Picasso Dreams

KAT Tales: Ugly Toads, Schools in the Campo, Andy Gibb, Opera, Peter Schiff versus Bono, and the Victory Garden (not necessarily in that order)

Nature Girl

Living out here in the jungle and off the grid, my husband and I thought to ourselves, "We should have a vegetable garden."  Or maybe I thought that.  Besides, what kind of bear wouldn't have a vegetable garden in times like these?  Anyhow, my first plan was an heirloom vegetable garden.  That's fine and dandy until you take someone with a dormant plant addiction and let her loose on the internet.  In absolutely no time I had amassed almost $1,000 in seed purchases from three companies.  Unbelievably, my husband actually knows the true amount I have spent on the entire project, which is a huge milestone in our quarter-century relationship.  He might even think it's more than I actually spent, which is a new strategy in living harmoniously with someone who really isn't like you at all, especially when it comes to money.  He thinks I'm crazy, but it's an artsy, creative type of crazy that he occasionally finds endearing - unless we are arguing about money and he then reminds me how little artists contribute to the household in terms of monetary instruments.  Still, it's not like this my all-time high purchase involving gardening materials.  I used to work at a nursery.  I was a trustee for the Arizona Orchid Society.  I need not say anything else that might incriminate me.

Because this is a Kelly project and it is undertaken in Nicaragua, it is naturally complicated exponentially.

So what does a thousand bucks get you?  Fifty plus varieties of tomatoes, 12 watermelons, 30 plus melons, eight beans, twenty squashes....Let's just say that after planting about 40 percent of my garden with plans for only one plant of each variety of melon, watermelon, squash, eggplant, cucumber, tomato, and pepper, plus plots for sweet corn, I have come to the conclusion that the garden might not be big enough.  I don't know how big it is.  I was guessing 7,500 s.f., but it could be larger than that.  We have put up posts and barbed wire, a good thing since I saw two cows hanging out by the cattle guard at the entrance of our road last night.  That brings up memories of the day I lost it after seeing cows on my patio eating all my hibiscus plants and writing to my friends and owners of the development that, "If I had a gun right now, I would shoot all the cows."  Sometimes this country can really get to you.  

The garden was once nothing but scrubby trees, shrubs and grass on a long-ago cow pasture.   It was all cleared by hand, mostly by Marlo's hands.  Marlo is my ayudante/cuidador.  We also have Ronnie as a cuidador and sort of ayudante, but at 18 and kind of sheltered, he doesn't seem to like the garden.  I know he's thinking he'd have more fun on a construction site than digging, weeding and killing my plants.  He is trying, though, and with the fruits and vegetables ripening, he's getting into the groove and makes fewer mistakes.  He did an excellent job of putting up the fence.

Marlo cleared the garden with his machete and a lighter.  And the garden hose.  Actually, I was the one who needed the garden hose, as I was too impatient to delay burning and almost burned down the nature reserve, but that's another story.  The winds were crazy this year, delaying the burning and planting by a few weeks.   In my frantic impatience, I also decided to attack a consuelo tree with my machete, and ants came pouring onto my head.  I ran through the yet uncleared brush to the house where I started stripping my clothes and shoes off, begging Rob to douse me with water from the hose.  The vicious little mofo ants attacked every part of my body.  After a sufficient amount of naked flailing like some aboriginal snakewoman, I thought I had most of the ants off me and ran inside to use the shower.  As I passed into the house, Rob said, "Nice show for the cuidador" and that's when I looked over to see Ronnie with a slight smile on his face.  I can only imagine the stories about me down in the 'hood.  

It's been a lot of work and I have been working side by side with my crew.  I haul rocks, dirt, and brush.  I wield my machete on weeds, shrubs and small trees.  I dig holes and water the plants.  I am well known in El Carizel for my work ethic.  The folks out there have all seen me lifting big rocks out of the silt in the river bed, all day long.  I find that the guys work harder if I am working, too.  I am 5'6" and 124 pounds and I am heavier and taller than both of my workers.  They are strong despite their size, but we make a pretty funny combo.

      

Many people have asked if my husband has helped with the garden.  Not really.  There was a day that we were planting corn and he did move a couple wheelbarrows full of dirt into the garden, but that's pretty much it.  Oh, I forgot to mention that he planted the corn in the nude.  I once read a book on Wiccan gardening in which the author suggested planting naked in the light of the full moon.  We are planting sweet corn that allegedly needs more light than the 13 1/2 hours we get here, so I thought maybe the Wiccan ritual would help us overcome the light obstacle.  Our anniversary happened to coincide with the full moon, so I somehow convinced my beloved that the best way to celebrate would be to plant sweet corn in the garden while naked.  He actually consented.   True love.  Sigh.

  

The grid was ready and all we had to  do was push the seeds into the holes and then turn on the sprinkler.  Easy, right?  Not exactly.  First, we waited for the moon, but there were too many clouds.  Okay, we'll use a flashlight.  Between the champagne and the darkness and the mud, we planted 20 percent of the cornfield (a mere 64 holes) before giving up.  I don't know how he ran out of seeds halfway through his rows.  My left-right dyslexia kicked in and I wasn't sure what we had planted.  It was a comedy of errors and it will be a miracle if anything comes up.

My garden is growing by the day and soon everything will be planted.  Everything I have planted save for the eggplants has come up.  I have a  90 percent germination rate - I think (still waiting for the sweet corn).  A little black cat likes to run over the mounds of seedlings , crushing my beloved babies.  Nicky loves to play with me when I am weeding the garden.  Black Dog likes to roll in the garden beds and has since crushed several tomatoes and peppers, as well as the entire lettuce and spinach beds.  Bad dog!  We are also fighting different bugs with assorted organic pesticides that don't work as well as I'd like them to.  We just harvested our first cucumber.  We have melons that should be ready next week. Unfortunately, bugs got the first summer squash and golden zucchini.  

 

You can see photos of the garden here.

A night at the opera

I did manage to squeeze in some culture in between plantings, joining my friends from San Juan for a night of the opera in Managua.  It was sort of a girls trip, as Vanessa, Blue and I left our husbands at home.  (Rob, to his credit, actually took me to the opera in Houston to see Madame Butterfly, technically a great performance, but the star of Madame Butterfly was the oldest cast member, and as such was not convincing as a young virgin and thus not the best performance for a first time viewer.  I can empathize with his desire to remain in the campo for the evening.  Christian, one of the three men in our group, fell asleep at least once during the performance.)  Our wonderful host, Alejandro, took us to Cocina Dona Haydee's for dinner before we were whisked off to the Ruben Dario Teatro Nacional (which has more red decor than a whorehouse) to see La Boheme, which I enjoyed very much.  It's the third time I have seen this particular opera, and while not technically perfect, it still sounded lovely.  It was strange seeing a French opera (setting) in Italian performed by an assortment of international singers and Nicaraguan extras with Spanish subtitles displayed on the curtain (first time I have ever seen that) accompanied by my English-speaking friends.  The Spanish was Castillian and at times hard to follow, but I am familiar with the story.  After the opera, we fought traffic (anybody who has driven by the Teatro Nacional knows about the four car light and two hour wait) and ended up at Hipa Hipa, a nightclub in Managua inhabited by a lot of 21 year-olds in minidresses doing the sexy dance...or maybe they were just having sex right there on the dance floor, on the table, by the bar...I don't even remember the last time I was in a nightclub.  Alejandro, a.k.a. Playboy, had reserved the VIP section for us.  It was fun to see, but I felt out of  place and thus was the beginning of the mid-life crisis.  

It was such a treat to have a night out.  It's not quite Manhattan, but after a month of working in the garden, I couldn't imagine a better evening.

Not a flip flop amongst us!  Must be some kind of record.

Me with my friends Vanessa and Blue at Hipa Hipa in Managua.

This is how I looked on my two good hair days in the past couple of months.  Now I am addicted to Cappelli's Salon in Las Galerias.

My mid-life crisis

Birthdays are usually a happy time for me.  For the past three years, my friend Mara and I have co-hosted our own birthday because in Nicaragua, you host your own birthday.  We rent the disco for a private party, crank out lots of 70's and 80's disco and zero reggatone (at least until I leave the premises), arrange to have food delivered that will invariably not make it to the disco, and serve twenty plus elephants of Flor de Cana to our closest 600 friends, most of whom have received hand made invitations by yours truly, Martha's secret lovechild.  Invariably, someone keeps passing out these handmade invitations to just about anyone, including people who can't come but want the invitation because they're cool.  I created a monster.  The second year invitations were actual collages.  I thought I would die from creative overdose and no time to finish.  

