¡Buen provecho! Good food in Mexico City
By Jaime Lucero

PEN Winter Lecture Series
Nicholas Gilman
Tue, Mar 4, 6pm
Auditorio Miguel Malo
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
50 pesos

Good Food in Mexico City: A Guide to Food Stalls, Fondas and Fine Dining is a little book with a big purpose— to put Mexico City on the map as one of the great food capitals of the world. The city, currently home to a quarter of the country’s population, is a complex amalgam of cultural influences which show up gloriously in its food.

This guide, the first of its kind in English, and the only “opinionated” restaurant guide for Mexico City, takes its readers to out-of-the-way market stalls, taco joints, as well as elegant, high-end dining spots. The book includes chapters on bars and cantinas, cafés, and food shopping, short essays on various aspects of Mexican cuisine and its history, and a glossary of food terms.

Gilman was inspired to write his book while helping design and edit Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler, a guidebook written by his partner Jim Johnston. Gilman said, “I had been compiling data on where to find authentic Mexican food for 20 years, and I saw an opportunity to organize my findings in this book. I think interest in the city, and definitely the food, will keep growing. Mexico City was just named ‘Destination of the Year’ by Bon Appetit magazine. There is enormous investment and growth in this city; it’s really better than ever here now.”

Gilman was born and raised in New York City. His mother, Esther Gilman, was a painter influenced by the Mexican modernists; his father, Richard Gilman, was a theater critic and a professor at the Yale drama school for over 30 years.

A trip to Mexico City in 1978 to study the great muralists began Nick’s love affair with the traditions of Mexican painting and culture—and with its food. After graduating from Hampshire College and The New York Academy of Art, he worked as a realist painter in New York City, and exhibited his work extensively in Mexico and the US. He moved to San Miguel de Allende in 1996 and currently lives full time in Mexico City. He became a Mexican citizen in 2005.

His passionate interest in food led to studies in culinary history and technique at UNAM (The National Autonomous University of Mexico) and the Claustro de Sor Juana. Gilman is a founding member of Slow Food Condesa/Roma (www.slowfood.org), regional representative of IFWTWA (The International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association), a member of IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals), as well as a regular columnist on food for Inside Mexico, (www.insidemexico.com) an English-language monthly.

When asked recently about his next projects, Nick replied, “I’ve been so busy writing, researching and planning Slow Food events that I haven’t had time for painting; that career remains on hold. I am planning a Spanish version of the current book, as well as researching a book on Oaxacan cuisine, which I hope to publish next year.”

The San Miguel Chapter of International PEN sponsors local literary programs and scholarships. San Miguel PEN participates in major Mexican literary events, and PEN members travel at their own expense to represent us at the United Nations and at international conferences. Proceeds from the Winter Lecture series fund local activities and help support the international organization.

Jaime Lucero is a freelance Cuban journalist living in Mexico City.

Romance after sixty and other transformations
By Kimberly Kinser

San Miguel Authors’ Sala
Minerva Neiditz & Carol Sherman
Fri, Mar 7, 5pm
Villa Jacaranda
(Note: This is a location change)
Aldama 53
50 pesos

Photo credit, Deborah Whitehouse

With equal use of her right and left brain, Minerva Neiditz, navigates Romance after Sixty. But how did a woman with a doctorate in Shakespeare from the University of Connecticut, who later had a very successful business-writing consultation company become a modern day matchmaker?

Minerva’s story is one of struggle, hard work, and a willingness to put herself on the edge. Whether that was acting as single parent, chairing the Permanent Commission for the Status of Women in Connecticut and writing affirmative action legislation, teaching over 18,000 employees of the Federal Reserve how to write a decent memo, traveling to Cairo and Israel with the Agency for International Development where that Agency coined the term “Minervize” your document or as the Director of the Institute of Writing at UConn, Minerva moved toward a goal and achieved it. That all sounds very left brain. She also taught Shakespeare at Trinity College and has two published books of poetry.

