Viva Mexico! Come Visit!

Mexico has been taking it on the chin lately. The tourist industry has been devastated by the swine flu scare, the reports of narcotrafficking violence, the return of so many workers who were forced to return from the U.S. by anti-immigration pressures. For those of us who live here and love this country, it's been upsetting to watch, because we know how distorted the news reports are, not to mention many people's image of Mexico. Every day, I am reminded of how fortunate I am to be here. I love the kind people, the rich culture. I have never felt unsafe; in fact, I feel protected. I walk home by myself late at night, eat the food and drink the water.

Mexico has an excellent public health care system and, when the aporkalypse struck, put into place the measures that all first-world countries are prepared to deploy in the face of a viral threat. To date there have been 87 swine flu deaths. Not a single case was reported in my home state of Guanajuato. Interesting article on Mexico's economy here.

“I think the whole world should be saying, ‘Gracias, amigos,’ to the Mexicans for the tremendous sacrifice they have made. That may have stopped what otherwise would have been a serious pandemic."
-- Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance ” (Penguin, 1995), NY Times, May 4, 2009

Narcotrafficking is a serious problem here, but like major crime everywhere, it lives underground, and is mostly concentrated in three border towns of Mexico--where the narcotraffickers have just-across-the-border access to the huge selection of guns they can't buy here, and where they can easily ship their contraband to their U.S. clientele. Murders in Mexico are 98% drug related. As in high-crime U.S. cities, most people go about their business barely aware of the shady world beneath the surface.

Meanwhile, the economy is booming. The Mexican stock market gained 130% over the last five years. Mexico has a cash surplus, newly discovered oil fields, an influx of foreign capital building major new manufacturing facilities, a reliable water supply, a burgeoning environmental/organic movement, and exceptional medical and dental care that is far less costly and more efficient than in the States. What's not to like? Mexico is the world's #1 retirement destination. There are over two million U.S and Canadian property owners here. Another six million are expected in the next fifteen years.

So come to Mexico! Relax, enjoy yourself. It's gorgeous, it's festive, it's safe and inexpensive.
Hmmmm....all those deported workers. I wonder who's going to pick the U.S. apple crop next year?

Gringo Haiku II: Meet the Authors

One day in November of 2004 I got an email from Leah Feldon, a friend I’d known in Manhattan twenty years earlier, just checking in to be sure I had her email address, because she was moving to Mexico. (I’m not filling in the details of husbands and ex-husbands and such). I wrote her back to say that I was planning to leave California in February to spend three months in San Miguel to decide whether I wanted to live there permanently. The phone rang seconds later; it was Leah saying the she had just bought a house in San Miguel. Now, anyone who lives here will not be surprised by this coincidence: it is a classic it-happens-all-the-time San Miguel vortex story. So here we are in this small town, four years later, after decades of occasional visits and email contact, savvy gringos who give you local advice and color in seventeen-syllable doses. See the first Gringo Haiku post here.

Old friends meet again
in San Miguel. No surprise:
Everyday magic….

Hopeful gringo hordes
cross the guarded border to
Seek a better life.

Goats hang from hooks. Piles
Of gizzards, tongue, shanks, hooves. Hey,
where’s the shrink-wrapped meat?

At Bellas Artes
I practice ancient art form.
Not flamenco. Yoga!

Through shafts of morning
light and birdsong I cross the park
to get a facelift.

Hola, amiga!
Great to run into you…for
the third time today.

Riposte III

I love stories about people who come up with the perfect comeback--or insult--at the very moment it's needed. The story about Frank Zappa in the earlier "Riposte" post is one of my favorites.

I had been trying to remember the famous exchange between Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw, between whom there was no love lost, when my friend Michael Sudheer sent me a whole passel o' retorts, including the one I was looking for. Made my day!

Here are a few of them. As my dad used to say (as he laid his winning cards down at the end of a poker hand), "Read 'em and weep..."

