Revisions and additions: Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village (2022)

These revisions and additions (April 2024) apply primarily to books purchased in Mexico. Books purchased more recently via Amazon are the latest printing at the time of purchase (check for any later revisions), and Kindle editions should automatically update whenever minor revisions are made.

page 87, para 3 : Sylvia Fein (1919-2024) . . . fell in love with Mexico.

page 87, para 4: … also took part, as did Chapala resident Frieda Hauswirth Das.

page 88, para 4:
Add new para: “Edythe Wallach (later Kidd) lived and painted for most of 1944 in Chapala and Ajijic. Paintings from her solo exhibit at the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala were later exhibited in New York.”

page 210, para 1:  should read … Don’t Drink the Water, directed by Mickey Church. [not Rocky Karns]

page 220, para 3: should read . . . Festival de Febrero (formerly Northern Lights Music Festival)… Estación Cultural Chapala has been renamed as “Centro para la Cultura y las Artes de la Ribera.”

pages  243, 250 : Estación Cultural Chapala has been renamed as “Centro para la Cultura y las Artes de la Ribera.”

page 277, para 1: “The Ajijic Society of the Arts, which was dissolved in 2023, supported the Children’s Art Program and the Ajijic Balloon Festival (Festival de Globos). It also organized an annual Art Camp for about 150 lucky young artists.”

page 284, para 2: “written by the Summerses …”

page 287, para 3: delete “recent”

page 316, Footnote 36.1  : add “Bob Bassing, personal communication, 2023.”

page 333, add index entry for Wrenn – page 88

Previous revisions  (November 2023) :

page 21, para 1: should read “bare red hillside scar shaped like an eagle on Cerro Colorado (aka Cerro del Aguila) near Rancho del Oro”

page 53, para 3: should read “He left school (Harrow) at 16, helped lay a telegraph cable up the Amazon at 18, and became an electrical engineer.”

page 54, para 2: should read  “The Sudden View”

page 61, para 2: replace “their home’ by “the Posada”

page 63: (a) should read “The younger Millett, educated at Rugby School, studied …”
(b) should read “in several languages. In 1929, his debut avant-garde novel …”

page 67, last para: Should read “… in Mexico. The two men had been fellow students at Stowe School in England. This timing …”

page 68, first para: should read “… 1950, later becoming professor of art history…”

page 88, between paras 3 and 4: add “Retired illustrator Charles L Wrenn visited Ajijic and Chapala in about 1943. His known paintings of the area include what is believed to be the earliest plein air watercolor of historic Mezcala Island, the largest island in the lake.”

page 102, penultimate para: should read “The spa at Quinta Mi Retiro closed in about 1960; it may well be the “fountain of youth clinic” which ceased activity that year, according to the El Paso Herald-Post, for operating without a proper license. Not to be deterred, later that year Lytton-Bernard opened the Rio Caliente…”

page 113: para 2: should read “In 1950, Eileen and Bob Bassing left their Hollywood careers and moved to Ajijic with her two sons (then aged 11 and 14 respectively) to focus on their writing. The family lived in a $5 a month home in Ajijic, and supplemented their income by selling home-made fudge and operating a small lending library, “Simple Pleasures”, of English-language books they had shipped from California. Eileen later recalled …”

page 134, after para 3: add “Also in 1956, Donald Lewis, a writer, was held for questioning on suspicion of homicide after his wife’s death from an apparent overdose of sleeping pills at their home in Ajijic. According to police, Lewis refused medical aid for her and asked that she be left alone because she was “just sleeping.”

page 137, para 2: should read “… after killing his wife. His story inspired several books, including Love, Lies, and Murder (2007). In 2010…”

page 145, para 1 : should read “Preciado, and the wife of US vice-president Lyndon B Johnson.”

page 157, para 7: should read “Benjamin Shute, a co-founder of the Atlanta College of Art, and his wife, Nell, painted in Ajijic …”

page 188, para 5: should read “lifestyle”

page 205, after para 2: add “Zoë Mozert, reputedly the highest paid calendar artist of all time for her sensuous illustrations for pin-up calendars, painted at Lake Chapala in the mid-1960s.”

page 208, para 1: should read “… You Can’t Take It With You, staged in the open patio of a small inn in Chapala in 1953, produced and directed by Bob Bassing, and staged in August 1953 in the open patio of “La Playita,” a small inn in Chapala. The play, in which John Upton took the lead role, ended with spectacular pyrotechnics …”

page 219, after first para: add “Completing a trio of close friends with Goodridge and Sendis was a young Californian guitarist, Jim Byers, whose subsequent musical career included performing internationally as a classical guitarist.”

page 240, after para 5: add “Renowned Hollywood portraitist Richard Kitchin—a school friend of Peter Lilley and Anthony Stansfeld, the Dane Chandos duo—lived and painted in San Antonio Tlayacapan in the 1970s. He bequeathed many of his later works to the Instituto Cultural Cabañas in Guadalajara.”

page 259: should read “three blocks in each direction”

page 270, para 2: should read “Carnival (Carnaval) celebrations in the village are said to date back at least to 1880, pre-date those in …”

page 290: acknowledgments, add “Bob Bassing, James Catmur”

page 298, ch 9, ftnt 2: add: “James Catmur. 2023. “Tracing an ancestor down the Amazon!” https://engx.theiet.org/b/blogs/posts/tracing-an-ancestor-down-the-amazon

page 308, ch 25, ftnt 10: add “San Angelo Standard-Times, 30 July 1963, 18.”

page 323, ch 47, ftnt 1: add “Sofía Medeles. 2022. “El recibimiento y el desfile, los pilares del Carnaval de Ajijic.” Laguna, 28 February 2022.”