Playing Catch-up

 

The last couple of months have been a bit of a blur so I am going to play a little catch-up and fill in some blanks. I arrived home on November 10th, after a wonderful week in Patzcuaro, just in time for the next big event in my life. The visit to San Miguel by author Francisco Jiménez.

 

Francisco Jiménez at the biblioteca in San Miguel

 

Many months of my Spanish conversation class last year were filled with the wonderful stories in Francisco Jiménez’s Circuit Trilogy. The Circuit, Breaking Through and Reaching out tell of the life of Jiménez from a four year old illegal Mexican immigrant to his graduation from university in California. He later translated the three books into Spanish which we read in our class. The titles are Cajas de cartón, Senderos fronterizos and Más allá de mí.

The stories are warm and funny, sometimes tragic, and offer a wonderful insight into Mexican culture and the struggle of immigrants to adapt to life in the USA. Needless to say by the time we were finished with the books we were all in love with “Panchito”. In our minds we had watched him grow up and felt as though we knew him.

Around this time a group of people from the biblioteca, our local library, began a project to bring reading to the children of the campos, the countryside, where many do not even attend school let alone read for pleasure. As one of the women on this project was from our classes, they decided that the Circuit Trilogy would be great place to start. They raised money for books and arranged to have Francisco Jiménez visit San Miguel de Allende. He was here only a few days and was on a pretty tight schedule but he did manage to address our class one day at the biblioteca as well as attending a great little party with us before his return to the States.

It was really wonderful to meet and talk with him and his wife. We found him to be kind, friendly and approachable in spite of the fact that he holds some pretty impressive credentials, including a PhD in Latin American literature from Columbia University under a Woodrow Wilson  Fellowship. In 2002, he was selected the U.S. Professor of the Year by CASE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and in 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa, University of San Francisco. He is currently the Fay Boyle Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Santa Clara University. 

The project was wildly successful, with the campo kids loving the books and so excited to have the author visit them in their little towns. He worked tirelessly visiting, and inspiring, so many children during his short visit. If I sound a little awe-struck, I guess I really was, and probably still am.

 

 

January 8th 2014??????

 

Wow, how did that happen? Where did the last couple of months go? The last time I set fingers to keyboard for my blog was the end of October, 2013. It’s been a very busy couple of months, but there has also been time to fit in some fun. Like the only place to be for Day of the Dead… Patzcuaro!

In October my friends and ex-neighbours in Corazon de Durazno, near Patzcuaro told me that they were off to Playa del Carmen for a week to spend some time with friends from up north who would be vacationing there. While I was pleased for them that they were about to embark on a nice warm holiday, I didn’t really think that this would affect me much, until Kathy mentioned that they were looking for someone to stay in their house and look after their cat while they were gone. Whoopee! A week in my old stomping grounds, and at Day of the Dead, no less.

I arrived in Patzcuro on October 30th and immediately headed into town to view the tianguis, the huge market set up in the main plaza, and of course the concurso. The concurso is the competition among the best of the best of the artisans that produce the amazing array of Mexican art that we see at this time of year. People from all over North America, and actually a lot from Europe as well, come every year to Patzcuaro to view, admire and purchase these rare pieces.

 

Incredible pottery from Capula

 

The photos above and below are work from Zinapecuaro, probably my favourite Mexican ceramics.

 

In San José de Gracia the Hernandez and Alejos families have been creating piñas, pineapples, for 40 years.

 

A stunning Day of the Dead version of The Tree of Life

 

Above and below, the whimsical art of the town of Ocumicho

 

 

Patzcuaro truly went all out for Day of the Dead 2013. The concurso was very successful, making excellent sales from what we could see of the sold signs, the tianguis  was huge and well attended and the town of Patzcuaro was decked out like never before.

 

 

 

I loved this display built over the fountain in Plaza Don Quiroga. People from different walks of life are kneeling before Quiroga in thanks for his teaching them their crafts and bringing affluence to the towns of Michoacán.

Throughout the week I had time to visit with friends and have some great meals in some of my favourite haunts. One such afternoon was spent with my good friend David at Rancho La Mesa. The restaurant sits high on a hill above Patzcuro and has one of the best views of the area.

 

Ostrich pens at Rancho La Mesa

I think he knows he’s on the menu

View from the gardens of Rancho La Mesa

 

All in all it was a week I will remember for some time to come!

Back To My Roots

Prior to moving to Mexico I spent the better part of the last 30 years working in the cosmetic industry in one capacity or another. For the last ten years I worked in retail and I can honestly say that I don’t miss that for a second! During that time, however, I also worked as a makeup artist and I actually do miss that part of my work.

While I worked for Estee Lauder we did the makeup for a lot of fashion shows, during my tenure with Lancome I did quite a few stage presentations and while working with Shiseido I did mostly little seminars about sun protection, but also some involving makeup lessons.

