The Expat Experience in San Miguel is often puzzling.  There are clubs and organizations that mimic clubs and organizations at home.  One such organization in San Miguel is the Garden Club.

This is the puzzling part.  Since everyone in San Miguel has a gardener why would you need a Garden Club?

What could you possibly learn at a Garden Club that your gardener wouldn’t know unless he is a really bad gardener?  Should this club be renamed The Bad Gardener Club?

Or is it possible that it really isn’t a garden club at all but something else.  A search of  The Website shows pictures of Gardens, and each newsletter highlights a Plant and every so often someone gets a Sweet Pea Award but there appears to be a lot of attention to trips, refreshments and parties and the Greening of San Miguel.

This club seems to be yet another Good Works Gang or simply a social club with a horticulture/environmental theme.  There is a story circulating, that may or may not be true about an incident in The Garden Club.

There was an event called the Herb Luncheon. It is said that one such member became so distraught over her lack funds, and her unlikely rise to president, that she had her maid put some herbs into the brownies for one of the luncheons. The ensuing raucously fabulous time became a bit too raucous for some members that the said member was gingerly asked to remove herself from this particular gang and form one of her own.

It appears that potting took on a whole new meaning for The Garden Club.

It suggest that wonderful line by Dorothy Parker

You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.

The Garden Club 2007 Calendar

Enough gossip, back to Good Works and the Greening of San Miguel.  This Good Works Gang has traditionally sold a calendar to raise funds to Green San Miguel but it appears that a new fund raiser was in the works from this article found in Atencion on April 2008.

Instead of creating a calendar this year, the Garden Club will make a packet of tear-out postcards featuring photographs of San Miguel and its people. The postcards will showcase 16 photos from contest entries and past photo winners.

The period for entering photos begins now and continues through May 9. Proceeds from postcard packet sales will be used for beautification and education projects within the San Miguel community.

Photo winners will receive five postcard packets and will be invited to the Garden Club’s annual luncheon.

Entry guidelines:

• The contest is open to everyone—resident or visitor, professional or amateur.
• A maximum of five submissions per person is allowed.
• If you are submitting your entries in digital format, their resolution must be at least 300 DPI.
• Negatives unaccompanied by prints are not eligible.
• Photos and negatives will returned if your entry includes name, address and telephone number. CDs will not be returned..
• All entries must include a title for the submission and the photographer’s name for credit in the postcard packet.

The intention was there but something went horribly wrong.  No Calendar appeared for 2009 as Babs has corrected in a comment
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Calendar Girls

Someone in San Miguel appears to have taken a leaf from the movie Calendar Girls where a Women’s Institute chapter’s fund-raising effort for a local hospital by posing nude for a calendar becomes a media sensation.

This movie was the start of middle aged women across England and the world disrobing for Charity. It appears that it  didn’t take long for the idea to come to San Miguel - Home of the Middle Aged Woman.

The Garden Club 2009 Calendar

The postcard contest stirred many middle aged women to consider a Calendar of themselves in a Calendar Girl pose and use the funds for Good Works..

A 2009 Calendar (hidden under old calendars to protect the young) soon began to circulate in brown paper wrapper in San Miguel.

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Those post cards became naughty post cards.

Oh dear, Grannies gone wild again.

Looks like the Greening of San Miguel turned into the Baring of San Miguel.

Where was the Garden Club?  Did some members use flowers to hide their assets?

Adjusting to a new country takes time, that is if you realize you are in a different country. Failure to realize you are not in Kansas anymore, creates a lot of stress.

Fran was upset by Garbage and turned to the Civil List for Support.

I am new to SMA and I am curious. I have been many different places in Mexico and I have never seen as much trash as I see in SMA. I do not understand the mentality of the Mexican people. Do they not care about their planet, their country and their beautiful city? They walk down the street and throw their trash where they are walking. They dump trash in empty lots. They litter the country side with trash. Do they not care about disease, bugs and rodents? They even litter in their own neighborhoods. Trash pickup is usually 2 to 3 times a week and is free.
Why are they such dirty people.

She struck a nerve as others were soon adding their own Garbage Woes to the Thread.

Since the first of the year our garbage has not been picked up. Normal garbage service in La Canada is Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Each garbage day, we put our garbage out early in the morning and, it is still there in the late afternoon. Last year it was always picked up early. Today, it looked like other garbage was picked up but not ours. I do not have a clue. Is there a number I should call or what? Any help would be appreciated.

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It seems like Garbage Disposal is a major issue in San Miguel. The Trash Woes grew. Imagine the pain these people experience by caring for other people’s trash

We have another problem with trash. We live on the corner of La Quinta. There is trash pick up on this corner on both Mondays and Fridays. However, recently someone has been leaving trash on this corner on any given day.