The first party started on my 40th, and each successive party has gotten better, as has the food.  I look forward to birthdays now, so why am I suddenly having a mid-life crisis?

Vanessa, Crystal, me and Blue

I hadn't really thought of the term "middle aged" as it might pertain to myself until a stream-of-consciousness-and-inebriation mini rant to a friend led me to discover that my former celebrity free-pass and fantasy, Bono, is now 49.  I wrote that I wouldn't have a mid-life crisis until Bono turned 50, which I instantly Googled and discovered that Bono has less than a year until he is officially middle-aged, assuming that he lives to be one hundred.

That Bono is no longer my fantasy should come as no surprise to anyone who saw the April cover of Spin magazine, with a glammed up Bono complete with eyeshadow, eyeliner and sparkles.  It wasn't like having a fantasy about a guy with a mullet for a decade was an easy thing to do, but the make-up was too much, which I promptly announced to the customers, staff, and the people trying to read magazines without paying for said magazines at the Miami International Airport Border's Bookstore.  "Oh my god, that does it, Bono's no longer my free pass!" I exclaimed, presenting the cover for Rob and everyone in the store to see.  Bono in glam was too much for even Rob to handle, which I gleaned from Rob's "WTF-You're-crazy-I-don't-know-her" glance as he took a step away from Bono's face on the magazine and thus a step away from me.  At least that's how I remember it - and I naturally have a much better memory than my beloved because I am a woman.  My ability to remember random bits of trivia and past wrongs is up in the top two percentile of my gender. 

What's even sadder is that my celebrity free pass is a not-yet-middle-aged-if-he-lives-to-be-one-hundred economic commentator/stockbroker Peter Schiff.  I barely know what the guy looks like, but listening to someone take on the paid hacks for several years does more than any heartthrob on the market.  You just have to listen to the man speak.  It's kind of like the way Bono sings.  It was easy to forget about the mullet because I was caught up in the music.  Okay, Peter's voice is slightly nasal in tone, but he speaks with so much passion and conviction - the Libertarian bear underdog for many years - how could he not be my celebrity fantasy?  Yes, nothing says "Sex!" more than crashing markets and bankrupt economies.  I am so pathetic.  Is this because I have no life here?  Or because I can't keep the names straight of the airbrushed faces in People magazine?  Or is it really bear economics?  I met a guy last week who was surprised I was a woman because we liked most of the same websites and could finish each other's sentences when it came to conspiracy talk.  "There aren't a lot a woman like you," he said, meaning that things like Operation Northwoods, Rex-84, the Bilderbergers and all that stuff just roll off my tongue.  Plus, I know a lot about economics and science, which are not usually subjects that interest my female friends.  I would be a hot ticket at a 9-11Truther's convention or a GATA protest.

  

So I stare at the reflection in the mirror too long, knowing that normally I look younger than my age, but looking back at photos from ten years ago, it hits me that I am in my forties.  It really didn't bother me until now, and I suppose it's something trivial enough that it will pass shortly, but it's been an obsession for almost a month, which is a long time in my imaginary world.

Tales of insects, toads and amphibian fecal matter

Living in the jungle means living with funny looking and often over-sized insects, wild animals, birds of exquisite colors...and toads.  

Toads seem harmless, at least if you grew up in New England catching toads, butterflies, and lightning bugs and bringing them into the house to live in mayonnaise jars until they eventually suffocate, even with holes punched into the lids.  

My happy memories of asphyxiated toads were tarnished a year ago when out of nowhere, about ten toads took up residence in the house.  At first it was just two or three  "How funny!" we remarked, until we noticed what looked like cat turds scattered around the house, except they weren't cat turds.  Toad turds are kind of airy;  when dry, they turn into powder.  Yes, powdered shit.  Suddenly it wasn't two or three, but ten toads that we would chase out of the house each day, each one leaving a trail of piss and poop.  The situation grew more dire in the rainy season, when they reproduced.  After the rainy season, they never migrated onto wherever it is toads migrate.  They stayed on, living under the bed, inside shoes, under the bookcases, -  wherever they could fit their disgusting, gelatinous bodies.  Then it got bad.  Very bad.  We were finding twenty or thirty in the house each morning.  It got to the point that instead of tossing them outside, I flung them violently over the retaining wall, hoping they would make their way down to the soon-to-be river - or better yet, die.

  

Some of the toads are poisonous, though which ones, we are not sure.  Many dogs have died from licking toads.  One observation I have from living here for four years is that Nica dogs are fairly stupid and should not be bred, but I digress as I am prone to do.  I treat all toads as if they are deadly.  Besides, they always try to pee (usually with success) on me before I violently hurl them to their unlikely death.  (Do they get he connection?  No, because toads are stupid.)  Of course this necessitates more hand washing, though nothing gets the dirt out from my fingernails.  It's a San Juan condition.  I freak out when I go to the States and I see that my fingernails are ALWAYS clean!  There are days here when I can write my name in the dirt that has collected on my arm.  One night I made a comment to my husband that in the course of two hours, the toads had caused me to wash my hands more than an obsessive compulsive.  I then proceeded to wash my hands another 15 times as I tossed yet more disgusting toads over the retaining wall, with many taking the opportunity to pee on my hand along the way.  At some point, I started using a towel to pick them up, but even that still necessitates washing my hands.  My fingers and nerves were raw after removing more than sixty toads from the patio.

How can this happen?  I am not a sadist.  I didn't necessarily enjoying tossing the toads and praying that they impale themselves upon landing.  That's not who I am, and that's who I was until I came up with the catch and release program.

Rob thought I was crazy at first.  "It will never work," he said.

The first night we closed the doors in the house and in the morning found 16 ebullient toads waiting at the door (well, ebullient for toads), which I collected and put into a cardboard box and later released in San Juan del Sur, only because I forgot about them when I was in the middle of nowhere.  I pulled over, got out of the truck, removed the box and dumped the toads next to the garbage can and threw away the urine-fecal coated cardboard box.  As soon as I drove away, part of the posse of diez hombres that observed my activities decided to check out what I had left behind.  They will hate me forever.

The second evening yielded sixteen more toads.  The third night we peaked with 20-something, and the next night we were down to four.  This morning six more toads were released to an empty field two miles from home and hopefully they won't come back.  We have already seen a difference and there are fewer incidents of walking through toad shit as we make our way through the house in the dark of the night.

Speaking of shit and urine, the Maya bugs have returned with a vengeance  Last week in yoga class, a Maya bug peed on my foot while I was stretching on my mat.  Despite tending to the situation immediately by scrubbing my foot with soap while standing over a petite sink in a bathroom without a light (I was in to much of a hurry to wash off the urine to bother looking for the light switch), I have a nasty rash.  A few days later, I swatted an insect off my foot and sure enough, it was a Maya bug.  Now I have two disgusting calloused rashes on my foot.  I can't win.   I remember looking at my legs in January thinking, "What the hell happened?"  If I was an immigration officer, I would have sent me into quarantine.  There had to be at least two hundred red bites on my legs, like I had  walked into a mound of fire ants.  I still have no idea what attacked me since I didn't feel it at the time, but they helped accentuate my jungle girl look, which also included sun-streaked orange hair, scratches, burns (don't burn your garden in Tevas), bruises, and permanently black fingernails.  Then came the tick bites.  Right now my back is covered by a series of insect bites of undetermined origin.  A couple weeks ago it was the scorpion bite when I picked up a bra that I had left on the floor.  The first ten seconds are searing, but the pain subsides to a dull sting.  Rob seems  to have an easier time dealing with bites.  My finger throbbed for about an hour.  A few hours later, my lips tingled slightly and my arm was visibly swollen.   I was practicing my Spanish with Marlo when I happened to mention that I had been stung by a scorpion that morning.

Though most people have no symptoms, some die from allergic reactions, he said.  Verdad.  He then told me that those with reactions should avoid sex.  Yes, a month without sex, male or female or you will die.  Even one day early and he swears he knows a woman who died when having sex on Day 29.  I told him that it was some woman's excuse to not have sex with her husband.  Touch me and I will die and there will be no one to cook, clean and scrub your butt for you.

I didn't tell him that my lips were tingling - or that I had sex that morning, just before meeting up with the scorpion.  (Actually, he's a Leo.)  Maybe he was trying to keep me from having sex with my husband because he has had one too many fantasies of his boss in ripped jeans that might be considered pornographic in some cultures, but which are my only options right now.  Two weeks ago I go a terrible sunburn on one knee and  a line under my ass from the holes on one side and a huge swath of dark brown that looks like a welt across my back from where my shirt creeps up when I am bent over planting or digging or composting.  I have stripes from my sandals going across my feet.  It's garden chic.  It's also not very sexy to my husband, who still has flashbacks to my days working at the nursery when I would come home smelling like mulch.  (Some people actually liked the smell.)  Ironically, it's not the scorpion that will keep me from having sex with my husband - it's the farmer's tan.

