The virgin and the bordello
By Janet Avery December 5, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

San Miguel Quilters exhibit/sale
Fri, Dec 12
Bordello Gallery
Casa de la Turca B&B
Organos 19

A bright, imaginative and colorful Virgin of Guadalupe wall hanging designed and quilted by full-time resident Pat Donahue was accepted into an international competition in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, Alsace, France, to represent Mexico in the South American division of the Bernina “European Patchwork Meeting,” September 18–21.

Only five quilts from Mexico were selected for the show and attendance topped 18,500.

The small quilt made its way back to Mexico City where it was exhibited in the Bernina “Mexico Concours” at the Centro de Cultura de San Angel recently. A small contingent of San Miguel Quilters traveled to Mexico City to view the exhibit of wonderful quilts made by members of the Mexico City Quilt Guild, and to escort the Virgin of Guadalupe art quilt back to San Miguel.

The Virgin of Guadalupe has symbolized the Mexican nation since the War of Independence. Rebel armies waged war beneath Guadalupan flags and Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is generally recognized as a symbol of all Mexicans.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, also called the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Mexican icon representing an apparition of the Virgin Mary. It is perhaps Mexico’s most popular religious and cultural image. Guadalupe’s feast day is celebrated on December 12, commemorating the traditional account of her appearances to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City, December 9–12, 1531.


Donahue’s Virgin will be on display, along with numerous quilts and wearable art pieces made by the San Miguel Quilters, in their first-ever exhibit/sale at the Bordello Gallery. Rumors have it that Casa de la Turca has a history. Locals remember it for its fine dining and fine women, once both available for a nominal fee.

Keep in mind these aren’t your grandmother’s quilts! Undoubtedly, you’ll see traces of old techniques, but nowadays quilters are much more adventurous with colors, fabrics and embellishments. For example, some of us are into recycling; you’ll find remnants from cast-offs, including shirts, skirts, dresses, lingerie, kimonos, you name it, incorporated into jackets and quilts.

Tuesday Market, Bodega de Sopresas and ALMA are all favored haunts for finding these items. Fabrics that most quilters are accustomed to using are harder to come by south of the border, so journeys north always include shopping expeditions.

Just as the painter must have paints, the quilter must have fabrics. The fabrics in the quilter’s stash are the palette. No self-respecting quilter could exist without one. A saying in the quilt world is that the one with the largest stash wins. Believe me, competition is fierce for that honor! Those not blessed with understanding partners need creative places to stash one’s stash.

One lady kept hers in the oven because “her husband would never look there.” Others keep them in the trunk of the car or under the bed. At one lecture, I learned “you don’t have to have a reason to buy fabric…eventually a reason will show up.” That made me feel much better! It’s dangerous for a quilter to go places with lots of fabrics. At the recent International Quilt Festival in Houston, it was the old “kid in a candy store” syndrome in action—so much fabric, so little time. 

The San Miguel Quilters, a group of 10 women, make quilts for charitable organizations to use in fundraising efforts, in between having fun and teaching each other new techniques in quilting. We are currently working on our fourth charity quilt.

Visitors to the Bordello Gallery may view the raffle quilt done for SPA (Sociedad Protectora de Animales). The SPA Quilt also can be viewed in early December at the Biblioteca. SPA is currently selling raffle tickets and will continue selling them opening night. The lucky winner will be announced at the exhibit/sale.

Janet Avery is a full-time resident and enjoys pursuing creative endeavors and wielding her red pen on newspaper galleys.

Xido/Cabras to preserve Palo Huerfano volcanic area 

Mexican Afternoon 
Sat, Dec, 6, 3-7pm
Benefits Xido/Cabras
Casa de los Angelitos
Faroles 3 
Col. Atascadero 
Donation 300 pesos

Xido/Cabras was created to preserve the volcanic area Palo Huerfano in Los Picachos. 

It is essential to value the natural and cultural benefits of this volcanic area such as the canyon named el chorro (the stream), its cave paintings, the hot springs called the manstranto and los cohecillos which are virgin archeological sites.

