Jane Austen and mind-boggling metaphysical marketing
By Kimberly Kinser January 2, 2009 San Miguel de Allende

Author Reading
San Miguel Authors’ Sala Special Series
Andrea Adler and Terry Hill
Fri, Jan 9, 5–7pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
50 pesos

On January 9, join the Author’s Sala to hear the newest edition in the Two Guys series from Terry Hill. Two Guys Read Jane Austen has been adopted by several Jane Austen Society blogs and will be on sale at Austen’s home and museum in Chawton, England.

Terry Hill and Steve Chandler have been fast friends since they met in the sixth grade more than 50 years ago. As they began their 60th years, they acknowledged to each other that though they had both received assignments to read Moby-Dick in high school, neither had actually completed the assignment. They made a pact to read the book in six months and communicate their experience to each other. Two Guys Read Moby-Dick was born and was a surprising success.

Do you read the obituaries? Hill and Chandler do. The next book in their series was Two Guys Read the Obituaries. Hill subsequently sold an essay to The Actuary Magazine, the publication for the Society of Actuaries. The essay begins “This was a very good weekend. On Saturday there were six obituaries in the New York Times and the average age of death was 88.3. On Sunday, seven obits averaging 86.2. Most days I feel a slight uplift if the average is over 75. These high-80s averages seemed cause for a celebration: I order a Canadian Club on the rocks. My companion orders bourbon.” This reading promises to give us each our daily requirement of laughter.

Hill comes from a family of writers and has written all of his life, mostly creating commercials in his international career in advertising. He has also written a play, Hamlet, The Sequel. That first effort won the Playhouse on the Green playwright competition in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In Two Guys read Jane Austen, we are invited into the world of Hill and Chandler as they email each other (they live in very different parts of the country) over a five-month period sharing the male perspective on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Hill’s presentation of his text promises to be entertaining and informative. A nice combination.

Andrea Adler has been working and writing about marketing as the final steps on the spiritual path of creativity for over 30 years. Her first book, Creating an Abundant Practice, sold over 10,000 copies and was written for the holistic health field. The book that she will share with us, The Science of Spiritual Marketing: Initiation into Magnetism, presents the specific steps of her process to a more generic audience.

How many of you are artists or have friends that are artists who dread the idea of marketing their work? Adler believes that this is only because this phase of the creative process is considered an external application when indeed it should be considered an internal process, like the creation of the work itself.

Acting as midwife, Adler, through private consultations or workshop, “births” the artist’s deepest desires into reality. If this all sounds far out, don’t be surprised when Adler starts talking about target markets and leveraging assets. She has shared her skills with Fortune 500 companies and boards of directors.

Adler writes: “When the context of our public relations efforts is in alignment with our content and we understand that we have a moral and social purpose to uphold, when we understand that emotional connection is the true driving force behind good marketing and that we don’t have to manipulate our content to get our audience’s attention, then the words public relations and marketing will no longer be greeted with hesitation or negativity.”

Adler will also be leading a one-day workshop, The Tao of Marketing, at LifePath on Saturday, January 10, as well as being available for private consultations through her website, http://www.holisticpr.com/. She calls herself the Spiritual Rotor Rooter and loves to help those ready to energetically align with their life’s purpose move forward quickly and efficiently saving precious money and precious time.

Reading from the first chapter of The Science of Spiritual Marketing, The Root Chakra of PR, Adler knows that this is where we get in touch with what may be frightening about the process of putting our work out in the world.

Jane Austen through the eyes of the Two Guys and marketing as a spiritual practice will prove to be a fun and inspiring evening. Please join the San Miguel Author’s Sala, bringing readers and writers together. 

PEN Lecture Series coming up
By Lucina Kathmann

PEN Lecture Series
Susana Valadez
Tues, Jan 13, 6pm
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
Donation 50 pesos

Jan 13 Susana Valadez, The Huichols Past and Present: From Sacred Space to Cyberspace.

Jan 20 Joe Persico, President Roosevelt´s Remarkable Women.

