Notes From Bacalar

Detour To The Lagoon

2008-10-06T01:03:00.003-05:00

There have been no posts here for some time. It has been a difficult time and my concentration, time and energies have been elsewhere.

As things change and I begin to feel more like communicating, there will be more posts but, for now, on my major site, 7 Color Lagoon.

Please visit me at ----------------------> 7 Color Lagoon

HOUSE ON LAGUNA BACALAR FOR SALE

2008-06-08T18:39:00.004-05:00

/s400/HouseFrmW+copy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209718559933512898" />

Photo by Howard Dratch, 2008

This is a shameless advertisement for my house on the shore of the Lagoon near the Hotel Laguna and the Cenote Azul. It is a beautiful, light-filled house with high ceilings, terraces, views of the Lagoon of the Seven Colors from every room. There is a covered terrace the width of the house with grille and bar area, a massive, cement dock that will berth larger boats and a ramp on the 1100 square meter, walled property which is proerly titled.

The street side has a massive lap pool, gardens and fruit trees encircled by flowers and tropical birds. There is a 2 room, 2 bath casita and a whole-house generator.

The house has 4 bedrooms and 3.5 baths on two floors. The price has been reduced to $US369,000. Contact me at hfd@7colorlagoon.com. It is sited perfectly on the most beautiful cove of the 35 mile long lagoon, far enough above the water to be protected from any possible rise in the lagoon. The house and I weathered a direct hit by Hurricane Dean last August without damage.

View the gallery of photos House For Sale

Tropical Real Estate
Home
Foreign Investment
For Sale
Mexico
Real Estate
Vacation Homes
Bed & Breakfast
Travel

Arthur Passed On

2008-06-01T11:04:00.001-05:00

There was some wind and a lot of rain, but little else. It is the memory of Dean that makes us nervous this year.

BULLETIN
TROPICAL DEPRESSION ARTHUR ADVISORY NUMBER 5
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL012008
1000 AM CDT SUN JUN 01 2008

...ARTHUR WEAKENS TO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION...THREAT OF HEAVY RAINS
CONTINUES...

AT 10 AM CDT...1500 UTC...THE GOVERNMENTS OF BELIZE AND MEXICO HAVE
DISCONTINUED ALL WARNINGS.

Tropical Storm Arthur Jump Starts Season

2008-05-31T14:15:00.000-05:00

NOAA and the National Hurricane Service warn today:

000
WTNT31 KNHC 311658
TCPAT1
BULLETIN
TROPICAL STORM ARTHUR SPECIAL ADVISORY NUMBER 1
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL012008
100 PM EDT SAT MAY 31 2008

...TROPICAL STORM ARTHUR...FIRST STORM OF THE 2008 ATLANTIC
SEASON...QUICKLY FORMS NEAR THE COAST OF BELIZE...ALREADY MOVING
INLAND...

AT 1 PM EDT...1700 UTC...THE GOVERNMENT OF BELIZE HAS ISSUED A
TROPICAL STORM WARNING FOR THE COAST OF BELIZE....AND THE
GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO HAS ISSUED A TROPICAL STORM WARNING FROM CABO
CATOCHE SOUTHWARD TO THE BORDER WITH BELIZE. A TROPICAL STORM
WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN
THE WARNING AREA..IN THIS CASE...WITHIN THE NEXT 6 TO 12 HOURS.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLE
INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED
BY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE.

AT 100 PM EDT...1700Z...THE CENTER OF NEWLY FORMED TROPICAL STORM
ARTHUR WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 18.1 NORTH...LONGITUDE 88.5 WEST
OR ABOUT 45 MILES... 75 KM...NORTH-NORTHWEST OF BELIZE CITY AND
ABOUT 195 MILES ...315 KM...SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF COZUMEL MEXICO.

ARTHUR IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 8 MPH...13 KM/HR. ON
THIS TRACK THE CENTER OF CIRCULATION WILL BE MOVING OVER YUCATAN
TODAY AND EARLY SUNDAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 40 MPH...65 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. THESE WINDS ARE OCCURRING PRIMARILY OVER WATER WELL TO THE
NORTHEAST AND EAST OF THE CENTER. ARTHUR IS EXPECTED TO WEAKEN
TODAY AS IT MOVES FARTHER INLAND OVER YUCATAN.

TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 260 MILES...415 KM
MAINLY TO THE NORTHEAST OF THE CENTER.

ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 1005 MB...29.68 INCHES.

ARTHUR IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAIN ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 TO 10
INCHES OVER BELIZE AND PORTIONS OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA WITH
ISOLATED AMOUNTS UP TO 15 INCHES.

travel warnings
Mexico
Belize
Tropical Storm
Chetumal
Bacalar
Travel

Space Feed

2008-03-14T12:24:00.001-06:00

Terrorism In Mexico City

2008-02-16T16:15:00.001-06:00

The entire country of Mexico was automatically placed on alert following a bomb attack in the Federal District (of which Mexico City is a part). The leading national news agency, El Universal reported that an attack was made in the vicinity of the national offices of the Secretary of Public Security in the capital city and that caused the nation to be immediately under an alert.

La vigilancia se incremento en todos los aeropuertos, carreteras, puertos marítimos, cruces fronterizos y vías de comunicación y se reforzaron de inmediato todos los esquemas de seguridad en la infraestructura estratégica en la capital del país.

En la ciudad de México se puso especial atención en las instalaciones del Sistema de Transporte Colectivo, Metro; de Luz y Fuerza del Centro; la residencia oficial de Los Pinos, las sedes de Gobernación y de la Cámara de Senadores, así como de las guarniciones militares que se ubican en la capital del país.

Security was increased in airports, highways, sea ports, border crossings and in the communication sistem as well as reinforcing security for the capital's infrastructure.

They go on to note that Mexico City is being given special attention in transportation systems, subway, electrical grid systems, Los Pinos (the Mexican White House), government offices and the Congress.

Those already in the country will have noticed additional road-blocks even here in far-off Chetumal manned by soldiers and police agencies in full riot or battle gear. They are, as usual, polite and deferential to tourists and known residents.

The explosion occurred yesterday, Friday, at 2:30 PM Mexico City time. One person was killed in the explosion and remained unidentified. It was not known if he ( a man of about 30) had touched the bomb or was carrying it.

The full report in Spanish can be accessed at Diario de Yucatan

Mexico
travel warnings
Latin America
Travel

Violence And Death Continue For Guatemala

2008-01-24T11:21:00.001-06:00

Visit the Toronto Globe & Mail for extensive coverage on the levels
of violence and death, constant crime and robbery and its dangers for
visitors, business people and tourists.

"In 2002, before the violence began to escalate, roughly 2,900 people
were killed. Last year, the total reached 6,033, although international
observers believe that it could be as high as 8,000 (the National Civil
Police doesn't count people who are injured in an attack but die later
in hospital). Canada, with a little less than three times Guatemala's
population of 13 million, had only 605 homicides in 2006."

CONTINUE AT THE GLOBE & MAIL

This is yet another story of a corrupt Latin American country offering
so much charm and beauty that is rendered dangerous to visit by its
unwillingness to control its rampant crime and violence.

American Man Held In Nicaragua

2008-01-03T18:51:00.000-06:00

I have been very distracted by the holidays, the economic situation and the repairs and hassles of trying to sell my home. Therefore this blog (and my others) has been sorely neglected.

Today I was galvanized into writing for the first time in nearly a month by the plight of a young man in Nicaragua. I have posted this to my blog, Travel Dangers and repeat it here because it deserves wider exposure.

Eric Volz is a young, American man who was wrongly accused of murder in Nicaragua -- according to an appeals court in that country. The accusations appear to have come because and through anti-Americanism and xenophobia in that country. The community was barraged, it is reported, by stories of murder, rape, money-laundering, etc. The desire to get the gringo took over for the justice system. Please remember that "gringo" is a highly derisive word in Latin America that equals "spic", "dago", "kike", and "nigger" in American English. It doesn't just translate to foreigner or American.

Miscarriages of justice happen. The ability of a legal system to redress its wrongs makes for a successful rule of law and for constitutionalism to carry the day. That happened in this case when a higher court reviewed the case of Eric Volz and declared him innocent. They also ordered that he be freed from the penitentiary where he was being held.

