Firemen’s fundraiser honors 12 citizens
By Jesus Ibarra, Sept 8, 2006
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Volunteer fire department fundraiser Saturday, September 9, 9:30pm, La Cava de la Princesa, Recreo 3 |
Many boys dream of becoming firemen when they grow up, and when there is a fire people feel relieved when see the red fire trucks zooming through the streets, sirens blaring. But people never stop to think that in San Miguel the firemen are all volunteers, risking their lives to save others.
The local fire department has served San Miguel de Allende for 15 years but has often faced economic hardship. The department receives 31,250 pesos from city hall every month, which is used for basic expenses such as fuel, telephones and electricity.
The salaries of the five paid employees—three truck drivers, a radio operator and an administrator—come from donations from companies such as Gas Express Nieto, Gas Noel, Papelería El Iris and La Esmeralda.
This year, the fire department, headed by José Sánchez and Martín Rayas, has organized a special fund-raising event to help defray the cost of its new fire truck; of the 475,000-peso expense, only 300,000 pesos have been paid.
Supported by the restaurant La Cava de la Princesa, the event takes place this Saturday, September 9, at 9:30pm at La Cava de la Princesa, Recreo 3. During the fundraiser, 12 sanmiguleneses will be honored for their outstanding service to the community.
The Fire Department
According to fire chief Rayas, the fire department currently is made up of 60 volunteers who work in day and night shifts. Volunteers receive training for eight months, taking classes on fire sciences, rescue, rappelling, and emergency medical techniques.
After their training, they must work in the call center answering emergency calls and send and receive the tankers that supply water to the trucks before they are allowed to fight the fires directly.
To be 16 years old is the only requirement for being a volunteer, and there is no upper age limit. The department includes some disabled volunteers as well.
Every Saturday, the department hosts 25 children from 10am to 1pm. The kids learn bout firefighting, go camping with other firefighting crews, and undertake community service projects.
According to Rayas, the department currently has three small trucks with a 1,000-liter capacity that are used to control fires in houses or vehicles.
Three large fire trucks with a 4,000-liter capacity are used for bigger fires. “When there is a fire, we usually send a small and a big truck as support, since the small truck has only enough water for about 9 minutes, supplying 111 liters per minute,” said Rayas.
The department also uses a car, a pickup truck and a Suburban. The Suburban is equipped with an electronic system of schematic maps that show the location of electricity and gas lines. “This is useful to detect the cause of a fire,” said Rayas.
Homage to 12 sanmiguelenses
The following 12 residents of San Miguel will be honored at the firemen’s fundraiser for their contributions to the city.
The following 12 residents of San Miguel will be honored at the firemen’s fundraiser for their contributions to the city.
| Juan Pasqualli, assistant mayor, for his work in agriculture. | |
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Carlos Araiza, from the restaurant El Pollo Feliz, for being a successful young businessman.
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Jorge Zavala, Public Works Director, for his work during the 2003–2006 administration. |
| Antonio Llamas, a successful third-generation sanmiguelense artisan. | |
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Don Manuel Zavala, PPKabezón, for his outstanding work for the sanmiguelense radio station XESQ. |
| Chelo Agundis, for her work for the community. Her drugstore, located on the corner of Canal and Hernández Macías, opened in 1950. | |
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Guadalupe Agundis, for her assistance to the fire department. Her store, La Herradura on Insurgentes, has been open for 40 years. |
Javier Álvarez Brunell, for his support of the firefighters.
| Luisa Yassel Navarrete, for her outstanding job as a member of City Hall. | |
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Alberto Villarreal, for his work and support for building the new city hospital. His business, Casa Canal, has been open since 1974 |
| Mother Rufina, for her tireless work at Casa Hogar Don Bosco | |
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Gerardo Martínez, owner of Imprenta Martínez, the city’s oldest printing company, in business since 1939. |
Rodolfo Jurado Guzmán, for his work for the community (a posthumous award).
Nancy Reid Harvie
March 31, 1926–August 29, 2006
| Memorial Service for Nancy Harvie Wednesday, September 13, 11am, Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25 |
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Nancy Harvie, 80, died at home last week after living almost half her life in San Miguel. She grew up in Berkeley, California, where her father owned Reid’s Drugstore across the street from the University of California. Nancy was by all accounts “brilliant,” proven no doubt by her undergraduate studies at the University of California, her Ph.D. in microbiology there and her postdoctoral work at Harvard University.
