The Lavender Project Benefit
Thu, Aug 6, 6–9pm
The Marsh Estate, Candelaria
Info: thelavenderproject.com
250 pesos

Help this lavender field of dreams
By Jeannie Ralston

Photos by Holly Wilmeth

This is how you could be spending next Thursday evening—wandering through a newly planted lavender exhibit in one of Candelaria’s most spectacular estates, breathing in that intoxicating scent and sipping an equally intoxicating lavender margarita.

And all the while, helping a Mexican community working hard to help themselves.

All proceeds from this gala benefit go to The Lavender Project, a community co-op that farms lavender in Rancho La Colorada, near Dolores Hidalgo. The benefit is held at the Marsh Estate in Candelaria, where lavender has recently been planted among olive trees and where the Chamber Music Festival’s University Quartet play on a festive, maypole-like stage on the grounds.

The lavender farmers and artisans from Rancho La Colorado are on hand to talk about growing lavender to support their once-desperate community and to sell dried lavender, lavender soaps and sachets, and other products.

The Lavender Project was started in 2006, and currently consists of two hectares of lavender, mainly Provence and Grosso varieties.

The co-op members dry lavender buds and distill lavender oil for sale and use in other products. A group of women makes soaps and body products, and another group sews sachets and other items. These products are sold in stores around San Miguel, including La Victoriana, Buenas Noches and El Charco del Ingenio.

Funds raised at the benefit will be used to repair an irrigation pump and expand the co-op’s drip irrigation system to accommodate 30 hectares of lavender; the farmers also need shade cloth and winter cloth for the greenhouse they’ve recently built for propagating their own lavender seedlings. The soap-makers require more equipment and a larger facility to expand their operation, and with plans to produce lavender honey, money is also needed for beekeeping training and equipment.

“The Lavender Project has been a great success and we’re at a juncture where the business is ready to go to the next level,” says Teresa Balcomb, president of St. Anthony’s Alliance, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit that started The Lavender Project (though the co-op is wholly community owned). “The money raised will be re-invested in the project to help the community achieve true self-sufficiency.”

The Lavender Project Benefit is sponsored by Coates/Dolan, La Conexión, Rosewood Artesana and Petit Four, which provides lavender desserts for the occasion. Coates/Dolan, the developer of Villas of Candelaria, adds extra fun to the evening. Guests are welcome to stop by Villas of Candelaria on the way to the Marsh Estate for lavender margaritas and other special treats, plus a chance to win an iPod shuffle. Look for signs as you pass through Candelaria.

The benefit’s silent auction features lavender-related artwork from many local artists. You also can bid on a vacation home rental in Martha’s Vineyard, nights in a Manhattan hotel and other vacation options. Bids can be made in pesos, dollars and Mexican or US checks.

Tickets include one Provence-variety lavender plant, which guests may take home from the event. Admission is limited to 150 guests; buy tickets early at the following outlets: La Conexión, Petit Four, El Charco del Ingenio, La Victoriana and Buenas Noches, or email mariarebora@hotmail.com. If tickets are left on the day of the benefit, they will be sold outside of Candelaria’s front gate. For more information or to make an easy online donation, visit www.thelavenderproject.com.

Jeannie Ralston is the author of The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming. She is a contributing editor at Parenting magazine and a blogger for the internet newspaper The Huffington Post. She lives with her husband and two sons in San Miguel and volunteers as an adviser for the lavender co-op near Dolores Hidalgo.





Celestial Lights
By Phyllis Burton Pitluga

Jupiter dominates the night sky

During August, Jupiter will be closest to Earth and therefore at its brightest as we pass the slower-moving planet on August 14.

Jupiter rises at sunset and sets at sunrise on this date and passes halfway up in the southern sky at midnight.

Jupiter is the largest planet orbiting our star, the Sun. It orbits five times farther from the Sun than the Earth. Jupiter is 10 times the diameter of our Earth. Because of its relatively large size in the sky and its white cloud tops, Jupiter is brighter than all celestial objects after the Sun, Moon, the International Space Station and Venus.

Through large binoculars or a telescope, the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter can be seen changing positions from night to night. You can track these changes each night by making a sketch showing Jupiter as a small circle and the moons as dots separated by “Jupiter-diameters” apart on either side. These four moons are similar in brightness.

The moon Io orbits in less than two nights and is second brightest. It is so close to Jupiter that the gravitational squeezing and relaxing on the little moon causes its interior to remain liquid. Io is the most active volcanic world in our solar system.

The next closest moon, Europa, orbits in three and a half nights and is third brightest. It, too, is undergoing gravitational squeezing by Jupiter so this rock and ice world has liquid water beneath its crust. Europa is one of the places where we hope to land a robotic submarine to explore this ocean for the existence of life.

The moon Ganymede is the brightest because it is the largest. By following it for seven nights, you can see Ganymede make a complete orbit of Jupiter, which includes passing in front of Jupiter and behind it.

The moon Callisto is much farther so that it takes 16.5 nights to orbit Jupiter. It is also the dimmest of the four moons. By viewing these four moons through binoculars or a small telescope, you will be like Galileo 400 years ago this month who, from observing the miniature system of moons orbiting Jupiter, became passionately convinced that Copernicus had been correct 50 years earlier in proposing that, instead of the planets and Sun orbiting the Earth, the Earth and planets orbit the Sun.