The "judge" prosecuting the case has sequestered the records and applied for an appeal to the supreme court of Nicaragua and is thereby keeping the American imprisoned in defiance of the court's orders. The man and his family are sure that he will be killed or disappeared if he is left in this third world prison. The State Department has offered hopeful words but seemingly little action.

The family has asked for an American boycott of tourism and investment in Nicaragua until he is released.

Watch the Internet TV coverage by ABC News and then go the the website of The Friends Of Eric Volz. Contact your elected representatives to push our timid State Department to actually support threatened Americans in America Latina.

travel warnings
Latin America
Travel
Expatriates
Nicaragua
Anti-Americanism

Tay Zonday Finds The Way On The Net

2007-12-10T23:05:00.001-06:00

No, this is not a music blog nor can I admit to watching YouTube on any regular basis. Still I was caught by these videos, this story. It is an introduction or a warning about the Internet now, the 'Net to come and the changing demographics of fame.

The New York Times caught me up on this story under "Homemade YouTube Video Lands Singer in a Web Ad". Tay Zonday found the way. Tay Zonday is, in reality, a grad student at the U. of Minnesota named Adam Bahner.

Tay Zonday posted his video on YouTube. He sang his song, "Chocolate Rain" and people watched and listened -- 12 million hits now. That friendly Dr. Pepper fellow heard, too, and came for Tay Zonday to take him away and let him sing his Paul Robeson depths out to the world in grown-up video with a real-life rapper, Mista Johnson (sign to that effect wafts by), to advertise Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper which is being given limited marketing for an introduction in January. I can hardly wait for cherry flavored, chocolate flavored Dr Pepper with fake sugar. If Tay can promote it then the Internet will have a new height to reach, a new bar to better.

Here are links to the original, home-made and the Dr Pepper slick version.

Arts
Culture
Technology

The American Dream Of Eternally Sexy Youth

2007-12-03T00:50:00.001-06:00

There are perks to the sponsored notes and reviews in one's blogs. The side trips that are offered (since every sponsor has to have at least their site checked by me personally. This one was fun. It would be more fun for a younger man looking for a sexy gift for the wife -- including "plus sizes".

Off to the lingerie halls. The site, Lingerie Diva, offers -- among other categories -- bustiers. "Aha!", said the blogger, "What is a bustier?"

Bustiers, I am informed, "are women's lingerie similar to a bra but extends down to the waist or hips to create a structured, supported look. Bustiers are often boned and include underwires and may have removable straps. Bustiers can also be worn as outerwear."

This pictured one stuck with me because it was the one that was actually sexy or it was the best photographed one by far.

Another under "sexy clothes" got to me for the same reason. Without the dangerous looking spikes on her feet. Now I have discovered the real nature of the new American dream.

Sort By:

Organized Packing

2007-12-02T23:55:00.000-06:00

Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007.

When I was in Miami recently I, yet again, discovered the usefulness of a backpack. It shows my generation. One when we carried books home from school arranged atop the 3-ring binder. That was before the backpack idea swept the world and before every kid had a travel bag filled with cell phones, laptop, iPod, iPhone and maybe a book or two.

ir

It is the age that leaves me forgetful of the weight-balancing act of the backpack. In Miami I needed to walk some distance to a supermarket, the mall, the local Target and I would be exhausted by the seemingly greater weight of those bags held by each arm. Each step weighed upon you. The backpack helped those shopping trips, the journey by ship. Suddenly one carry-on with cameras and papers and another with computer played the same trip on energy. The backpack carried computer and one camera, second lens, lens-cleaning supplies, filter, cell phone and enough medications for a few days in case luggage sets were lost. One on-line resource for travel supplies and luggage, LuggageSource.com, also has some discounted leather backpacks that would be great to replace my $50 Target one.

Recent Galleries And Links

2007-11-23T00:08:00.000-06:00

This week, besides watching the stock market doing aerial displays of falling leafs and low-level bombing, the real business of selling my house has begun. Now that the first potential buyer came by I feel that the process is begun, the die cast, the decision made irrevocably.

Check out the listing for the property as a B&B on the Mexico International site.

This agency feels the casita, the small house on the property that was for a worker-family and could be rental units or a pool house, is a selling point. They may be right and repairs continued today with a crew of masons patching, a good scrubbing begins tomorrow and the windows will soon be replaced and all the plumbing modernized for the two very small bathrooms.

Photo of the Medusa Nebula from APOD © Don Goldman at Astrodon.

NEW GALLERY SERIES: I began a new set of gallery pages called HPOD for Howard's Picture of the Day after NASA's APOD, the astronomical picture of the day -- one of the greatest websites on the Net.

The first two pages with one picture on each are of a sexy tuliapan flower and last night's When Tree Frogs Sing The Blues.

As the weather (even here in the tropics) begins to cool for winter, swimming becomes a bit harder, wet suits need to be worn, and the exercise becomes harder. There is walking where it is safe and practical and there is the home gym idea to keep the heart muscle pumping, the body in motion, the brain in gear.

Check out the ProForm site for fitness equipment. The site is straightforward and the equipment of high quality. It is sold on-line and from major retailers.

HPOD - Picture of the Day

2007-11-20T02:23:00.000-06:00

Check out the first of my Pictures of the Day (20 Nov 2007) on a separate gallery page from 7 Color Lagoon.com. I will never actually mount one daily or even close. But it is a nice presentation and the workflow will get faster as times goes on.

Flowers
Gardens
Mexico

HPOD

2007-11-20T01:40:00.000-06:00

Howard's Photo of the Day

Tuliapan, Bacalar, Mexico

Flowers
Mexico

The Reality And The Dream

2007-11-18T01:45:00.000-06:00

Is the condo boom of South Florida real or a counterfeit version of life amid luxury in a tropical version of the American Dream? Photo ©Howard Dratch, 2007.

SOBE, South Beach, Miami Beach in what was once the tropical dream, Miami. Here the ship passes the southern tip of the barrier island that has become an urban playground, the center of the lure of the Sun Belt and the America-land theme park of the Caribbean, Central and South American worlds. Here is land's end, what was what was left of the island as island rather than urban development.

Here in Bacalar such things are beginning to happen albeit on a tiny level. This week a real, full-size Caterpillar bulldozer began its dozing across the cove on what had been a pretty piece of land with an abandoned house begun years ago with walls and roof, no floor or windows. The land is being leveled for a building site and rumor (chisme) along the coast road is that it will be "condos". Condos in Mexico could mean a skyscraper or four apartments. Bacalar is not Miami. It is not America.

Hopefully the mortgage crisis which has widened so far and begun to affect other industries and economies, will not stop the growth (the sale of my house is really what is on my mind) and prices of the last vestiges of Mexico's Caribbean coast. Mahajual on the Xcalak penisula near here is now called "The Costa Maya" and is rebuilding after Hurricane Dean's direct hit and devastation. The state government has earmarked large sums (really large in pesos) to rebuild a planned Mahajual as a tourist destination. Bacalar is considered part of this plan.

Sterling Silver version of a "Tiffany inspired" ring for $22 on-line.

Looking at condos and apartments, thinking of cities where I might live there is always the real and the dream and the lines are blurred. A designer jewelry on-line catalog caught my interest. They have many "designer" items that are designer inspired jewelry. Which is to say that they sell copies of luxuriously designed items which may be in less precious materials. ("Is it real - or is it Quanta Bella? Only you will know.......") The prices are highly attractive, as are some of the pieces. I was taken with this mesh ring of stainless steel mesh.

Taser Stories Continue

2007-11-16T13:23:00.000-06:00

Disclosure: I have sold my stake in TASR. It is a strong company with a product in demand and is surely in a growth industry. At some point I may even buy one of their new consumer models (they come in colors) but it is also a potentially dangerous or deadly weapon in the wrong hands. Too often the police seem to be the ones who have the "wrong hands".

The Offer, The Hunt, The Big Steps

2007-11-04T20:33:00.001-06:00

As selling my house on Laguna Bacalar in Mexico ( see the photo gallery on my site) begins to gather steam, my hunt to sell, perhaps then buy, real estate is somewhat different than the US equivalent. In the middle I shall have to move countries and that is no small decision nor chore. For now I continue to use real estate sites on the 'Net to get an idea of what is available to rent in the US or in Merida. The sites with the best pictures and most information win. It is almost like getting to visit -- almost -- when the pictures are used at least vaguely well.

