November 2, 2007, Cont. from front page, The worst crime in San Miguel streets, By Jesús Ibarra, Environmental education in elementary schools by PEASMA, By Wendolyn Vàzquez Marìn, San Miguel in the News, By Atenciòn Staff

Colonel Philip Maher passed away on December 23, 2006. He was loved by the American expat community for his efforts as the U.S. consular agent in San Miguel. Among the many things he did for the San Miguel community, Maher organized the fire department in 1983. He convinced the local government of the importance of a professional fire brigade and arranged for the first group of firefighters to train in California, Texas and Arizona.

Maher was born in 1922 in New York City. He became an aviation cadet in the Army Air Corps and was sent to Hawaii in 1942 after finishing his flight training. He was in Saipan and Iwo Jima until the end of World War II. He returned home in 1945 and married his childhood sweetheart, Muriel, with whom he had two children, Kathy and Tom.

For many years, he was involved in military research and development. The Mahers came to live in San Miguel in 1970. During his retired life in San Miguel he was an avid golfer, he was president of the Biblioteca Pública for more than two terms, and, as co-founder of the San Miguel Education Foundation, he was involved in the start of Atención. He was also treasurer of the golf club and an English teacher.

In 1983 he was invited by the then-consul general of Mexico to be consular agent to the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán and Querétaro.

Pedro Vargas

Pedro Vargas (1906–1989) was one of San Miguel’s most famous sons and one of the most revered singers and proponents of Mexican music of the 20th century. For 40 years his voice was heard daily on San Miguel radio XESQ singing the “Padre Nuestra” at 6am and “Ave Maria” at noon.

Vargas is remembered not only as the official singer of renowned Mexican composer Agustín Lara, but as a founder of Mexico’s oldest radio station, XEW. He was also a pioneer in the Mexican recording and television industries during the 1950s, when he made famous the phrase “Muy agradecido, muy agradecido, muy agradecido” (I am very grateful, very grateful, very grateful).

Don Pedro Vargas was born April 29, 1906, at Mesones 16. Pedro was introduced to music at age seven, when his mother took him to the Parroquia priest to become an acolyte. He finished school in 1920 at the age of 14 and traveled to Mexico City, where he met important composers and began singing professionally. During his successful career of more than five decades, Vargas maintained personal friendships with presidents of several countries and international stars, yet Don Pedro always thought of San Miguel as home, saying: “San Miguel de Allende has always been a city of extraordinary beauty and is imbued with a special charm that causes visitors to return over and over again.”

Don Pedro loved San Miguel and visited frequently, doling out greetings in the Jardín, getting a shoeshine, having an ice cream at “La Gardenia” and browsing the surrounding shops before joining his friends to play dominoes at Instituto Allende.

Pedro Vargas organized several artistic performances at the Ángela Peralta Theater beginning in the early 1930s, many of which were benefits. Later, during the 1980s, he organized concerts in which he and other famous singers performed to aid rural development in San Miguel.

Pedro Vargas was married to María Teresa Campos, also a singer, and had four sons: Pedro, Mario, Marcelo and Alejandro.

Stirling Dickinson

(From a piece by John Virtue, published in Atención, October 20, 2006)

Stirling Dickinson, who passed away on October 27, 1988, loved Mexicans and loved San Miguel. He was a very shy man, but he felt more at ease with Mexicans than with his fellow Americans or other foreigners. He helped all humble Mexicans and he paid for medical attention for anyone who needed it. He also paid for the education of many poor sanmiguelenses and contributed to the school where they studied.

Dickinson was born in Chicago in 1909, an only son, brother to two sisters. He was a millionaire through inheritance from his grandfather and father. While studying at Princeton, he befriended Heath Bowman, with whom he traveled in 1934 to Mexico to research the first of three books on which they collaborated, Bowman as author and Dickinson as illustrator. Looking for a cheap place to live while researching and writing, they arrived in San Miguel in February 1937. When he saw the Parroquia, Dickinson reportedly said: “My God—what a sight—I’m going to stay here.” They bought part of the ruins of an old tannery on calle Santo Domingo, where they fashioned a house that they christened “Los Pocitos.” Bowman later married and Dickinson purchased his share of the house. He was a lifelong bachelor, believing that artists should live an ascetic life, and that is what he did in Los Pocitos.