Andy Gibb

How can I  segue from husband's dislike of my farmer's tan to Andy Gibb?  Well, that he dislikes both should be obvious, but the reason why I love him so much is that I realized a while ago that he never says a word when I play my favorite Andy Gibb songs, which would be cause for divorce in some states - the playing of anything by Andy Gibb, that is.  Still, he bites his tongue and doesn't say a word or even grimace when "Shadow Dancing" and "Everlasting Love"  appear on the playlist.  That's what marriage is all about.  I don't will no longer say a word about Johnny Cash, so we are even.  Okay, some might think that since there was a movie made about Johnny Cash's life and not one of Andy Gibb's, that would not make us even.  But we are even.  Thank you, Rob.

The Mid-life Crisis Collides with the Campo and I Cannot Feel Sorry for Myself

This is typical of many of the houses in the campo.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to accompany him and woman named Marcella to deliver some sewing machines to a remote barrio in the jungle.  We would need to go by horse and ox cart, he said.  We met at the appointed time, loaded the machines into my 4Runner, and made our way south.   Just past Escamequita, we saw an old man walking down the road, so we offered him a ride.  About halfway between Playas Yanqui and Coco, there is a road that veers left to Parque Escamaca.  The old man was surprised and relieved to see us heading down this road.  About three miles later, we came across the community of Las Brisas, where the old man lived.  I thought about him walking six miles from where I had picked him up.   Though it's not too far geographically from where I live, I never knew the community existed.  

In Las Brisas, Eric met with some of the local women to discuss the sewing center.  He is coordinating the delivery of  ten foot-powered sewing machines into the campo so they can have their own sewing center.  The ladies were excited.  One woman said that in a few months, they would have enough profits to buy two more machines.  I turned to Eric.

"Did I understand that correctly?" I asked.

"Incredible, isn't it?" he answered.

This is a country that doesn't plan for the future.  This is a country where someone will spend their last centavo on a beer and worry about how he will feed his family tomorrow.  But I was to learn that things are actually different out here, away from any kind of public service.  People have to plan to survive, particularly to make it through the rainy season when the river rises and the community is cut-off from the rest of the world for a few months out of the year.  

We waited for the cart to be loaded with bricks before the sewing machines were placed on them to be transported to El Cangrejo, which is 6 kilometers from Las Brisas.  We chatted with the locals to pass the time.   We started taking pictures of a  little girl eating breakfast while surrounded by chickens.  As soon as she saw the cameras, she started to cry.  The mother told us that not too long ago, doctors came in and gave the kids vaccinations.  Some of the doctors took pictures of the kids, so the little girl associates cameras with painful shots.

My horse.

It was unfortunate that I was unable to ride my horse, Pablo Picasso, into the jungle.  My appointed horse was fine as far as horses go (and typically loaded with tics everywhere), but the saddle was like nothing I have ever experienced.  It's a Nica saddle, so there is no horn.  It's just a piece of leather draped over a thin straw mat.  The stirrups were tied in a complicated manner and thus I didn't want to disturb them.  They were too short by at least twelve inches.  I could sit down and rest my butt on the horse's ass.  At 5'6", I am a giant here. 

Because everything with me is complicated, I had to carry my scoliosis-inducing camera.  Though it was around my neck, I used one hand to secure it and the other hand to hold the rope reins.  There was no bit and my horse liked to run.

As we left Las Brisas, I was thinking to myself that my vehicle could make it through this path.  At some point I stopped thinking that and wondered how the hell an ox cart was going to make it through.

We passed two hundred year-old Ceiba trees and ancient Guanacastes covered in orchids and bromeliads.  I saw plantain trees with stalks of sweet yellow maduro hanging from them, undisturbed in the wild.  Monkeys and sloths moved through the trees.  There were so many birds that we never felt alone during the journey.  

We rode along a dry river bed for a while.  When the rain comes, the river comes alive with fresh-water shrimp that remain dormant during the dry season.

The villagers of El Cangrejo were happy to see us.  Not too long after we arrived, the ox cart pulled up with the sewing machines.

Eric delivers the sewing machines.

While Eric was busy setting up the machines and talking with the ladies, I wandered into the school, which exists only because of Eric's efforts. The government said that the kids can go to school in Las Brisas, but it's an hour on foot or horse, and impassable during the rainy season.  Eric took on the project of building the school.  I had to dodge the chickens that were racing through the empty classroom. 

Inside the classroom.

Classroom materials.  Yep, that's it.  One of these items includes an American government book in English published in 1993.  

  

This was one of the more humbling moments of my life.  The classroom is nearly void of educational materials.  The teacher lives in La Tortuga.  She takes the bus to Escameca, walks five or six kilometers to Las Brisas and then saddles up on a horse to go to El Cangrejo.  Ten months a year she does this, or until it the rain keeps her away.  My friend Eric is trying to have a small house built for her in the campo next to the school.

I attracted a crowd of children with my camera.  One young teenage girl followed my every move to the point of extreme awkwardness.  She reminded me of a salesperson at a store in Managua, hovering within millimeters just in case you need something.  I felt like a celebrity here. 

  

 

The kids were dressed in an array of clothing, from naked to a full length lilac taffeta dress.  It was fund seeing a young girl wearing a formal dress around the house.  The dress had dirt stains, like it was no different than any other dress.  I mention it because I have seen this quite frequently - in the middle of nowhere on a day of no importance, little girls are dressed like princesses.  

Eric told the leaders of this small community about a house constructed of dirt bags in San Juan.  With plastic bag construction there is no need for oxen to load cartfuls of bricks to the outer villages.  They are cheap, easy to construct, provide great cooling and are more earthquake proof than simple brick construction  They were buzzing about the possibilities.  

I am excited about the sewing center.  I am going to have tote bags made for the store and T-shirts made for my farm ("Commie Greens:  Eat organic or Die" and "Commie Greens:  Social Engineering through Organic Farming" are my and Rob's respective logos) in the jungle.  It won't be a sweat shop, either, with fair prices paid for the labor.

The lady who owns the land on which the school sits invited us for lunch.  It was standard fare: rice, beans, tostones and avocado, but filling.  We played with the children, the dog and the chocoyos (parakeet/parrot cross) and then said our goodbyes.  I promised a little girl named Dahlia that I would send some dahlia seeds back with Martin when he came to town later in the week.  She didn't know her name was a flower.  She and her mom aren't sure they will be able to grow the flowers because of the pigs, but they'll try.

Martin, our guide, was excited about the seeds.  The first thing he said was, "We'll have even more seeds for next year."  I am not used to this level progressive thinking about the future in this country!

He has no idea what mustard greens or eggplant are, so I am coming back in a month to offer a cooking demonstration over the open fire.  Should be interesting.  

I could barely walk at this point, and I dreaded the return home in the saddle.  I looked at the stirrups again and realized they weren't going anywhere down, so I shoved my camera in my backpack and braced myself for the pain - and there was a lot of pain.  The ride back to Las Brisas home was brutal.  It nearly killed me.  For the most part, my discomfort was related to the stirrups, but the saddle didn't provide a lot of cushion and the weight loss through gardening has made me lose any padding I ever had on my ass.  I was so, so, so thankful to get into my car with air conditioning and padded seats.  

It took a few days to recover from the pain, but the thought of what is or isn't in the classroom weighs heavy in my mind.  Eric is trying to get a donation for a solar panel, battery and mini-DVD player that could be used for educational purposes.  The roof needs repaired (the monkeys run along it, destroying the zinc), the screens need fixing to keep the chickens out.  The fence to keep the cows out seems to be holding up, as the classroom appeared bovine-free.  

I started looking for educational materials in Spanish from the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations. I am hoping to gather posters, pamphlets, coloring books, flash cards and anything else that they might be able to use.  If you are reading this and want to help, send postcards of animals, flora, fauna, or interesting shots of other countries, as well any lightweight educational material (preferably in Spanish) to:

School Project

El Gato Negro

San Juan del Sur

Nicaragua

Yes, I have the simplest address in the world.

Postage from the US is ridiculous $4 per pound, so lightweight items are best.  Thanks for anything that might help provide basic education to these kids.

 

You can see more photos of Nicaragua here.

Kelly and Luna

This is a photo of me and my friend Luna at the official Grand Opening of her Day Spa at Pelican Eyes.  Some of you might recognize the fabulous Luna from this album, her wedding in Amalfi.