Usually dogs get into it and make a mess. We have had people knock on our door to “pick up the street”. We have.

We have also had someone deposit the trash at our front door implying that it is our mess.

We always have our gardener bring out our trash on the correct day.

How do we prevent these people from using our corner as a daily dumping site? How do we get people to stop leaving other peoples mess at our front door?

This morning, once again, someone is piling trash in front of our door.

I don’t know if it is someone from La Quinta or Canadita that is putting the trash at the corner, or someone who is coming from elsewhere to just get rid of their bags.

We are constantly picking up after the dogs who rip open these bags. Our bodega is full of other peoples trash.

How do we get a sign or perhaps a trash bin installed on that corner?

We are drowning in other’s trash

Whenever there is moaning and groaning on the Civil List people soon turn to offering solutions.

I’ve wondered about this, too. I have noticed since someone put up a nice sign at the Sancho Panza ‘tree’ prohibiting the dumping of garbage it is now being dumped at our corner.

I think we should go together and put up the same sign on our corner. (Does anyone know who put up that sign?) And, at the same time, contact the city and see what, if anything, they will do.

Garbage pick up is Monday and Friday from around 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. Placing neatly bagged or boxed garbage the same morning seems reasonable.

We’ve also considered pointing our entrance security camera at that corner to figure out who is doing this.

And someone from the Spiritual Gang has a simple solution with how to get God involved in your Trash Woes

If you put a Lady Guadalupe near or on your door that should stop the problem. That is one thing that the Mexicans respect and will honor.  The bigger the better.

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Then the reality of living in another country dawns on one member.

Yeah, when I moved here I did that too, for a while. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work. Some people will just throw their trash on the streets regardless. So, I just clean in front of my house every day and hope for the best. It’s the “trade-off” of living in this otherwise magical place.

Then the Doing Good Works Gang comes up with a suggestion that involves the community, Trash and Good Works.

I would definitely be interested in organizing a team to pick up trash on the sides of the road. The thing that drew me to Mexico and San Miguel in particular is the natural beauty of the place. There’s something very romantic about this desert scene. And I’ve noticed a recycling plant in San Miguel that offers a small reimbursement for the recyclable materials you bring in. Just something to keep in mind

Another chord struck.

I, too, am sick of seeing all the trash everywhere…when I become a resident of SMA in about five months, I intend to start a program for trash pickup with the probably naive hope that once an area is cleared of trash people will think twice about throwing junk on the streets…want to join me in organizing pickups?

And here is capitalism at its best. For $9 pesos they will pick up your garbage

There is Store Sign at 43 Aldama that leads to much speculation.

Donatella Spa

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi), master of sculpture in both marble and bronze, one of the greatest of all Italian Renaissance artists was ruled out because he is dead.

Well in San Miguel you are never quite sure but he would be over 500 so I think it is safe to assume he is dead.

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Donatello (Don or Donny) is a fictional character that appears in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and all related media. Now, unlike some residents of San Miguel, who confuse magic and reality, this Donatello can be ruled out because he was a comic book character and not real.

But in San Miguel you can never be too sure.

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That leaves only one person Donatella Versace sister of the late Gianni Versace.

There is something about that bleached blonde European look that is a bit awry in San Miguel.

You don’t see many Europeans in San Miguel who look like this.

Most of Europeans in San Miguel are of the earnest variety – backpacks and hiking books.

This look is so un San Miguel.

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Yet there she was one morning in the Jardin. Donatella Versace walking the streets of San Miguel.  Could she be here for plastic surgery?  In San Miguel you can be sure they are here for plastic surgery.

My friends in San Miguel are always terrified that a picture of them will appear on my blog, capturing them at a moment they would like to forget. I honour their friendship by not making them subjects of posts, however, when a friend dies you want to honour their uniqueness – the quality that made them a friend in the first place.

Joe Stiffler was one of those friends who died, yesterday, in San Miguel. I met Joe at party and he was interesting, fun and colourful from the get go.

Joe Stiffler

Joe always wore clothes like those in the picture – bright colours and those great big dark glasses and a permanent tan. He used to say that his full time job was getting a tan.

This picture was taken at a roof pouring party for Joe’s new house that was one street up from where we lived.

He had style.
He had opinions.
He was unique.

I will miss not having him one street up next year.

I was told that he didn’t go for a heart transplant as he felt someone with a family would need it more. That is selflessness of a kind I wish I had.

Also read Babs of San Miguel on Joe and his big house warming party last week.

His good friend Billie Mercer had a wonderful post on what made us all so smile about Joe and his ways.

Since the original post, I have had several wonderful emails and comments from his family giving me even more insight to how adored this man was and how kind Joe was and in particular to his mother Lois and family.  He left a lot of good Karma behind.   But there was a wicked side to Joe too,  such as the reason he told a Computer Store salesperson in Houston, for buying a computer.  That twinkle in his eye always told you that something interesting would soon be said.