In 1938, Stirling was invited by Peruvian artist Felipe Cossío del Pomar to become director of the first art school in San Miguel. When this school closed in 1949, he opened his own, but he later joined Instituto Allende as art director.

Dickinson had two great passions: his baseball team, which he founded in 1938 and managed until 1987, and his orchid collection. He helped the baseball players in different ways, usually financially. Most of their houses were purchased with Stirling’s help. One player aspired to be a taxi driver and Stirling bought him a car. A taxi driver said once to an American tourist: “I did not know him, but my father did. He told me that Esteerling Deekenson built San Miguel, not just the houses, but the sky and earth itself.”
After his death, the baseball players launched a successful campaign to have a street named after him.

Doctor Felipe Dobarganes passed away on February 21, 1999. “His pride was to be sanmiguelense, and his love was medicine. He was an excellent husband and father for his seven children,” said his wife, Barbara Dobarganes. “He was a great reader and was interested in history and had an excellent memory. He was always involved with humble people. He was intolerant of unfairness and inequality.”

Doctor Dobarganes was born January 3, 1920. He studied medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). After completing his education, he became head of the old general hospital at San Juan de Dios, and later he founded the hospital on calle Reloj in 1957. He was head of the State Public Health Department in Guanajuato from 1961 to 1967. Afterwards, he returned to San Miguel and was again head of the General Hospital. He retired in 1986. The new general hospital in Fraccionamiento Ignacio Ramírez is named after him.

Susan Roettinger

Susan Roettinger passed away on April 16, 2006, in San Francisco, Nayarit, where she had lived for two years. She was beloved by the San Miguel community for her work as a leader in the Red Cross, which she joined in 1995. She always showed endless energy and had an offbeat sense of humor.

Born June 26, 1945, in the United States, Roettinger was raised in Mexico City. She was educated at St. Stephens in Austin, Tulane University in New Orleans and in Florence, Italy. A friend of hers, Carol Lee, with whom she worked for the peace movement opposed to the Vietnam War, described Susan thus: “With a big heart, high intellect and amazing talents (from cooking to sewing to art … and organization skills, Susan spread her wealth. Without a bow, she gave and gave” (Susan Clay Roettinger, by Bett Adams, Atención, April 28, 2006).

She became the president of the Red Cross board in 2001. During her tenure, she won several financial battles. She left the presidency in March 2004 and moved to San Francisco, Nayarit.

Carmen Masip

Doña Carmen Masip died in 2006 in San Miguel de Allende. She is considered to be the principal organizer of the cultural movement in San Miguel, where she worked with community leaders to make the city blossom culturally. According to her daughter, Paulina Hawkins Masip, Doña Carmen “fought to preserve the city’s historical heritage while retaining its provincial essence.

Her civic activism resulted in both increased tourism and investments in the local economy.”

Born in Spain, Doña Carmen was the daughter of Don Paulino Masip, one of the great scriptwriters during the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Her family was exiled during the Spanish Civil War. She arrived in Mexico at the age of nine and she never went back. She always considered herself a Mexican, and thanks to President Lázaro Cárdenas, she received Mexican citizenship, in recognition for her work in promoting culture. She was one of the founders of the Biblioteca Pública and the Academía Hispano Americana, as well as the creator of the magazine Tierra Adentro (Land Inside). Among her many accomplishments in San Miguel, she rescued the Ángela Peralta Theater and revitalized the Cultural Center Ignacio Ramírez (Bellas Artes), which she headed for 34 years.

