by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I am offended by magazines which publish articles whose authors claim expertise on San Miguel after visiting here for only one week. Up that same literary alley, every now and then some new arrival submits for my consideration a how-I-came-to-San-Miguel piece. My response is, not in quite such stark terms, "Literally, every expat in San Miguel has got one of those; why would we want to read yours?" Recently, in a similar, newbie genre, a woman submitted to me a what-to-do-in-San-Miguel piece.

This author wrote about two dozen different establishments, a few whose names she didn't even know: "Get a green drink from the stand near the door at Mercado Sano." Each place was mentioned only superficially, as if she were jotting down notes in a taxi, already on her way to the next. Reading it I learned the names of the owners of a couple of businesses and that the Nail Spa serves anchovies on toast, but that was about it.

The article started up at the mall ("Cinemex is air-conditioned") and ran the reader back and forth across town, inducing, in me anyway, a sort of motion-sickness. I thought, "Thank you, but Lokkal's audience doesn't need to be told to visit the Fábrica la Aurora."

Maybe the author was hoping to get favors from the businesses, "Look what I did for you," because at the end of the piece she appended the contact information of a dozen or more of the places she mentioned.

Most obviously, the article would have benefitted by focusing on one neighborhood, or by limiting the number of places visited to what a reasonable person, someone not high on amphetamines, might find comfortable on a reasonable day. But I didn't suggest any edits or rewrites because I doubted that the author wanted to work at it.

As it was, I wrote back:

She wrote back:

I responded:

Speaking of the Fábrica, I heard a similar story from Kelley Vandriver at the last art walk:

There really is no accounting for taste.

The author of the what-to-do-in-San-Miguel piece I had rejected groused about my treatment of her to a friend of mine. There is a Mexican saying, "Chico pueblo, gran infierno," "Small town, big hell." This friend, who had a position in a nonprofit up north gave me some advice:

"You need to find a way to say no without really saying no. When someone wanted to donate something that I didn't want to accept, I waited a week or two and said, 'I'm sorry, but my board has other ideas.'"

There is that joke about the guy who is eating his first meal in the prison's chow-hall. Someone calls out, "Seventeen," and everyone laughs. Some short while later someone else calls out, "Thirty-one," and, again, everyone laughs. The newbie asks the guy next to him, "What's going on? Why are people calling out numbers and laughing?"

The old-timer explains, "Well, you see, we've all been here so long that we've numbered the jokes." Emboldened, the newbie calls out, "Twenty-four," and no one laughs. "What happened? Why didn't anyone laugh?" he inquires of the old-timer, who replies, "Some people don't know how to tell a joke."

Some people don't know how to tell a joke. Some people don't know how to tell a story. Some people don't want to. Taking a photograph doesn't make you a photographer. Filling a page with words doesn't make you a writer. You might be good at that, but not at this. Musicians can't necessarily draw.

I don't know where I can come up with a board, but if I give my assistant the title of "Editor," then I can just blame everything on her.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off. Please do contribute content, or your hard-earned pesos to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice; Atención robustly reborn for the digital f you can, please donate using the orange button below. Thank you.age. If you can, please donate using the Paypal button below. Thank you.

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