Current State of Mind

Breaking through the Barrier

copyright Kelly Ann Thomas
All rights reserved.

I have had a hard time focusing lately.  My prognostications have manifested into reality.  The DJIA is in a freefall, the political landscape is chaos, and the Fed is printing money like there is no tomorrow because maybe there is no tomorrow.

And yet I have belief that mankind will overcome slavery, breaking free from governments and debts that bind him to despair.  I just hope mankind wakes up before it's too late.

White Woman's Guilt

copyright Kelly Ann Thomas

Ah, lazy mornings.  I awoke at dawn to the sounds of two tribes of Howler monkeys competing to provide me with my morning wake up call.  Callie crawled onto my chest for her morning cuddles until Richmond, my Maine coon cat, pushed her away and demanded I share the love.  The young ones (Nicky ad Isabelle) spent the morning playing with a cardboard box.

Not wanting to get up just yet, I pick up the latest Vanity Fair and settled back under the covers.  Bill Clinton's comeback, Angelina Jolie's relief work, and the founders of internet commerce take me far away from the jungles of Nicaragua.  Though I delve into the articles, each time my eye drifts from the pages, I am reminded of my geography - the cane ceilings, the wild parrots screeching from the tree, the rolling green hills, and the blaring of the horn for the 6:10 bus to San Juan del Sur.  Outside, the blue spotted butterflies make a rat-a-tat sound (similar to static electricity) as they chase each other in all directions.  Occasionally an interloper will join in on the butterfly version of Three Card Monty, rattling off their passionate clicks until one suitor is chased away.  I steal a pillow from Rob and try to focus on the articles about pretty and important people.  I cannot remember the last time I was this lazy.  Normally by 6 a.m. I am brewing my chai latte, feeding the cats and Not My Dog and Nobody's Dog, serving myself a bowl of granola and yogurt, and assembling all the things I will need in town - trash and recycled materials, compost bin, laptop, camera, cell phone and charger, keys, yoga mat, money, and all the things needed for the store.  Invariably I forget something each day.

It felt so good to lie in bed until 6:30 that I decided to play hooky, which I can do because I am the boss.  Having worked every day for the past few weeks, I can justify staying in bed.  My presence might be missed, but isn't necessary for the day. 

As I get ready for the maid (I wash the previous evening's dishes, pick up my clothes and make the bed so as not to appear too lazy), I feel fortunate and guilty.  I can sing my own self-worth, but had I been born into an impoverished culture with parents who had little or no education, I might be the one sweeping the floors and scrubbing the showers.  Poverty is a requirement of capitalism.  I don't know what Arelia thinks of me or extranjeros in general.  We pay her 150 cordobas for 4 hours of labor; the average wage for a maid in the campo is 80 cordobas for 8 hours of work.  We also provide for her medical care.   We have given her stacks of nice clothing, linens, shoes, toiletries, and household items.

Many people underpay their maids.  Many maids steal to make up for their crappy wages.  It's more complicated than the "pay them more" solution for reasons that I will not cover in this post.   

The second day Arelia worked for me, she found a garish plastic belt in the bathroom trash can.  She asked if she could have it.  The belt had come with a pair of shorts.  Just before I tossed it away, I thought that I should offer it to Arelia when she came to work the next day, but it was so ugly, so tacky that I thought she might be insulted by the offer.  She picked it out of the trash and asked Rob if she could keep it.  I was mortified by my wasteful actions when he told me she liked it and needed a belt.  It's not trash to me, she said, although worded slightly differently.

I don't usually toss things like that away, or if I do, they go into a "gratis" box that I leave on a corner, not too far from the garbage dumpsters.  Of all the things I have given away, only one item had a dearth of takers.  In fact, this one item sat on the stoop to our store for three days before someone finally picked it out of the free box.  That item would be Kato Kaelin's autobiography.   Rob and I joked about the old drunks rummaging through our free book pile, fighting over who got to keep the French cookbook written in German.  "I don't want Kato, you take him!" we imagined them screaming at each other while grabbing the second to last item to go, the French cookbook written in German.  Kato's ghost-written autobiography had "graced" the shelves of the Iguana book exchange for several years and became my property when Dee donated her picked over collection to me.  A month later I relayed our imaginary story of the drunks rejecting the autobiography of O.J. Simpson's houseguest when one of my unidentified friends said, "I have that book." At first I thought he meant he had read the book in the past, though he couldn't have been older than 13 when the trial occurred.  No, he said, he picked it out of the free box and had the book in his office!  I didn't know whether to be insulted or amused.  The drunks picked up copies of my old Cold War text books and guides to Soviet missile production, but not Kato.  If anyone from Kato's publishing house is reading this blog entry, I suggest you find the person who gave O.J.'s buddy a cash advance for his memoirs and put him in rehab where he belongs.

But I digress, as I am prone to do.

Compared to an American, I live a very modest life.  Compared to a Nicaraguan…well, I am not in the league of the uber rich Managuans who show up in their helicopters and make their maids tend to their children on the beach - in full uniform, including pantyhose, but I live in a nice house, own two (cough, cough) vehicles money pits (because the first one is lacking mobility caused by a non-functioning differential), and have a nice business.  I have a really nice life.  I am suffering from White Woman's Guilt.  Reading Vanity Fair almost seems a cliché.  Almost.

Fear of Flying

My heart is still lodged in my throat, my stomach is in knots.  The screams of 200 terrified passengers still rings in my ears.

The first warning was the captain's stern and urgent call for flight attendants to stop the beverage service and return to their jump seats.  They barely had time to get to their seats when the turbulence shook this tiny metal tube with wing to its core.  The plane dropped into a free fall.  Passengers screamed.  The pilot banked a hard left while going into a steep descent.  More screams.  Oh my god, the plane is going to crash, I thought to myself.  A Filipino woman sitting across from me was gripping the armrests.  I wanted to grab her hand, but she was too far away.  "Praise Jesus!  Praise Jesus!  Praise Jesus!" she called, over and over.  She was not the only one seeking divine intervention.  I looked for the emergency exits and watched as several passengers crossed their hearts and offered prayers to Dios and Mary.  The plane continued to descend.  We are 20,000 feet over the Caribbean and there is no place to land.

"It's just weather," I said softly.  "Just weather."  I didn't really believe it.  I thought of Rob, imagining him a widow.  I feel guilty for wanting him with me right now to comfort me.  I shoved my laptop under my seat, envisioning the rescuers finding it submerged in water.  My thoughts turned to dad number one, who survived a plane crash in 1968.  Ten people lived, 32 died when his plane crashed into the side of a mountain outside of Lebanon, NH.  Ironically, he survived because he was a smoker.  Those that survived all sat in the back of the plane.  I am five rows from the back.  I usually prefer to be as close to the front of the plane as possible, so I can hussle down to immigration before the pother passengers, not that it matters because 90 percent of the time I end up in the slowest lines.  The flight is four short of full, so I am sitting near the rear.  .

Eventually, the turbulence disappeared, though my heart rate has not returned to normal.  The passengers sit in silence, all trying to process that fear we felt as the plane dropped and a crash seemed imminent.  I am not sure how much time passed before we felt that we were out of danger.  Seconds felt like years.  Thoughts raced through my mind faster than I could process them.  I feared for my certain death.  Never before have I felt this much trepidation and anxiety.  I noticed that the plane was still descending, though only slightly.  I looked out the coral reefs of the Caribbean, thinking about the air crash in Mauritius.  Life jacket is under the seat, water is warm and shallow, I am close enough to three exit points.  The pilot has everything under control, but just in case, I go over my scenarios. 

Exacerbating the situation was that we had been sitting at the gate in Miami for more than two hours while mechanics examined and repaired a dent on the plane.  As inconvenient as it was, it does not matter how long we have to wait to make sure the tin box can keep us safely in the sky.  What was wrong with the plane?  The captain hadn't mention bad weather.  You could hear these same thoughts echoing down the aisles, no one wanting to give voice to our fears.

My camera remained on my lap, clutched tightly with my thighs.  Before the announcement, I had been experimenting with photos from the window and uploading them onto my laptop.  I had just finished perusing a copy of Cloth, Paper, Scissors and felt inspired to do something artistic, so I decided to shoot some photos of the rippled lines beneath the sea and play around in Photoshop.  The plane was maintaining position, but not climbing. 

No one said anything for a while.  I broke the silence with the click of the shutter and snapped pictures of a deserted island below.  Was that a landing strip?  The plane ascended back to 31,000 feet.  The pilot told the cabin crew to resume the beverage service.  He offered no immediate explanation.