Kendal Dodge Butler, best known in San Miguel as an actress, died at her daughter’s home in Park City, Utah, on August 17, 2006, after a one-year struggle with a progressive illness.

Born in 1941, she retired to San Miguel in 1998, following the death of her second husband, Frank Butler. She was already fluent in Spanish from extended childhood travels in South America with her parents. She visited San Miguel in 1965 to visit her parents.

Her father was the famous travel and mystery writer David Dodge (author of To Catch a Thief ), who had retired to San Miguel. When she married the photographer Joaquín Reynoso, Kendal abandoned her job with CBS in New York and came to live in Guadalajara with her husband, with whom she had a daughter, Kendal. She lived for four years in Guadalajara, and after her marriage dissolved, she returned to the States to raise her daughter. She came back to San Miguel and got involved in theater. She attended and spoke at AA meetings in English and in Spanish. She joined Jovenes Adelante and befriended students in the Mujeres en Cambio scholarship program; became a board member of the Chamber Music Society; was active with the Center for Global Justice and other
progressive political organizations; and read copy for Atención on Tuesday evenings. She was also president of the Bibloteca board for a while.

“Kendal was a gringa with the soul of a Mexican, who loved and understood Mexico and Spanish as few Mexicans do,” commented Tania Noriz, a former reporter at Atención.

One of the most heinous crimes is the one committed against a defenseless child, particularly a newborn. One of this kind was recently committed in the Centro Histórico of San Miguel.

On the morning of Monday, October 16, the police department received a phone call from a woman who, with her husband, had found what seemed to be a red sweater between the wall and a “taco” stand on the street of El Calvario, at the top of San Francisco. When they moved it, they observed a newborn baby girl, naked and wrapped up in the sweater. When the police officers arrived, they confirmed that the baby was dead and took the body to the medical examiner.

According to the District Attorney, César Augusto Gasca Toledo, the medical examiner determined that the baby girl was born alive. “A test was performed on the lungs, which are put over a specific liquid and if they float it means that they have taken air,” said Gasca. “The girl’s lungs confirmed she had been born alive.” The medical examiner also determined that she did not received medical attention when born, since the umbilical cord was not cut properly.

The District Attorney announced that they are currently investigating hospitals, clinics and particular doctors to find a woman who had received medical attention for pregnancy in the past few days, to try to find the mother. “This crime is a homicide, since it seems that the girl was abandoned naked in the cold in order to cause her death. This crime is punishable by up to 35 years in prison,” said Gasca. “According to the experts, the baby girl may have been abandoned between 1am and 5am, Monday, October 22, and the cause of her death was hypothermia.”

A similar case took place three years ago in San Miguel, when a newborn baby boy was abandoned near a brook. In that case, the baby survived and he was adopted by a young couple.

Do you need help in this situation?

Please be advised that there are people that can be called if you find yourself or someone you know in this situation.

For assistance call:

DIF
Procuraduría Auxiliar en Materia de Asistencia Social
Centro de Atención a la Violencia Intrafamiliar (CENAVI)
Tels. 152-0910, 152-3380

C.A.S.A.
154-6060 Psic. Alejandra Saucillo
152-6181 Psic. Felipe Lantén

Environmental education in elementary schools by PEASMA
By Wendolyn Vàzquez Marìn

Environmental education should be a priority today. We need new generations who know and respect the natural environment, with the conviction that to protect something we need to know it and love it. The Environmental Education Project San Miguel de Allende (PEASMA: Proyecto de Educación Ambiental San Miguel Allende) provides a series of workshops aimed at public elementary school students, which allow participants to get closer to the natural and cultural realities of their environment.

The project attempts to increase participants’ awareness of environmental issues, to get them involved and take short-term action with which they can contribute to improving the environment. Above all, PEASMA strives, in the mid- and long term, for a change in attitude, educating citizens who will make balanced decisions promoting harmony with the environment and the protection of natural resources.