The Hudson Bay Company West Vancouver

Todd used to have a bad habit of sending me a barbershop quartet on Valentine’s Day

Then during my last few years in Vancouver I worked as a cosmetic department manager for a large Canadian drug store chain. There we did makeup for a number of events and also took bookings for makeup for special occasions for our clients. Privately I have done weddings and makeup for photography.

Lately I’ve been finding myself doing this again and I really enjoy it in this setting where I  am not under the watchful eye of some large corporation who is waiting for this season’s sales projections, special event plans and staffing budget. While I was being questioned about my margins not being up to corporate expectations, in a demographic that was improperly researched to begin with before the store was built, I sort of lost the joy I used to find in doing transformations through makeup.

Revisiting my cosmetic roots sort of began last April during our annual camping week with 30 girls from Mexico City, A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words. Todd and I set up a little makeshift makeup and photography studio at the camp and we painted and photographed the girls. It was received with great enthusiasm and each girl had her makeup done and got her own portrait. For me it was a lot of work after not having done anything like that for years, but I also thoroughly enjoyed it, and realized that I actually missed that aspect of my profession.

Makeup at Camp Connie

A couple of months ago I again did the makeup for photographs for a website that Todd will be constructing for a friend here in San Miguel. That has sort of been set on the back burner at the moment as the friend has been out of town for a couple of months, but again, it nudged that part of me that misses the creative side of my work. 

Yesterday I did a little makeup lesson for our friend Emma Salazar, from the bibliotheca, the public library, here in San Miguel de Allende. Emma is a tireless worker who coordinates events and fundraising for the bibliotheca, including the weekly Home Tours. She is also beautiful and vivacious and a great model! 

I also enjoy my watercolour painting, but this is a different and more interactive way to express my art. I guess it’s just a little something that’s been missing in my life since I quit working and I hope to be able to more of it in the future.

My Apologies

 

I just want to say that I am sorry that so many of your comments have gone unpublished and unanswered on the last several posts. I have had technical difficulties. I am incredibly technologically challenged, but have remedied the situation, at least for the moment, or until another pops up, LOL.

I really appreciate all of your comments and insights and look forward to reading them with each new post. Thank you for bearing with me during my learning curve, it is indeed, difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. For anyone who is interested, I have now published and answered all the missing comments on those last few posts.

I will endeavor in the future to stay on top of these glitches and hope that you will all continue to read, enjoy and comment on my posts.

                                                                      Thank you so much,

                                                                        Shannon

The Plight of the Mexican Church

 

We all know that Mexico is a very Catholic country with more churches per square kilometer than, possibly, any other country. It is also a country that is very hard on it’s churches. I’m not sure why this odd phenomenon occurred to me but since it has I might as well share it, LOL. Off the top of my head I can think of three instances where churches here have suffered at the whims of nature and countless others at the hands of thieves and looters.

I have spoken before of Parícutin in the post The Birth of a Volcano, in which the church in the village of Parícutin, in the state of  Michoacán was buried in lava right up to the altar, where it mysteriously stopped. Today a 30 foot wall of lava stands in front of the untouched altar, a miracle visited daily by the faithful of the area. The rest of the church, however, was completely destroyed.

 

 

Then we have the case of the Santuario Del Carmen, a church in the pueblo of Tlalpujaua, also in  Michoacán, Tlalpujahua; Christmas All Year Long, which met a similar fate in a flood and mudslide. The Santuario was built in the 16th century and dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and sometime later an image of her was painted on the adobe wall of the church. Then in 1937 Mother Nature showed her cruel side once again in the form of a landslide that buried several blocks in the center of town, including the Santuario Del Carmen and killed about 400 people. However, this disaster too, was not without it’s miracle.

Today all that can be seen of the entire area is the church’s bell tower sticking out of the ground. Strangely though, the wall that held the painting of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was not damaged and Our Lady remained unscathed when the landslide stopped just short of the wall. The wall containing the painting was carefully removed from the rest of the ruined building by some 1200 townsfolk and moved to the parish church not far away. The Santuario Del Carmen was eventually rebuilt and Our Lady of Mount Carmel resides at the altar in the company of Saints Peter and Paul.

 

 

Recently we learned that another of these brutal encounters with nature occurred right here in San Miguel de Allende, the result of which has left the remains of a church in the town’s presa, reservoir. This one seems the saddest to me as there seems to be no information available about the origins of this church or even it’s name. The water level in the reservoir is very high now, due to all the rain we’ve had this season and the church sits alone in the presa with only it’s spire above water to remind us of it’s fate. If anyone has any information about this church, I would love to know it’s story. 