Since Miami-Dade County is one greatest possibilities in the US, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and credit squeeze will be a blessing for me in either renting or buying. Miami is one of the bubbles that burst but remains a livable city with an aura of fun about it. Lower prices will help since living in America requires waking up in the American Dream just to survive.

In the US, Canada, Puerto Rico and, of all places, Portugal, GMAC real estate offers Premiere Service agents and offers its Elegant Homes like this California beauty for 3.5 million dollars -- not pesos.

Forbes recently listed so many places hit worst by the mortgage debacle that are now more affordable choices for retirees. We shall see how long I remain here, how long it takes to sell and how easy it is to move countries yet again.

Some Jewels To Adorn

2007-11-03T00:36:00.000-06:00

In reality my use of jewelry is small and my use of it the same. But for many it is something of beauty, a statement of character and appeal as well as the diversification of wealth. Here in Mexico, considering the great trust earned by the banking system, gold jewelry is far more than adornment. It is the bank account that is pretty and worn, protected on your person from the insecurity of the financial systems.

For some it is the deposit of value for the very rainy day, the one when the financial system has failed, when the revolution has come and swept away all your possessions and accounts.

I chose a titanium bracelet for the illustration because titanium is on my mind this week. It is a pretty metal, not so precious, that is a necessity in more and more technological products and is growing its appeal as jewelry as well. On a financial note I recently invested in a Titanium production company, TIE which looked great in its numbers -- and still does -- but showed flat earnings for the quarter, took my little investment in its shares and fell dramatically. It has begun to recover and my choice was probably good, my timing lousy. We shall see what the volatile future in the Market brings this season.

Staying Home While Traveling

2007-11-03T00:08:00.000-06:00

A condo vacation rental from Lowery's Vacation Rentals, www.moremouse.com

It is twice now that I have sublet apartments in Miami while traveling there for medical visits and procedures. The two condos I rented for 2 weeks (in January) and a month this past September were totally different but both served their purpose.

The first purpose was, of course, to save money. Hotels are for a day, weekend, week. Past that point they are expensive and I would be paying for things that would have begun to annoy me. The restaurant in the lobby of most of the hotels in my price range can be wonderful on a dark and rainy night when I am too tired to leave the hotel but are usually on the Howard Johnsons gourmet scale. Exception: The Biscaya at the Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove -- one of my favorite restaurants in the world. Good to delicious, simple foods available (grilled salmon with perfect asparagus, perfectly colorful salad and the world's best fruit sorbet), gentle classical music to sooth the savage beast waiting for dinner, and perfect service.

My last apartment gave me a relatively comfortable refuge following a difficult surgery where I had stored food-stuff and drinks, had a separate bedroom in which to curse surgeons and a nice kitchen to keep myself fed at minimal cost.

The same factors would be relevant for the vacationing family group. Why pay for multiple rooms or suffer the indignities of sharing with children when a condo or house fully fitted out is waiting to give you refuge at less cost than the confines of a hotel room or rooms. Spread out, relax, make yourself at home, then vacation.

Visitors to Florida, especially those family groups with children tend to head for Orlando and the world of the mouse. For them there would be an Orlando rental home.

On The Road To Malibu

2007-11-02T01:58:00.000-06:00

It was more than 20 years ago we decided to check out living in LA, re-settling my photography work where things happen more quickly than in the older world of the East. Or so I thought. Photography went well enough for me at the time and it looked to be a place where work would come in. But a little Rodeo Drive and the cost of housing made it clear that the Hudson Valley would be where we would land again -- and did.

Malibu and Santa Monica, Venice beach and Harry who was the Rasta-man in white robes on skates who we hung with were my memories of LA. Malibu and it canyons and the Pacific looking beautiful we ended up living in Laguna Beach for a time but Laguna is not the City, not L.A. and not quite real. Also expensive!

You can do, in L.A. in Malibu drug rehabs in the L.A., Malibu, Rodeo Drive style. Get over the craving (or the giving in to it) while being surrounded by beauty with the Pacific in the distance and surroundings that hardly seem like a gritty movie about wild-eyed addicts. This is the stuff of therapy in style, reinforcement in surroundings that are fitting for recoveries.

Tickets To Big Ball Games

2007-11-02T01:38:00.001-06:00

If your tastes run to football games in the fall and you like the Cowboys tickets-- they are playing at the Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas; have I got a web site for you. NFL, MLB, NBA,Hockey, NCAA Football, NASCAR Racing (even I can enjoy car racing), tennis and even wrestling tickets are waiting. There is even an email newsletter to sign up for that will deliver news about your favorite team regularly.

There was the trip last January to the US, to Miami, when I neglected to look up when and where the Superbowl would be. Yes! That piece of ignorance gave me troubles since it turned out the whole world was coming to Miami just when I needed a place to stay until my apartment was ready. All of a sudden all rooms were booked, blocks of rooms, loads of fans. Travelers should stay aware of everything scheduled for their destination and itinerary.

Ten years ago as we left my old home town of Tampa towards the west or south west or Mexico or wherever we ended up, the stretche into New Orleans became clogged with cars waving team penants, drunk college students and fan hordes and, again, New Orleans was full up, the choice of hotels limited by reservations by fans of the Sugar Bowl. Another piece of ignorance. I never take the extreme interest of many in ball games and the effect it can have. In reverse the fans have to fight for their tickets and travel plans. This site helps with the tickets part.

Home For Now

2007-10-31T00:07:00.000-06:00

Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007. Rainbow from the end of my dock.

Here again in Bacalar, home again. At the same time my home is on the market officially. For those of you seeking a tropical, Mexican village on a 35 mile long freshwater lagoon not too far from the Costa Maya and the Caribbean, this is a special, unique property. The location is among the best on the lagoon. The views spectacular in all weather and seasons. Terraces both upstairs and down overlook the panorama of the lagoon, the uninhabited far shore and the spectacular ink-black night sky in common with the Mayan astronomers.

I have made a short pdf article I can email. Email me at: hfd@7colorlagoon.com. You need do no more than put Bacalar House as the subject. Visit the photo gallery of the house at http://7colorlagoon.com/galleries/houseforsale/index.html.
Two agents are already representing the house and more are expected. Links to them will appear here shortly and are on the last post at 7 Color Lagoon.

This house does still need some things. Modern lighting that is well-planned and designed would be an improvement on what was designed by the original owners. We have only used small lamps to augment this but modern equipment in whatever style would help. One style that does tend to intrigue me for this house and for my next space is track lighting.

Laguna Bacalar
Lighting
Foreign Investment
Tropical Real Estate

Macworld's Mac Security Pledge

2007-10-28T01:28:00.001-05:00

Macworld recently published its' "Mac Security Pledge" on ways to protect your on-line presence from identity thieves, hackers and other bottom-feeders of cyberspace.

Definitely worth a look and then take the pledge.

Back In The Little Pitaya

2007-10-23T00:22:00.000-05:00

Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007. My house in Bacalar is going on the market. Check the Bacalar House page which will be largely enhanced shortly.

Home again in Mexico, an alien land, after being home in the States where I have begun to feel a little lost in the brave new world. Home again in "little Pitaya", a title I just made up after actually having returned to The Big Apple itself. There was a lot of Miami too but I don't know if Miami has given itself a fruity name. I must stop to search to see one day when it really seems interesting enough.

Also when pitayas are in season I must photograph it to show off. It is a delicate red-skinned fruit that is the fruit of a viney cactus that grows around tropical trees. Around lime or mange trees I was told would be best. It is, like all cactus, slow-growing for here, mature enough to fruit a time to wait. I have not been able to raise them, but have managed to eat them happily. The flesh is whitish -- it almost looks like a whitish kiwi inside with its flecks of black seeds. The taste is not of a kiwi but similarly sweet-tart and juicy, the skin thick and waxy. The Mayan word for it is pi'tahaya I am told by Mayans who question why I would want to learn Spanish when I could be learning Mayan. This is one of the only words I ever seem to remember for some reason. The numbering system was fascinating with its dots and bars, the dots a 1, the bar a 5.

While in Miami I treated myself to a new watch suitable for life here on the jungle edge. A $50 Casio that will work sturdily like the last one I gave to my guard but will not tempt anyone to cut off my hand above the wrist to take it.
That type is collectible, incredibly beautiful but awfully tempting. Essential Watches has IWC watches as well as "pre-owned" Rolexes like the vintage "Paul Newman" Daytona for only $120,000 or the other quite acceptable model for $3100. Not for the jungle. The watch will probably function flawlessly but the machetes might just start flying too.

