Teotihuacán magical, mystical tour
By Arturo Morales Tirado
September 12, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Lecture
Teotihuacán virtual tour
Arturo Morales Tirado
Thu, Sep 18, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos

Teotihuacán represents myth, architecture and culture—cosmic order and the birth of the gods, 2,000-year-old urban design and a pattern of cultural development lasting 700 years.

Wise Teotihuacán architects placed the cosmopolitan city as an extension and permanent link between it, the region, the planet and the universe. The city, which grew to perhaps 100,000 people, was one of the largest in the world at the time and was the most influential in Mesoamerica during the Classic period (200–900 CE).

Today it is one of the most investigated and spectacular archaeological sites of pre-Hispanic Mexico. It is the cultural and social bridge between the formative and post-classic eras in Mesoamerica, one of the world’s six original civilizations. It embodies Mexican iconography and such idiosyncrasies as the use of public spaces to transmit knowledge, ideas and ideology.

Dozens of photographs illustrate this virtual tour of a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition to pyramids (the second highest in the world), murals, squares, palaces and residential areas, Teotihuacán offers a fine museum and a restaurant inside a spectacular natural cave. Recent discoveries at the site and their relationship to contemporary Mexican culture will be covered.

The web of life at El Charco del Ingenio
By Walter L. Meagher

Lecture
Wild & Wonderful
Walter Meagher & Wayne Colony
Fri, Sep 19, 5pm
Sala Quetzal
Bibliotca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos

Walter Meagher and Wayne Colony take the audience on a visit, via words and pictures, to each of the three habitats that make up the botanical garden El Charco del Ingenio:

scrubland with tree-like cacti and low, thorny trees but also wild orchids; seasonal wetland with its “immodest display of vivid floral colors” from late August to mid-October and “aerobatic swallows skimming over the presa”; and “the canyon deep with its perennial pool, deciduous trees and Peregrine falcon ledge.”

Land managed and preserved by El Charco extends to 100 hectares, of which Parque Landeta is about 33 hectares. The three habitats subdivide this landscape, giving it a beauty and richness of plant and animal life singular in the state. Before El Charco was founded, its landscape was no more interesting than overgrazed and abused lands common on the Central Plateau, except the canyon was always interesting.

In what way is a landscape interesting? Seeing a painting, I may possess the image, the memory, the pleasure of the moment without owning the work. Similarly, a landscape is what no one owns. El Charco’s views move our aesthetic sensibility: the presa seen from the path to the Conservatory, the grassland trailing over the horizon north of the canyon, the wetland in bloom during summer rains, the deep canyon, shaded and mostly hidden. 

The first component of a landscape is topography, the second is vegetation. Collecting butterflies with a camera, sighting birds with binoculars and collecting plants in a period of four years, the landscape of El Charco revealed a visual and biological richness utterly unexpected as the heritage of San Miguel’s unbuilt spaces. This was nature up close, not a landscape, but its components.

A habitat is where someone or something lives. It can be extensive, as is the habitat of the mountain lion, or restricted, like the golden barrel cactus, living wild in five states of Mexico. While Mexico is the 15th largest nation in the world (Russia is first, Canada second, China third and the US fourth), Mexico ranks third in biodiversity.

The reason for the great diversity in Mexico—sometimes called megadiversity—is the variety of habitats it hosts. It has lowland tropical forests, cloud forests, pine and oak forests, and semi-arid scrubland, as well as grassland, thorn forest and desert. But where we live, in a semi-arid landscape in the shadow of a grave and attractive mountain, can we hope for megadiversity?

El Charco is rich in plants, birds, butterflies, reptiles and small mammals because there is a variety of habitats, because both species and habitats are protected and because life is naturally species-rich in this part of the world. Each habitat—scrubland, wetland and canyon—has subdivisions, such as the pool on the way to the canyon bottom where the belted kingfisher hunts. Even if there were only scrubland, there would be surprises: 21 species of cacti and several hundred species of wildflowers.

Biodiversity can be expressed in numbers (110 species of butterflies, 156 species of birds and 498 species of flowering plants in the protected parcel), but what matters to us, who seek its private revelations, is nature’s proximity: the sound of the peregrine falcon, the flotilla of wintering ducks, the blossoming of the wetland with Cosmos and Sunflower.

Species are visible (the ducks on the presa, for example), but the web of life—how one species depends on another—is invisible; but it is the web, water and nutrient flows, relations of predator and prey, that can be disrupted. The desire to protect wildlife arises more strongly as we take pleasure in that wildlife, not abstractly, not by the fireside, but in the field. These pictures are meant to move you to come out and see for yourself.