The flight attendant asked me for me drink order.  "Cranberry juice, water, and Valium, please."

"I have a Xanax I can share with you," he said, and I almost took him up on what might have been a sincere offer.  If we crashed, I would need to keep my wits about me, so I didn't pursue it.  I'll wait until we get to Managua and stop at a pharmacy.  No prescription needed there. 

We eventually did get an apology and an explanation, but the passengers in the back couldn't hear it over the roar of the engines.  That is the other reason I do not like the rear of the plane.  It's too loud.

I felt much better when I looked at the lush landscape  as we approached Managua.  Even the subfusc olive waters of Lago Managua seemed steeped with life (and raw sewage).

As we approached the runway, a rainbow came into view.  Below, the brightly painted houses and the rusting red tin roofs popped out from the dense green foliage.  Everything looked so beautiful from the air.

We landed - a perfectly smooth landing.  The passengers greeted the landing with a large round of applause.  The crew apologized for the delay in Miami.  They warn passengers about overhead luggage that may have shifted during landing.  No apology for the near death experience needed , though I would have liked to thank the pilot for being able to get us safely here.

I am on the ground, watching as a bright yellow school bus in a sea of green drives parallel to the runway.  I am home.  This is where I want to be

Private Thoughts

Yesterday I found a love letter of sorts tucked inside a book from a collection I purchased some time ago but never shelved.  It was invasive, I know, but I couldn’t resist.  As soon as I saw the name, I had to read the letter.  I know the person.  As I read the letter, I saw the telltale characteristics of the significant other's personality, structure and prose.  The letter was written before they were married.  The letter writer referenced Ma Bell. Like Ma Bell, as a couple, they have ceased to exist. 

There wasn't anything special in the letter - typical yearnings of new love, but it was unfinished.  There were no creases on the paper, no signature, no sign that it had ever been mailed, and yet he not only read it, but saved it.  I found it in the recipient's book, tucked in the back sleeve.  I wonder why it was placed in this particular book.  Did something in the book remind him of her?  Or maybe this was her book and she found the letter, tucked it aside, and in the aftermath of the breakup, he took possession of the book and sold it to me. 

If I am slightly obsessing about this, then what have the readers of my unfinished letters and journals gone astray thought of me?  Am I recognizable as the writer?

Several months ago, I was seized with an urge to pour some of my pent up emotions onto paper and some rather startling truths flowed from my pen.  I stopped somewhere along the way and left my notebook and t-shirt at someone's house.  When I returned the next day, the t-shirt was there, but the notebook was gone.  A friend of a friend was staying at the house, looking after it while the owners were away.  Each day I returned and scanned the living room and kitchen for the notebook, but it never reappeared.  The housesitter only met me once and I don't think she knew that the t-shirt and notebook belonged to me, nor would she be able to identify me as the author.  My fear was that it would be left behind where my friends might one day discover it.  There would be no mistaking that the words belonged to me.  They were words that I would never repeat to anyone.

I don't know what became of the journal.  It was several months before my friends returned.  I hope the notebook was just used as scrap paper and tossed away from prying eyes like mine.

Monkey on my Head

This is Maya, a 4-month old Congo monkey.  Poachers killed her mom, so she now belongs to the Pelican Eyes animal sanctuary.  She needs constant care for about 18 months.  I took over the job of monkeysitting (meaning the monkey sits on my head most of the time) for a few hours last week.

Poor Rob was trying to eat a banana when Maya caught sight of it and decided it was feeding time.

This is a self portrait just before I drove home with a monkey on my head.  I am pretty sure this would be illegal in the US.

Moving to the 'Burbs

I am escaping hell!  No more late night bars, no more 5 am buses, no more "Cebolla!  Cebolla!  Cebolla!" screaming through my living room.  No more bombas lit off in front of my car, no more feral cats fighting on the roof, and no more flooded streets spilling into my living room.  I am headed to the suburbs, about 20 minutes south of the giant metropolis of San Juan del Sur.

Ask and you shall receive.  I asked and the universe delivered me a fabulous, new home bordered by a 400 (?) acre nature reserve, just a few minutes away from my horse and a private (in that no one goes there) beach.  The owner has graciously offered us the use of his home for 10 months.  Best of all, it is off the grid.  No more Union Fenosa.  I will also have internet from a solar-powered ISP!

This house is on a lot that I wanted to purchase, but at the time, I was not ready to buy.  Now I get to live exactly where I wanted.  I can have a vegetable garden.  I have no neighbors.  When I left the house yesterday afternoon, I heard the monkeys howling in the trees.  This is going to be an incredible change.

I have a friend who rents a one-bedroom apartment to use as a studio and I will take over her lease sometime in January.  I will have a house in the country and an apartment in the city.  The apartment is about the same distance that my current home is to my store, a two-minute walk.  It is a block away from the beach.  Stepping out of the door and facing right, you can see the ocean.  It's on a side street, so there will not be a lot of traffic.  I will use it as a studio, a storage space, a spot to escape to when I do not want to be in the store, and an overnight pad if we want to hang out with friends in town at night.

When I awoke this morning, I recalled I had been dreaming about compost piles.  I so want to be in touch with nature again.  When we moved here, we were both hoping to recreate our experience living in a little cabin in the woods of Vermont 15 years ago.  We had a nice, simple life.  We hiked, rode our bikes, ran through the hills, and at the end of the day cooked fabulous meals.  We made jams, pickled peppers, and froze corn and blueberries.  We loved amongst deer, raccoons, foxes, skunks, pheasants and wild turkeys bordered by a meadow and a forest.  It was a great little place.

I wrote my business plan for a bookstore/café/gallery in that little cabin.  Fifteen years later, I have the store and soon the cabin.  I suppose it is not fair to call it a cabin, since it is a nice house.  It does have many natural elements - a cane roof, riverstone walls, and wooden doors and window frames.  I probably shouldn't write more, lest I jinx this good fortune.

As I walked down the steps to the beach this morning, I ran into a new arrival.  "I am blissing out!" she said, climbing the steps to the sidewalk.  I make my way down to the water, stopping to examine the millions of coquina-ish mollusks congealed en mass in the sand.  I took in the fabulous lush hillside, normally parched this time of year.  We have had unusual rainstorms in the dry season.  The water sparkles so bright I have to avert my eyes.  It is a beautiful morning and I reminded of my first months when I owned the beach.   Of course, it is not mine, but I knew the beachscape so well that it felt a part of me.  I watched the other beachcombers, wondering when they came to view the sands as their own.  I was glad that I had not brought my iPod with me, for I would have missed the clicking sounds of the crabs as they darted in and out of the crevices in the rocks.  I stopped to watch them go about their routines and then realized how long it had been since I had take then time to is little stretch of land I cal home.  Walking back, I wondered what else I would miss about my daily routine.  I will still see the same people, but I won't be part of the barrio.  I will miss seeing the taxista holding his little baby daughter (who isn't a baby anymore) in the morning before going to work.  The neighborhood kids won't see me walking down the street with Nikita and Isabelle, our black and white mascots we take to and from the store each day.  I'll miss the little kids who play on my porch and write their names on my dusty car.  Still, these moments are not worth enduring the lack of sleep I have had from the incessant noise pollution of a "sleep little fishing village."  As an aside, I hope the guidebook writers come up with a more appropriate description of the town, which has far more cars than fishing boats.  Yes, and here I am adding to the traffic.  I could take the bus into town and probably will at some point, but I will commute to work by car most days.

The cats will commute, too.  They have to earn their keep, so they go to the store each day to entertain the customers with cute little poses and pathetic cries implying that they are dying from lack of caloric sustenance, something that can be cured with a little piece of Canadian bacon or a sip of a latte.  Callie and Richmond are more than happy to see the playful kittens leave for the day.  I know they secretly hope that each time I leave with Nikita and Isabelle, it will be the last time they ever see the kittens.

Well, I am going to start packing y possessions.  I am counting down the days until I can sit under a black sky illuminated only by stars and lightning bugs.

Are you happy?

Are you happy?

I am asked this several times a weeks by friends and family. If someone had asked me that at 1:30 this afternoon when several friends and their friends and family converged on my store after I had run out of ice, bread, juice, fruits, and ground espresso (I have the beans, but grinding is a noisy and time consuming process) and sweat was pouring off me, I might have said, “Not at this immediate moment,” had I the time to respond. It’s every business owners dream to have too many customers, but when it’s 93 degrees (a guess) and 95 percent humidity (another guess because I have never actually seen a thermometer or barometer here) and you don’t have the benefit of AC or enough fans to create hurricane force winds and you let one of your employees leave just before the mad late lunch rush appeared and all you really want to do on your first day back from vacation is to close early and run down to the beach and dive into the water to remove the layers if grease, sweat, and dust covering your body, profits are secondary to wanting a life.