Since being home I have pulled the walls of the property, the steel gate and the walls of the house around me to retreat into myself. There was this crushing culture-shock of being shocked by both my cultures and the profound exhaustion. There was also the Mexican version of broadband to deal with. And the volatile stock market that does sap the energy watching and reading the roller-coaster days of fall.

Love & Cholera on Babbitt's Main Street

2007-10-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

Photo of stack of antique bound books from the site Pictures of Old Books.

Shopping for books always seems as if Amazon is the lone Internet dealer. Shopping for books in New York was always The Strand where they were all to be found in bins and dusty shelves, everything that could be read could be found with enough searching. Back in my more youthful days living in small-town America, shopping for books included the sweet hunts in odd corners -- the Salvation Army store in Hudson, NY where I found a first-edition of Harold Lasky's The American Presidency.

There were also yard sales at churches and the wonderful book sales at The Woodstock Library. Last January a magical book sale appeared in the parking lot next to my motel near The Falls in Miami where a lovely lady sold me all the books that would fit in my suitcases for the trip home for $4. The shopping can be as much fun as the collection and both almost as satisfying as the reading.

2007 has brought us the Internet, PayPal and plastic money. Check out my Amazon links and Buy.com for books. I found Love In The Time Of Cholera at widely different prices and a rather complete selection of Sinclair Lewis' works at Buy.com.

Books

The SubPrime Mortgage Crisis

2007-10-07T00:11:00.000-05:00

Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007.

Confused about the market jitters, past volatility, housing supply surpluses, the "melt-down". Here is the explanation is a single shot. This is, of course, merely an indication of the forces that moved big lenders to throw caution to the winds allowing everyone a shot at their 15 minutes of wealth, sort of.

Hitting The Real Estate Web Sites

2007-10-06T23:55:00.001-05:00

Miami Downtown condo under construction. Photo ©Howard Dratch, 2007.

It is not a new game but for those of us contemplating large moves and great life changes, surfing real estate and rental sites has become almost as much fun as Iron Chef competitions and watching mediocre movies for the 100th time. Today I ended up corresponding with a rental agent for the Design and Cultural Districts, Downtown Miami and the Brickell area with its condo complexes and high-rises that have tempted me with their urban amenities (not with their horribly high prices).

Monday I return to my comfortable home in Mexico and, for all its evil memories, it is home, mine, beautiful and comfortable. I am simultaneously anxious to get home and relax and depressed at leaving my own country for all its current problems. However, the house must be sold and I have become entranced or mesmerized by the discipline of investing in order to raise my income enough to survive these life- and financial-changes. Every morning has me hypnotized by screens of numbers and letters, bar charts and "candlestick" graphs. The rest of the time spent with annual reports, financial reports, prices per share, earnings per share, dividend yields and the discussions and analysis of "analysts" and experts. The experts and analysts are fun, take themselves seriously and are taken seriously and often spew nonsense, good sense or mass hysteria depending on the day.

Another area might have been another choice to live since the stock and bond markets are now accessible by Internet from anywhere-ville. My problem is that Florida is close to sea level (to make my heart happy) and its medical community has kept me alive far longer than ever expected. It has good things to say for it (and some negative). I was also checking out Arizona luxury real estate for fun. There is always the wanderlust to consider some place new and different. The desert tempts now that I have changed from distance, open-water swimming to lap pools. At my age and after the violence that came from swimming in open water, a pool seems like the proper kind of swimming.

Technorati Tags: Real Estate, Miami, Condos, Apartments, Arizona, Luxury Homes, Florida, Stock Market, Stocks, Bond Market, Investing

Nutritional Boosters, Healthy Diets And American Nutrition

2007-10-04T23:37:00.001-05:00

Visiting America again I am constantly amazed by the super-sized people. There are so many people now waddling through doors built for the masses of an earlier time. On Amtrak the 50 year old dining cars did not leave enough room for so many of the travelers to fit into the booths. The TV spews out a constant stream of junk food ads, convenience foods, instant foods, fast foods, drive-thru meals and even ads from Taco Bell for the second dinner or fourth meal -- I was impressed with the bald pandering to the public not just to supersize 3 non-squares a day but to add yet another high cholesterol, high fat, high calorie meal to their day.

The opposite is also true. There is a plethora of organic foods and health foods that are no longer relegated to "health food stores" but have large sections in mainstream supermarkets. The nearby Publix sports large sections of "organic" foods, exotic and "ethnic" foods. Health struggles with grease and fat in the constant battle of health versus self-inflicted disease. One Internet concern markets high-protein supplements and muscle-building drinks, muscle milk

Bon Provecho/Bon Apetit/Eat Hearty!

Servicing Industrial Power Supplies

2007-10-04T01:32:00.001-05:00

Visiting Miami reminds me of the time we spent here during and after Hurrican Wilma. The storm came nowhere close to the violence of Hurricane Dean's category 5 pass over my house in Bacalar. It did not destroy Miami as Dean did to the village of Bacalar and the damage done to the growing city of Chetumal.

However, it did disrupt the modern, American city of Miami and environs. Power was cut, power poles leveled by the hundreds, streets were blocked and gas stations were unable to pump gas. For a modern city in the developed and industrial world, it was a telling situation that warned us of the fragility of the contemporary infrastructure of a modern city. It is anything but hardened. Miami, after all, wasn't the corrupt and ignored New Orleans written off by the government. It was merely a small blow and a big shot of damage.

Back in Mexico after Hurricane Dean I had my generator ready to be plugged into the electrical system of the house (and that system isolated from the public grid). It was noisy and hard to get running since I had not properly exercised the machine regularly and gas supplies and lines were dirty. But it worked. It pumped water, made light, ran my computer and even ran the refrigerator. Luckily vegetarians are not so dependent on the refrigerator since little will go bad if it is not refrigerated.

For businesses the need is great for quick and sure access to power supply repair not only for the stuff of private home needs but for the far more important needs of medical facilities and laboratories, food processing, manufacturing, oil drilling, communication systems and defense needs.

Keeping the machinery going and being able to access immediate repairs and supplies for the emergency back-up equipment is right up there with "job one".

Fighting Repetitive Desires

2007-10-04T01:12:00.001-05:00

There are so many things in this world that are not good for you. Many become addictions. Tobacco is probably the worst. I know. I smoked heavily and, with my lousy genetics, developed heart disease. Thirteen years later I remain addicted to tobacco. I don't smoke it, couldn't, shouldn't, mustn't. But the desire remains. I still want the cigarette I can't and won't smoke.

Salt is another. Heart disease compels some control over salt intake and it is incredibly hard. Food needs salt to enhance flavors and so much sneaks into all foods.

Some people have the predisposition toward alcoholism and do not seem to be able to control their drinking. It, too, is a violent addiction that needs to be addressed because of the damage it does not only to the alcoholic but the people around him -- abused families and killed or maimed innocents the alcohol-user hurts in cars or with weapons and "accidents".

Of course there is also now the ever-popular recreational and prescription drug addictions that require drug rehabilitation.

The good part is that many rehab facilities have been sited - wisely - in beautiful locations. Malibu, Bacalar, Baja California all have the requisite meditative and beautiful environments to help in the rehab process. My memories of Malibu are of the beauty of the Pacific, the canyons and Mulholland Drive.

Technorati Tags: Drugs, Drug Rehabilitation, Alcoholism, Malibu, Treatment

How Much Memory?

2007-09-30T17:34:00.000-05:00

My new (last January which is some time in computer-years) MacBook Pro came with 1 GB of memory. So far I haven't used all of it. However, I have gotten my first digital camera and the applications to work with pictures and design my sites do gobble up memory. The MenuMeters telltales in the menubar are now at 668 used and 356MB in the green. It is plenty but I am not really doing much of anything except writing this.

Another GB is waiting for me at the mail drop at the hospital to be picked up tomorrow and (with luck) easily installed. Buy more is always the by-word for computers. My iBook G3 is still happily humming on its maximum 640MB, the MacBook Pro can fit 3GB. One source for IBM memory as well as Apple and other manufacturers is called, amazingly, The Memory Store.