The following picture of the spire is very small and distant as we got stuck in the mud when we tried to get close enough to take a good picture. We drove in the direction we thought would take us close to that side of the reservoir on a road that quickly became a small track that led to the forested campo. Due to the aforementioned rain, the track we were driving on degenerated to a muddy path and before we realized that we should probably turn around, we were stuck.

I found it quite comical watching Todd cutting branches off trees with a pen knife to stuff under the wheels of the car, although he didn’t see the humour. I wanted to help but he insisted that I stay in the car. I guess he was envisioning my walker and I stuck in the mud along with the car. We did eventually get out but had to take the picture from the highway far above the presa .

 

 

 

“ A small, picturesque city 80 miles southeast of Mexico City, Cholula is said to have a church for every day of the year. There are, in reality, about 80 in all, many dating to the 17th century and filled with paintings and sculptures from that time. It is enough to draw hordes of worshipers — and thieves.”

The quote above comes from an article in the New York TImes describing the spate of burglaries in the churches of Mexico over the last few years, and in Cholula in particular. For those that are interested in reading the article I’ve left the link at the bottom of this post.

I had sort of thought that the pillaging of Mexican churches was a thing of the distant past, but apparently it is an ongoing problem. In 2008, 2010 and as recently as October of 2012 churches in Cholula have been looted. The entire town of Cholula is involved in the protection of the churches and is even receiving help from expatriate Mexicans in the USA.

Four hundred year old Mexican works of art have turned up in auction houses, and apparently there is a strong market for this type of religious artwork in the southern US. According to the the article in the New York Times….. “ A group of religious-themed 18th-century paintings by the Mexican artist Miguel Cabrera sold for $362,500 in 2010, according to an online listing by Sotheby’s auction house."

There is not a lot that can be done to pacify Mother Nature, but I find the pillaging of churches by thieves for monetary gain appalling.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/world/americas/looting-of-cholula-churches-stirs-locals-to-action.html?_r=0

The Right Place

 

 

 

Last Saturday night I went to a great party. It was a birthday party for my friend Carla in an absolutely gorgeous house down by Parque Juarez. I met some lovely people, ate some great food and enjoyed the light show put on by nature when the evening became stormy. Carla and I go to Spanish conversation class together and our friend Jo, another classmate, was in attendance as well.

Even though the house was huge the party was quite crowded and as I maneuvered my way through the crowd with food, drink and walker Jo kindly commented that she knew what it was like to be handicapped. She told me a story about a time when she was living in New York and had suffered a serious injury, leaving her in a wheel chair for about three months.

It was winter time and dark and cold as she had tried to hail a cab, but even empty ones kept passing her by. None of the cabbies wanted to deal with a person in a wheel chair. Finally, in tears, she spotted a policeman and approached him, telling him of her dilemma. He hailed her a cab and instructed the cabby to take her where she wanted to go.

Wow! What a difference the locale makes. I’m often asked when people see me tottering over the cobblestones with my walker “ Oh my gosh, you didn’t do that here did you? “ or “ It must be SO difficult for you to get around here! “ Although, however kind the sentiment, it could not be more wrong. I am far better off being here in Mexico with my disabilities than I would be ‘north of the border’.

A couple of years ago, when I was still in a wheel chair, I was working for a friend in Umecuaro, a tiny village up in the hills between Morelia and Patzcuaro. I spent six months there looking after my friend’s property while she was working in Bangladesh. I had to oversee the regular work done on the property, like putting in new fence posts, tree fumigation and building repairs. I had to shop for household goods and feed for the horses and dogs.

It all seemed a little daunting at first, doing all this from a wheel chair, but then I realized you are never truly alone in Mexico. Lori, the live-in housekeeper and ranch hand was certainly helpful. But the most amazing thing was the help I received everywhere I went. I had a walker in the SUV with me and a wheelchair in the far back. I would use the walker to get to the back of the truck and then lift the wheel chair out while balancing on one leg. Or at least that was the plan. I don’t think I actually had to do that more than a handful of times.

Nine out of ten times before I ever reached the back of the car help had arrived. It came in the form of kind strangers from all walks of life. Whether it was a young girl, or an old man they all helped me get the wheel chair out of the car and made sure that I had things well in hand before going on their way. I was flabbergasted……and touched……and charmed by all these wonderful folks that took the time to come and help a stranger.

A few months ago I was taking a class at the Instituto Allende, part of the Lifelong Learning Program, and as I left the building I encountered an amazing phenomenon. The instituto is on Calle Ancha San Antonio, a wide thoroughfare running, approximately, down the middle of Colonia San Antonio. There is a tope, a speed bump, about two feet wide and flat on top running across the street and painted like a crosswalk. As I stepped off the curb and onto the tope to hail a cab all the traffic stopped in both directions.

