Adventures in Music series at Biblioteca
By Linnea Kullberg, Jan 26, 2007
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Adventures in Music with Elsmarie Norby Tuesday, February 6, 3pm Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública, 50 pesos |
Elsmarie Norby presents the second in a series of classes in discovering new dimensions about timeless music: how, throughout history, music has reflected time and place, lifestyle and cultural values. Imagine listening to a Beethoven symphony and finding parallels with the visual arts, architecture and social systems of the period. Imagine listening to the voices of Bosnian women and getting glimpses of their landscapes and culture. Imagine listening to two distinct jazz forms and learning why one has urban roots and the other rural. But don’t expect a strictly cerebral approach. Norby brings humor and previously unexplored facets of music into the format through listening and discussion. What makes music beautiful? What makes it offensive? What makes it inspiring, sad or happy? Norby brings energy to these questions that awaken participants to a new excitement about their own musical experiences.
Norby is a lifelong musician—a Juilliard-trained pianist, violist and choral director—and a 10-year resident of San Miguel. She has been a major force in music activities here, building two Mexican choirs, playing in a number of concerts and other musical events and producing benefit concerts to raise money for ANYÉL, a nonprofit music program that brings music classes to hundreds of young children in their own schools as well as in orphanages and daycare centers. As she says, “Everybody responds to music, it awakens feelings, which lead to thought, imagination and creative expression—nothing is more important for the development in very young children than self-confidence, the awareness of choices, better learning skills and a lifetime love for the creative arts. The result is children growing into more positive, active members of their families and communities—this is more than music!”
Future lectures in the Adventures in Music series will take place on February 20 and March 6 and 20 at 3pm in the Biblioteca Pública’s Sala Quetzal. The 50-peso charge benefits ANYÉL and programs for children at the library.
Winged wonders of the insect world
| Audubon slide show Friday, February 2, 4pm Villa Jacaranda, Aldama 53 50 pesos |
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The Sociedad de México, A.C., will present the popular slide show “Monarchs: Butterflies without Borders” at the Villa Jacaranda, Aldama 53. Presented by Bob Graham, a retired naturalist from Parks Canada who regularly leads trips to see the butterflies in Michoacán, the slide show details the life cycle of the monarch butterfly and its fantastic migration from the milkweed fields of the northern United States and Canada to Mexico. At the same time, Bob will emphasize some of the problems threatening the very survival of this endangered phenomenon.
Scientists believe that monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) belong to a family whose evolutionary origins are tropical. None of this family is able to tolerate freezing at any stage of the life cycle. Nevertheless, over tens of thousands of years, monarchs have extended their breeding territory into the extensive milkweed fields of the US and Canada.
Each fall, like many Canadians and Americans, monarchs abandon their northern homes and head south. What triggers this exodus among monarchs is uncertain, but decreasing hours of daylight and cooler temperatures probably play a major role.
Their final destination is high in the mountains that make up the Sierra de Angengueo, in the State of Michoacán, only a half-day’s drive south of San Miguel de Allende. For some monarchs this journey spans much of North America.
Given the size of this dainty creature, this is one of the most perilous and spectacular migrations in the world. This trek and their beautiful, jade-colored, bejeweled chrysalises have made monarch butterflies one of the most popular of North American insects, to the degree that there is a movement afoot to make them the national insect of the US.
Tickets can be purchased at the door the afternoon of the presentation. The proceeds go to the Sociedad Audubon de México A.C. The Sociedad would like to thank the Villa Jacaranda for the use of their cine/bar theater. For additional information, call Bob Graham at 154-9856.
Happiness from within
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Lecture by Kelsang Wangchog Thursday, February 1, 5–7pm Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25 100 pesos/US$10 |
Kelsang Wangchog, a Kadampa Buddhist nun, is the resident teacher at the Sukhavati Buddhist Center in Querétaro. She is a very warm and clear meditation teacher and a close disciple of Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. Venerable Geshe-la (as he is affectionately called by his many students around the world) is a humble Buddhist monk born in Tibet in 1931 and is the founder and the spiritual guide of the New Kadampa Tradition (International Kadampa Buddhist Union) for 30 years. Venerable Geshe Kelsang has published 22 highly acclaimed books on Buddhist philosophy and practice and is a well-known meditation teacher.
