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25. Admission is 50 pesos and benefits the many programs of the library. Seating is limited. Tickets may be purchased in advance at the theater entrance in the Café Santa Ana any weekday after 11am.
Classes & Workshops
Chess workshops
Free chess workshops meet Mondays 5–6:30pm in the central patio of the Biblioteca Pública. The Biblioteca has good chess sets, but bring your own if you like. Eighteen players crowded the north portal of the patio on March 3. Two new Jims and a Jack proved to be formidable. Some players meet in the patio informally at other times.
About a dozen players gather at Mama Mia, Umarán 8, on Wednesdays, 5–7pm. With the warmer weather, assistant manager Martín opens the rooftop terraces so we can play chess like aristocrats. The restaurant has tournament-class sets, long inlaid tables, attentive waiters and spectacular views of churches, mountains and sunsets.
Adults also play chess at Casa de la Cultura in Chorro, 10am–2pm on Saturdays. A chess celebrity, former US Junior Champion Peter Irwin, taught us all the virtue of humility on March 8.
Rediscover the pleasure of your body
Richard Adelman and Ana Luisa Martinez invite you to “Rediscover the Pleasure of Your Body: Connecting motions and emotions” during a talk on Friday, March 14, 7pm and a workshop on Saturday, March 15, 10am–5pm at LifePath Center, Recreo 80. They believe that inside everyone there is a graceful and sensuous person waiting to get out and offer you the opportunity to embody yourself in a new way through a unique combination of activities you will find nowhere else. Recapture the pleasure of being in your body through the gentle movements from the Feldenkrais Method, somatic psychology and Afro-Cuban dance (accompanied by Richard’s live conga drumming). Be guided through Gestalt therapy to explore and integrate your emotional responses to the movements.
Richard Adelman (MA in psychology) is a certified Feldenkrais Practitioner with nearly 40 years of experience in somatic psychology and 50 years as a conga drummer. His wife, Ana Luisa Martinez, is known throughout Latin America as an unusually nonintrusive but powerfully effective Gestalt therapist specializing in body issues. They are seeing private patients at LifePath until March 21.
The cost for the talk is 50 pesos and the workshop US$75 or 815 pesos. For more information, contact LifePath at
www.lifepathretreats.com
or 154-8465, or Richard at richardadelman@gmail.com
or his cell: 044 (415) 114-3069.
Writing workshop: beginnings, endings and everything between
How to start; how to end; what to put in the middle. This is the basic issue for all prose writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Professional writer and writing teacher Eva Hunter offers an eight-session course from March 19–April 4 designed for beginning to advanced writers. Sessions run 9am–noon, in Hunter’s workshop close to Centro.
Writers will learn to organize their work, to write eye-catching beginnings and endings and to develop story. An additional emphasis of the workshop is craft and self-editing.
Hunter is an award-winning writer whose fiction and nonfiction has appeared internationally. Formerly on the creative writing faculty at Portland State University, Hunter is also a founder of Connexus: The Writers’ School and The Writer’s Workshop: San Miguel. For more information, contact her at
evamhunter@gmail.com or 152-6634.
Trips & Tours
Instituto Allende trip
On Saturday, March 22 at 9am, Instituto’s weekly trip heads to the quaint village of Bernal and then to the City of Querétaro. Bernal boasts a significant landmark in the form of a towering boulder that looms over the village and local weavers produce good quality wool blankets, sweaters, wall hangings, shawls, vests, rugs and pillowcases. The town is also renowned for its semiprecious stones.
Afterwards we’re off to nearby Querétaro, where we stop at the famous Aqueduct, the Cementerio de los Hombres Illustres, the Plaza de Armas and Querétaro’s centerpiece, the Villa del Villar del Aquila Fountain. Querétaro’s popular outdoor market is on the schedule, as is a walking tour through the typical colonial streets with preserved gardens, churches, fountains and the house of La Marquesa, now a luxury hotel. Lastly, there is a visit to the Hill of the Bells where stands the Benito Juárez Monument along with the Chapel of Archduke Maximiliano. Cost for this all-inclusive trips is US$65 (transportation, museum fees, restaurant-served meal, snacks, etc). Reservations are a must and fees must be paid in advance. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Native-speaking, bilingual guides lead all tours in a safe environment.
Each Wednesday at 4pm Instituto offers a free preview lecture on the upcoming weekend’s field trip. For more information, visit or call 152-0226.