The Winston Churchill/Geroge Bernard Shaw exchange:
Shaw: I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of your play. Bring a friend...if you have one.
Churchill's reply: Cannot possible attend first night; will attend second...if there is one.

Groucho Marx struck a similar note: I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.

An exchange between Churchill and Nancy, Lady Astor:
Astor: If you were my husband, I'd give you poison.
Churchill: If you were my wife, I'd drink it.

A barb from Oscar Wilde: He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Then there was the time, long ago, when Dick Cavett introduced the nauseatingly accessible Rod McKuen as America's most understood poet.

And when Ghandi repsonded to the question of what he thought of Western civilization: I think it's a good idea.

"Art in Garden" opening

Friday, June 3 is the "official" re-opening of the Generator Gallery, during the monthly ArtWalk at Fabrica Aurora here in San Miguel. I'll be showing a series of large photographs of Candelaria, the huge annual plant and flower fair, and a group of small acrylic finger-paintings.

I'm learning that preparing for these shows is a lot of work--framing, enlarging photos, labels, hanging, publicity. At midnight last night I was printing and cutting up wallet-size photos of the work I'm showing and making them into refrigerator magnets--and wondering where I went wrong.

I'm trying to plan ahead, and pretty much know what I'm going to show through the rest of this year. What I want to do next are some BIG finger-paintings, working flat on my worktable with lots of open pots of paint, spray bottles of water, music in the background, a glass of tequila by my side.....Oops, I must be dreaming... I've got a deadline to meet on the book I'm ghostwriting....

Leonore Fleischer

I often tell people that it was Leonore Fleischer who lured me into the writing trade (vintage hippie era photo of Leonore from my book, Clothing Liberation: Out of the Closets and Into the Streets, circa 1973). She dropped by my stand on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village one auspicious Saturday in 1970, when I was selling off the inventory of my macramé (yeah, wanna make something of it?) jewelry business, which had become a pain in the butt. Six months later she called me, having seen a write-up about my wares in the annual New Yorker “What to Buy for Christmas” article, wanting me to write a book on macramé. I protested vehemently, but she persisted, and over lunch at the Lion’s Head pub, convinced me that she could give me whatever help I needed (I had a graphic design studio at the time, but I was no writer). Well, the short version is that Leonore became my editor, and a very close friend: we are still in touch. I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story. But I want to brag a little bit—in the hope of hustling up some business—by quoting her response to my delivering that first manuscript:

"I read it, I read it over again, in shock. The manuscript was perfect. Perfect. Not a comma out of place, not an adverb wrongly used, not a work misspelled. More, it was as witty and friendly as it was informative. A witty craft book! I sat stunned. There was nothing for me to do, nothing."

True Tomatoes

I was born and raised in New Jersey, and spent childhood summers with a pile o’ tomatoes and a salt shaker, eating my fill. I vividly remember being in south Jersey with my first husband, Bruce Torbet, working on a civil rights documentary called “Mississippi Summer,” on the day of the first moon landing. I spent the day up to my ears in a cornfield (unplanned pun), eating the sweet raw corn between takes (I was the sound recordist). I had been an avid follower of the space program, so in anticipation of watching the moon landing, we stopped at a farm stand and bought a humongous bag of tomatoes, and a whole container of Morton’s salt. That night I sat propped up in the motel bed with my tomatoes and salt, happy as could be, although I had a suspicion the landing had been shot in a loft on Greene Street in Soho (remember the flag that was wired to look as though it was flying in the breeze?). What a wonderful day!

First-rate tomatoes have come and gone in my life. In many places where I've traveled they were stupendous, but even in California they didn’t measure up to New Jersey standards, and in winter—forget about it. Here in San Miguel, for all that I love the place, the tomatoes look appealing, but are lacking in taste, as though reconstituted from some combination of sawdust and tomato paste. But lo and behold, thanks to the burgeoning, green/environmental movement here in town, there is a new organic gourmet store in my humble neighborhood, Vía Orgánica, and the tomatoes are wonderful. So again I have bags of fabulous tomatoes and a big salt shaker, and I am as happy as can be…. Viva Vía Orgánica!