It has been my dream to open a bookstore/café/gallery for the past decade and a half. I finally did it, successfully, too. What I didn’t plan in this fantasy of mine is giving up my life. I don’t have long talks with my friends. My writing, both personal and what I post online, is almost non-existent. My professional website hasn’t been updated since its inception. Languid strolls on the beach are rare, and I haven’t added anything to my rather large cornucopia of sea glass, driftwood, and shells. There are days when I miss my old life so much, though in some ways it was not as fulfilling as what I have now. I miss concerts. For the first time last year I missed a Dave Matthews Band concert, breaking my nine-year streak. I miss talking with my vet, one of the nicest men in the whole world. I miss my house and my wonderful purple office and the hot tub and the peach tree that serves as Vladimir’s headstone. I miss my purple Volvo and the Houston Art Car Parade. Most of all, I miss most are my friends. I miss hanging out at Starbuck’s (but I don’t miss the coffee or the $5 iced lattes) and catching up on the latest news with my friends. I miss weekend brunches and trips to Anderson and Hunt where I could just hang out with my girlfriends and leave the stress of the city far behind. I miss cleaning my house with Margaret. I miss margaritas with Rebecca. I miss long phone calls with Marc, and funny email exchanges with people I have never met. I miss my old friends, too, and I feel so bad for neglecting those who care so much about me. At the end of each day, I am too self-absorbed with my creation that I don’t have the time or energy to write and more often than not, I don’t have a reliable Internet connection that permits a decent call via Skype.

Am I happy? Almost. I might complain about the lack of decent ice cream or easy access to a computer store, but the lack of material things to purchase has nothing to do with my overall state of well being. It’s the personal connections that I miss. I have a really nice circle of friends here, but it’s different. I have only revealed small bits and pieces of who I am for many reasons. Time is a big factor, because while I see my friends every day, I am not in a position to have uninterrupted, private conversations. I am also reticent to reveal the occurrences that have shaped my life because the walls have ears and nothing is private once it leaves my mouth (or keyboard). Most of all, I cannot put the required effort into new friendships without first rekindling the old. I feel guilty when I go out for dinner with my girlfriends because there are at least twenty people with whom I need to speak or write to. I have moved around often and it has been too easy to let friendships fade for lack of time or vicinity. When I moved here, I resolved to not continue that pattern, and yet I did unintentionally. I told myself that at least people could catch up with me on my blog, but a scan of my archives will show that I stopped posting with any kind of regularity back in September. There is so much I want to express, but I can’t write about Iran, Iraq, gold, politics, oil, and the government while neglecting my friendships. I still haven’t opened 482 emails, most of which are personal. I recently discovered that an alternate email program I installed but never used downloaded mail each time I booted my computer, and aside from way too much spam, there were some important emails that I never knew existed.

This will be my last post for a while, until I have had time to make amends and attempt to salvage relationships that are important to me. I don’t know if it will take a week or a month, but my friends have to come first. When I do return from exile, I will have much more enthusiasm and passion with the knowledge that I am not neglecting my relationships in order to write about the evils of those who wish to initiate Armageddon.

Bievenidos a Nicaragua, Yo No Fui

Nothing is going to plan. I wouldn’t care so much if those plans didn’t involve opening a business and the importation of household goods. I am trying to keep my humor about me, but today I just feel like wringing someone’s neck. Whose neck to wring, I’m not sure, as the second official motto (according to Pat) is, “yo no fui”, which translates to, “I really could care less about your problems, but if you’re going to blame someone, don’t blame me because even if I screwed up, I’m never going to admit it and the government and private sector will continue to provide me employment for doing absolutely nothing all day, so please don’t whine to me, nanny nanny boo boo.” The short version is, “It wasn’t me.” No one is responsible for the screw ups. “That’s just the way it is.   Bienvenidos a Nicaragua.” (Official Gringo Motto, or so I’ve been told about 10,000 times in seven weeks.)

I’m not a “that’s just the way it is” kind of person, so living here has been an adjustment. I prefer efficiency to bureaucracy and painful truths to cover-ups. I traded one pin the blame on someone else culture for another. However, now I am at the mercy of faceless bureaucrats whose primary language is one that I struggle with on a daily basis. The delay in my household goods is no doubt related to the zealous use of packing tape on the boxes, slowing down the looters in their quest to lift something from my shipment. I figured I didn’t have a whole lot that would be of interest, but I was told today of someone whose razor blades were stolen, but not the razor. Someone else mentioned their pictures disappearing from their shipment. The potential looters are probably still going through the three giant Tupperware boxes of photos, figuring I must be insanely wealthy given all the places I have photographed. Maybe someone is burning copies of my CD collection so their cousins can sell the bootlegs on the beach.

Like 94 percent of Americans (and probably an equal number of informed Nicaraguans), I am opposed to CAFTA. I believe in the concept of free trade, but nothing is ever free, so “free trade” also comes with a cost. Will CAFTA eliminate the barriers for gringos wanting to move their book collection to Nicaragua? No. Will it do anything to improve my life? Highly unlikely. Will it have a negative impact on my life? Probably, especially with CODEX hidden between the 27,989 words regulating banana trade and the 34,989 words regulating the import and export of beef that make up the treaty. (I am using Enron debt modeling techniques to determine the number of words in these regulations, but they’re probably much larger than my guess.) Will CAFTA help Nicaraguans? Perhaps the wealthiest will find some benefits. Everything else is just a guess.

The whole importation process offends my Libertarian sensibilities. With each passing day anarchy becomes more desirable. Maybe that’s just what the world needs right now, because the present course appears too much like tyranny. This isn’t about Nicaragua, now. Despite the frustrations, I do like the place, even if I had to scream at the IBW folks and threaten to take my $1,000 per year to their competitor if they didn’t arrive at my house today to see if I qualify for their wireless internet plan. (It’s been six weeks since I made the first call!) Their competitor is a local with a satellite dish, but the connection crawls during the busy period, which is also when I tend to surf the web. My perhaps idle threat worked, and so I am told that a technician will arrive at my house shortly. “I assume you’re being facetious,” was my reply to Rob when he said the technician didn’t specify which day he would arrive at three, only that he would be here before three. It’s 2:25. I’ll even give him until 5, assuming he is on Nica time.

Update: Rob was correct. The technician did not arrive today, and despite the prolific use of cell phones here, failed to call to say he wouldn’t be here, thereby wasting four hours of my time. I think my old cable company provides customer service training techniques to IBW.

Part of the reason I am stressed is that I don’t know enough about what is transpiring in the US right now. I depend on the Internet to keep in touch with the world at large. The same men and women who said, “Iraq has WMDs and we know exactly where they are, they’re right here in this here ice cream truck weather station  – gosh, they must be around here somewhere” are now setting the stage to nuke Iran and eventually to keep the Zionist spies and blackmailers happy. A four star general has been stripped of his stars for adultery, although it appears that he was divorced or a week from being divorced when this affair with a civilian occurred. He was the Commander of Fort Monroe, the military facility which is holding a “how will the US forces institute martial law once those evil Russians Vietnamese Afghanis Chinese Syrians Sudanese Japanese Bosnians Venezuelans Canadians Iraqis Germans North Koreans French Iranians drop a suitcase nuke in whatever city happens to have the most physical evidence of wrongdoing by Bush and his largest financial supporters” exercise as I type this. A number of high-ranking officers have refused to participate in a plan to drop nuclear missiles on Iran in the even the US is attacked, and many have speculated that this General sided with his country and not the Israeli neo-con agenda. I find this punishment a bit harsh for an affair, especially given the condoning of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gitmo. Military members have mentioned that almost all leave has been cancelled for September, and most of those stationed in Iraq will only be allowed to leave 17 miles from base during December leave. Bush has an approval rating of 38 percent, and it is hard to believe it’s that high given that ninety percent know he lied about WMDs to start a war. Something’s up and I really feel the need to be online right now.

Even though I want to escape all this, I can’t. This small group of Armaggedonists affects all life on the planet. A few years ago, I read the worst written but most prescient book called “SB1 or God” by Karl Maddox. It was written in 1991, yet outlines the attack on the WTC in the falloff 2001 (to be blamed on religious fundamentalists, though they were not the ones who planned it), the attack against Iraq in 2003, and it ends with a doomsday nuclear attack against Iran and Syria. The concept of the book is that God is SB1 – Artificial Intelligence. Man created AI for the purpose of stopping the destruction of the planet.