Jan 27 Susan Page, Surprising New Strategies for Your Relationship.

Feb 3 Austin Briggs, The Joys of Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Feb 10 Jeannie Ralston, Bloom Where You’re Planted.

Feb 17 Walter Meagher, Wild and Wonderful: Nature Up Close in El Charco.

Feb 24 Sandra Gulland, What: No Panties? The Seventeenth Century Revealed.

San Miguel PEN’s annual winter lecture series, now in its 23rd year, will begin on January 13 and continue for seven weeks with talks every Tuesday night at 6pm in the Bellas Artes auditorium.

The series kicks off with The Huichols Past and Present: From Sacred Space to Cyberspace, a talk by Susana Valadez of the Huichol Center for Cultural Survival and Traditional Arts in the Sierra Madre Occidentals in Jalisco. Beside slides and information about a fascinating culture, Susana is bringing examples of Huichol folk art, which will be on sale at the Bellas Artes on January 13 starting at 3pm and after the talk as well.

The second speaker is the enormously popular biographer Joe Persico, who will talk about his latest book, Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life. Franklin Roosevelt’s 30-year romantic relationship with his wife Eleanor’s personal secretary, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, was documented in a series of letters to which Persico was given access by Lucy’s granddaughters. The result, according to Publishers Weekly, is that Persico “engagingly and eloquently narrates the tangled relationships between Franklin and the various women to whom he became close,” no surprise to his San Miguel audience.

On January 27, writer and relationship counselor Susan Page will talk about Surprising New Strategies for Your Relationship. The author of six relationship books, Page spent twenty-two years conducting workshops for couples, including her innovative groups in which she allows only one member of the couple to attend. Spiritually based yet highly practical, her work is, as one reviewer put it, “like the Buddha channeled by Ann Landers.” “It's not about better communication,” says Page.

On February 2, Professor Austin Briggs will return to the PEN lecture series with another talk about James Joyce, this time about the book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. While reading the book in question will certainly deepen your understanding of Austin’s talk, all his talks on Joyce are both comprehensible and fascinating even to people who have never read a word of James Joyce.

On February, 10 Jeannie Ralston will give a talk called Bloom Where You're Planted. Author of The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming, Ralston will discuss her odyssey from Manhattan to the fields of Texas and introduce a local lavender success story in progress, the Lavender Project, a women’s cooperative in nearby Rancho el Colorado. Representatives will have lavender and lavender products for sale.

On February 17, botanist Walter Meagher will present his book Wild and Wonderful: Nature Up Close in El Charco. The book catalogs the life in San Miguel’s Charco del Ingenio, home to at least 535 species of flora and 110 species of butterflies. Visitors to San Miguel are often attracted to its architectural or historical context, but according to Meagher, they should be attracted to its biodiversity as well. The talk will be illustrated with photos by the book’s photographer, Wayne Colony, who will also be present.

The last lecture, on February 24, by historical novelist Sandra Gulland, is called What: No Panties? The 17th Century Revealed. The talk is based on her most recent novel Mistress of the Sun, about Louise de la Vallière, an outstanding horsewoman who became the lover of Louis XIV, the Sun King. San Miguel readers will recall Gulland’s earlier trilogy about the life of Josephine Bonaparte; the new book about the Sun King’s mistress has risen to number two on Canada’s bestseller list.

Admission to all lectures is by contribution of 50 pesos. Money collected is used to support San Miguel PEN’s work on behalf of writers and freedom of expression around the world. International PEN, of which San Miguel PEN is one chapter, is the largest worldwide association of writers with branches in 110 countries. It is devoted to the promotion of literature and the protection of writers who run into trouble, jail sentences, threats etc. for what they have written.

There will be more detailed information about each of the lectures as they approach, but meanwhile, mark your calendars!

For more information: lucina.kathmann@gmail.com  or 152 0614.

Lucina Kathmann has lived in San Miguel de Allende for more than 30 years. She has been a member of the San Miguel PEN Center for 23 years.