Maria Valenzuela

The amazing and endearing Maria Valenzuela only works two afternoons a week at my house, but she manages to clean, do the laundry, iron (and mend my clothes), shop and prepare food to leave in the fridge, pay the bills, tend the garden, and in general oversee whatever needs tending to. She works for other gringos during the week, and cooks for a local caterer. She is the matriarch of a large family--ten grown children, many grandchildren and an extended family--which means there are always unexpected expenses and crises, even deaths from the diabetes and other maladies that plague the local populace.

Clearly our lives are very different--I live alone, I have no children, I'm not religious. Yet we have become close. I am invited to family gatherings--of which there are many, often connected with religious celebrations. I 'sponsor,' as do other family members--one of the Christmas posadas they do for nine straight nights, providing pinatas and prayer (along with a mini-procession of the family's nativity tableau), punch and tamales, for their neighbors and community. For all her responsibilities, Maria has an abiding sense of humor and fun, and we always manage to laugh, even when we are having a difficult time. And we both enjoy our tequila.

I salute Maria Valenzuela, a bright light in my life and in the life of her family and community.

Everyday Magic

There are minor mysteries everywhere…the way the full moon shows up each month, perfectly poised in the night sky, in the arched window in front of my desk. The way the blue neon cross at the local parish church two blocks away is simply a straight line, like a sword pointing to the sky, from my studio window. Lately I’m fascinated by a springtime transformation that takes place in my home every day:

In the early morning, light comes in through the triangular window on my stairwell. It casts a sharp triangular shadow on the opposite wall, then migrates down the stairs and becomes a shapeless blob on the floor and kitchen rug, and around midday arranges itself in a perfect circle at the foot of the stairs. Now if that's not magic.... see the whole sequence here.

Day of the Locos

This is a fiesta-mad town, and yesterday was one of the maddest, and one of my favorites-- El Dia de los Locos--the Day of the Crazies. See photos here. This only-in-San Miguel parade culminates eight days of celebrations, fireworks, and devotions that honor St. Anthony of Padua, the patron of mariners and fishermen, expectant mothers. animals, American Indians, and travelers, among other beneficiaries of his benificence.

Over ten thousand people, organized by neighborhood and community associations, parade through the streets in extravagant, inventive costumes of every description, each group led by a vividly festooned truck with it's own sound system, each group dancing and cavorting to its own rhythms. This year Disney movie characters were a main theme. Lots of men dressed as women. Hmmmm... Tens of thousands of other people line the long parade route (some hang off balconies and rooftops) holding upside-down umbrellas to catch the candy flung by the paraders. Kids ride atop their parents' shoulders. Vendors hawk tamales and corn, cold drinks and balloons. It's kind of like a good-natured Mardi Gras, wild and enthusiastic, but without the booze.

Gringo Haiku

My fellow writer friend Leah Feldon and I were desperate to come up with something for the first San Miguel Authors Anthology, but we hadn’t been in San Miguel long enough to have written anything about it. Sitting around over a couple rounds of tequila, we wrote a piece on ‘Gringo Haiku,’ based on the traditional Japanese poem form of 17-syllables, in lines of 5-7-5, about the vagaries of San Miguel gringo life, with a faux-academic introduction. It got great laughs, so we turned it into a little book. Here are some samples:

In San Miguel you
never know for whom the bell
tolls, or why, or when.

Carnelian sun slants
on red tiled roofs. I wonder
what it will sell for.

On Vonage wings and
wireless internet I reach out
to the old country.

On jardín benches
a row of stopped geezers eyes
the brown-eyes chicas.

Rain glistens on the
cobbled streets and the arm slings
of fallen women.

More Gringo Haiku coming soon. Contributions welcome, but juried by our panel of critics....