The main goals are to preserve the flora and fauna in danger of extinction, to recharge the aquifer and to create projects with the support of the local government to help the people of the region have sufficient income to live and keep their lands instead of selling them and thus leaving them without a patrimony.

Some of the goals of creating an eco-tourist park are to preserve the ground, water and native species and the reforestation of areas of the holms oak. It is also very important to encourage the sustainable management based on environmental education. This project will also allow people from the region and people from San Miguel to enjoy recreation in a unique space. More information: asociacionxidocabras@gmail.com.

Two birthday girls celebrate way up high
By Elena Shoemaker

Elizabeth Phipps told me, many years ago, that if she made it to 90, she wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride. I thought that was a great idea, of course!

So we did! I’m only two-thirds of the woman Elizabeth is, as I just turned 60. Elizabeth is the dapper one. I’m learning from her example.

Elizabeth’s family of friends in McAllen, TX, provided the trip. They’ve been friends for more than 50 years. Elizabeth has loved Mexico since she was six years old. She remembers being ferried across the river because there was no international bridge. Her love affair with Mexico has never stopped.

My older brother, Wells, visiting from Aptos, CA, joined us on the balloon ride. He is also a birthday boy. Go, Scorpios!

Thanks, Jay Kimball, for providing the balloon and for getting our feet back on the ground. May you all enjoy your birthdays, however many there are, and share them with those you love.

Holiday fare 
By Roger Hind

Mujeres en Cambio Luncheon
Thu, Dec 18, 2pm
Hacienda de las Flores
Hospicio 16
120 pesos

The next Mujeres en Cambio luncheon will be roast turkey breast with all the trimmings, vegetables, salads and desserts provided by Mujeres en Cambio members. By attending this luncheon, you’ll help raise funds for educational scholarships for 150 young women from the ranchos around San Miguel. We pride ourselves that less than one percent of funds raised goes to overhead. Entry to the lunch is by pre-purchased ticket only, available now at Casa de Papel, Mesones 57A. For further information, call Roger Hind at 154-6552; sorry, no phone reservations can be taken.

Golden autumn
By Lou Christine

The green catalpa tree has turned 
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A Blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.


The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach, 
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop


The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.


Those are the first three stanzas of W.D. Snodgrass’s “April Inventory,” taken from Hearts Needle, his 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poems. For a number of years Snodgrass and wife Kathy have moved between their residence in upstate New York and San Miguel. The affable couple have contributed to and enabled other famous poets to read at San Miguel’s Poetry Week, which takes place here each January. Over a tumultuous lifetime, the student, professor and scholarly poet has taken the pulse of human nature, penning a plethora of poignant poems, a number of which deal with death. 

At the time Snodgrass’s Heart’s Needle was published, the poet was distraught over the loss of his daughter—not because she died, but because they were separated by divorce, part of the seeming epidemic of broken marriages that swept the nation during the mid-fifties. To him, the loss was as traumatic as death itself.

Sad to say, these days Snodgrass himself is facing the inevitable and quietly coming to grips with his own mortality. Inoperable lung cancer was discovered in early September. The prognosis was bereft of hope. His wife, Kathy, says, “De”—what she and his friends call him—“is a tough-minded realist and has taken the dreary forecast in stride.” With the horizon shortened, the dignified wordsmith is hanging in there, tucked away in upstate New York. He is receiving tender, loving care from Kathy and remains as comfortable as possible under Hospice home care. Kathy says De’s spirits are high.

Kathy displayed her own true grit when she related over the phone, “De and I have the luxury of knowing the end is near, and more important, we’re together.” She went on to update his condition. “He’s not experiencing pain. I’m stuffing him with his favorite goodies—goodies that were taboo just a few months back.” 

A few weeks after the grim prognosis a frail yet resilient Snodgrass and stepped into the literary batter’s box at the Syracuse YMCA’s art gallery to give a reading. On perhaps a smaller scale, his riveting performance and steady delivery might be compared to Lou Gehrig’s Yankee Stadium swan song; De sounded as though he was the luckiest man who has ever lived. There was concern that his strength might not hold up, yet the luminary came through, mesmerizing his audience and extending his reading into extra innings.

