Retirement day-by-day in SMA, 
Oct 27, 2006

Book signing and reading Falling … in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security By Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair Friday, November 3, 3–5 pm Calzada de la Presa 14

A new book on expat living in San Miguel de Allende describes in vivid detail an entire calendar year of fiestas and frustrations, fulfilled hopes and challenged stereotypes, adjustments and joys of retiring to Mexico.

Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair, who came to San Miguel for a three-month vacation in 2002 to escape the Phoenix summer, experienced what happens to many San Miguel visitors. They fell in love with San Miguel within three days and made the decision to chuck life in the US and move here. (Hair had been doing extensive research on Mexican living before the vacation, so that move wasn’t totally clueless.)

Along the way they wrote hundreds of letters back to friends and relatives in the States capturing every detail and discovery. This journal, now edited down to 300 pages and amplified with four years of accumulated experience living in San Miguel, became Falling…in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security. 

It is being published by Salsa Verde Press  www.salsaverdepress.com this fall and is already available on Amazon.com and at La Conexión.

The two describe their experiences with the San Miguel healthcare system (including their shock at a 61-peso total bill for an EKG and ER visit to Hospital General), the difficulties finding lower-rent apartments, their adventures getting lost on city buses, and their daily walks to local shops to load up on fresh fruits and veggies, quite different from the way they shopped and ate in the US. They give prices of many items they buy, including meals from their favorite “hole in the wall” restaurants.

The challenges of learning Spanish over 60 are sprinkled throughout the book, from Schmidt trying to tell the housekeeper she’d put the cats in their cage but instead saying the roosters are in the towel (gato/gallo and juala/toalla) to her misadventures with a Guadalajara taxi driver who might have been told accidentally that Schmidt loved him rather than she loved Mexico. 

Schmidt and Hair pick out a lovely deserted spot on the Fra. Juan de San Miguel statue to watch their first Alborada 4am fireworks, wondering why no one else is sitting there, only to discover they are in the line of fire when the fireworks erupt. In trying to find cambio, Schmidt terrorizes a tiny shopkeeper when she stumbles on the stairs and crashes into the small store.

Along the way they learn much about Mexican and San Miguel history and ceremonies, to give readers an understanding of what is behind the annual highlights of the San Miguel calendar year.

Not a “how-to” or travel guide, Falling … in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security is a travel memoir and a love story. The “Falling…” in the title also refers to Schmidt’s falling on the irregular sidewalks within her first hour in this “city of fallen women.”

Schmidt is a former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor who became public relations director for the medical research programs at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. She published three mystery novels in the 1990s and is in seven anthologies, including the Library of America’s Reporting Civil Rights (www.reportingcivilrights.org).

Hair was director of accounting for a major mortgage company and owned a tax business in Los Angeles. She has edited all of Schmidt’s books. They met when both were on the California NOW board of directors and RV’ed full-time across the continent for more than three years in their search for the perfect retirement city. They found it in San Miguel.

They are known for their website blogs, forums, photos and SMA FAQs, at www.fallinginlovewithsanmiguel.com.

Here is an excerpt from Falling … in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security.

From March:

“Saturday night we decided to walk down to the Jardín to see what was going on. We took off with no purses and no money except for two pesos Norma found tucked in her slacks pocket. She gave them to the first beggar we saw so we’d be free. Along the way we ambled into an art opening, enjoying pepperoni and cheese on crackers as we tried to figure out the abstract paintings that didn’t grab either of us. We did try to appreciate the paintings, in exchange for the appetizers. SMA is famous for its freeloading attendees of art gallery openings who go only for the wine and cheese…. 

Fire dancers performed in front of the Parroquia, inviting rhythm maintained by four drummers, all in face paint. A pixie-haired Mexican woman, her face painted mime white with a black line down the center, showed the men how it was done, swinging her fire-tipped batons like salsa partners. Someone yelled in English, “I have a camera,” and expected the crowds would part for her so she could get a close-up, but nobody moved. 

Already the vendors who weave palm fronds into fantastic religious images and flowers were at work, selling the completed palms for blessing at Palm Sunday masses. A Cuban exhibit alongside the Jardín in a long tent sold books, Che Guevara T-shirts, and handmade wood and leather drums ranging from 50 to 500 pesos ($5 to $50 US).

Fireworks overhead and loud music channeled down the narrow San Miguel streets in our direction told us there was something going on at Plaza Cívica two blocks away, so we had to check it out. Almost no foreigners there—what a difference two blocks can make. 

We got close in to the masked and costumed dancers who were going round the plaza like it was the Day of the Locos parade. Well-amplified salsa and rock music was just below the decibel level that would have had my fingers plugging my ears. A smirky Bush-masked guy(?) kept shrugging his shoulders as if he knew nothing as he danced. He kissed a gorilla and chased a large Indian-costumed woman(?) and tried to look up her skirts. She danced with him and swung him into a deep backward dip. Then she held her nose as if Bush had let off gas. 