Nancy married Allan Harvie (now ex-husband) when she was still a student and soon after her only child, their daughter Louise, was born. Before she arrived in San Miguel, Nancy pursued a long teaching career, working at the University of California and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Once again, her extraordinary ability is underscored by the national “Teacher of the Year” award she won in 1958.
Nancy studied music under master pianist Tirzah Mailkoff, and the two became lifelong friends. When they both retired and moved to San Miguel in 1968, they became close friends with Stirling Dickinson. On Friday evenings, the friends gathered at Chorro 7, where Stirling taught Nancy Spanish while Tirzah cooked dinner. The three amigos traveled frequently: to Holland, Egypt, China, Thailand, England, Greece, Belgium, and even Antarctica, always looking for the rare orchids Stirling collected.
In San Miguel, Nancy was an early and enthusiastic member of the San Miguel Garden Club and a strong supporter of the Biblioteca Pública. When Tirzah (now 100) was asked to create a music room and catalog the library’s musical holdings, including thousands of pages of sheet music, Nancy applied her logical mind to assist Tirzah and followed through with the task as Tirzah’s health faded. In the early days, Nancy also volunteered at the local hospital to assist with lab work and dermatological diagnosis.
Nancy and Tirzah recently sold their house on Chorro and moved to Las Villitas, condominiums located on the street named for their great friend Stirling Dickinson. Nancy is remembered by numerous friends in San Miguel and elsewhere and is survived by her daughter, Louise Harvie Christoffers, and her namesake granddaughter, Nancy Christoffers. A memorial service will be held at the Biblioteca Pública on September 13 at 11am in the Sala Quetzal. For more information, contact Louise McGann at 154-5081.
Planting musical seeds
By Linnea Kullberg
| ANYÉL is a nonprofit music education program for children offered to them in their classrooms in public schools, in orphanages and in daycare centers. ANYÉL is going into its third year, and hundreds of children have the experience of singing, dancing, playing rhythm instruments and listening to music from all over the world. | |
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The goal of the program is to use music to activate feelings and then encourage the children to think, imagine, have opinions and express themselves. For one year, ANYÉL did have a building to accommodate other families wanting music education for their children and who could pay a small fee, but that no longer exists. ANYÉL continues its original mandate: to provide free access to musical education in public schools. It must have financial support from the community to function. At the beginning of each session, the kids proudly proclaim, “I am an instrument … my voice is my instrument!”
Elsmarie Norby, founder/director of ANYÉL, has for many years directed little choruses in San Miguel wherever she could gather children. Her dream was to one day have 100 children’s voices in a choir. Opera San Miguel gave enthusiastic support to the idea. With the help of Juanita Bautista, teacher and coordinator of the program; Veronica Agundis, director of education and culture in the presidencia; and the public library, a choir now rehearses every Saturday morning from 10:30am to noon in the library’s Sala Quetzal.
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As of last Saturday, exactly 100 children have appeared to register. Do they all come? Of course not! But between 40 and 50 children do come every week. They are attentive and eager to learn the music and the skills required to be a voice in a choir. |
In September, they will begin to sing regularly at various events, and we hope that more children will be inspired to join. “A town with 42,000 school-age children (figures from Atención) can certainly produce 100 kids to sing,” says Elsmarie. “We will sing and they will come.”
Elsmarie is teaching a young man named Mario to be the choir’s accompanist. Mario is 15 years old, has taught himself to play the piano, and is very talented and inspired. Guided by Elsmarie, herself a pianist/teacher, he is acquiring technical skills for playing, accompanying and teaching beginning students. The choir also has a “mama del coro” named Lupita. She takes attendance, registers new members, helps set up chairs, monitors bathroom requests and sings with the kids.
Anyone is welcome to come by on a Saturday morning and check out this marvelous happening and find out how to volunteer. Donations are also needed to support the various expenses of any choir, such as music, event planning, robes and general support. Membership in the choir is free of charge, so that all children in San Miguel will feel welcome to join. Checks can be made out to ANYÉL, with choir on the memo line.