PEASMA is an initiative by Save the Children Mexico (FAI: Fundación Apoyo Infantil), Guanajuato region, whose main objective is educating the new generation within the municipality in the care, love and respect for the natural and cultural environment in which they live.

PEASMA stresses the networking of different organizations and institutions involved directly or indirectly with ecological education and the care for natural and cultural environment, in order to unite efforts and generate a greater social impact. PEASMA is thus the result of work among six civil society organizations and two governmental entities involved in environmental care. The six organizations are the Garden Club, Audubon Society, Botanical Garden (El Charco del Ingenio), Save the Laja River, Save the Children, Mexico and CASA’s teenagers’ center. The two governmental entities are the Environment and Ecology Department of San Miguel de Allende and SAPASMA (sewer system and water treatment). Save the Children and the Botanical Garden have worked together since 2002 on a pilot project involving all fourth graders from the public elementary schools of San Miguel.

From January to September 2007, PEASMA workshops and field trips reached 6,751 children in 32 elementary schools. PEASMA relies on seven environmental teachers, five assistants, three people in social services, one volunteer, one assistant’s coordinator and two project coordinators.

Due to San Miguel’s success, the state government has set a goal of 500 public schools to practice the PEASMA proposal in other municipalities. Currently, PEASMA coordinators Natalia Ortega and Eugenia Velasco are touring the state to train teachers. Their purpose is to “communicate the potential of the manual as a environmental education tool and support for the official curriculum, as well as to motivate the teaching staff in order to fulfill these activities in their schools.” Teachers who have taken the course report being motivated by this experience and will continue promoting concern for the planet with their students. Municipalities covered to date are Dolores, Silao, Celaya, Salamanca, Irapuato, Tarandacuao, San Francisco del Rincón, León, San Felipe Torres Mochas and San Luís de la Paz.

If you wish to be part of PEASMA or would like to contribute with donations, please call 152-3686 or 152-0897. Save the Children offices for the Guanajuato region are located at Hidalgo 13.

Tips from PEASMA

New Save the Children Store

During the next gift-giving season, you can find a great variety of natural and hand-crafted products at the new Save the Children (FAI) store at Hidalgo 13. They also provide donation receipts.

Tips to lower water consumption:

· Watch for humidity stains on walls and ceilings. They are generally signs that water is leaking; this could also affect your home.

· To conserve water, rinse your mouth with a glass of water after you brush your teeth.

· If a faulty faucet leaks one drop per second, you can fill a 30-liter bucket by the end of the day.

· Saltwater is 97.5 percent of the planet’s water, 2.5 percent is fresh. Overall, only 0.3 percent is consumable.

House-hunting in San Miguel has become quite the pastime, for both the professional and the novice. The New York Times picked up on a local sanmiguelense’s efforts at such an enterprise:

The New York Times
October 12, 2007

House-Hunting as Vacation
By Amy Gunderson

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/travel/
escapes/12your.html?pagewanted=print

…Camilla Sands started her tour company, Simply San Miguel (www.simplysanmiguel.com), with some 15 different vacation options for visitors to San Miguel de Allende in the Sierra Madres of central Mexico, but she says it is her Real Estate Curious Tour that gets the most bookings.

Topics addressed on the six-night trip—which costs US$1,285 (double occupancy) with hotels, local transportation and some meals—include health care and home insurance. Tour-goers also meet architects and designers who can advise on how to comply with the town’s strict architectural guidelines.

While real estate is the focus, Ms. Sands said, “We don’t overdo it every day. I consider it a tour as well as a vacation.”

By the middle of the trip, she said, most attendees have decided whether they want to concentrate more on the real estate hunt. If not, she said, there are plenty of other traditional and more leisurely alternatives to hoofing it through homes.

“They can go shopping,” she said, “or I can arrange for them to take a cooking class.