Sadly (or not) I am an application junkie who wants to have every app that might one day be of necessity hanging around, up-to-date and ready for action. All too often I do need them. Even the little freeware apps that make digital life so much easier -- iResize, QuickSilver, SpeedFreak, Vienna -- and the big apps like Skype, Lightroom, iPhoto and even the great browser, Firefox, which sometimes decides to soak up a big chunk of memory.

Technology
Computers

The Medical Solution

2007-09-29T21:42:00.000-05:00

This trip to the States has, as always, been focused on medical care. Mexico may not have broad broadband, cheap electricity, discount stores and gadgets galore but it does have fresher food, more courtesy, more color and an abundance of beauty. It is a cheaper place to live than is the US.

However, it is medical care, hospitals, emergency services, medical education and respect for nurses where the United States shines. Sure, we desperately need better medical coverage by the government, financial oversight and an equal opportunity for all to share in the exceptional care, but we do have exceptional care.

My trips over the past 5 or 6 years, since a cardiac emergency brought me here by air ambulance, have relied on the services primarily of Baptist Hospital and its CardioVascular Institute. There could be some question if it is as good as I think it is except that it is 13 years since physicians promised me 1 year, 3 years or, possibly, 5 years with congestive heart failure. When I came into Miami from Mexico in the year 2000 it was in what is called "last stage" CHF, in constant and great chest pain. I am opposed to heart transplantation for myself so that limited the alternatives. Baptist has taken good care of me over the years.

One of the reasons is that it is a magnet hospital for nurses. An institution that works hard to provide more than just a job. They help staff with child care, provide shuttle buses to the parking lots and, most of all, provide respect to employees. Nursing care is based on team approaches and is carefully supervised for goals and results. After working many years as a freelance photographer for a statewide trade association for hospital administrators I have some knowledge of the field (surprising how much an intelligent photographer can learn while smiling and keeping his mouth shut).

The complexities of running such an institution (totally opposite from the horrors of the NY State Psychiatric Hospital where I worked for years prior to becoming a photographer) have some help from modern digital services -- software and hardware. One benefit is healthcare management software that allows medical team leaders/supervisors to monitor and assist their team members to meet goals for patient care.

Baptist has also been named one of the most wired workplaces as well as one of the 100 best places to work. Each employee seems to have a communicator, cell phone, computer terminal, etc. When I had serious troubles in a cardiac recovery room after a cardiac catheterization to replace an arterial stent, the nurse responded immediately to my call, sang out that her patient showed ( whatever, since I had my mind on staying alive) and the charge nurse iimmediately called my cardiologist by cell or communicator and orders were immediately given, steps taken and the doctor was shortly by my side (Dr. Efrain Gonzalez of Miami Arrhythmia). Here I still am so the system of keeping staff content and loyal to an institution works.

Internet
Health
Medicine
Technology

The Continuing Internet Home Hunt

2007-09-27T23:03:00.000-05:00

My house for sale in Bacalar, Mexico. ©Howard Dratch, 2007

For this expatriate considering repatriation or relocation south of the border, the hunt that continues to obsess me is not just for a house or condo or apartment but for the very concept of where home lies. Can I afford to live in this expensive and, often, tense country that is, above all, my country?

Should I join the expatriate, urban homesteaders in Yucatan where I would have to pay cash and renovate but would end with colonial elegance of tile floors and courtyards? Where I will have servants to care for me and, hopefully, about me as I do now or in the States where I will have robot servants -- dishwashers, microwaves, HDTV, mortgages, car mortgages and the ability to go most anywhere (with exceptions since I will probably live around Miami) and speak English.

It will boil down to money and credit and the big decision about the level of tension that my heart will survive. America is tense and scared -- for good reason. The weight of its heavy expense is a constant tension for those of us who are not rolling in the money that surrounds many Americans.

I have fixated on Miami because of my faith in some ofhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif my physicians and of the care I receive at Baptist Hospital. I feel my health will be best served by being near BHSSF. However, there is more of America than just Southern Florida.

A Seacoast Realty home for sale in Richlands, NC.

Tonight I took a virtual side-trip to the Wilmington, North Carolina area to look over some of the offerings there. My wife and I had stopped on a tour of the southern coast before we ended up in Mexico because it had history, culture, beauty and the sea. The housing stock in its historic center was impressive in its homely beauty. Wilmington NC real estate too, is not cheap -- except perhaps when compared to other American coastal areas.

Returning Slowly To Life

2007-09-26T21:00:00.000-05:00

Photo ©Howard Dratch, 2007. Glass-wall reflection from Miami Art Museum courtyard.

There has been a hiatus from blogging that has been unavoidable. This trip to the US was to undergo medical testing and procedures here with the latest equipment and techniques. Two of the three were just that. Cataract surgery that was reasonably painless, clean, successful and is healing well. Then there was a nuclear stress test done in two parts that returned pretty good results without threats of further surgery or impending crises. The chest X-ray was digital (astounding quality able to be transmitted to any doctor or facility with an Internet connection almost instantly. The blood test probably cost 10 times the one in Mexico and was probably more than 10 times as complete and accurate (not to mention clean).

Then there was surgery which was promised to be ambulatory -- enter at 10AM, cut at 2PM and leave by late afternoon. The surgeon, a referral from a doctor to whom I had been referred, has not earned my undying respect. I had to spend the night in the hospital which pleased me immensely considering the great pain I was in and the problems that arose about 3AM (that is when problems like to arise). Having the great nursing staff of Baptist Hospital of Miami instantly with me, gentle, competent and reassuring made the difference between a night of panic and fear or ambulances and just their help and compassion. The nursing profession is found best at magnet hospitals like Baptist where nurses are given respect and benefits they deserve. Luckily my cardiologist, Efrain Gonzalez, had insisted that the surgery be performed at Baptist rather than Doctors' Hospital where the surgeon is based in order that the Cardio-Vascular Institute and Dr. Gonzalez be close by and to guarantee the best nursing care.

I am recuperating very, very slowly. My movement is severely limited, the pain great and I feel at least 80 years old as I shuffle along.

I continue to look at condo complexes to rent or buy into either around Miami or, perhaps, near Fort Myers/Naples. I am still refusing to consider the idea of "55+" communities, "retirement communities". I think it is bad enough that I am old, the rest of the world needn't be. I like to see a variety of people, ages, sexes, income ranges, education, colors, ethnicity. That is the nature of the world. Just shopping for golf courses, golf equipment like Callaway Golf would not be enough. I need to swim my laps, read my books, blog my blogs, and sometimes talk to people of all sorts.

Health
Medicine
Technology

Water Lilly Tryptich And JigSaw Puzzles

2007-09-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

I will be writing a review -- no, more of a travel article -- on the show I so enjoyed at the Miami Art Museum yesterday. One piece in the show called "Power of Ten" made up of gifts of art works to the museum on its 10th anniversary ( May 4 to October 28) that pleased, entertained and amused me was Waterlillies (After Monet) by Vik Muniz (2002).

As I entered that gallery a tri-fold wall with three largish, framed works greeted me. I thought for a moment that they were small copies of the famous Monet work I had so often been entranced by at the MOMA in New York. But then after a moment I realized that they are not paintings but assemblages of cut paper that somehow come off with the feeling of the painting, not copying it just imparting a bit of its flavor.

It was only 1996 when MAM began collecting works rather than just exhibiting those curated by other institutions. Miami, after all, is a brash, new city. "Culture", after all, in Florida is usually the newest roller coaster at the amusement park shaped like a mouse or owned by a beer brewery. Miami is now stepping up toward more international stature and looking to show itself off as more that a mouse heaven for the kindergarten set.

There is, in this work by Sr. Muniz, some of the feeling of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by an artist to mirror but not copy a famous painting. It works. It is successful. Coupled with the Tamayo show it is a fine way to spend and afternoon.

Throw Some Glass Into The Fire

2007-09-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

Again I headed for Miami's Design District to see what Miami deems its culture. After yesterday's excellent (if misdirected visit to MAM) visit to see the Tamayo show I thought the worse to happen would be that I stumbled onto another interesting corner of the city. I even had my new MetroDade Visitor Pass. For $19 there is unlimited mass transit fares for a consecutive 7 day period. Good thing since the day turned into a hot, wild goose chase.

