Or at least we think it was!

Driving up the main access road just south of us, ready to turn the corner on to our access road, Mary, who was driving, said, “What’s that ahead?”

“Ahead” was something on the road that leads to the woods we walk in every day.  to me, it looked like a huge tree leaf and I said so.  Mary replied that whatever it was, it was moving and she thought it was a snake.

So, naturally–we drove over to within 10 ft of it, maybe less.

She was right–it was a HUGE snake, and it quite clearly had just eaten.  It was moving very, very slowly, as snakes do after just having dined out.  It was headed to the property across from ours, which is densely overgrown and perfect snake cover (which is why we are fanatical about keeping our grounds cleared and trimmed, except for the swath of jungle in back of us).  The head was exactly as I had read–lance-like and very small given the diameter of the body, which was distorted, of course, by whatever it had just eaten.  We guessed it to be between 5 and 6 ft long.

We moved closer to see it as it crossed over into the drainage ditch on its way to cover.  Side sort of rectangular patterns in a blue, top graying brown.  Not that that makes too much difference–everything you read about the fer-de-lance talks about the highly variable color and pattern.  We’re fairly sure that’s what it was, though, because there are just so many of them in the area.

Normally, they hunt at night and seek cover during the day.  But they can be seen during the day in the open if they had a late breakfast.  While they are most likely to strike at this time–having just eaten–they are the least venomous, having just used it all up!  However, I have no desire to test this out.

What made it a little creepy for us is that on the way up the carretera, not 5 minutes below our turnoff, Mary saw another huge snake on the other side of the road.  She couldn’t tell whether it was live or dead just that it was coiled at least somewhat.

I was delighted to get into our carport finally and then into the house!

DVD cover

Thornton Wilder, an American, won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  Yet the book is not American in style or outlook.  That was deliberate on Wilder’s part.  A fan of 17th and 18th century classic French literature, the book has an odd detachment that somehow or another greatly enhances the tragedy that he is describing: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”  Through the device of a Franciscan monk who tries to determine if it was divine intervention rather than random chance that led to those deaths, the stories of those five lives emerge.  Every single one, just shortly before their deaths from the fall, was starting a radical change in their lives, one of great hope and opportunity.

Ended by the fall.

It is a very powerful book, one that still lingers in my mind even though I read it about 6 weeks or so ago.  I decided to get the DVD of the movie made in 2005 from an adaptation of the novel.

Wilder himself believed that the book would not lend itself to what he called theatrical presentation, including a movie, saying that the book’s subtleties could not be caught on film.

However he might have viewed this film, I for one thought it one of the best and most powerful films I have seen for some time, capturing perfectly, for me, the real tragedies of lives ended so abruptly.  The reason for that is in no small measure to the script, written by the director, a woman from Northern Ireland.  The rest is due to incredibly moving, powerful performances by the actors.  Kathy Bates as the Marquesa de Montemayor gives an utterly superlative performance, filled with nuance (giving the lie, in my opinion, to Wilder’s belief that it couldn’t be done); Robert De Niro is perfect as the Archbishop; F. Murray Abraham makes the role of the Viceroy three-dimensional; and Harvey Keitel is simply outstanding as Uncle Pio, in a performance I never would have believed he could give.  The other actors are equally as good.

It takes place in Peru, not Panamá, but there is that Latin American feel to it.  The movie was shot in Madrid and another Spanish city, but cleverly–you believe you’re in Peru.

I don’t know why I’ve decided to take up the role of reviewer these days, but as I was cleaning up the table by my easy chair, where I watch videos, I picked up the DVD case and thought–I’d like to write about this.

The title of the book says it all–it is a history of the building of the Panama Canal, the greatest engineering feat of all time to that date.

I’m not finished with the book yet.  I’ve read the entire section on the French efforts under De Lesseps, the transition period, and am now rereading the section on the Panamanian revolution/separation from Columbia.  The latter was an eye-opener for me, and blasted all sorts of assumptions I’d made about what happened.  Yes, US intervention was crucial to the Panamanian revolution; without it, the new Republic wouldn’t have lasted a week and the founders of Panamá were well aware of it.

BUT I had always assumed the the Canal Treaty originated with the US.  In fact, it did not.  Panamá got an incredibly raw deal with that treaty–but it was written and signed by a Frenchman who was the official representative of the new Panamanian Republic.  Philippe Bunau-Varilla was a director and stockholder in the second French company that held assets in Panamá that included the work done so far on the canal and a great deal of machinery, buildings, etc.  Panamá, of course, was not the country but the Department of Panamá, of Columbia.  Bunau-Varilla was desperate to sell of the canal assets BUT also to see that the canal was built, in order to rescue, as he put it, French honor and French genius.  As he saw it, the only country who would and could do it was the US.

