San Miguel FAQ

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Bonnie Lee Black wrote: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is itself a work of art, in my view – a grand mosaic made of many colorful, diverse pieces forming a beautiful whole. This week a diverse group of people here in SMA gathered to celebrate the inauguration of the newest mosaic installation by artist Juan Eduardo Rios Mancilla in Colonia Guadalupe. Mosaics resonate here and are cause for celebration.

This new mosaic, which covers one full wall on the Arroyo Walkway near Calle Farolito, features many of the iconic elements of San Miguel – especially the Parroquia church in the Jardin in el centro.



Among the requisites of the installation, which took two months to complete, was that it be “family friendly” and that it might beautify the area and draw visitors to it. ...

Continue at The WOW Factor: WOW Factor: A Mosaic Celebration. More #WOWFactor.
SMAFAQ carries many of Bonnie's posts, but not all of them. Don't miss any! While you're there, you can subscribe to her blog.

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ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
(May 4, 2023, WOW blogpost by Bonnie Lee Black)

When I was in my mid-twenties I lived for several years in southern Africa and worked as a copy editor and layout artist at The Rhodesian Farmer, a weekly farming magazine in Rhodesia’s capital, Salisbury. (The full story of how this unlikely scenario came to be can be found in my memoir Somewhere Child. I won’t go into it here.)

At that time, Rhodesia was considered the breadbasket of Africa. Its rich soil, ideal climate, and skilled farm workers made it something of a farmer’s paradise. And this magazine, The Rhodesian Farmer, was an important organ of the country’s farmers’ union, to which most farmers belonged.

One day, sitting at my desk, going over the galley proofs for the next issue, a man came into my office, head a bit bowed, holding his crumpled cloth slouch hat in his hands. The receptionist had sent him to see me because he was French, and among my colleagues I was the only one who’d studied French in school and remembered a few words. She thought I might be able to help him.

His name was Bernard, I learned that afternoon in our long and pleasant conversation conducted in our own version of Frenglish. He was a farmer, a quiet, unassuming bachelor, perhaps in his early forties. (He seemed old and weather-beaten to me then.) He had been traveling the world, he told me, looking for the right place to settle and have a farm of his own. He’d searched throughout Europe and gone further afield, visiting Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. None of them were quite right for him, he said.

He told me, in his quiet and deeply felt way – and this is why I remember Bernard so clearly even after fifty years — that he believed everyone in the world should be able to go anywhere in the world to find the place in the world where they felt they truly belonged. The country we’re born in should not own us, he said. The world is big, and we only live in it once. We should be free to explore it freely and live wherever we’re happiest, unhampered by government strictures and bureaucracies.

This thought had never crossed my mind before that afternoon, and it hasn’t left my mind since. Bernard the farmer had planted a seed.

Imagine, I often think, if more people were encouraged to think more globally and travel more widely – and not by just quickly rushing through other countries to sightsee but by remaining for a while to see if they fit: Learning the language, learning the history and culture, learning how to cook that country’s traditional dishes, learning the steps to their traditional dances.

Imagine also a world without border walls or barbed wire fences, where immigrants are embraced instead of chased, where nationalism is replaced by a new form of globalism with the ethos, “We’re all in this together.”

This may well be a wildly romantic notion, but I imagine this would result in far fewer wars and happier, healthier, more broadly minded people worldwide. It’s fun to imagine. But what would it take to make this happen?

Personally, I’ve learned that I’m happiest living where palm trees grow. So staying in or near my home state – New Jersey, USA, where palm trees definitely do not grow – would never work for me as a lifetime choice. I love year-round, sunny, sleeveless days and abundant, healthy, juicy tropical fruit (mangoes! avocados!). I loved Africa, and I felt at home there. I’m loving Mexico, and I am at home here.

As for Bernard, as I recall, he chose to settle in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He bought a small farm and married an African woman, and, I like to think, lived happily-ever-after – or at least until that country’s civil war forced most farmers off their land and back to their countries of origin. But that’s another story.

[To see the original post, with photos, go to: www.bonnieleeblack.com/blog/anywhere-in-the-world/]

Juan and Victoria in front of her front door, which is decorated by Juan’s mosaic art (photo credit: Jim Quinn).

Bonnie Lee Black wrote: Among the many wonderful, purposeful things we older women can do with our lives, now that we’re no longer young and seen as serving mainly decorative or procreative purposes, I feel, is to become role models, patrons, or mentors for younger people. We can open-heartedly open doors to those for whom those doors might otherwise be shut tight or completely out of sight.

Here is a perfect example of this, in my view:

Some six years ago, award-winning San Miguel de Allende visual artist Victoria Pierce (75) asked her gardener/handyman Juan Eduardo Rios Mancilla, then 34, to make a mosaic tile tabletop for a small wrought iron side table in her garden. This project led to other small mosaic projects in her home, until Victoria noticed something: Juan’s latent artistic talent. ...

Continue at The WOW Factor: Victoria Pierce: Opening Doors. More #WOWFactor.
SMAFAQ carries many of Bonnie's posts, but not all of them. Don't miss any! While you're there, you can subscribe to her blog.

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With an enormous thank you to Scott Allison for his photographs.

Don Day wrote: It’s become a bit of a ritual, an annual event. It’s when I get a group together and ask Mario’s Mariscos Frescos to bring in the very best that the Pacific Ocean has to offer.

Oysters, scallops, shrimp, crab, octopus and lobster. Plus a couple of plain but certainly not ordinary fish. Some served raw, some lightly cooked, some lightly battered. Some dishes very simple, some quite saucy. Everything scrumptuous.

Eight, maybe nine…I lost count…small courses. Most served family style in the middle of the table. ...

More at Don Day in SMA: Diving into an ocean of delights. At Mario’s. While you're there, you can subscribe to his blog. More #DonDay.

Mario’s Mariscos Frescos Estilo Mazatlan is located at Salida a Celaya #83A in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The restaurant is open from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm, seven days a week.

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