Authors’ Sala Special Series

Bringing readers and writers together
By Adrienne Atwell, March 9 2007

Authors’ Sala Special Series
Jan Baross andTerrence N. Hill
Fri, Mar 9, 5–7pm
Posada de San Francisco
Plaza Principal 2
50 pesos, includes wine reception

Since 2004, the Authors’ Sala has promoted literacy and the art of writing through its outstanding literary programs. This month’s presentation features two award-winning authors and playwrights, Terrence Hill and Jan Baross. Each will read excerpts from their latest publications, as well as talk about their careers as writers. 



Terrence N. Hill

Hill worked in advertising as a writer and creative director for more than 30 years in Toronto, Detroit, Washington, New York, London and Paris. After quitting, Hill started writing for himself. He has written and published poetry, essays and short fiction. In 2005 he published his first book, Two Guys Read Moby-Dick (co-written with Steve Chandler), and won the ‘Playhouse on the Green’ playwriting competition (Bridgeport, CT) with his first play Hamlet—The Sequel. It was a good year. The second book in the “Two Guys” series—Two Guys Read the Obituaries—was published in the fall of 2006. 



Hill will read excerpts from both Two Guys Read Moby-Dick and Two Guys Read the Obituaries. In these books, Hill and co-author Chandler, friends for almost five decades, maintain a lively and often hilarious correspondence about reading Melville, people who have died and pretty much anything else that strikes their interest. They are engagingly susceptible to digression. Hill will also talk about why he’s bald and why he writes.



Excerpt from: But what if the bell doesn’t toll at all?



“Our life is unwelcome, our death
Unmentioned in ‘The Times.’”



—T.S. Eliot from “Two Choruses from ‘The Rock’” 



Like every New Yorker, I compute each day the average age of the deceased in the New York Times obituaries. From this result I then subtract my age. And like the rest of you I was plunged into a Spaulding-Gray-like depression on May 9th when the average Times-obit deathee age was only 64.

It was a bad day for all of us. Not just the watercolorist, stage producer, labor leader, lawyer and math teacher whose ages, when totaled and divided by five, gave us the horrifying 64. 

It was much like the day after the collapse of the Yankees in the playoffs last fall. You could see it on our faces—an ineffable sadness, a down-at-the-mouth-ness. What’s the point?, we all seemed to ask.

Recognizing their responsibility not only to print all the news that’s fit to print, but also as the guardians of the city’s psyche, the Times did the stand up thing. The next day, May 10th, the paper followed their transgression with four obits averaging 92! 

Well, I for one breathed a sigh of relief. Not to give away my age, but I now figured I had another 32 Academy Award Shows in my future. I might live to see George Bush’s daughter be elected President (the Yale daughter, not the one that couldn’t get in). I would see quarterbacks not yet born win the Superbowl. The whole town was similarly uplifted. Many of us, for the first time in our lives, received smiles from Duane-Reade checkout girls.

The May 10th turnaround also proved conclusively that it is folly to believe that God does not read the Times. With what seemed divine intervention, the weather that day turned decidedly warmer; the sun arriving after several days absence. In God-years, you see, 92 is pretty much the equivalent of immortality.

In a single day, the Times had been able—as that venerable philosopher Br’er Rabbit once said—to take a frown and turn it upside down. Clearly the paper had seen its duty and transformed the entire city from sad to glad. You can imagine the Times staff giving one another high fives and snake-dancing through the press room as if they had just swept the Pulitzers.

The city-wide euphoria added strength to a vocal Times contingent that had been for some time pushing management to adopt a policy of never reporting any death under the age of 60. To many of us, this seems like a good idea, but management insisted that sometimes such a death would just be too important as news to ignore. They cited the JFK assassination as an event that would simply be too difficult to cover up. A compromise was reached and it was agreed that in any under-60 obit, the word “untimely” would have to appear in either the headline or the lead paragraph.

Obviously, however, the ground had dramatically shifted on the Times obituary policy. The clearest indication of this came on May 16th, less than a week after the 92-year-average delirium. On that day, the paper for the first time in my memory, ran no obituaries—not a one! In the past I had believed that the absence of no-obit days was a Times rule based on the principle that it is generally bad to encourage a belief in immortality. I must say I would agree with this policy in the main. Things get out of hand when there is a widespread belief that we will live forever—witness the behavior of people in their twenties.

It must have been a heady day for the Times. In effect they had announced that death shall have no dominion, or at least column inches. And what number were we all supposed to subtract our ages from? Infinity? But any number subtracted from infinity still leaves infinity. And if there were no deaths, what about taxes? Could the Times unilaterally banish them too?

No, it was clear the newspaper had gone too far. And they knew it. Times, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful. May 17th, death resumes: an organic farmer, a war hero, a Yankee Stadium peanut vendor, an actress and an engineer. Average age—81.4.


The Authors’ Sala Special Series presents short works by local authors. The San Miguel Authors’ Sala presents author readings and workshops for writers and aspiring writers. Local authors books are for sale at the Biblioteca gift shop, La Tienda, Insurgentes 25. Look for books by local authors in a special section at the Biblioteca. For up-to-date information on upcoming events, visit www.sanmiguelauthors.com. 