San Miguel is many expat’s version of paradise, and it doesn’t take much for national newspapers from the US to pick up on the trend. Houston Chronicle covered several popular retirement places in Mexico, including San Miguel, in a recent issue:

Houston Chronicle
October 14, 2007

A refuge for retirement
By Dudley Althaus

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5212402.html

…Increasingly, (retirees) have decided that Mexico is as good or better a place as any to face the inevitable.

“I would never go back home,” said Harold “Skip” Waggoner, 67, a former deputy sheriff from Central Florida who retired 12 years ago to Ajijic. “My mother spent five years in a nursing home. That’s scary.

“The Mexicans value old people, and they take care of them.”

With 78 million Americans hitting retirement age through the next three decades, and many finding themselves financially unprepared for the transition, the number of southbound seniors looking for warmer and cheaper climes is expected to surge.

Sales of retirement or vacation homes for foreigners already are booming in places such as Ajijic, San Miguel Allende and Mexico’s coastal resorts. The same is happening in Costa Rica, Panama and even in impoverished Nicaragua.

Entrepreneurs are planning retirement villages and assisted living facilities to service the graying Americans. Pressure is building to allow Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits to pay for care in Mexico and elsewhere overseas.

Nonprofits here in San Miguel frequently find far-reaching support from people all over the world. Steven Zlatic was inspired to join a LaSalle Bank Marathon team in Chicago that raised operating funds for the local nonprofit, Casa de Los Angeles. Catholic Explorer covered the team’s progress in a recent issue:

Catholic Explorer
October 14, 2007

http://www.catholicexplorer.com/explore4325/
people/marathon-man-runs-for-a-cause.shtml

…Casa de los Angeles intersected with (marathon runner Steven Zlatic’s) running path a few months ago when he signed up for the 2007 marathon; he had previously completed it in 2005. Zlatic registered himself as a member of Team Casa, a group of 23 runners that raised money for the organization through their training efforts and the race.

Close to US$26,000 was pledged to the charity in its inaugural year as an official charity of the LaSalle Bank Marathon, said Kevin O’Donnell, Team Casa coordinator and a board member of Casa de los Angeles. All 23 Team Casa runners raised a minimum of US$800 for the cause, while Zlatic accumulated close to US$1,600 in pledges. Fortunately, fundraising was not affected by four Team Casa runners being unable to finish the marathon when race officials closed the course due to extreme heat and humidity.

O’Donnell explained the funds raised through the marathon would have a significant impact on the organization, considering the amount raised is about 20 percent of its annual budget. Casa de los Angeles is currently in the midst of building another facility that could assist an additional 100 children with day care services, a center for mothers and free medical clinic.

Many people follow Atenciòn contributor Jim Karger in his popular “Business, Investing & Real Estate” column. Texas Lawyer caught up with him to talk about his and his wife’s latest passion, saving Mexican street dogs.

Texas Lawyer
October 5, 2007

Going to the Dogs: Lawyer Trades In Labor Practice for Consulting and Canines
By Jonathan Fox

http://www.law.com/jsp/law/
LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1191488592297

…Six years ago this month, Jim Karger left the firm he founded. He’d known for some time that he needed to change his life. Work pressures had led to a ritual he found appalling—after leaving his office, he called his wife, Kelly, a few blocks from home and asked her to get his Wild Turkey and water ready so she could hand him the drink as soon as he walked through the door.

So Karger resigned his partnership. He and his wife sold their house in North Arlington, Texas, their matching twin-turbo Toyota Supras and nearly all of their possessions. They bought a 1984 Volkswagen van, packed it with their remaining belongings and left town for San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “The camel got tired of carrying the load, knelt down and threw it off,” Karger says.

A year later, the Kargers founded Save a Mexican Mutt (SAMM), a charity that rescues, rehabilitates and arranges the adoption of stray Mexican dogs. Karger also started a consulting practice with a slower pace than his old law practice, helping “relatively healthy” businesses worldwide improve relations with their employees.

“For the first time in my life,” Karger now says, “I can honestly say I’m very satisfied with the way things are turning out.”