I had an email from a younger cousin of Joe’s.  To him, Joe was a model of sophistication  in Montana and Wyoming.  He said that Joe reminded him of the Silva Thin Man for the old cigarette  ads and sent me this picture.

Joe - The Silva Thin Man

The Tuesday Market sells lots of stuff, including very cheap movies.

And therein lies one of the moral dilemmas of San Miguel de Allende – buy or not. Well, a moral dilemma for some.

I used to buy crap copies of movies I didn’t want from the Tuesday market. Now I get titles I wanted in better quality. Hmm let me think about it. I’m really worried about people in movies not getting their royalty checks or the Mexican police hauling me off when I’m a starving artist in Mexico.

So the conflict begins between the starving artists and those who collect royalties. Yet, there are more than these people involved in this dilemma. This in a San Miguel In Joke but look at the map and explain what you can buy at the cafe shown by the orange square.

As with any moral dilemma there are two sides – the liberal artists who lives off royalties against the socialist fighting injustice and big corporations. Where would poor Michael Moore land on this issue.

Does this mean there are thieves San Miguel – copyright thieves who don’t view themselves thieves but liberators?

This, as with all things in San Miguel played out on the Civil list. One of the first to weight in was someone who gets royalities.

International Copyright law forbids the duplication of any copyrighted material. Period. To do so is called stealing. To do so and then sell those pirated discs, regardless of where or when, simply compounds the act of stealing. You are selling (or buying) something that does not belong to you. All the obfuscation and self-justification in the world cannot hide that simple fact. Shoplifting is stealing. Plagiarism is stealing. Copying and selling pirated discs is stealing. Supporting the shops in town that sell pirated discs is supporting stealing.

An untrained leftist lawyer weights in

Just because an action may be a violation of U.S. copyright laws does not mean that it is a violation of copyright laws in all other countries. However, the U.S. is strenuously trying to make it so by pushing other countries to bring their copyright laws more in alignment with U.S. copyright laws.

And then a satisfied leftists customer speaks.

I bought 2 movies from (name withheld) and they were of excellent quality. He even bought a movie I couldn’t find anywhere off the I tunes store. I offered to pay for it and he gave it to me for free but kept it in his collection. I think what he is doing is awesome so get off his back. If you don’t want a service on here simply don’t use it. Too many high horse riders on here giving nice people flack. Can’t we just all get along. This can apply to many other posts circulating at the present time.

Counterpoint

I believe you’re missing the point here. The quality of the pirated DVD has no bearing on the fact that it’s illegal, that you’re literally stealing money from artists or actors who have spent many years perfecting their craft, and if you condone that, you probably never, ever get mad when someone cuts in front of you while you’re waiting in line or when someone steals from you! I’m not there yet.

Then one of the Pirates speaks up

Those guys are copying copies of copies. In Mexican law you can copy it if you own an original, I don’t own a store or a stand where I sell them. I copy them for friends. I have a great lawyer that keeps me informed on my rights. I’m a huge movie, TV. and music fan. With the little money I make I just buy more movies to add to the collection that I share with everyone. If you buy a movie from me with the profit most of the time I get another movie you haven’t been able to find. I own all the originals I didn’t copy them from Blockbuster or Netflix. Its very easy to copy a movie. But what about a movie that Blockbuster or Netflix doesn’t have??? I have all of those hard to get titles that you cant find here or on Netflix. And you can get more that 2 at a time.

Then comes a little voice

I don’t know what the Mexican copyright laws are but I do know every so often..a bus pulls up to the Tuesday market with police type men and removes the cd’s and dvd’s and the owners and take them away on the bus. I have been there when they have done that.

The debate soon changes to economics and Robin Hoodism

Oh my…. the DVD debate. I can only add that if the movie industry would stop charging more than $20 US for a DVD, stop charging more than $12 per person at the theatre (in Canada) and if they would stop paying tens of millions of dollars to the stars…. maybe there wouldn’t be such a temptation to find an alternative source for movies… legal or not. I agree with the person who said I am not so concerned about the loss of revenue to the makers of these movies… they already overcharge grossly for their products and make HUGE profits for their pockets. I buy them at the stores in Canada and I buy them at the Tuesday market and I sleep at night. It’s all relative.

The Artists quips back..

A lot of people depend on the income from royalties and residual payments based on legitimate sales of our work. If you want to see a movie, please buy or rent the disc. I will thank you, my colleagues will thank you, and eventually my heirs will thank you.

Finally someone admits they steal and feel justified.