A Vicente Fox was there, flirting with all the women. A Satan scared a small boy who ran away from the circle, his parents chasing him to comfort him. Little kids in costume made the circuit as well, dancing right along with the adults. Who could tell who was male or female, young or old, neighbor or stranger? That was the point. 

A white-masked guy in cream velvet pants and jacket over a white T-shirt spotted Norma and swept her onto the floor and made a full circle, escorting her under a bridge of people’s upheld arms and adding her to a conga line. Fox came over and shimmied at me so I shimmied back but waved bye-bye to him, not ready to follow Norma’s dance circuit. I was tired just watching the costumed dancers salsa on, dance after dance after dance. Once in a while a rock song I recognized came out of the amplifiers. Mostly it was purely Mexican high-energy music, great fun. We kept dancing in place as we watched.

Fireworks continuously exploded overhead. They were being set off a few feet away from people around the bigger-than-life statue of Allende on horseback waving a sword that is the centerpiece of the park. Safety regulations? What safety regulations? 

More Malabar

Malabar presentation, Thursday, November 2, 7pm Chocolate Lounge, Mesones 99

The editors of Malabar will present issue number two in what has become a tradition since the days of El Petit Journal: a big party. Malabar is now flaunting six more pages in color and reaching the cities of Salamanca and Guanajuato as well as Querétaro, León and San Miguel. This issue’s highlights are a cover by Russel Monk; a portfolio of images by Dan Borris with Valerie Mejer’s poetry, called “Time’s Playing Fields”; a preview of Luis Camarena’s next art exhibition; the amazing work of the Mexican graphic artist Edgar Clement and the first part of a literary dossier named “The Anglo-Saxon Martyrdom in Mexico,” this time dedicated to the work of Malcolm Lowry and his days in Mexico.

Cretcher’s local wildflowers book blooms
By Linda Whyman

The wildflowers of our area, encouraged by generous rains, have been luxuriant this year.

Now they yield their secrets—where, what, when and sometimes why—in the long-awaited, definitive and illustrative book on the wildflowers of San Miguel, Pocket Guide to the Wildflowers of San Miguel de Allende by Richard Cretcher. Cretcher’s exemplary guide to the flowers we see on the hillsides and in the callejónes of our city is not only a must for gardeners, nature lovers and amateur botanists but also a delight for anyone who appreciates beautiful photography. 

The first printing of the guide has been made available for fund-raising purposes for Audubon, El Charco, the Biblioteca Pública and the San Miguel Garden Club, in recognition of all the people who provided assistance on the project. Audubon is selling books at the monthly birdwalks and at the Picachos hike on November 11. In addition, books are available at Macdonald’s Gym on Stirling Dickinson. The Biblioteca is selling books at Café Santa Ana and Sundays at the house tours. Books are also available from Garden Club members, and El Charco del Ingenio has books available at the botanical gardens. They are also for sale at El Tecolote, La Conexión, Border Crossings, Terra and Casa de Papel.

The genesis of his project, according to Cretcher, occurred several years ago on an Audubon birdwalk into the local countryside. The leader, Fen Taylor, asked whether anyone was interested in photographing wildflowers. Equipped with a new digital camera and a life-long interest in close-up photography, Cretcher leapt at the challenge. Although Cretcher had been photographing wildflowers since the summer of 2001, with encouragement from Donald Rohan and other members of the local botanical garden, El Charco del Ingenio, the project evolved into a documentary of the wildflowers of the region. Dr. Jerzy Rzedowski, the foremost botanist in Mexico with the Instituto de Ecología in Pátzcuaro, Michoacan, graciously provided scientific and family names of the wildflowers. Many others added common names, practical uses and other interesting facts and folklore, making this much more than just a book of “pretty pictures.” Cretcher says that he hopes the guide will help preserve the local wildflower heritage and will gen
erate additional data, collected by the people, both foreign and local, who use the book

The guidebook includes 165 photographs of flowers, identified with botanical, Spanish and English common names where they are known, size of the blooms and interesting facts about the plants. Color-coded pages reveal when the flowers bloom and where they were photographed. The data are given in both Spanish and English. Cretcher has a special interest in the English translation of Spanish common names. “Pegamosca, for example,” he says, “is still hung in rural Mexican homes to catch flies.” 

Cretcher has lived in San Miguel for nine years. Prior to that he spent 23 years as Director of Education for the Ohio Institute of Photography and Technology in Dayton. He also was involved in projects including the Manned Space Flight Center Photo Lab for NASA as Director of Photo-Science and Engineering for Data Corporation/Mead Technologies in Dayton. He received his BA and MA in photography from Ohio University in Athens.