Films & Videos
Fidel: the untold story
Fidel Castro leaves the presidency of Cuba after leading for nearly half a century. He has outlasted 10 US presidents, foiled numerous assassination attempts and single-handedly defied the most powerful, militaristic nation on the planet.
This powerful documentary, Fidel: The Untold Story (91 minutes), examines the life of the Cuban leader, beginning with his childhood as one of seven children of a sugar planter and ending after 40 years of the Cuban revolution. Directed by acclaimed US filmmaker Estela Bravo, the documentary is unprecedented in providing its viewers with an understanding of Cuba and its leader, a man who is greatly misunderstood in the US. Bravo uses exclusive archival footage and a remarkable mix of interviews with Fidel and such luminaries as Harry Belafonte, Aleida Guevera (Che’s daughter), Alice Walker, Ramsey Clark, Sydney Pollack, Angela Davis and longtime friend of Castro, Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel García Marquez. Whether dismissed as a relic or revered as a savior, all agree that Fidel Castro is one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time.
The film shows on Monday, March 17 at 7pm in Teatro Santa Ana, Biblioteca Pública, Reloj 50A, 50-peso admission. Following the film will be a discussion led by Dr. Cliff DuRand, who travels frequently to Cuba. For information call the Center for Global Justice 150-0025.
Snowbird films
Noam Chomsky’s Imperial Grand Strategy: The Conquest of Iraq and the Assault on Democracy and Al Gore’s Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth are the featured films this week in the Center for Global Justice’s Snowbird Symposium Film Series.
Revolutionary linguist and outspoken political activist Noam Chomsky tackles US domestic and foreign policy, specifically the war in Iraq and the Patriot Acts I & II. In Chomsky’s eyes, the war in Iraq is merely a manifestation of a larger and long-standing US policy of foreign aggression, an “Imperial Grand Strategy” that was first made public in the neocons’ 2002 National Security Strategy. The film screens at 3pm on Monday, March 17 at Teatro Santa Ana in the Biblioteca Pública.
With the fate of our planet arguably hanging in the balance, An Inconvenient Truth may prove to be one of the most important and prescient documentaries of all time. Al Gore felt an urgent personal calling to draw attention to the increasingly desperate crisis of global warming and this riveting documentary is basically a filmed version (by respected TV director Davis Guggenheim) of the PowerPoint lecture that Gore has presented (by his own estimate, well over 1,000 times) to attentive audiences all over the world. Considering Gore’s amiable, low-key approach to charts, graphs, statistics and photographs that leave no room for doubt regarding the reality of global warming as Earth’s ultimate environmental crisis, many viewers will be surprised by just how fascinating and convincing this no-frills film really is. In the end, it accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired. It won the 2006 Oscar for Best Documentary and the 2007 Noble Peace Prize. It will be shown
at 3pm, Thursday, March 20, at Teatro Santa Ana. Admission is 50 pesos.
Film on Paul Robeson
On Tuesday, March 18 at 5pm there is a repeat showing of the film on the life of Paul Robeson, the great black singer and political leader. All the proceeds of the film are given to Jovenes Adelante, an organization dedicated to helping Mexican high school graduates from low-income families with outstanding academic records to attend local universities for a full five years. It pays their tuition costs and some additional small expenses.
The film shows at the Community Hall of the Quinta Loreto. Tickets for 50 pesos are available at the door, or before from Joe Ershun (152-2380) or Virginia Wheelwright (152-1861).
Zen video series
The seventh presentation in our series is the documentary, The Zen Mind: A Zen Journey Across Japan. Award-winning filmmaker Jon Braeley joins Japan’s top shakuhachi flute player to create a richly entertaining and rewarding film that may change your life forever.
The Zen Mind is a journey across Japan to explore the practice of Zen. You will step inside the Zen temples and monasteries and into the meditation hall where monks practice seated meditation. It reveals the daily routine of the Zen monk, a way of life hard to imagine by outsiders.
Limited seating; early arrival is recommended; 20-peso admission.
The film screens on Thursday, March 20 at 5:30pm at the Meditation Center, Callejon Blanco 4, off Quebrada.
Perfomances & Events
Fiesta del sol
On Tuesday, March 18 the Center for Global Justice holds a “Fiesta del Sol” fundraiser to celebrate solar energy with music and delicious sun-cooked food.