I waved them on apologetically and stepped back on the curb. I walked a car length down the side walk and stepped out again between two parked cars when I saw a cab coming. Again, all the traffic stopped in both directions. I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea. Wincing apologetically I waved them on again and decided to cross the street and try from the side that was in the direction that I was actually heading. Needless to say I had no trouble crossing the wide street and I still stopped traffic a couple more times before I managed to flag down a taxi. There is clearly a different mindset here.

Then just the other day while we were shopping at Superama in Querétaro, ( I sometimes still use a wheelchair when shopping ) I left the store while Todd was going through the checkout and made my way to the car. By the time I reached the trusty old Escape, a small crowd was gathering. There was a young woman with a couple of kids and bags of groceries and two parking lot attendants vying to help me from the chair to the car. If I had to have a serious accident I sure picked the right place to do it!

¡Viva México!

Mexico, Land of Creativity

 

You would think that by now I would be used to the inventiveness and creativity I see around me every day here in Mexico. Yet I am still continually surprised and delighted. Yesterday in my Spanish class a discussion was initiated by a news story about Mexican migrant workers in California developing a cooperative and  becoming owners of a vineyard there.

Our teacher ( a Mexican ) said that he thought this was a very rare occurrence as, in his opinion, most Mexicans do not work well as a team and generally lack ambition. There was an outcry of disagreement from most of us in the class to this, somewhat general and biased, statement. By way of explanation he said that while he did see a lot of creativity in some of the ways poor people find to make a living, he also felt that most of them never think beyond having enough money to put dinner on the table that evening, and for this reason their businesses don’t grow.

I agree with this thinking, but only as far as to say that most Mexican people really do live in the here and now, giving little thought to the future. However, I also think that this is a cultural thing that does not necessarily denote lack of ambition. I have seen some of these odd little businesses thrive and become quite successful. Case in point, my ex-neighbour in Patzcuaro.

Florentino always had some enterprise on the go. He sold baskets of peaches on the roadside in front of his house during peach season, which makes sense as Corazon de Durazno was built on an old peach orchard, then he added soft drinks for the thirsty drivers, and then ceramic flower pots. Then plants that his wife Migda grew, and then flowers in ceramic flower pots. Next he started selling tacos. Doesn’t everyone?

 

 

Flori digging out money for cotton candy

 

Herman, it was blue cotton candy

 

But Florentino didn’t stop there. He laid a concrete floor under the trees between his yard and the road, sort of down in a hollow. Above that he built a roof and eventually tarp walls that can be lowered in inclement weather. He moved the shelf bearing the 2 liter soft drinks inside and added 500 ml sizes to go with lunch. There is room for a couple of plastic tables and chairs in case you don’t want to eat your tacos in the car.

Florentino makes some of the best tacos de bistek that I have ever tasted, but they can be messy with all the grilled onions and serano peppers and juicy meat. I think Flori may have had a taco stand at some time in the past but this one was called “The Return of Don Taco”, as if the whole world had been waiting for this event! It brought in people too, who would never admit that they had no idea who Don Taco was. The stand now also sells Migda’s homemade Birria, Menudo and Guacamole. The couple has 6 children, that’s certainly motivation.

 

Migda with some of the gaggle

 

Now having said all this, I hope that his business is still there and doing well or I will have lost a good argument for Mexican ambition, LOL. I am returning to Patzcuaro for a week in early November, so I will see. Another brilliant marketing idea can be found in the Mercado de Artesanias, the artisan’s market here in San Miguel.

 

 

 

In amongst the candle holders, picture frames and tin angels sits a display of Mary Kay cosmetics. A true entrepreneur, this young vendor knows her clientele. Certainly there will always be a market among the tourists for the pewter desk sets and handcrafted mirrors, but this young lady knows that the ( often wealthy ) ladies that visit from Mexico City every weekend are probably more interested in makeup. Ambition? I think so. Creativity in marketing? Absolutely.

Have you ever gone to a mechanic and been told that they don’t have the right part for your car? I sure have, and seeing as I tend to hang on to my cars for a long time, I have sometimes been told that the part I need is discontinued. I have then been told that if I want to leave the car they will endeavor to find a part but it will likely take a couple of weeks, or I can go searching junkyards for it, if I prefer.

The same situation here in Mexico would be handled very differently. If the part that you need is not readily available your mechanic will probably say, “No problem, I think I can make one myself, it will take a couple of days though”. Sure enough a couple of days later your car is ready and running with some new home made bits. Creative? Definitely!

What if a farmer doesn’t have and can’t afford the right type of vehicle to transport his goods? Will that stop him? Not in Mexico. Of course, in Mexico the police likely won’t stop him either, which can not be said north of the border.

 

 

 

I once saw a gigantic bull riding in the bed of a tiny Mazda pickup truck. Never tell a Mexican that something can’t be done. They will prove you wrong.