I already GIVE the industry my full support by attending a ridiculous amount of movies at the theaters – primarily MM right here in SMA, and by subscribing to HBO, Netflix, etc. Some of those movies cheat ME of my hard-earned money. Therefore, I have no qualms of conscience if I should choose to buy a copy of some movie on the cheap – supporting my local SMA Mexican entrepreneur; and, 2. I DON’T CARE!!! about your industry-sponsored version of morality.

Are there thieves in San Miguel? Is this an organized gang of Copyright Thieves?

What is cuter than dressing your little pooch in a visor? Sun does get in their sensitive eyes and these visors protect them.

And when you play poker, having these little poker whizzes on your lap simply adds to the fun of the game.

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Poodle Visor

Imitation is supposedly the sincerest form of flattery but in San Miguel imitation is simply the search for uniqueness. Gangs takes inspiration from so many things – flowers, childhood tales, household items. This new gang instead of dressing dogs to look like them, dress themselves to look like their dogs.  Out with the Straw Hat and in with the Visor.

Helen has chosen the Poodle Visor for shopping.

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Outdoor Hunting Dog Visor

Ray has chosen the Hunting Dog Visor for his outdoor look
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Balloon Visor

Rose takes her inspiration from the Balloon Vendor and her dog Balloon.

If you talk to anyone in a visor then remember to ask about the welfare  of their dog.   Well you won’t really have to ask as the dog will be yapped at their feet trying to escape and get rid of that terrible visor their owner has made them wear.

It must be so embarrassing to be a dog in San Miguel

Original Lamps

Mexicans artesanos have a knack for making art out of unusual materials – corn husks, reeds, onyx, and fabric are among the many, many media used to create unique art.  And the subject matter can be local or mystical or just for the tourists.

The influx of expats gangs in San Miguel, over  the years, has created a new inspiration for artesanos.  Artesanos are fascinated by apparel and look of Gangs almost as much as Expats are fascinated by local Mexican fashions.   While Expat Gangs use the camera to capture “local color” the artesanos use art to capture what they call “Foreign Color” or Gringo Madness

It all started with the Mojigangas.  This was the first time  Expats images appeared as Folk Art.
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Expat Lamps

But soon more Expat Folk Art began to appear in Local Mexican Markets in Gringo Free Areas.  Mexicans just love to collect these new art forms.

One of the most popular is the Tiffany Lamp Lady.  Mexican children love to turn on and turn off the Expat Lady and laugh as she lights up and goes dark much like the Expat Ladies in the Jardin.

This is a new movement in SMA and only a few images have been translated into Folk Art but the glow you can see in Gringo Free Zones from the Expat Lamp is growing stronger.

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Expat Parasol Bookends

Another popular area of Expat Folk Art is the Bookend Series. Combining a love of books with Expats, this art project started as a fund raiser for the Biblioteca. Demand soon exceeded supply and the Expat Bookend Series was created

Expat Dressed Bookends

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Day of the Dead Personalized Expat Statues

The Personalized Day of the Dead Expat Statues are giving to each Facelift patient in San Miguel.

As new Expat Gang Art is found it will be highlighted on this blog

The sign says it all

Clothing is both an expression and indication of eccentricity. It has also been one of the key ways to identify a gang.

I am currently in Wales and today, there in front of me, was a Gang that I had been unaware of.

Crossing Guard, Hunter Explorer Gang

This is the Crossing Guard, Explorer, Hunter Gang. He has a map to orient him but looking at him would suggest he need a much bigger map covering not only geography but social and psychological areas as well

I also found a sign today that should be used in San Miguel

Sign Needed in San Miguel but in Spanish not Welsh

Sometimes a picture says it all

Do You Think You Could Eat there Evelyn

Photographs in the Jardin fall into one of three categories

Entering the Jardin
Doing the Jardin
Leaving the Jardin

There are Four Corners to enter and leave from
Canal and Hidalgo
Umaran and Cuna de Allende
San Fransisco and Relox(j)
Correo

The Four Corners of the Jardin

The Parroquia

These corners are the Gates to Magic .

When you first enter the Jardin you will glimpse what at first you think is the Magic Castle of Disney Land but it is only the Parroquia.

The Parroquia is the source of all Magic in San Miguel.
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The Iron Benches of the Expats

To experience the magic move quickly to the Iron Benches upon which sits the Expats of San Miguel, The Magicees of San Miguel, as it were.

As you sit you will find there  on the Iron Benches you will find there is so much do to in the Jardin.

Doing Good Works in the Jardin

There will be table after table of Expats Doing Good Works.

There will be Balloon and Toy vendors (Dollar Store on a Stick).

There will be itinerant vendors of vanilla and hats.

Beggars abound.

Cute little local children run around chasing pigeons.

At the end of your day, you will gather your purchases and exit though one of the Four Gates, surfeited with magic and eager to return the next day.

Leaving the Magic by Gate Three (Umaran and Cuna de Allende)