Bunau-Varilla and an American lawyer who represented the French company, set out on a campaign to convince the US Senate to build the canal in Panamá, not in Nicaragua as was the near-unanimous sentiment at the time.  The campaign was brilliant, aimed at the right people–including Teddy Roosevelt who was President–and who appreciated the technical arguments.

But the final hangup was Colombia, thanks basically to misunderstandings on the part of the US government as to what was really happening in Colombia and what its intentions really were.  What was ready to  hand was a completely home-grown, potential revolution of Panamanians, who were convinced of the necessity of separating from Colombia but were well aware of the dangers.  Bunau-Varilla manipulated these men, especially Dr. Amador, and in the end, lied to the Panamanians in order to get from them his official role as the single person who would represent the new Republic to the US.  That, of course, was to get a treaty that would be to the advantage of the French company and accomplish his goals.  In order to make sure that the treaty would pass the Senate without hassle in the least amount of time, he wrote one that gave away the Canal Zone to the US, excepting outright ownership.  But the US had sovereign rights within the Canal Zone.

The terms of the treaty were nothing short of incredible, far, far more than the US had been prepared to ask.  In fact, when Secretary of State Hay and others saw it, they were flabbergasted–but of course accepted the treaty–who wouldn’t?  So, the treaty was signed–hours before the official Panamanian delegation reached Washington–and were, as Bunau-Varilla knew they would be, totally outraged; he was fired from his position on the spot.  But it was too late.

As the final piece in the drama, Roosevelt violated a 50 year old US treaty with Colombia by sending warships, landing troops and preventing the movement of Colombian troops in Colón.  The story of the revolution on November 3 is wonderful.  Word had gotten to Panama City that Colombian troops–500 of them–had landed in Colón.  Dr. Amador and the rest of the conspirators panicked, visualizing very realistically firing squads and other unpleasant consequences.  But the hero of the revolution was Señora Amador, Dr. Amador’s wife.  She supposedly told them to get on with the fight, soldiers or no soldiers.  And she was the one who concocted a brilliant scheme that was the reason the revolution was a bloodless one. The only casualty was that of a Chinese shopkeeper who was killed in his bed when a Colombian warship fired 5 or 6 shells on Panama City.  He and a donkey!  It’s just the greatest story.

There’s far more to it that what I’ve just outlined.  This is a greatly simplified summary just of parts; the history of the French effort in itself is utterly absorbing.  The whole story is so wild that it actually wouldn’t make a good novel–people would scorn it–”over the top”–”unrealistic”–yet it’s all true!

I have always loved history and there is no reason on earth why it has to be boring, because the stories usually aren’t.  It takes a good historian who is also both a good story-teller and a good writer.  McCullough is all of these.  He is one of the foremost historians of the present time, having won the Pulitzer Prize twice, both times for biographies.  The only other book of his that I’ve read so far is his biography of John Adams, which is really fascinating and very well written.   I think he’s a better writer in The Path Between the Seas.

As I said, I haven’t finished the book yet, but it is hard for me to believe that the story of the successful US effort to build the canal and all that that meant is going to disappoint.  McCullough is too good a historian, the story is too good, and he writes too well.

This is a must read for all sorts of people–those interested in Panamanian history, those looking for a true-life action-adventure story in the building of the Canal and those who just plain like well-researched history that is beautifully written.

Cattle egrets in cecropia tree/Mary Farmer

By taking all sorts of fascinating pix, Mary is making my blogging life a lot easier!  Why should I stir myself when she does such a great job?

I thought this photo was just perfect.  Look at that stupendously gorgeous tropical sky!!  That’s the beauty of the rain–afterwards, you get this marvelously clear sky, even better than on postcards!  And I don’t knock postcards.  Whenever I go to any popular scenic site, I always buy postcards because inevitably, professionals take better pictures than I do.  And many, many years ago, someone tipped me off to the fact that it’s a wonderful way of remembering a trip–just a few words on the back of a postcard to remind you of what it was you saw and did.  Naturally, I did that for a while, then, of course–forgot.