On Sunday, September 10, the class from Casa Hogar Santa Julia (the orphanage for young girls) will come to the Unitarian Fellowship meeting at 10:30am in the Posada de la Aldea to present the morning’s program with their ANYÉL teacher. This will be a wonderful opportunity to hear more about the program, see the results and sing along.
To expand the program throughout San Miguel, classroom teachers are being given instruction and materials about ANYÉL. The original ANYÉL teachers also do this work and are paid for it.
Visitors are welcome to go to classes to observe and/or participate. To find out the schedule and plan a visit, please call Juanita at 152-8188. She speaks English.
If you’d like to be a “planter of musical seeds” among the children in San Miguel and want a tax-deductible receipt, please make a check out to San Miguel Educational Foundation, with ANYÉL on the memo line, and send it to Solutions, Recreo 11, Box 354, San Miguel de Allende, 37700, GTO, Mexico—or drop it off if you are in the neighborhood. If you don’t need an IRS receipt, make the check out to “ANYÉL, escuela de musica” and send it to the same address.
Midday Rotary hosts BC Interact club
| The Rotary Club of San Miguel de Allende-Midday recently hosted seven Interact club members (ages 16 to 18) and five chaperones from Trail, British Columbia. Trail is a small town (population 8,000) east of Vancouver and 14 miles from the US border. | |
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Interact is Rotary International’s service club for young people ages 14 to 18. Interact clubs are sponsored by individual Rotary clubs, which provide support and guidance, but they are self-governing and self-supporting. Each year, Interact clubs complete at least two community service projects, one of which furthers international understanding and goodwill. As one of the most significant and fastest-growing programs of Rotary service, with more than 10,700 clubs in 109 countries and geographical areas, Interact has become a worldwide phenomenon.
David Fawcett, World Community Service committee member of the Trail, B.C., Rotary Club, contacted the Midday Rotary through their website last year about doing a joint club project. He also stated that their Interact club members wanted to travel here to work on that project hands-on.
The Interact club members held many fundraising events, such as car washing and bake sales, to pay for their expenses to Mexico. Midday Rotary Club members furnished free accommodations in their homes for the students and chaperones. During their week here they spent two days building a home for Casita Linda, visited the Santa Julia and Mexiquito orphanages and worked a day at Casa de Los Angeles. They also heard a presentation from Ernesto and Fernando, two young men who won second place in the “Young Scientists” worldwide competition for their carrot washing filtration system.
It wasn’t all work and no play, though. The Midday Rotary provided a welcome luncheon, a trolley tour of San Miguel de Allende, Sunday brunch at the Villa Jacaranda, tickets to the July 4 celebration at Los Laboradores and a cookout for their last night in SMA. The Interact members voted to donate a $1,000 (Canadian) check from the Trail Rotary Club to Casita Linda. The Trail Rotary plans to send more money to complete the cost of building one Casita Linda home (US$1,200).
Through projects such as this, Interact clubs develop a network of friendships with local and overseas clubs. In the process, Interact members develop leadership skills and learn the value of hard work.
Casita Linda makes another dream come true
By Holly Wilmeth and Jean Gerber
Photos by Holly Wilmeth
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Gloria stands shyly with her hands covering her belly, her head tilted to one side and her hair covering a blind eye. She is around 40 years old and the proud mother of three daughters. |
Although she is mentally handicapped, she keeps an immaculately clean and tidy home. Her husband, Vasilizo, whom the daughters claim is about 66 years old, sits on a small chair with a large smile and wrinkled hands that show the years of hard work he has endured.
The Ramirez Anguiano family lives in Los Galvanes, about 10 kilometers from the center of San Miguel de Allende. They are a humble and loving family of five; one daughter, who is severely mentally handicapped, is a patient in the mental institution in León, the other two daughters, both in their 20s live with their parents. The only material wealth Gloria and Vasilizo can give them is the shelter of their tiny, one-room adobe house. The parents sleep outdoors in a lean-to made of partially built adobe walls with two large aluminum sheets that hang suspended over their heads—not much to protect them from the cold evenings and rainy summer season. They share their little compound with a turkey, a few chickens, a cat, a dog and a cheerful yellow parakeet.