In a totally non-pedestrian city like those of Florida one must make detailed plans, carry directions, exact addresses and a transit map. Otherwise a rental car or taxi (exorbitantly expensive in a spread-out city) is a necessity. I found the performing arts center, the Carnival Arena but the Design District always seems further away than I thought. It somehow did not seem worth any more bother. Perhaps another week or another visit. Maybe it would be fun to live there and push myself back into producing some works again. Maybe I would like to play at designing my interior spaces rather than just throwing some stuff together and then covering it with junk, pictures, files and books. Total chaos is the stuff of anti-design.

I did find a new substance for those with gas log heaters and outdoor grills. It is called fire glass and replaces the fake logs I always snickered at with colorful glass which then flames. It comes in myriad colors and is a fascinating thought for the pyromaniac in me.

Snailmail The Elegant Way

2007-09-19T23:42:00.000-05:00

Mailbox available at Seattle Luxe. com.

Recently the thought of re-decorating my world whether a new house in Mexico or a condo or apartment around Miami has been piquing my interest. I do not look forward to changing my life (or maybe I do) but some facets will be fun. Today I set out to visit Miami's new Design District and look around as a possible place to live.

PeopleMover in Downtown Miami. ©Howard Dratch, 2007.

I never got there. I did get to ride the MetroMover -- an elevated people mover that circles the Downtown, Brickell and Design areas. I rode the wrong one, returned back to my starting point and decided to visit the Miami Art Museum where I truly enjoyed a show of Ruffino Tamayo's paintings and a fine video installation from the MOMA in New York. I plan an article for Blogcritics Magazine on the shows. Miami is hardly a hotbed of culture but is doing its best to improve the selection of shows, galleries, performing arts and other un-southern activities.

Miami Art Museum and Leger sculpture. ©Howard Dratch, 2007.

Here in the US, in Miami I am receiving some snail mail but the existence of Skype, broadband and my email accounts has made a great change in the way we run our lives. Still, when I set up shop -- a homestead -- mailboxes will still be expected. It may as well be interesting.

Arts
Culture
Technology

Universities in the News and as Alma Mater

2007-09-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

Old Penn from replay photos.com

I have an article today in Blogcritics Magazine about University of Florida cops viciously attacking a student and shooting him for asking a heated question of Senator Kerry. It is a frightening story of police turned violent and totally out of control.

The fault is theirs but, in the end, is the fault of an institution and administration that has obviously abdicated its responsibility to ethics, morality, academic freedom and the American rule of law. Sadly, many Americans of whom many are young do not vaguely understand the concept of freedom of speech, assembly, expression and assembly. They do not understand the very basic nature of the American ideal. It seems that they have come to believe that police have the power to do anything they wish to whomever they please. It is a dangerous situation for our nation. It may be worse than those WWII fascist sympathizers who believed that making the trains run on time was more important than liberty. Now it is "security" that has taken precedence over any protection of constitutional guarantees.

At the University of Florida its graduates and students will hopefully be deluging the administration with the call for massive changes in its "security forces" from aggressive and hateful violence against students to protection of them. They will hopefully be calling for an investigation of an administration that has fostered an atmosphere of repression and violence. The faculty -- who have not reacted in a properly outraged wave against violence and repression -- also need to be investigated for their lack of leadership.

The University of Florida may not be an alma mater its 21st century students will look back on with love, respect or wistful memories as do many alumni of other schools.

One company specializing in campus photographs, murals, framed images and other memorabilia offers Penn State football images. Happily, since I am not interested in football, they offer images of more scenic and academic parts of the Penn State campus and of other schools even including the U. of Miami around the corner from me.

I just recently visited my alma mater with all the love and nostalgia that such a visit should engender and posted a picture of the lovely formal garden at Blithewood where my wife and I were married. That is the way in which college experiences should be remembered. The U. of Florida like Virginia Tech may be put in a different category.

Education

Florida University Declares War On Students

2007-09-18T16:36:00.000-05:00

What did they do to my country while I was gone. Florida and its sub-standard university system has never shown much favor for freedom, education or liberty but has now declared war against students. The University of Florida has obviously hired and trained its wannabe cops to shoot students on any pretext. They are now visually proven as a newly violent form of thought police.

OK. Perhaps after all the headlines and investigations the University of Florida might (hopefully after paying the multi-million dollar fine it so richly desreves) agree to allow its students to actually ask questions. In other educational institutions this has been allowed for some time, but this is Florida. The young man is lucky the southern cops hadn't brought their dogs, riot guns and water cannon to control people who ask questions in public. Perhaps not.

Those students who did not go to a Florida state university just for the famed partying, fraternity hazings, semi-professional teams playing with their balls and liberal alcoholism, should now begin searching for decent educational institutions where they may be safe from the bubba thought police.

Roses Trigger Memories

2007-09-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

Photos © Howard Dratch, 2007

Visiting the garden at Blithewood where I was married I encountered a memory-laden rose. It was perfumed with old memories, sweet memories, sadness and joy.

The formal garden at Blithewood, now the Jerome Levy Institute for Economics of Bard College, was originally designed by Andrew Jackson Downing in the mid-19th c. and has been continued through a number of mansions on the Hudson River estate. In the 1950s the property was given to Bard College and was used as a womens' dorm for many years. It is one of the gems of the Hudson River Valley.

Flowers
Gardens

Food, Gardens & Life

2007-09-15T00:12:00.000-05:00

Walking in the growing and surprisingly affluent and energetic city of White Plains, New York I was impressed with America's incredible surfeit of both things -- a world of cell-phoned kids and ostentatiously driven adults -- and foods. Some of the foods, the variety and super-sized portions may explain the growing stature of my people -- in a negative sense. That "large coke" I ordered somewhere wasn't the large coke of my youth. It was a small, paper barrel with a good part of a gallong of the soda pop.

On the other hand was this great Japanese fruit and vegetable market in White Plains near Mamaroneck Avenue that had a magnificent salad bar with fruits, salads and entrees by the pound, Asian and Latino foods and dark chocolate bars not to be missed -- dark chocolate, reduced sugar bars of great taste (yes, I was weak and had one) and flowers outside to brighten the bleak, urban feel of the urban Northeast.

The concept of a garden of life -- of nutrients, whole foods and organic foods has not been ignored in this community where affluence is the order of the day.

Food
Whole Foods
Health

Finding Christmas Gifts Takes Time, Needs Time

2007-09-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

The increasingly early advertising blitzes for national holidays -- Advertising Christmas when Halloween isn't yet here, for instance -- would be annoying except for those gifts that require not only thought and very personal feelings but time to prepare.

Christmas gift ideas is one method to strike real emotion in the recipients of gifts. Personal and created gifts that cannot have come from anyone else and mean something very special to the people to whom they are given. Canvas on Demand takes digital (like my wondrous new Nikon D40X) images as well as traditional and turns them into canvases with many variations.

Possibilities are endless and they offer a 100% guarantee. Pictures can be colorized or turned into sepia, manipulated, restored, cropped, texturized and other manners of making a highly personal presentation.

Ensconced In A Sublet In Miami

2007-09-10T22:03:00.000-05:00

The train returned me from New York still kicking but a little weakly from the traveling. Two long rail trips in a week was pushing my reserves. Now there will be a month in Miami to have cataract surgery, an ambulatory surgery and cardiac tests (hopefully no more heart surgery).

A month in a somewhat strange city in a country in which I have not lived for nine years. A month in a hotel would be prohibitive and claustrophobic. Hotel alternatives of suite hotels and corporate rates for "extended stays" are also highly expensive. A week, two weeks, a month are the kind of durations too long for a hotel, too short for a real sublet or rental.

I joined Sublet.com as I did last year and again sublet a short-term apartment. It should be better. Expensive but less so than hotels, larger ( a 1 bedroom with a terrace, some green space and a relatively decent pool. It is in Dadeland in the southern part of Miami which is a new satellite city attempting to create a "village" atmosphere where shops, banks, businesses, office towers, and public transport are within walking distance. Large, luxury condo/office/shop towers are going up in a location that includes two Marriotts, a Ramada, the MetroRail station, bus nexus and strip shopping.

My apartment is in a large complex of 2 story condos across a canal from the Dadeland Mall, an upscale mall of Gaps and Sharper Images, Saks and Macy's and the other stores that flank such places. So far it seems both nice enough and a way for me to experience living in an apartment-sized space and in a more urban, American environment to see if I can someday decide where I would like to live after I sell my large house.