Minerva had been single for over 15 years, losing her first husband to chronic disease and her second fiancé, just before the wedding, to sudden illness. She decided, as she was retiring from UConn, that she did not want to spend the rest of her life alone. She wanted a partner. After dating 20 men over that 15-year period and not finding the right man, she put her academic hat on and got serious. She began by joining three dating services with a goal of interviewing 100 single men, thinking “this would make a great book.” By the time her research was over, she had interviewed 140 men: her original 100 plus those 20 she had dated plus 20 referrals from friends who said, “You MUST meet my friend for your book.” With her entrepreneur nature still at work, Minerva chose a book launch date: her 50 year reunion from Smith College.

Faced with pages and pages of data, Minerva chose 29 gentlemen that represented major types. In this book, Romance after Sixty Minerva takes on the roll of Mrs. Chaucer (think Canterbury Tales), hearing the story of 29 men not looking for God but for Love, which is not all that different after all.

Minerva presented the book first to her Smith classmates before making ninety presentations in person and on television over the next year, selling 1500 copies. In 2005, health issues changed the focus of her life. For two years she took care of her heart and her health and only had time to write a bilingual children’s book with Spanish speaking collaborator, Elisa Gonzales.

Today, Minerva is healthy and ready to share the message that love and romance are absolutely available to those over 60 years of age. “Wisdom is halfway between convention and impulse,” Minerva believes. She is in her 75th year and in a 10-year relationship with Jack, her travel partner. She finds that at this time in her life there is serenity to spare. With age comes acceptance, flexibility, and non-competitiveness. Add a healthy sense of humor and Minerva is living proof of the premise of her book.

Kimberly Kinser is the creator of Pizarra Blanca Writers, an Amherst Artist and Writers workshop that she leads at LifePath Center.

Book Fever
By Marcia Loy

Taking the pulse of David McCullough

McCullough’s special gift as an artist is his ability to re-create past human beings in all their fullness and all their humanity.

—Gordon S. Wood, The New York Times Review of Books

This distinguished author has written books about the Panama Canal, the Johnstown Flood, the Brooklyn Bridge and several presidents. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award twice.

Mornings on Horseback, 1981. This biography of the young life of Theodore Roosevelt won the author a National Book Award for Biography. It chronicles the childhood of one of our most remarkable presidents, whose mother and young wife both died on the same day. It also shows the life of his brother, Elliott, who died at 34 and was the father of future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. My only complaint is that the book ends when he loses the race for Mayor of New York City at the age of 27. I wanted more. There are, however, several other biographies of Roosevelt in the library.

Excerpt: In conversation he spewed words with a force that often started people not accustomed to him, and this, with his upper-class New York accent, would be enough to set him off as something out of the ordinary at Harvard—even at Harvard—from the time he arrived. To many it seemed he had a speech impediment, and possibly the problem may have been associated with his asthmatic condition, physiologically, that is; but it appears also to have been such an integral part of his make-up, so established a trait, that those within the home circle took no notice of it. They were as oblivious to this, apparently, as they had been earlier to his myopia. If he talked “funny,” they never thought so. At Harvard, classmates soon learned to goad him into an argument for the sheer fun of hearing him.


Truman, 1992. There have been twelve presidents in my lifetime and Harry Truman has always been my favorite. There was his Midwest background, his direct approach, the sign “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk, his integrating the armed forces and recognizing Israel. He was vice-president for 82 days before Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. He replaced one of the most popular presidents in the 20th century. He’d met with FDR twice, neither meeting a substantive one. He took the oath of office when the US was still at war with Germany and Japan. He had no knowledge of the development of the A-bomb and no idea of FDR’s post-war plans for the nation. He had no background in foreign policy, did not know Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to Russia. He had no firsthand knowledge of America’s allies, Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin. And yet, he did an extraordinary job as president.

McCullough spent ten years writing this massive biography and he won his first Pulitzer Prize for it.