Back at home, under Kathy’s watchful eye, when his strength permits Snodgrass gives interviews to journalists. He spends precious time with Kathy, reading, napping and listening to his beloved Mahler. The Snodgrasses have become one of Netflix’s best customers. When feeling extra frisky Snodgrass asks for pen and paper. 

Born January 5, 1926, and raised in western Pennsylvania in a middle-class family, young Snodgrass went into the Navy during WWII. Afterward he attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, then went off to the University of Iowa to become a student of Robert Lowell, who was already a renowned poet. Snodgrass tried his hand at playwriting and other literary disciplines but eventually discovered that the musical cadence of rhymes and rhythms was his true calling. 

At first, Lowell scoffed at his student, saying his poems treated untraditional themes, not in the spirit of T.S. Eliot who professed that poets are never to regale the personal or emotional while jotting down observations. Despite the negative criticism from his mentor, Snodgrass was no quitter, and he persevered with his own style. Today Snodgrass is referred to by his peers and admirers as the father of “confessional poetry,” a mantle he has never really embraced. Nevertheless, he is noted and respected for magnifying emotions, those stemming from amazement and awe or those from rejection, reactions he has proudly worn on his poetic sleeve. Even Lowell became a fan and began echoing Snodgrass’s themes in his own writing.

The author of over 20 books of poetry and countless articles, a respected and sought-after professor at Cornell, Wayne State, Syracuse, Wayne University and the University of Delaware, W.D. Snodgrass for over half a century has been a steady, sober and pragmatic voice. He is astonishingly creative but never glosses over his own misgivings or shortfalls. 


His contemplative nature enables De to scrutinize and contemplate his fading existence. It’s a horrible shame that such a nice, decent man has to leave us and leave his Kathy and will not to be on hand to see the fresh blossoms this coming spring. My thoughts return to the final stanzas of Snograss’s “April Inventory” and their prescient cunning:

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body’s hunger;
That I have forces, true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

Lou Christine is a local writer and long-time contributor to Atención.

Three kings visit Mexiquito 
By Robin Loving Rowland

Tres Reyes party
Sat, Jan 10, noon–3pm
Santuario Hogar Guadalupano Mexiquito 
Carretera a Dolores Hidalgo 


The 12 days of Christmas officially end in January when three kings (or wise men, as many of us know them) bring gifts for children. “It’s good to be king,” as the old saying goes, and it’s great fun in San Miguel when the three kings bring gifts to the Casa Hogar kids, 100 children who live in local group homes due to family circumstances beyond their control.

Local mail service Border Crossings started the tradition 14 years ago by posting the children’s photos at their Mesones/Relox office for selection by “kings” and “queens” who will receive their favorite child’s letter and purchase the items the child wants. Typically, the kids ask for tennis shoes, pants and a shirt, three things that generally can be purchased locally for under US$30/300 pesos.

Then January 10, all the kings, queens and children gather at the boys’ home, Mexiquito, just past Fábrica La Aurora on the left side of the road to Dolores. Gents dressed as the three kings pass out the gifts. There’s entertainment for the kids, refreshments and opportunities to enjoy the happiness of children who appreciate something new and theirs alone.

“Of course, all of this happens on volunteer power,” said Nellie Lorenzo, owner of Border Crossings. “We still need a translator, people who can transport the gifts from Border Crossings to Mexiquito, folks to set up the gift table and entertainment, a photographer and a couple of men to dress as kings. We also need US$1,000/10,000 pesos to purchase the refreshments, children’s entertainment, etc.”

US tax-deductible checks may be made out to the San Miguel Community Foundation, noting “three kings” on the memo line, and may be dropped off at Border Crossings, Box 121. Volunteers may contact Robin Loving Rowland at robin@robinloving.com, 152-3709 in San Miguel or (925) 418-8003 from the US or Canada.