Up, up, and away…, March 2, 2007
Up, Up, and Away: Hot Air Ballooning in San Miguel
Slide show & talk by Robert de Gast
Tues, Mar 6, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Bibloteca Pública, Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
“What good is it?” asked a spectator of Benjamin Franklin at the launching of an unmanned balloon, in France, on August 27, 1783, at the site now occupied by the Eiffel Tower. “What good is a newborn baby?” replied the 77-year old scientist-philosopher. The first flight with a human being aboard did not happen until November 21, 1783, when Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Laurent became the first to fly. Their 25-minute flight took them a little over five miles. Marie Antoinette, a spectator, pronounced, “It’s the sport of kings!” More than 200 years later, ballooning is the sport of thousands of enthusiasts around the globe and continues to attract and enchant millions. The first balloon flight in Mexico took place on February 26, 1843, when Benito Leon Acosta flew from Guanajuato to Dolores Hidalgo in a hydrogen-filled balloon.
Photographer and balloon pilot Robert de Gast presents the slide show “Up, Up, and Away: Hot Air Ballooning in San Miguel” and talks about the history of ballooning and flying around San Miguel. De Gast, a long-time resident of San Miguel, is a popular lecturer, and the author, most recently, of Behind the Doors of San Miguel. The one-hour presentation is at the Teatro Santa Ana in the Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25. Admission is 50 pesos, a portion of which benefits the library’s many programs.
Health in an atom
Bioenergy I, by Guillermo Galindo
Thurs, Mar 7, noon
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
Donation requested
Mexican physician Dr. Aureliano Horta applied Einstein’s relativity theory to the atom, to offer a new way of understanding nuclear energy and, further, its applications to biology. According to Horta, in addition to mass and energy, electromagnetism must also be considered.
Based on his findings, Horta has developed an electromagnetic medical appliance to increase bioenergetics levels in the human body. Successes using this therapy have been reported in the medical literature, especially in chronic, currently incurable diseases such as diabetes, cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis.
Guillermo Galindo Endo worked with Horta for more than 10 years and in this presentation he explains the basics of bioenergy and the impact of Horta’s scientific work on everybody’s life.
Four seasons of a father
My father’s room
Talk & video by Roland Salazar Rose
Fri, Mar 9, 5pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25
Donation
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Artist Roland Salazar Rose discusses the pros and cons of combining written words, oral presentation and images in his memoir, My Father’s Room. |
The Four Seasons of the Master Myth “has been on his front burner—simmering—since 1990 when he created 1,000 images in San Miguel and Maine. “Having no ‘philosophical construct’ for the images, at a book sale at the Biblioteca he purchased J.K. Feibelman’s Aesthetics. He says: “One chapter stood out: ‘The Master Myth and the Modern Artist.’ Feibelman’s thesis was the ‘master myth’ is a guiding force in terms of which the greatest art could be discovered.” Feibelman applauds James Joyce “as the first,” but “not the last,” to “grapple with the forces of the ‘master myth’ in the form of a contemporary work of art.” For Salazar, Aesthetics provided him with the “philosophical construct” he needed for expressing the 1,000 images.
Using the theme of the myth of the ‘Year God’ he wrote about his own life in art; after categorizing the 1,000 images he finally selected 25 images for a sample video. The result is a work-in-progress video which shows him painting with voice over. The ‘master myth’ was my spark for the visual art project, Installation, I am planning that shall express, by memoir, my life in art as metaphor for the master myth.”
Roland Salazar Rose reads selections from his manuscript My Father’s Room and shows elements of the images and oral memoir in The Four Seasons of the Master Myth. Salazar’s recent mixed media paintings with chapapote can be seen online at
www.salazargallery.com.
Get your nonprofits noticed and funded!
Workshop
Grant Writing for Beginners
With Dr. Cynthia E Lynch
Tues, Mar 13, 10am–4pm
Sala Quetzal,
Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25
150 pesos
One of the greatest assets of San Miguel de Allende is the residents’ spirit of service to others. Even the casual visitor finds it difficult to resist. Anyone here for any amount of time is tempted to become involved with any number of the many nonprofit organizations San Miguel has. There are so many to choose from, with more than 65 officially registered (501 C 3s of the IRS) nonprofit organizations actively pursuing important causes in San Miguel, and with countless other loosely affiliated, non-registered groups and individuals also doing good works.
The effects of these organizations can be felt and seen every where in town from the schools, to the health services, to animal control and adoption, to the social calendar published in the Atención. There is no doubt about the huge contribution these organizations make to the San Miguel community.
In an effort to support and strengthen the good works of these organizations the Biblioteca is hosting a series of workshops intended to help them grow and strengthen in nonprofit capacity and excellence in SMA so that they can continue to service the community.
Twelve people representing nine local nonprofit organizations and one American University attended the first Grant Writing for Beginners workshop held in January. It was an all day, hands on learning experience. The objective of the workshop was to provide the participants with the skills and resources to begin doing intensive searches for grant opportunities for their organizations. The workshop packets included “How-to” instructions, contact recourses, Meta search engines for finding funders on the Internet and much more information that the participants could share with their fellow organization members. The workshop was so well received that Dr. Cynthia E. Lynch of the University of Texas Pan America is offering it again. All materials are provided. José Luis of the Biblioteca will accept advanced registration starting March 1.
If grant writing is not what your organization or planned organization needs at this moment, the Biblioteca will offer other workshops in this series including, capacity building, strategic planning, program evaluation, budgeting, and financial management later in the year. Watch Atención for announcements.