I also noticed a similar, vacation-styled rental lead for Pigeon Forge cabin rental in Tennessee near Gatlinburg which includes access to a heated pool (Tennessee is "up north" for some of us -- and north enough to enjoy magnificent fall colors). The Great Smoky Mountain National Park and Dolly Wood are also nearby. My wife and I had stayed in the area during treks from New York to Mexico and returning and were impressed with the natural beauty of the region.

The log cabins appear to include a great deal of luxury at less-than-luxurious prices. There are 1 bedroom, 1 bath to 4 bedroom, 3 bath cabins. This is not roughing it.

Travel
Miami
Vacation Rentals
Smoky Mountains

The Account Of A 21st Century Train Journey

2007-09-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

Please click over to the posts I have recently made on Blogcritics Magazine and on my own blog, 7 Color Lagoon about the continuing saga of my travels in this exotic nation of America. In this segment I describe the trip on the Silver Meteor, an Amtrak rail journey, from Miami to New York.

Rail travel is old but could become a growing alternative to the chaos of air travel in the post 9/11 world.

Travel
Amtrak
Trains
Miami
New York

Dressing In America

2007-09-03T22:23:00.000-05:00

I am back in the US, back in New York. The rules are changed from Miami. I had to treat myself to a new navy blazer -- the first in a decade -- and a (horrors) tie. US rules are different than Mexico and New York is different yet from Miami -- far more formal and far chillier.

Shopping is the American exercise and shopping I have done and will do for my 6 weeks in my very own country. However age, illness and overpowering boredom are cutting into my shopping sprees. The new blazer was bought at a Gentlemen's Wearhouse in Miami with no comparisons nor shopping and tired me enough. "Hi", said I, "Please show me your navy blazers." They had one of good material and it fit. I wandered out and looked in one other store and said "Great." My 12 year old one that had been used for working in as a photographer -- pockets loaded with lenses and film, shoulder weighted with my equipment bag -- it has seen better days. I may even find other uses for it than going out with my in-laws to New York places whose "informality" means heavy formality to me after ten years of Mexican living without blazer, suit, dress shirts or ties.

Buffet at a club in New York. ©Howard Dratch, 2007 Nikon D40X

Other shopping for clothes may now be shifted to the Internet in order to cut down on time wasted and energy spent. One such venue for wholesale clothing even offers the backpack I was searching for the return train trip to lessen the weight and hassle of the computer case plus camera bag plus little bag for medications and personal items for shaving and tooth-brushing.

New York
Travel
Shopping

The Great Amtrak Trek

2007-09-03T21:49:00.000-05:00

Having landed by ship in Miami and finished my appointments there, I journeyed via Amtrak's Silver Meteor from Miami to New York's Penn Station and splurged to treat myself to a roomette. The roomette, expensive as they are, was a great difference from a previous trip years ago from Rhinebeck, NY to Tampa, FL in coach.

I am working on an article for Blogcritics Magazine and my blog, 7 Color Lagoon. The trip was pleasant enough (and necessary as I cannot fly) to report on to my readers. It is also interesting that passenger use of Amtrak is up 6% this year -- perhaps as air travel becomes more complex and chaotic.

From the Metro North train from Penn Station to Westchester at the end of the journey. Harlem is also still here.

It is the first time I have been in New York in 9 or so years. It is still here. Taxi drivers are still obnoxious. Grand Central is still a challenge but the first class (for sleeper car passengers) in Penn Station is probably more pleasant than most first class lounges for air passengers. Plush, clean, A/C, business center, red cap service... It is a jewel in the problems that still remain for rail travel. Amtrak is on the right track (pardon the pun) but has some way yet to go.

Travel
Amtrak
Trains
Miami
New York

Stay tuned for the saga of the On The Road journey On The Railroad -- a combination of Kerouac and Woody Guthrie.

Visiting In An 1814 Farmhouse In New York

2007-09-01T22:03:00.000-05:00

For the moment I am visiting relatives in a more rural area of suburban New York. They have a lovely restored and remodeled 1814 farmhouse and I am reveling in the softer northern light of fall in the Northeast, the trees just beginning to consider turning colors for our entertainment and their house with its formal dining room and huge farm-styled kitchen with wood-burning stove for warmth, casual dining table and exposed, hand-hewn beams.

Home and Living.com is another resource for an extensive collection of dining room furniture as well as other home furnishings.

Bed and Breakfast Guide For Texas

2007-09-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

Photo © Beringer-Dratch of Texas capitol

We traveled some in Texas in the early years of visiting Mexico by Bronco. There were great things to see, fine food -- especially shrimp and Chinese-Vietnamese cuisine. We stayed for a while in Galveston and on South Padre Island but my favorite spot over-all was Austin with its university, good bookstores, great light to shoot the classic state house, and both Mexican and Chinese-Vietnamese restaurants.

I came across a site that acts as a guide and referral to the best of the Texas bed and breakfast inns in the state. There are three in Austin. The site leads to guides for the U.S. and some other countries. The choices in Austin and Galveston are worth a look if you are traveling or planning events. Galveston suffers pollution from the petroleum industry but is an overlooked, charming and friendly stop. The B and B there offers a pool and reasonable prices.

Furnishing Your Home Theater

2007-08-29T22:10:00.000-05:00

When I was small we went regularly to the movies -- my mother, aunts & uncles -- together and separately each taking the kid along. That was me. When I was small I waited for the cartoon and the "good stuff" like Audie Murphy in To Hell And Back. The "mushy stuff" put me to sleep. Actually I usually ended up asleep anyway. Even Dial M For Murder left me asleep (I was 6 or so) and is now one of my favorite, great, classic Hitchcock masterpieces.

In those days we often went to the Tampa Theater with plush, folding seats, the smell of popcorn and my favorite nonpareil chocolate candies. The ceiling sported twinkling stars in a dark blue background and the seats were still comfortable.

Now in the modern technological world there is no need to journey out into the tense and frightening world. It is more than possible to set up a home theater. One company on the Internet, Stargate Cinema, offers home theater seating of quality and in a variety of styles along with posters, seating accessories (how about a lighted beverage holder?) and a wide selection of movie posters.

Movies
Home Theater

Eating My Way Home

2007-08-27T20:26:00.000-05:00

In my youth which doesn't seem to have been so long ago, I was always thin enough and reasonable unconcerned about "fatness". Times change and age changes us. Now I have a weak heart that does not want to carry extra weight I have added extra weight to this aging body. Not fair.

Then, following almost a week of living without electricity, refrigeration, telephone, Internet and fresh foods arriving at the stores; I boarded a Carnival "fun ship", the Imagination. I am never immune to a couple of days aboard the feeding machine that is cruising but this trip came as counterpoint to days of deprivation. I walked up the gangplank, was greeted by pleasant security people (it helps when only one person is boarding) and was nearly knocked over by the caress of air conditioning after so much heat and humidity. My bags stored in the cabin and Mexican residency explained to a Scandinavian purser's office assistant who had never known anything but tourist visas, I went up to the grill where I eat rather than the closed-in dining rooms. Food spilled over tables in a gluttonous cornucopia of excess and I was in heaven. Drunk on frozen yogurt, pizza and iced drinks.

Did I add more to the over-the-line weight of my waist-line? Yes. I am guilty and must watch myself now. Many of the passengers were of the wide-beam variety. America shows its affluence by the wealth of foods available and the plethora of fast food and junk food. America is swollen with these things, with the wealth, excess and convenience. The result is a population wanting and needing help with its diets, dieting and nutritional supplements like the hoodia patch.

Hoodia, of which I know nothing, is a cactus product and I am a pushover for cactus. Nopal cactus leaves are a favorite of mine in Mexico and I have been told they can also be blended into a drink. Tequila and Mezcal are also wondrous liquors. I don't drink much but they are my favorites with Kalua in my coffee and Napolean Brandy or, perhaps, its bouquet.

Cruising
Food
Health

Encased, Ensconced and Home Again

2007-08-27T20:07:00.000-05:00

The hurricane came and did its cat5 best to destroy, dislocate and endanger. My house and I survived the direct hit with its 300+ km/hour winds with their noisy, deafening shrieks. It came and even this fearless observer of storms was left impressed with the storm, with the power of earth to taunt and try man. This was the summit of storms -- almost. Wilma, I have heard, was even worse in Cozumel where she parked herself for about 40 hours rather than the equally powerful Dean who came and went. There were about 6 or 8 hours of storm, a few at the amazing height of the winds but he did not stick around. Late that day the sun came out for a few minutes to really appreciate all the damage he had wrought.