Wild & Wonderful 

Wayne and I know each of these habitats intimately, having studied and photographed them extensively for Wild & Wonderful: Nature Up Close in the Botanical Garden El Charco del Ingenio.

I wrote the book’s text and Wayne took the photographs; world-renowned Harvard ecologist Edward O. Wilson graced us with a foreword. It will be on sale at the event for 300 pesos.

Sylvia Jessop suggested the title. During the winter, spring and summer of its preparation in 2007, I called it The Charco Book: A Tribute to a Special Place. In Wayne’s photos you will see that it is special, but Sylvia didn’t think the title was special. Nevertheless, I resisted hyperbole. In the end, she was right.

Mexican education
By Anne Olsen

Lecture
Education in Mexico/San Miguel
Anne and Jim Olsen
Wed, Sep 17, 3–5pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
Free

Anne and Jim Olsen will give general background on Mexican education and specific information about what’s available in San Miguel in a lecture at the Biblioteca.

The Olsens have lived in San Miguel for 20 years and have worked with both Mexican and foreign students for 14 of those years, both privately and within local institutions. Between them they have taught at all levels from primary through university here. They write an education column for Atención, largely based on questions they have been asked by parents over the years.

Before arriving in Mexico, the Olsens worked for the United States Agency for International Development, the Organization of American States, Project Hope, Women in Development and a variety of foreign ministries of education. They worked in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Colombia. 

While in the US they both worked in educational publishing. Jim Olsen was an editor at Scholastic and founded Scope magazine and then was an editor-in chief at McGraw-Hill. Anne Olsen was an editor and then vice president at several small educational publishers. They also wrote a variety of adult and children’s trade books.

Anne has several master’s degrees in education and social work. Jim did doctoral work in curriculum design and holds a Ph.D. in international education. They were both licensed teachers in 32 states. 

They will take questions after the presentation. They can be reached at 154-4374 or anne.jim.olsen@gmail.com.

UNAM lecture series to support the Biblioteca

Last Saturday, Dr. Roberto Escalante Semerena, head of the Faculty of Economics of UNAM, gave a talk titled “Food Crisis” in Teatro Santa Ana, the first in a lecture series offered by UNAM. For the first talk entrance was free of charge, but entrance for future lectures in the series is 100 pesos. All funds raised will be used to improve the Internet technology in the Biblioteca. 

The transforming faces of revolution
By Lauren Lesko

Lecture
Astrology and Revolution
Lauren Lesko
Wed, Sep 17, 7pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
Donation

The spirit of la fiesta permeates San Miguel de Allende as the city prepares for El Grito, the annual reenactment of Mexico’s original proclamation of independence from Spain. I was first made aware of the coming fiesta when, weeks before the day of celebration, street vendors began unfurling assorted sizes of Mexican flags, alongside whistles, key chains, drums, synthetic wigs, and toys of all manner in green, white and red. As each day passed, the preparation for celebrating Mexico’s independence took on new forms.

 For me the most haunting are the large gold medallions, Mexico’s seal, mounted on swaths of green, white, and red cloth, looking like oversized medals of valor as they ceremoniously hang against stone walls that have preserved for the last 198 years the echo of the original cry for independence.

I am an astrologer, and because astrology is rooted in the belief that the potential of any event in life is embodied in the beginning of that event, my astrological radar is delightfully alert to the unusual fact that the citizens of Mexico, unlike citizens from many other countries, celebrate their national independence as the beginning of their fight for freedom.


Humanity’s ability to rise transformed and renewed out of the ashes of death and destruction is the celestial signature of the planet Pluto active deep within the individual and the collective psyche. Whenever people are called to revolution, including a radically changing consciousness, it is worth investigating the condition of the planet Pluto. Not surprisingly, Pluto was active the night of September 15, 1810, at the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba on August 24, 1821, and again at the signing of Mexico’s constitution on February 5, 1917. 

Today, north of Mexico, the people of the United States of America are embroiled in a revolution in consciousness, and the handiwork of Pluto deserves our attention. It is not surprising that the planet of death and transformation was not pronounced throughout the Democratic National Convention, nor on August 28 when Senator Obama accepted the Democratic Party nomination for president. On September 17, I will discuss the relevance of Pluto’s influences on Mexico’s past and the United States’ present.

Interested readers can visit www.LaurenLesko.com to read additional commentary on the relevance of astrology in daily life. 







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