Vasilizo and Gloria met over 30 years ago in the campo; they were both young and tending to their families’ animals. As they formed a family of their own they built a small home on the piece of land they currently live on. Working long days during the asparagus season to bring income into their home (500 pesos a week each) and tending a small piece of land with maize and bean crops is their only form of income and survival. The neighbors have been helpful, giving them a little money to buy medicine for their daughter in León.
| The two daughters, Olimpia and Reina, said that the house that the Casita Linda volunteers are building means a lot to them. “Finally, our parents will be given something, after so many years of protecting us and giving everything to us. | |
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Our dream is to have a safe, dry home and also to be able to visit our sister, Socorro, in León.”
Last Saturday, as we were working together mixing and pouring the cement, Vasilizo shyly approached one of the volunteers and whispered, “Can you put our name on the house so that no one can take it away from us?”
Casita Linda is a nonprofit volunteer organization. Working with the appropriate government departments and local people, we identify a community that has a need for our houses. At community meetings, families most in need are selected and an agreement is signed with the recipients for sweat equity in exchange for the house. Since these people are living in extreme poverty, they are not required to pay any money.
For more information on Casita Linda, contact Jean Gerber at mnjgerber@yahoo.com (154-9446) or you can email Chris McLane at
gcmclane@yahoo.com (152-1024).
Program of the Fiestas Patrias September 8–16
Friday, September 8
6 am, Mañanitas to the Virgin of Loreto, patron saint of the city, the Oratorio Church
10 am, Commemoration in the Jardín of the 159th anniversary of the Molino del Rey Battle
6 pm, The Mexican flag raised in front of the new City Hall building
6 pm, Italian cinema, Los Malditos (The Damned), Beneficiencia 13, free
7 pm, Third government report by Mayor Juan Antonio Jaramillo, Jardín
8 pm, Theater, The Life of Ignacio Allende, Ángela Peralta Theater
Saturday, September 9
8:30 am, “Zumbiando” aerobics in Parque Juárez, 20 pesos
5 pm, Music, Taki-Kuni group, Jardín
8 pm, Theater, The Life of Ignacio Allende, Ángela Peralta Theater
Sunday, September 10
Noon, charreada (horsemanship show), horse ring next to the San Miguel Sports Center on Salida a Celaya
1 pm, Music, Jardín
7 pm, Music, Jardín
Tuesday, September 12
4 pm, Documentary, The Last Zapatistas, English subtitles, Santa Ana Theater, Biblioteca Pública
Wednesday, September 13
10 am, Commemoration of the 159th anniversary of the war against the American Army for the defense of the Chapultepec Castle by the Niños Héroes (the Boy Heroes), Benito Juárez Park
Thursday, September 14
10 am, Mass to celebrate the Charros’s Day (Cowboys Day) in the Lienzo Charro (the horse ring) next to the San Miguel Sports Center on Salida a Celaya
12 pm, Charreada (horsemanship show), Lienzo Charro, salida a Celaya
1:30pm, Honor guard in front of Ignacio Allende’s house by the Conspirators Cavalcade
Friday, September 15
6 am, Civic ceremony in honor of the Mexican flag
Noon, Arrival of Liberty Athletic Delegations, Jardín
5 pm, Special program for the independence ceremony, Independence Day Message from Querétaro, Jardín
6 pm, Folklore and indigenous dances, Jardín
10 pm, The Mexican flag will be moved from City Hall to Ignacio Allende’s house by Mayor Jaramillo, members of City Hall and the Fiestas Patrias Queen
10:55pm, Arrival of the independence torch by local athletes
11 pm, The Cry of Independence, “el Grito,” at Ignacio Allende’s house, by Mayor Juan Antonio Jaramillo
11:10 pm, Fireworks and music, Jardín
Saturday, September 16
6 am, Civic ceremony in honor of the Mexican flag, City Hall
8:30 am, “Zumbiando” aerobics, Benito Juárez Park, 20 pesos
9 am, Civic ceremony for the anniversary of Mexican Independence, Jardín
11 am, Traditional parade celebrating the 195th anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Independence War, main streets of the city
4 pm, Traditional bullfight in the bullring Plaza de Toros de San Miguel
6:30, Civic ceremony by the National Army in the Jardín
8 pm, The Route of Independence Cavalcade enters to town to give the national symbols to the local government
8 pm, Mexican Night, Salón Acuario, Fraccionamiento La Luz, fundraiser for Nuestra Señora de la Luz Church