My father’s room

Talk and video
Artist Roland Salazar Rose
Fri, Mar 9, 5pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
Donation

Artist Roland Salazar Rose introduces and asks audience participation in discussing the pros and cons of combining written words, oral presentation and images in his memoir, My Father’s Room. Salazar’s recent mixed media paintings with chapapote can be seen at Galeria Aspen, 74 Mesones, his studio at 6 Montitlán, Los Balcones or online at www.salazargallery.com. He has resided in San Miguel for about 20 years, and says that The Four Seasons of the Master Myth “has been on his front burner—simmering—since 1990.” He has selected 25 images and made a work-in-progress video which shows him painting with voice over. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons music is in the background.

Salazar will read selections from his manuscript My Father’s Room and show elements of the images and oral memoir by projecting on screen The Four Seasons of the Master Myth.

Second annual Shalom San Miguel literary reading on Jewish themes
By Sharon Leder

Jewish forum series
Literary readings
Mon, Mar 12, 4:30pm
Hotel Quinta Loreto TV Salon
50 pesos

Shalom San Miguel holds its second annual literary reading on Jewish themes as part of the Jewish Forum Series. Readers present selections from poetry, fiction, and memoir on a variety of themes relating to Jewish tradition. In addition, a storyteller will convey folk wisdom and lore. All are welcome. A donation of 50 pesos is appreciated.

Four readers and one storyteller will present their work. Themes range from the Biblical-historical, to the political and socially conscious, to everyday miracles in daily life, and to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Other themes reflect the search for shalom or peace, the struggle with God, and the humorous side of life.

Writer and educator Joe Ershun has been a resident of San Miguel for eighteen years. Joe began writing poetry ten years ago. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation and The Village Voice. Joe grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and lived and worked in New York and Pennsylvania. He founded and directed a Masters Program in Human Services for former drug addicts and convicts at Lincoln University. When he retired, he came to San Miguel, fell in love with the town, and has lived here ever since.

Cynthia Huntington has taken several courses in writing in San Miguel and the US and has published some of her stories and articles. Born in Yorkshire, England, Cynthia has lived in various locations around the world, including Denmark, France, Turkey and the US. She has been a nurse, a mother, a stewardess for Pan Am and a Team Leader on Pan Am Tours to China. Cynthia is currently working on a book of short stories and a collection of memoir pieces.

Noah Stevens, originally from Montreal, has been living in Irapuato for 20 years. His poetry in English, Spanish and French has appeared in Mexico and Canada, both on line and in print. For two years, Noah has coordinated poetry readings in the Irapuato community under Noches de Poesia. He has also participated in the Encuentro Internacional de Poetas in Zamora, Michoacán (2002) and Encuentro Internacional de Escritores in Salvatierra, Guanajuato (2004-7).

Painter and sculptor Milton Teichman is also a writer whose stories have appeared in Midstream Magazine. A winter resident of San Miguel for six years, Milton read from his fiction in last year’s literary reading on Jewish themes. This year, Milton reads selections from poetry and fiction. His artwork is being exhibited in Gallery 19, on Calle Jesús, in San Miguel.

Storyteller Sid Yakerson, resident of San Miguel for 23 years, served for over 12 years as a tour guide for Patronato Pro Niños and trained many of the organization’s current guides. Originally from New York, Sid came to Mexico as an engineer and manufacturer of paper. When he initially vacationed in San Miguel several decades ago, he came under the town’s spell. He later settled here and became known for his storytelling.

Prolific writers read in San Miguel

PEN reading
Linda Schor and Halvard Johnson
Fri, Mar 16, 4pm
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
Donation

Lynda Schor’s latest books of short fiction are The Body Parts Shop (Fiction Collective Two), and Adventures in Capitalism (Unicorn Press). She is also the author of Appetites (Warner Books) and True Love & Real Romance (Coward McCann). Her stories and articles have been published in magazines and anthologies, including Ms., Redbook, Playboy, GQ, Mademoiselle and many others. She has won many prizes, including an O’Henry nomination, and two Maryland State Arts Council grants. Schor teaches fiction writing at The New School, in New York City and is the fiction editor of the online literarary magazine, Salt River Review. Her story, “Sex for Beginners 2,” is currently in the online issue of The Mad Hatter’s Review.

Halvard Johnson was born in Newburgh, New York, and grew up in New York City and the Hudson Valley. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and Baltimore City Arts. Many of his collections of poetry including, Transparencies and Projections, The Dance of the Red Swan, Eclipse, and Winter Journey are archived at the Contemporary American Poetry Archives which can be visited at http://capa.conncoll.edu. Recent collections include Rapsodie espagnole, G(e)nome, The Sonnet Project, Theory of Harmony—all from www.xpressed.org.— and The English Lesson, from Unicorn Press. Guide to the Tokyo Subway was published last year by Hamilton Stone Editions, which will publish another collection—Organ Harvest with Entrance of Clones—in April 2007. Johnson has lived and worked in Chicago, Illinois; El Paso, Texas; Cayey, Puerto Rico; Washington, DC; Baltimore, Maryland and New York City. For many years he taught overseas in theEuropean and Far East divisions of the Univ
ersity of Maryland, mostly in Germany and Japan. He’s currently living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.