Fatalism isn’t my thing, but the web-bot results halfpasthuman, astrological forecasts, Remote Viewing predictions, and the almost daily dose of gloom and doom news coupled with my memory of the events outlined in the book have me a bit on edge. I want to believe that there will be some mass conscious shift that will stop World War III, but sadly I don’t see that happening. I don’t have a particular spiritual path. I go from believing that reality is a holograph with untold billions of parallel universes to believing that we are somehow connected with nature and a higher force, or maybe that higher force is simply mass consciousness. I look at all the natural calamities that may befall the planet soon and wonder if it is not the spirit’s way of cleansing itself from the dark matrix before total nuclear/biological/chemical destruction.

Along the Florida Gulf Coast, including the barrier island where my mom lives, there is no life in the water. From the coastline to approximately 20 miles out, it is a dead zone. Dead coral, dead fish, dead, starfish, dead manatees, dead turtles and dead crabs. Nothing is alive. Residents are blaming it on red tide, but I don’t recall red tide lasting this long. The cynical side of me wonders if there is some relationship to storm relief. There was once talk of adding some sort of gel to the center of a storm, something that would absorb the condensation and energy, thereby decreasing the effect of a hurricane. Shortly after I read about this method, there was a Category 4/5 storm off the coast of New Orleans. I went to bed wondering if New Orleans would exist when I woke up. Mysteriously, the hurricane suddenly dropped to a Category One as it hit the coastline. I found it odd. There was no mention as to why it would die just like that. I didn’t think much of it until the following year when marine biologists started to study dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. I wondered if any of these new technologies were secretly tested the year before and the fallout was killing marine life. It’s not a huge jump in logic. The US government has worked on weather modification programs since the 1970’s. On several occasions, Putin has said he would ensure good weather for a particular event. Weather modification is not a secret in Russia. China has the largest cloud seeding program in the world. It’s not a secret. Other countries have complained about the potential fallout – from drought to flooding. While living in Arizona, I first became aware of chemtrails as I watched perfect blue skies disappear into a cloudy haze while jets sprayed “X”s high above the city. These Xs would dissipate into clouds. When I first moved to Tempe, I marveled over the clear blue skies. I could tell the season by the shade of blue. I bragged to my friends of our more than 300 days of sunshine. Sometime in 2001, I noticed the skies were hazy, that even though I would look at the weather radar and see neither systems moving in nor any indication from the forecasts for cloudy days, clouds appeared. I spent most days outdoors working. The appearances of the Xs bothered me. Phoenix Sky Harbor was/is the fifth/sixth busiest airport in the nation. Why were planes, which I immediately assumed to be military jets, allowed to crisscross an huge urban center day in and day out, particularly when the frequency of F-16 crashes in those years. During monsoon season, I watched as storm systems passed over without dumping any rain in water parched deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, yet Texas had terrible rains and flooding. The days when the storms failed to produce rain were marked by heavy spraying the day before and day of the storm system passed overhead.

I actually called Kelly AFB twice to ask about the spraying. I asked why military planes were flying over the city. They were obviously military planes because you could watch the same two (and sometimes) four planes flying back and forth at high altitude. A passenger plane wouldn’t be permitted in the air space. One time I was put on hold for twenty minutes; another time I was told that there were no training exercises at the moment.

Two years ago the US Air Force announced a 30-year lease on refueling tankers. Aside from the obscenity of such an action that outrageously benefits Boeing shareholders and screws the US taxpayer without even the benefit of Vaseline, the question is why is there a need for so many additional tankers? I believe the lease agreement was for 100 tankers. This is an addition to the tankers the AF out right purchased that year or had in inventory. Almost bad as the outrageous military budget (which is exceeds the combined military budgets of every other nation on this planet) are those faux patriots who rail against people who demand financial and ethical accountability for their government. I will no doubt be labeled some tin foil nut for my failure to obediently submit my money and my soul to a group of liars, cheats, and thieves who design biological and chemical weapons and believe in the viability limited nuclear war (because these reptilians have built themselves handy dandy underground bunkers that they will not share with the citizens they supposedly are defending).

Well, this is one reason I am living in Nicaragua. No chemtrails, no biological weapons facilities, no weather modification programs. I just hope whatever it is that is polluting the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t spread to the rest of the planet. Whatever problems I may have with the “That’s just the way it is” mentality here, I’m still pretty happy. I like the people I’ve met, the fruits and veggies are wonderful, the coffee is exponentially better than anything I have been served at Starbucks, I can drink the water that comes out of the faucet and it actually tastes good (unlike Houston, when I used bottled even when cooking), the scenery is beautiful, and my sunsets aren’t marred by chemicals sprayed into the air.  Life could be much worse.

Enron, the Bee Gees, and Shopping for a SAM in Nicaragua

 

I haven’t written anything lately because there is not much to report. I have been hanging out in the hammock, engrossed in the story of Enron. (Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald.) Normally, I race through books, but this one requires a slow, careful read. There are so many details of complicated transactions; I could hardly keep them straight. Fortunately, there is an excellent Cast of Characters at the beginning of the book, complete with dates of office and the definitions of acronyms and contract titles.

Before I started reading the book, I had a rather low opinion of anyone associated with Enron. I found it hard to believe that any employee could not see the problems from within. The illegal trades the outrageous compensation, acquisitions of broadband, water, wind and electric utilities – I saw Enron from a distance and the military term “FUBAR” came to mind. It is an appropriate term. As I read the book, it was easy to understand why so many employees and investors got conned into a multi-billion dollar shell game, at least initially. Those who did try to warn company officials were ignored or terminated. Any analyst from the big banks, investment companies, and Arthur Anderson who questioned Enron’s accounting methods found themselves out of a job after a few phone calls from Ken Lay, Jeff Shilling, and Andy Fastow. Report anything negative and the banks would lose the huge commissions to broker the deals.

W

hat amazed me was how few people it took to bring such a huge company to its knees. Andy Fastow bears the brunt of it, along with Michael Kopper, Richard Causey, and Ben Glisan (Enron) and David Duncan (Arthur Anderson). As much as I dislike Ken Lay, he comes off as more of a naïve, incompetent fool in the book, the son of a poor minister who became too enamored with wealth and the social register. I don’t believe that he was out to rape the company (that was Fastow). His stock sales before the crash were necessitated by his personal debts ($70 million), and it appears he resisted selling. He truly believed Enron stock would go up. He was willing to forgo the $61 million golden parachute and his position during the negotiations to merge with Dynegy to save Enron. I don’t think he’s innocent of all of the crimes he has been charged with, particularly since Sherron Watkins told him about the Raptor time bomb before the company went bankrupt, but his real errors were not verifying the numbers tossed around by his CFO and failing to do his job properly. Enron never even had a cash flow statement despite the legal requirements to do so. Enron never had a debt maturity schedule! Yes, a multi-billion dollar company had no record of how much cash it had on hand or when its debts were due. It appears that Skilling and Lay never even knew about the most of the debts.

They hired James Baker as a consultant, but no one paid any attention to his advice. His important analysis that could have averted three disasters (horrible business deals in India, England, and Brazil) was tucked away in a file cabinet, apparently unread by anyone in the International Division or the Board of Directors. 

One problem I had prior to reading the book was Enron’s decision to lock out the employees from their pension fund. However, the lockout of employee pension funds occurred at the same time every year, the last week of October. (The same with most companies.) Many employees lost less money after the lockout because the stock price happened to increase over the week. Once the lockout was over, many employees bought more Enron stock, believing Enron’s stock had bottomed out and would only get better. Employees had time to disinvest before the lockout. They chose not to.

The author failed to mention the fake trading room, which I think is significant. As you may recall, there was a trade room with fancy computers. Nothing as going on, but when bigwigs came to visit, employees were herded into the room to pretend there was trading activity taking place. Every person sitting in front of the screen was guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud, and yet I haven’t heard of any arrests. 

In other news, my Bee Gees craving has been satiated. My household goods are STILL in Managua (maybe this week the folks in Customs will finally release them since they have now had ample time to rifle through my goods – fortunately 80 percent of my stuff is book related and my music collection is U2 and the Police and the Grateful Dead and Dave Matthews, not exactly popular artists in Latin America, so perhaps my goods have not been pilfered), but in the meantime, I purchased another bootleg CD – The Bee Gees Greatest Hits. I actually own this double CD set, but in its eighteen years of extended play, I have somehow manage to wear out a spot on “How Deep Is Your Love” and “You Should Be Dancing”, so the CD skips or get stuck on those particular tracks. I needed replacement, so along came a bootlegger and for 30 cordobas ($1.80), I have a back up. The Bee Gees made a lot of money from me in my youth, so I don’t feel terrible about the bootleg copy (but I’m sure I eventually guilt will strike and when I find a record store will replace my worn copies with authentic ones.) Now I can listen to the Bee Gees on my CD Walkman, but I can’t sing along because there is no music to hide my voice from my husband and cats. I’m an alto and I don’t have the voice to sing along with Barry Gibb (who I planned to marry one day, such was my obsession!) whose voice can shatter glass. I can’t hit the high notes! I’m sure Richmond (my Maine Coon cat) can’t wait for the stereo to arrive, as he loves dancing with me to disco music.