As Mexico’s trees are used up to cook and heat water, solar stoves offer a solution. Fossil fuels are beyond most rural budgets and a life of wood hauling usually means chronic knee pain. Demonstrations on March 18 will introduce the ingenious new low-tech, carbon-neutral, smokeless cookers—easily built from affordable materials.
The event will take place 2–5pm at the Plaza de Los Cuatros Vientos (Four Winds Plaza) of the Charco del Ingenio Botanical Garden. Tickets are 300 pesos and can be purchased at Calzada de la Luz 42 or at any center event in March.
Mexico is proud of expropriating its oil industry on March 18, 1938, a date which gives us the chance to add on a celebration of this new technology. Participants can meet center members and staff and learn about center programs. Transportation is available. For more information, call 150-0025.
Perish from the Earth
Many Americans are deeply worried about the implications for their constitutional government of the extraordinary expansion of executive power during the Bush administration. Add to that a common popular hysteria about “illegal aliens” and you get a heady mixture. This is the basis of a dystopian play by David Stea to be premiered in the Center for Global Justice’s Snowbird Symposium.
Borrowing a line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Perish from the Earth is a dramatic reading in three acts drawn from two of Stea’s short stories. Set in late 2009, the action takes place about a year after the cancellation of the 2008 US elections under provisions of the Emergency Powers Act, which effectively grants dictatorial powers to the President in the event of his own declaration of a national emergency. While the centerpiece of the play is dialogue taking place among adolescents in a concentration camp established for supposed “illegal immigrants,” this dramatic reading explores other possible implications of this hypothetical seizure of power.
David Stea, Professor Emeritus of geography and international studies at Texas State University and a research associate of the Center for Global Justice, has written dystopic fiction and poetry in both English and Spanish for many years. Perish from the Earth, his first play since 1960, is presented by members of the Center for Global Justice in Sala Quetzal, Insurgentes 25, on Wednesday, March 19, at 10:30am.
Spring equinox concert in the canyon
As is customary every year, El Charco celebrates this festival of the sun, offering music to the flourishing earth. Since the equinox this year falls on Holy Thursday, we will have a program of sacred music of San Miguel composers of the nineteenth century. The musicians will be led by Francisco Mota, accompanied by a children’s choir from the Oratorio. Traditionally played in several churches of San Miguel during Easter week, this music will be heard for the first time in a natural setting with wonderful acoustics.
Come with friends and enjoy an hour of magnificent music in a spectacular setting. We suggest you come early on Thursday, March 20 at 5pm and bring a hat and cushion.
Arts and crafts fair
Instituto Allende wraps up its winter season arts and crafts fairs with a three-day event, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, March 21–23 from 10am–6pm. Many of San Miguel’s best artists and craftspeople show and sell their wares, along with many who come from other regions of Mexico. The all-day entertainment and food makes for good family fun. Admission is free.
Third annual Shalom San Miguel Literary Reading
The Jewish Forum of Shalom San Miguel presents its third annual literary program on Monday, March 24 at 5pm. The program features Murray Kamelhar, Judith Jenya, Noah Stevens, Sharon Leder, Milton Teichman and Sid Yakerson. Their words express many aspects of Jewish experience: growing up Jewish; working for shalom/peace across the divides of religion, nation and culture; the Bible’s influence on adult consciousness; reflections on the Holocaust; and how to persevere through life without losing wonder, humor and gratitude. All are welcome at the Hotel Quinta Loreto TV Salon. A donation of 50 pesos is appreciated.
Murray Kamelhar, well-known in San Miguel as founder of the “Actor’s Lab” and most recently for directing JB, will read from his memoirs. Writer/activist Judith Jenya, recently published in Hamilton Stone Review, will read a memoir selection “Catholic Mitzvah,” chronicling her conducting a Catholic parade as a Jew in Croatia. Poet Noah Stevens, originally from Montreal and living in Irapuato for 21 years, has published poems in English, Spanish and French in Mexico and Canada. Sharon Leder and Milton Teichman, a married couple, have been winter residents of San Miguel for seven years. Together they edited Stories and Poems on the Holocaust, nominated for the National Jewish Book Award. Sid Yakerson, San Miguel resident for 25 years and known as a master storyteller, celebrated his second bar mitzvah at age 90 and recently read from the Torah at age 92.