Finding a formula for good health
Is it All Relative?
By Hernán Drobny, MD
Fri, Mar 9, 3pm
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
Donations
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” We look for simple formulas to keep us feeling well. A common one heard today is taking aspirin regularly keeps heart attacks away. But it is not that simple!
Consider the case of John. At a recent check up, his doctor told him that, based on medical studies, he could lower his chances of a heart attack by about 25% if he took small doses of aspirin regularly. Wow, what a good deal, he thought!
He understood this suggestion to mean that if 100 persons like him took aspirin, 25 would avoid a heart attack. This is a common misunderstanding (made even by medical practioners!).
Statistics can be confusing. So to better interpret statistics commonly reported in medical articles, using John’s example with aspirin. I hope this will help you to better understand some of the statistics reported in health care studies.
To understand how John would benefit from aspirin, we must first look at his individual risk for having a heart attack. He is 53, has a total cholesterol of 220 (higher than desirable) and an HDL cholesterol, the “good” cholesterol, of 45 (not that good). His blood pressure at his doctor’s office was 135/80. He does not smoke. Widely used formulas that predict future chances of heart attacks suggest his risk comes out to a .8% chance of having a heart attack in the next year. These formulas are based on “risk factors” like gender, age, cholesterols, blood pressure, etc. (One web site where an example of these formulas is available is: http://hp2010.nhlbihin.net/atpiii/calculator.asp?usertype=prof.)
This means that of 1,000 men with John’s characteristics, 8 will have a heart attack in the next year. If all 1,000 take aspirin regularly, then only 6 will have a heart attack in the next year. This amounts to a 25% drop since the risk goes from 8 to 6. But in reality, John’s individual chance of having a heart attack goes from .8% to .6%, or only lowered by .2%! A small drop in a small number looks like a huge reduction.
Using the 25% number (called the “relative risk reduction”) makes the treatment sound much more impressive than the absolute number of heart attacks prevented: if 1,000 people like John take aspirin for a year, 2 heart attacks are prevented. Another way of presenting the benefit of taking aspirin for John is to say that 500 people like John need to take aspirin for a year to prevent 1 heart attack (called the “number needed to treat”).
This is not the end of the story!
Simple statistics or simple strategies are often misleading. It really matters how you combine strategies to improve your health. Medical decisions can be so complicated. Choices must be made under duress. Often there are no easy answers. Find out more at this lecture.
Navigate Viking territory
By Sigurlaug Gudmundsdotir
Wed, Mar 7, 5pm
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
Six hours from New York lays one of the most precious pearls of nature in the northern part of the globe. This is Iceland, 40,000 miles square and only 300,000 inhabitants. Icelanders are descendents of the Viking navigators who sailed across the oceans many centuries ago. They landed and began to settle in Iceland about l100 years ago. The Vikings brought animals with them: horses, cows, sheep and so on.
There are eight glaciers in Iceland of different sizes, which cover one-ninth of the country’s land surface. Now that they are melting due to global warming. These blocks are as big as buildings and stay on the lagoon for months while melting and have even been seen in James Bond movies.
The highlands of Iceland are a world of mystery and majesty, where the mountains and valleys have a unique beauty and gracefulness. Wherever one travels in Iceland one enjoys nature, peacefulness and silence. Icelanders live in harmony with the power of nature in their country They make use of the geothermal heat in the ground to heat their houses, fill swimming pools and heat up greenhouses in order to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers.
So maybe it is a country worth visiting to give a closer look.
Sigurlaug “Silla” Gudmundsdotir is from Iceland and will regale you with stories from the long, dark winters, fairies and elves, traditions and habits.
Adventures into music
Adventures in Music with Elsmarie Norby
Tues, Mar 6, 3pm
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
50 pesos
Elsmarie Norby presents a series of classes in discovering new dimensions about timeless music: how, throughout history, music has reflected time and place, lifestyle and cultural values. What makes music beautiful or offensive? 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 musical activities here, building two Mexican choirs, playing 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.
Everything you want to know about buying real estate in Mexico
“Everything You Want to Know about Buying Real Estate in Mexico”
Tues, Mar 6, 10am–noon
Mexico Advisor
Correo 24
Free
152-0586
San Miguel de Allende seems to have a certain sway over some people. We’ve all heard the stories about visitors who come for a week’s vacation, fall in love with the town and impulsively buy a house before they leave.
There are, however, a few obstacles that can confront potential home owners wanting to reside in this popular colonial mountain town. Hopefully these real estate problems haven’t happened to you or anyone you know but they have actually occurred to a few prospective home buyers. This workshop is designed to provide prospective home buyers with the knowledge and awareness they need to avoid the potential problems and pitfalls of buying property. Many buyers are confused about the complexities of Mexican real estate such as the difference between signing an Escritura (deed) and a private contract. Any number of seemingly minor problems or errors can delay or nullify a real estate sale ranging from discrepancies between a government office description of the property, the property deed description and reality, to an invalid Power of Attorney and incomplete probate processes.
Lecture highlights will cover:
· No deposit, no return
· What to know when negotiating a sale
· Establishing realistic timelines for transactions and closings
· Avoiding real estate title problems
· Preventing financial obstacles that may delay or jeopardize your purchase
The free workshop will be conducted by Raoul Rodriguez Walters the Managing Partner of Mexico Advisor and Gerardo León Jimeno Legal Director of Mexico Advisor.
Call 152-0586 or 152-6932 to reserve a space. For more information, visit www.mexadv.com,
or email info@mexadv.com.