Venerable Geshe Kelsang arrived in England 30 years ago and since then has tirelessly worked to offer the modern world a perfectly accurate, clear and practical vision of the complete Buddhist path to enlightenment. An excerpt from one of his books, How to Solve Our Human Problems, from which Wangchog will offer this very insightful and profoundly practical public talk, is apt for everyone:
“Normally our need to escape from unpleasant feelings is so urgent that we do not give ourselves the time to discover where these feelings actually come from. Suppose that someone we have helped responds with ingratitude, or that our partner fails to return our affection, or that a colleague or boss continuously tries to belittle us and undermine our confidence.
These things hurt, and our instinctive reaction is to try immediately to escape the painful feelings in our mind by becoming defensive, blaming the other person, retaliating, or simply hardening our heart. Unfortunately, by reacting so quickly we do not give ourselves the time to see what is actually going on in our minds. In reality, the painful feelings that arise on such occasions are not intolerable.
They are only feelings, a few moments of bad weather in the mind, with no power to cause us any lasting harm. There is no need to take them so seriously. We are just one person among countless living beings, and a few moments of unpleasant feelings arising in the mind of just one person is no great catastrophe.
Just as there is room in the sky for a thunderstorm, so there is room in the vast space of our mind for a few painful feelings; and just as a storm has no power to destroy the sky, so unpleasant feelings have no power to destroy our minds. When painful feelings arise in our minds, there is no need to panic; we can patiently accept them, experience them, and investigate their nature and where they come from. When we do this, we shall discover that painful feelings do not come to us from outside but arise from within our own minds. Circumstances or other people have no power to make us feel bad; the most they can do is trigger the potentials for painful feelings that already exist within our own minds. These potentials or karmic imprints are the residue of the negative actions we created in the past, which we performed because our minds were under the control of delusions, all of which stem from self-grasping ignorance.
By patiently accepting painful feelings without clinging to them, the negative karmic potentials from which they arose are purified, and we shall never have to experience that karma again.”
This talk, given in English, is followed by a brief and relaxing meditation and a question-and-answer period. Everyone is welcome.
Mexico under NAFTA
Global Justice Panel discussion
Mexico under NAFTA
Wednesday, January 31, 10:30am
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
50 pesos
It was 13 years ago that Mexico joined with the United States and Canada to form an integrated economic system that has fundamentally transformed Mexican society. Under the banner of “free trade,” the movement of capital and commodities across the border was accelerated. Following the economic principles of neoliberalism, public assets were privatized—often sold to those who were politically well connected—and social services were curtailed. Communally held ejido land also opened up for sale, and this, along with a flood of imported corn from the US, forced millions of campesinos off the land and fueled a massive migration. NAFTA has made Mexico an ideal laboratory in which to study the effects of globalization, since it is so intensified in this part of the global south.
These are among the effects of NAFTA that will be explored by a panel sponsored by the Center for Global Justice next Wednesday morning. Panelists will be retired professor of social philosophy Cliff DuRand, a research associate at the Center, and Atahualpa Caldera, a master’s candidate in watershed management at the University of Querétaro. They will give an overview of a three-week course that will be offered in February.
Has Mexico become part of the First World, or only a dependent appendage of it? Come and join in this discussion of the transformation of a society in motion.
The magnificent Maya: Part I
Lecture
Magnificent Maya
Wednesday, January 31, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana, Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
They were the most advanced of all the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica. The Maya inhabited southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and the western boundaries of Honduras and El Salvador. They built cities and paved roadways, although they used no wheeled vehicles of any kind. Their astronomers plotted the movements of the visible planets and stars using a mathematics that included zero, a rare accomplishment in world history. They were the only people of the New World to develop a complete written language that could express anything spoken. They made books that combined illustrations and glyphs.
The magnificent Maya are the subject of a lecture that focuses on architecture and art, the Bonampak murals and Maya mathematics. Retired professor of humanities Guillermo Méndez is the lecturer.