Excerpt: As a boy brimming with such musical aspiration, his head filled with Shakespeare and noble Romans, as one who had taken teasing in a town where appearances were vital, and where every youngster bore the constant scrutiny of innumerable aunts, uncles, teachers, shopkeepers, and neighbors, he might well have burned to rebel. He might have longed for escape, as had Willa Cather growing up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, or to strike back somehow against the kind of small-town minds and souls that Sinclair Lewis would remember from boyhood in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. But nowhere in all that Harry Truman wrote and said about his youth, or in the lengthy recollections of him by friends and family, is there even a hint of anger or hurt or frustration over his surroundings. Clearly he liked Independence, Missouri, and its people. He liked being Harry Truman.


John Adams, 2001. This biography won another Pulitzer Prize for the author as well as several other awards. I admit I didn’t know that much about Adams when I read the book. I knew he was Washington’s vice president and the second president of the United States. I didn’t realize he was as involved as he was in the American Revolution. This is a wonderful introduction to a complex man who died on the same Fourth of July as Thomas Jefferson.

Excerpt: Adams understood clearly the importance of what he had accomplished. To his dying day he would be proudest of all of having achieved peace. As he would write to a friend, “I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: ‘Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800.’”

Subjected to some of the most malicious attacks ever endured by a president, beset by personal disloyalty and political betrayal, suffering the loss of his mother, the near death of his wife, the death of a son, tormented by physical ailments, he had more than weathered the storm. His bedrock integrity, his spirit of independence, his devotion to country, his marriage, his humor, and a great underlying love of life were all still very much intact.


Coming in March: First novels. If you’ve read a good one lately and would like to share it with readers of Atención, please send it to me at marciabookfever@hotmail.com. 

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública.

Word Watch
By Bill Gallacher

aderezo (noun m.) The universal word for dressing, of the food variety. Ever asked for more chess with your ensalada? It’s remarkably easy to let ajedrez slip out by mistake.

advertir (verb) Along with avisar, a very common word for ”to warn.” But the use of advertir extends well beyond “to warn,” and may signify little more than to notice, whereas these two words have quite separate connotations in English. No advertí que estuviera enojada. I did not notice she was angry. Other ways of handling “to notice” are fijarse en, percatarse de, observar or plain old notar.

afección (noun f.) Misleading, since the most common meaning of afección would be illness or disease although it can also mean affection, as in fondness. Safer in this regard would be afecto or cariño, with cariñoso working well as the adjective “affectionate.” If affected, with the meaning acted upon, is required, the Spanish would be afectado from the basic verb afectar. But if affected means putting on airs, the Spanish equivalent would be amanerado or lleno de afectación, the latter noun working perfectly for affectation. Dangerous territory, fraught with the potential for misunderstandings.

Echoes of Creeley’s world
By Bill Pearlman

Memorial Readings
Robert Creeley
Thu, Mar 6, 4pm
Sala Quetzal

American poet Robert Creeley (1926–2005) left a body of work that spanned modernism and entered into his own particular style of poetic speech. Bob was also a friend of many poets who came under his influence and kept his company over many years, in California, New Mexico and New York.

On March 6, we will read from Creeley’s work and from others who were connected to him, including Charles Olson. Creeley is associated with the so-called Black Mountain School of poetry which helped define the emerging counter-tradition to the prevailing literary establishment, originating in the work of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky, which later expanded into the work of Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg and Denise Levertov. Robert Creeley was not only an important poet, but a dear presence with whom in conversation a whole world came alive, in a breadth of intelligence, memory and a style of speech decisively his own. Come listen to echoes of Creeley’s world.

Oh Love

My love is a boat
floating
on the weather, the water.

She is a stone
at the bottom of the ocean.
She is the wind in the trees.

I hold her
in my hand 
and cannot lift her,

can do nothing
without her. Oh love,
like nothing else on earth!

—Robert Creeley