These cattle egrets have settled in for a bath and pedicure, no doubt, in one of the tall cecropia trees behind our house.  It’s a flock of 20-30, far more than we usually see at one time.  BUT we do see them every day.  There seems to be one flock of about 5-8 that flies sedately from south to north over our place at about 8:30 every morning, and returns south in the late afternoon.  Not surprising, since we have a cattle ranch behind us.  But they are so regular, and so stately, that I have from the beginning instinctively thought of them as commuters; the only thing missing is a copy of La Prensa.

What also interest me is where you find them.  For example, for some years we had bird-watching acquaintances in Boquete, who told me that they almost never saw cattle egrets–that it was years before they saw their first.  They’re so common here (cattle country) that it just astonished me.  There are a few cattle ranches near Boquete, but they’re probably tucked out of sight of the pueblo itself.  But it does intrigue me–is there an altitude barrier, for example?  I have to ask Carla Black (if I remember) if cattle egrets are common in Volcan, which is much higher than Boquete.  There are a lot of dairy farms there, so it’s a good test.  For all the times we’ve driven to Volcan, I don’t remember seeing cattle egrets, but for me they are now part of the landscape and if I did see them, that would not be  a remarkable sight, one to remember.

But I do enjoy our egret friends–it’s one of those sights that always brings a smile, even though I’ve seen them flying overhead literally hundreds of times.

I love synchronicity, I really do.

Here’s an article in the Washington Post about a rich Brasilian woman, Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, and what she’s doing in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, one of the most violent and drug-torn cities in the world.

Despite spending a great deal of time in Brasil, I’ve never been to Rio.  But I’ve visited favelas in São Paulo, taken to them by a Spiritans Father Irish missionary.  However, the ones I went to were definitely not the worst.  Still, one of the tensest moments of my life came when Jimmy and I got separated.  I think I’ve already written about this, so won’t do so again.

Sorry to use the “r” word–I know it’s now a four-letter word to some people (who don’t seem to have any problem with the four-letter word “poor”) who hopefully are finding moral and spiritual uplift on Fox News and Don Imus talk shows.  But she is RICH (I will be d____d and blasted if I let anyone censor me for perfectly acceptable language); knowing what I do about the rich in Brasil and how, normally, they truly isolate themselves from ordinary Brasilians, never mind favela kids, I have nothing but admiration for her.  I don’t have a means test for admiration for people who are doing their best to help others.  And I completely agree with her about that education gap–I would–that same attitude directs my far, far more modest efforts in an infinitely easier situation.  Note especially the numbers of children she’s taught who haven’t made it.  She clearly doesn’t have a barter or exchange mentality–she does what she can.

Please take the time to read this article about a truly remarkable woman.

Lucy

As the middle child, Lucy tends to get less than her share of certain types of attention.  Not love, hugs, and petting–she makes sure that she gets her due there!  But we just don’t have as many recent photos of her as we do of Ethel in her heyday and, of course, Fred.

The other day, Mary was photographing some caterpillars, I believe, and had the rare opportunity of being able to take pix of both Lucy and Ricky.

Lucy was 7 in June; her birthday is most likely 2 weeks before mine.  Given that she was a rescue puppy, whom we acquired at 11 weeks, we’re not exactly sure.  I didn’t get any pictures of her on her birthday, so this will have to do.  Come to think of it, I didn’t get on of Fred on HIS birthday on October 18!  Better get on with it.

OK, so Ricky got into the act.  He and Lucy are great friends; they play together  (well, he plays and she copes) a good deal.

This rock is about 5 ft tall and was taken out of what became our septic outflow well, which is or at least was the Panamanian equivalent of a drain field.  The pozo itself is probably 6-8 ft deep and 6 ft wide, filled with large rocks.

I always find The Panama News interesting.  Here’s another article on  Martinelli’s immigration policies towards Asians.

Also, the following came in early yesterday evening via email; I’m on Jackson’s list.  There’s no TPN reference, so I’m just copying and pasting it from my email.

Manuel Solís Palma has died.

The last figurehead president of the dictatorship — he was appointed by General Noriega, without pretense of election — has succumbed to pulmonary edema. Martinelli announced that he’s not declaring a day of mourning, nor will there be any state funeral.

I imagine that the PRD will turn out in force for the funeral, however.