Details in the cloudy atmosphere of Jupiter can be observed through larger telescopes. As this story goes to press, an Australian amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley, has discovered an asteroid or comet impact into the cloud tops near Jupiter’s south pole. It has left a noticeable black scar that will stretch out as Jupiter rotates. This scar is white in infrared light because of the warming and upwelling of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Because Jupiter rotates in almost 10 hours, this new impact may be centered, toward one edge or the other, or even behind the planet. So, keep trying to see it.



Sky Calendar, August 2009

By following the Moon as the biggest and brightest “pointer” in the sky, during the month you can identify different planets and bright stars. On following nights you can relocate them but without the Moon—it moves 25 times its own diameter from one night to the next. Evening: Mercury and Saturn are low in the west and Jupiter rises about sunset. Early morning: Venus and Mars are in the east in the dawn sky. 

August 5, Wednesday: Full Moon rises at sunset, then 50 minutes later each night after that. 

August 12, Wednesday: Perseid Meteor Shower will not be so impressive this year because the bright light of the Moon interferes.

August 13, Thursday: Last Quarter Moon.

August 14, Friday: Moon passes just above the Pleiades Star Cluster after midnight. 

August 17, Monday: Moon passes above Venus.

August 20, Thursday: New Moon (i.e., no Moon because dark side faces Earth).

August 24, Monday: Mercury is highest in the western glow of sunset.

August 27, Thursday: First Quarter Moon (halfway across the sky at sunset) and the Moon will orbit in front of the bright star Antares, 3–5pm.






Benefit Concert
Broadway Loves Casita Linda
Wed & Thu, Aug 19 & 20, 8pm
Teatro Ángela Peralta
Mesones 82
350/150/100 pesos

Building hope one house at a time
By Jean Gerber

Casita Linda presents its first annual Broadway Loves Casita Linda musical extravaganza.

Conceived and produced by Broadway theater musical performer Colin Cunliffe, the production features song and dance numbers by Broadway performers who have donated their time and talent to the event and are coming to San Miguel for the exclusive purpose of furthering the good works of Casita Linda. Tickets are on sale at Teatro Ángela Peralta box office and at La Conexión, Aldama 3.

Casita Linda, which means “pretty little house,” was conceived in 2000 to address the overwhelming need for decent housing for the most disadvantaged families in Mexico. The organization was legally registered as a nonprofit civil association in September of 2001. Casita Linda seeks to alter the destiny of poverty by creating a dignified, safe and empowering environment that provides a foundation of hope for families living in extreme poverty within the municipality of San Miguel de Allende.

In 2006, Casita Linda expanded its mission by recruiting a full complement of board members, expanding fundraising efforts, producing new print and internet marketing materials and attracting a strong base of international and Mexican volunteers to work side by side building the houses.

Today, 20 million people in Mexico live in extreme poverty. While some may own a small piece of land due to the ejido reforms of the early twentieth century, often little is on the land that can be called a house. Many live in structures rigged from rocks, wood, sticks and tarps, with meager protection from cold and rain.

For some families, disability or age make it difficult to earn enough for adequate food and clothing. Improved housing is beyond their grasp. Some families have lost men to el norte, perhaps driven by the dream of saving money and returning later to build a decent home for the family left behind. However, that dream is often unfulfilled and the women and children are left to survive on their own. Regardless of the reasons, Casita Linda has seen how a small home can help keep a family together, provide a sense of security and create a foundation of hope for the future.

Casita Linda has volunteers who, with the assistance of community leaders and social workers, conduct interviews to determine which families are in greatest need. The recipients must have legal possession of their land. The program is unique in that family members, to the best of their abilities, physically participate in construction.

Though Casita Linda’s mission is to build houses, it has formed alliances with other nonprofit organizations to take advantage of their expertise in engineering, social services, animal care, donation of furnishings and other household necessities. One such alliance, formed in early 2008, with a professor of architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and 14 of her graduate students, reviewed house sizes and construction methods. The RISD team spent five weeks in San Miguel evaluating building options and working with local volunteers to build an adobe house. Their work now enables Casita Linda to build a longer-lasting and stronger house with materials that are less toxic than cement and much more comfortable.

The homes, costing US$7,000–$8,000, materials and labor included, currently are built using Compressed Earth Block (CEB) rather than traditional adobe and mark another step toward a better, greener house. Casita Linda now hires three full-time Mexican construction workers to assist volunteers and family members. During construction, family members are taught how to make adobe blocks, to provide a trade and further involve the family in building their home.

RISD continues to work with Casita Linda, documenting the construction process so it may be replicated in Mexico and elsewhere. Further research with RISD continues on solar power, water catchments, cooking, bathrooms, building products and methods.

Casita Linda is a Mexican not-for-profit organization which works with the San Miguel Community Foundation, a 501 (c) 3, through which US donors may receive a tax credit. As of July 2009, Casita Linda has constructed 26 homes which provide shelter for 130 people. Visit the website at www.casitalinda.org  for further information and donation and volunteer opportunities.

Jean Gerber, Executive Director of Casita Linda, was a commercial real estate broker for 20 years in Miami and San Francisco. She and her husband, Michael, came to San Miguel in 2002. Jean has been active with Casita Linda since the spring of 2006.