Speaking of the Bee Gees, last week I went to an after hours bar (but not after hours because I am a wimp who wants to be in bed by 11 p.m. at the latest) that was playing old Disco Inferno videos (not The “Disco Inferno” – Stephen King’s favorite song in the world) from the 1970’s – ABBA, Billy Ocean (wearing tangerine polyester), Michael Jackson pre-surgery and other disco divas. At one point, the bartender switched to Disco Karaoke from the 1970’s – more ABBA, the Bee Gees, John Travolta…you get the idea. The bar was half ex-pats and tourists, half Nicas. EVERYONE sang along to the music. It was such a riot to hear people singing “Dancing Queen” and the greatest hits from “Grease”! The night before, the Iguana had live music, which consisted of Jay playing his guitars, with Dee (owner of the Iguana) singing along. Two other locals, Justin and Bill, joined in at times on the guitar. The music was eclectic – a blues version of “Summertime” (from the opera “Porgy and Bess”), Tracy Chapman, Led Zepplin, and more. By the end of the night, everyone was singing along to the music. I wish music night was a weekly event at the Iguana! 

Last Monday we heard a presentation from an archeologist studying what he believes to be Nicaragua’s original capitol before the Spanish arrived. The site is just outside of Rivas, about 45 minutes from San Juan del Sur. Unfortunately, many artifacts have been destroyed by centuries of farming. It was a nice break from the usual routine. It left me with more questions than he could answer. Rob and I spent the rest of night in deep discussion, wondering if there really was a cocoa trading route as the professor hypothesized, why the Mayans allowed passage through their territory (I suggested they imposed a tax), why the Mayans didn’t move further south, and why the Incas and Mayans had their pyramids, but nothing like that exists in between in Nicaragua (destroyed by volcanic activity?).

On the topic of volcanoes, Concepcion (on Isla de Ometepe, directly East of SJDS in Lago Colcibolca) is expected to erupt sometime this year. There have been 13 eruptions in the past 120 years. There have been numerous tremors and even a 6.3 quake southeast of Rivas last week. The 6.3 occurred just before dawn and was strong enough to move our bed seven inches from the wall. (If a certain someone claims he made the earth move, I shall remind him that he was asleep at the time.) The roof sounded like it was buckling. I went to pick up a vase that had fallen on the floor when suddenly an aftershock hit. I could see the walls and floor shake. It was wild! There was no damage outside of the a few things falling off some less than sturdy plastic shelves in the bathroom. We have felt small tremors at least once a day since then. The tremors haven’t been large enough to rattle anything, but you can feel the floor move just a bit. Both Rob and I find the earthquakes fun, but only because they aren’t strong enough to harm anyone or anything. We hope that when Concepcion erupts, it’s just a release of steam. People live on the island, and we certainly don’t want them to loose their homes from lava flow. Most reports I have seen indicate it will be a small eruption.

We are supposed to sign the lease for the bookstore tomorrow. Hopefully, we will be okay with the terms. We have been told we can’t fry anything and we hope that doesn’t mean we can’t fry bacon for the quiches. The landlord knows we will be baking and doesn’t have a problem with that. She has guest rooms next door and doesn’t want loud music (which isn’t appropriate in a bookstore anyhow, but there will be music and it won’t be Muzak!) or drunken brawls (you know how violent those bibliophiles can get!).

I have scrapped the cat on a surfboard logo for something more simplistic, a black outline of a cat. It just got too busy for one color on a small bumper sticker. I will post the logo after it has been tweaked. I have to get advertising ready by August 10^th, as well as go shopping for fabric, tables and chairs, barstools, and an espresso machine. I haven’t wanted to do anything until I had a contract signed. 

The same man who built me a bookshelf and two very nice computer desks for the casa will make my bookshelves. Money, money, money! Actually, I am getting a great deal. I have eleven 84” high bookcases with one-inch board and six shelves, for $70 each. He is also making me two window benches. I will brave Mercado Oriental in Managua for the fabric. Supposedly you can find ANYTHING at Mercado Oriental. Need a Surface to Air Missile? According to Moon Books Nicaragua, “It is said that during the war years you could find contraband firearms and aircraft parts in the Mercado Oriental, if you knew where to ask. It’s still the wildest ride in the city, and it’s true that if you can’t find it here, you can’t find it in Nicaragua. However, it’s not for the faint of heart: someone gets robbed here very seven minutes.” Maybe it’s harder to find a SAM today, but for the adventurous tourist in need of a little souvenir, this would be the place to negotiate a deal, or at least an introduction to your arms dealer of choice. Just think how much fun you could have with airport security with this little trinket tucked inside your carry-on! My strategy is to take just enough cash tucked in my bra to buy fabric and incense (I’m just not in the market to purchase a SAM this month) and carry nothing else on my person. I know people who have shopped there without a problem, but I have heard horror stories. One person hired a bodyguard ($5 for two hours) so she could shop unimpeded. I don’t know how I would go about hiring a bodyguard. I think Rob has enough of a “don’t fuck with me” presence necessary for a successful shopping trip in Mercado Oriental. (He successfully navigated St. Petersburg as a semester abroad professor during the heyday of the mafia while carrying $45K on his person – you couldn’t trust Russian banks with that kind of money in 1994! – and was always motioned to walk around the metal detector of the mafia bar he frequented. Everyone thought he was mafia, but no one knew for sure. He looked Lithuanian and spoke with a Moscow accent.)

Well, I have blathered on for three pages without anything relevant to say, so I’ll keep this short (for me).

Hasta lluego!

Cordoba Cat

This is Callie, now known as cordoba cat due to her fondness for licking and eating and rubbing the local currency over her face as if it´s catnip Rob´s smelly T-shirts.  She is a strange one!  She loves the smell of sweat, particularly  from the male gender.  She used to take Rob´s shirts from the clothes basket and rub them over her face, moaning with pleasure.  Now she takes money from my purse.  The currency here is pretty grungy, so she´s in heaven.  Now if only I can teach her to leave the hundreds alone!

Stuff

I saw a headline in the Nicaraguan press stating that oil had breached $60 per barrel.  I have not checked the news in over a week.  It´s weird.  I just don´t have the desire to know what is going on in the world outside of Nicaragua.  In part it´s due to slow internet connections (and despite what I have been told, there is no high-speed access available in San Juan del Sur).  Also, I am in vacation mode and I just don´t care to bother myself with these details.  Now I wish I hadn´t checked whatreallyhappened.com because it is more of the same.   I cannot believe Bush and company  can get away with murder.  Now I see the democrats are tossing about the same tired names.  Recently, I informed the Democratic Party of Texas to remove my name from their rolls.  I only registered to vote in the primaries, but the sorry state of the party leaves me with a horrible taste in my mouth.  Nothing will change with their leadership.  Ugh.  Damn, I just missed a sunset for this.

In other news, I may have found a spot to open my bookstore/gallery/cafe.  Like all Kelly projects, it´s a fixer upper, but it has 4500 s.f. (about half would be an outdoor garden).  I´m waiting to hear from the realtor.  I won´t post photos so as to not jinx myself.

Well, I am out of time at teh Internet Cafe.  It´s Cyber Leo´s todfay.  Super Internet is about a 28K connection tonight, so I had to go elsewhere.

More to follow.

A New Life

Well, I did it.  I am writing this from the Super Internet Cybercafe (which means something like a 256K connection if I´m lucky) in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.  It´s just around the corner from my home. 

It´s been an emotional and jammed pack past few months getting ready, hence my absence.  I have so much to write about, but having spent the past 45 minutes uploading and editing photos with this god-awful connection and ancient mouse and keyboard, the lengthy traveloge will have to wait until tomorrow.  Thank goodness for jump drives.  At least I can write on my own computer and bring the drive to the cybercafe.

All is well.  I can´t describe this place (or anything else, fo rthat matter) in a few sentences, so friends and family will have to read about my adventures tomorow, provided there is no power outage here. You can check out the latest photos under ¨New Life in Nicaragua¨in my photo gallery. 

More to follow.  Adios until tomorrow.