Today is the inaugural posting of the San Miguel Allende Journal.
It is dedicated to George Douglas Perkins, founder of a Journal modeled after the New York Times. He infused his granddaughter with love of learning and freedom, and with her trustfund from the Journal, found herself in San Miguel de Allende in 1948.
Soon thereafter abandoning a showhorse property and life in southern California, came with the horse Royal Crescent to San Miguel, followed by her son, who then met the most beautiful girl in San Miguel and married.
Their firstborn is this writer.
The most beautiful girl had a noble family history, and it entwines with the history of dramatic moments in Mexico, a great-granddaughter of General Mariano Escobedo, fieldmarshal for the Battle of Puebla and 5 de Mayo Holiday observance, whence the General removed the ousted Maximilian's sword.
The beautiful girl's great-uncle restored the historic church in the town square, the Cura Jose Lopez Escobedo, and he is buried in the altars of the church near his brother the physician Anastasio Lopez Escobedo, who brought health inspection and order to the city once in ruins and a ghost town, they are near the miraculous and legendary Sr. de la Conquista made of ancient orchid paste that makes him more than real on his mirror-covered cross.
Dedicating this to all who have gone before to create San Miguel de Allende.
In this way, consider this a message in a bottle as the city broils in change, currents washing down the street after the rain are murky with car-related hues. In the 1960's the water ran clear and continually in rivulets next to the sidewalk, on white concrete cribs that sent it down Canal Street and Aurora to the orchards. The enormous beefstake tomatoes were the taste of those clean-water days, they were sold by ladies peeling Opuntias nopalitos by the Insurgentes sidewalks. The droughts sent the men North and the tomatoes could not be grown as easily anymore.
This is a voice of the earth dehydrating, the orchards are going or gone now under condos. The water toilets arrived and the water stopped being abundant. Compost systems had been the norm for thousands of years before; it has only been sixty years and the founding springs dried up ten years ago.
The export broccoli farms sump water at the head before the water comes downhill. Now there is no water at midday inside the heart of town. The well, San Julian, works just for the historic district, but it will not flow continually.
Please conserve water in San Miguel. Please plant a tree as often as you can. To abate the heat that is a novelty here for the last years. The desert from the high-plateau has arrived.
How it happened: read A PLAGUE OF SHEEP.
And so, as a desert occurs, there are ghosts of culture now being created, as much of the old tradition and knowledge and politeness is being dismissed.
(c Marcela Andre 2005-2008
It is dedicated to George Douglas Perkins, founder of a Journal modeled after the New York Times. He infused his granddaughter with love of learning and freedom, and with her trustfund from the Journal, found herself in San Miguel de Allende in 1948.
Soon thereafter abandoning a showhorse property and life in southern California, came with the horse Royal Crescent to San Miguel, followed by her son, who then met the most beautiful girl in San Miguel and married.
Their firstborn is this writer.
The most beautiful girl had a noble family history, and it entwines with the history of dramatic moments in Mexico, a great-granddaughter of General Mariano Escobedo, fieldmarshal for the Battle of Puebla and 5 de Mayo Holiday observance, whence the General removed the ousted Maximilian's sword.
The beautiful girl's great-uncle restored the historic church in the town square, the Cura Jose Lopez Escobedo, and he is buried in the altars of the church near his brother the physician Anastasio Lopez Escobedo, who brought health inspection and order to the city once in ruins and a ghost town, they are near the miraculous and legendary Sr. de la Conquista made of ancient orchid paste that makes him more than real on his mirror-covered cross.
Dedicating this to all who have gone before to create San Miguel de Allende.
In this way, consider this a message in a bottle as the city broils in change, currents washing down the street after the rain are murky with car-related hues. In the 1960's the water ran clear and continually in rivulets next to the sidewalk, on white concrete cribs that sent it down Canal Street and Aurora to the orchards. The enormous beefstake tomatoes were the taste of those clean-water days, they were sold by ladies peeling Opuntias nopalitos by the Insurgentes sidewalks. The droughts sent the men North and the tomatoes could not be grown as easily anymore.
This is a voice of the earth dehydrating, the orchards are going or gone now under condos. The water toilets arrived and the water stopped being abundant. Compost systems had been the norm for thousands of years before; it has only been sixty years and the founding springs dried up ten years ago.
The export broccoli farms sump water at the head before the water comes downhill. Now there is no water at midday inside the heart of town. The well, San Julian, works just for the historic district, but it will not flow continually.
Please conserve water in San Miguel. Please plant a tree as often as you can. To abate the heat that is a novelty here for the last years. The desert from the high-plateau has arrived.
How it happened: read A PLAGUE OF SHEEP.
And so, as a desert occurs, there are ghosts of culture now being created, as much of the old tradition and knowledge and politeness is being dismissed.
(c Marcela Andre 2005-2008