We still don’t have our 2009 license plate, and we renew our registration in Dolega in June.  According to what Mary understood from the woman in the office and Maritza Espinosa, the plates are made at a school for rehabilitation of prisoners.  Somehow or another, an error occurred in our paperwork, and our plate, which is always waiting for us, simply was not there in June.  We received a papelito–that’s what it’s called, a little paper–from the office stating that we had paid all fees and allowing us to drive the truck legally for two months while waiting for the plate to arrive.  Two months came and went (we knew better than to expect them sooner), Mary returned to the office–and no plate.  In two weeks, the woman said–but issuing us another papelito, an extension until mid-November.  No fools we, we waited longer before we checked again.

By this time, Mary and the office worker were becoming good friends.  No, the plate hadn’t arrived, she said–wait until November.

We returned yesterday–8 days before the extension expired–and of course, no plate.  We now have another papelito, extending until January 6.  The office worker urged Mary to check back in December.  Like anything is going to happen between now and Christmas!

The Tránsito does stop cars for expired license plates.  We see the checkpoints on the carretera quite frequently, and we see the workers unscrewing expired plates from cars of very unhappy-looking Panamanians.  I’ve yet to see a gringo in such a situation but that’s because almost all of us are very keenly aware of the advisability of keeping up with the laws.

We finally were stopped last week, I think it was, by a very nice Tránsito muchacha who asked for our papelito.  We gave it to her, explained that the placa simply was not in Dolega.  She shook her head in sympathy and assured us with a smile that so long as we had the papelito, we didn’t have to worry.

We’re beginning to lay bets with one another on whether or not we will have our 2009 plate before it’s time to pick up the new one.

Monday we met again for the Reading Program in the library.  There had been some confusion over the day–both the day and the hour had been changed several times, and I don’t think some of the kids heard the final decision.  We only had 10 kids there–but 4 of them wanted to read Harry Potter!  So we did.  I had brought my Spanish copy with me, but it wasn’t enough.  Each of the kids wanted to read their own copy–they were transfixed by the story–but as other children read, those who didn’t have a book or couldn’t easily share with others wandered off, to return when it was their turn to read.  Two boys, again, were utterly absorbed by the story, and one boy was quite proud of his ability to pronounce “McGonagall” and”Dursley”–NOT easy for Spanish speakers.

I’m going to try to find another copy of HP y la piedra filosofal at Hombre de la Mancha before we meet again next week.

Please take the time to read the Comments section after the Flooding in Valle Escondido post.  For one thing, you will suddenly become aware of all kinds of personality traits of mine that I had no idea I had!  The best one–the one I really love–is that I am envious of the rich or those in Valle Escondido or both or neither or something.  THAT one really made my day!  And I must admit I am very fond of the comment that assures me I am both spiritually and materially poor.  This from someone whom I’ve never met in my life.

One nice thing about living where we are is that we are somewhat isolated from the crazies.  I don’t read the Gringos in David list, but Mary does, and from time to time she sends me stuff from that list.  It is hard for me to fathom that people who can write such lunatic fringe stuff actually exist, but they do.  I have no idea if the person who is so sure of my character is such a person, but the comments made are typical of a class of people who leave me marveling at their lack of ability to reason.  There is no basis in anything I’ve said for any of those comments.

I have actually met quite a few people who live in Valle Escondido.  Many of them are quite nice.  And some of them are not, judging from their behavior in public. None of them are friends or even close acquaintances–our value systems are quite different.  Prices of real estate in Valle Escondido–or anywhere here in Chiriquí–are remarkably easy to come by.  In fact, you almost can’t avoid knowing what they are, no matter how hard you try.

I have said many times that this blog is not for everyone.  For those who find me envious and poor both spiritually and materially, I suggest you find some other, more uplifting  reading material.  Reading here may corrupt you in some way.  

Well, that’s it for today.  With any luck, I’ve lost two readers who should definitely be reading other  blogs.  I’m not going to approve any more of such comments–enough is enough.

ETA:  My, my–the person who is such a competent judge of my spiritual and material nature has never before read my blog and assures me that yes, indeed, she is definitely capable of judging my spirituality.  Can you believe it?  That’s the latest from her.  I am so tempted to post the reply here, so tempted, so that you can see for yourself.  But it’s better that I don’t.  In the end, I truly feel sorry for such people.  As a matter of fact, I can safely say that those are the kinds of people for whom I do have compassion, for surely they need all we can give them.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–things don’t matter, people do.  And this person needs all the love and compassion we can give her.

I’ve talked a little with Don Ray and very briefly with La Gringa in Honduras about responses to blogs.  I can say without reservation that I have been fortunate, I’ve attracted so few of the more bizarre type of reactions.  I suppose it is hard to be a spiritual and material judge of papayas.