Now I have been traveling. The trip had already been planned but it was surely a good time to leave. My garden was sad to face with its denuded trees and plants, the flowers blown to Campeche, the lime tree down and shrubs knocked over, all the fruits from the trees brought down. Electricity, phone and Internet services have not yet been restored. They are promised for this Friday but it is Mexico and time has little meaning.

Wander over to 7 Color Lagoon for a loose narrative of this epic voyage that I have begun. So far I have gone by taxi, bus, taxi and cruise ship and have gotten as far as Miami. My bags -- old black, wheeled things with dozens of ribbons to differentiate them from all the other old, black, wheeled things -- are again with me. My computer bag is artificial leather and was, I think, a long ago premium from buying office supplies in New York or some such. It is time, with a lovely, loyal MacBook Pro to upgrade to something like Samsonite or Timberland before all that computer finds itself on a floor somewhere.

Travel
Hurricane Dean

Cooking With Gas

2007-08-21T00:38:00.001-05:00

Living in Mexico where utensils of high quality are hard to find and most people make do with traditional ceramics and simple rolled steel, cheap cast-iron; I am happy we originally brought some cookware from the States. There are a few stainless steel bots and saute pans and my old tried-and-true blackened, cast-iron skillet that has served me for about 20 years. It has its own non-stick surface now and is worth much to me.

The other end of the spectrum is berndes cookware, a German-made line of fine utensils since 1921. This is the real McCoy, the stuff from which memorable meals are made. Granted that nothing would have saved the simple boiled penne rigati I ruined the other night when I spaced out and boiled it for 22 minutes instead of my usual 11. It was highly suitable to feed the garbage can and I made sandwiches for dinner. They were good.

Using the right tools, the precision knife and non-warping pans and griddles is part of the process of successful food. They even have woks -- German woks, perhaps, but woks nonetheless. It appears to be the kind of site and company to supply the level of quality of a chef's tools.

Even my less-than-high-quality stainless pots keep being usable here no matter how I abuse them. Other pots and pans have long since hit the dirt. Simple, precise, quality tools turn a cook into a chef.

Cat Woman

2007-08-19T20:43:00.000-05:00

Sometimes these sponsored posts are out of my line or just arrive at the wrong time. Tonight I am happily and mindlessly watching Catwoman in Spanish on TV. It is the night before what may be a bad storm -- Hurricane Dean -- and in the middle of a lot of hectic preparations. I can also celebrate that my annual visa to live in Mexico was renewed quickly and without hassles.

I stopped to see if I needed to research a company to mention here and I was taken to an on-line store that specializes in animal masks, costumes and stuffed animals -- The Jungle Store.com.

It has a lot of things for kids and infants. OK. And some to lighten the heart (hopefully for light-hearted people) of those looking for masks and costumes. The leopard masks and costume cheered me up. The movie, bad as it may be, is also cheering me with the sexy cat-woman and the silly, formula story.

What better way to forget the coming tempest than with a sexy cat woman dressed in leathers and a cat mask to (sort of) hide her identity?

House For Sale In Bacalar

2007-08-19T16:08:00.000-05:00

I am slowly gearing up to sell my lovely house on the shore of the lagoon. There is a page on my site, 7 Color Lagoon.com with the house and, now, a first gallery of pictures.

A list of agencies handling the proposed sale will be added and a pdf download with a description. This whole process is to be done slowly to allow me time to attend to medical matters, family obligations, and that difficult, final decision to part with a home I love.

Stay tuned, save your pennies or contact me at hfd@7colorlagoon.com

If you are in the Yucatan heed the message just received from local civil defense on my cell phone: If you are in a secure place, stay there. If not, go to a shelter. Obey, they say, the authorities. Since I will not evacuate my solid home for a Mexican shelter so there will be no authorities. My boxes of candles are here, some food and canned food, lots of purified water, matches, flashlights, gas for the generator, etc. Tomorrow the velador will secure all movable items and cover the pool filter. Most windows will be covered with the storm doors of mahogany. I will be fine if Dean actually hits here. The worry is not for me in my cement home but for the thousands of local people in palapas of bamboo and thatch and those inland in the jungle from here.

Reporting On The Arrival Of Hurricane Dean

2007-08-19T15:52:00.000-05:00

GOES image from NOAA of the Eastern Caribbean in infra-red.

As Hurricane Dean nears our coast of the state of Quintana Roo and the Yucatan Peninsula, I have been following it and reporting on advisories and my thoughts of yet another hurricane.

For now I have moved Hurricane Dean reports to my long-neglected blog, Travel Dangers. Visit for links to official and commercial reportage, satellite imagery and, if the power and phone lines hold, my observations as he comes our way and (maybe) hits us -- or not. Please visit there for Hurricane Dean information.

Travel
Hurricane Dean
Meteorology
Caribbean
Weather

Hurricane Dean Is Coming

2007-08-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

I have been watching the approach of Hurricane Dean toward the border village of Bacalar, the Yucatan's Caribbean shorelines and, perhaps, Chichen Itzha and Merida afterwards. It seems more and more as if we will experience a taste of this one and that the Cancun and Mayan Riviera with Cozumel will be hit yet again.

Forecasts and satellite images (along with the links to keep in touch with updates) are being posted while the electricity and phone lines last to my blog, Travel Dangers.

I was about to delete it or shunt it aside to work on this one and 7 Color Lagoon.com when this subject fit in too well.

Hurrican Dean Sparkles Towards Us

2007-08-18T01:15:00.000-05:00

The hurricane season is now better-than-officially open. Hurricane Dean is coming this way. He is not a threat yet, merely a phenomenon to watch. NOAA issued this statement and promises an update at 5 AM.

A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE SOUTH COAST OF THE
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC FROM BARAHONA WESTWARD TO THE HAITI-DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC BORDER. A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE
CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24
HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED
TO COMPLETION.

A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR JAMAICA. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS
THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...
GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE BRITISH VIRGIN
ISLANDS....U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS AND PUERTO RICO. THESE WARNINGS
WILL LIKELY BE DISCONTINUED LATER THIS MORNING. A TROPICAL STORM
WARNING IS IN EFFECT ALONG THE SOUTH COAST OF THE DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC FROM CABO ENGANO WESTWARD TO BARAHONA. A TROPICAL STORM
WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN
THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

A TROPICAL STORM WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR PORTIONS OF CUBA...FROM THE
PROVINCE OF CAMAGUEY EASTWARD TO THE PROVINCE OF GUANTANAMO. A
TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE
POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.

INTERESTS ELSEWHERE IN THE CENTRAL AND WESTERN CARIBBEAN...INCLUDING
WESTERN CUBA...THE CAYMAN ISLANDS...AND THE YUCATAN PENINSULA OF
MEXICO...SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF DEAN.

I shall do just that and watch closely to see if the storm will ruin my hectic week's plans or not.

A sponsored hunt led me to a site that sells diamond rings as well as “teen jewelry” (like toe rings) and a neat catalog feature that opens and turns pages like the print version or on-line magazines distributed by Zinio. The diamond rings were more fun if the option to “Design Your Own Ring” was clicked.

When my wife and I were married the budget (Ah, those old-time hippies) did not lend itself to diamond rings (a small, antique one came much later). We did, however, know an I.B.M. engineer looking to remake himself into a craftsman. In his case that was a jewelry maker and cutter of semi-precious stones. He did design her wedding ring as a simple filigree band. It worked.

The idea of the wedding ring is the forging of bonds and the infinite continuity of the circle that cannot be broken. It is a wonderful idea that is sometimes the case in a successful marriage. Here in Mexico the more happily married women seem to call their man “corazon” or “heart”. I like that. It is sweet, brief and very descriptive.

Travel
Hurricane Dean
Meteorology
Caribbean
Weather

Getting Cool, Being Green, Enjoying Luxury

2007-08-16T20:12:00.001-05:00

It may be fun to start over with another place to live at some point soon. We had more privacy when the major problem was keeping the jungle at bay. Now the boats, jet skis, tour boats and sightseers (as well as the black-hat boys) mean that leaving the large sliding-glass doors and sliding windows uncovered may not be appropriate. Surely if I were to live in a more urban area of whatever country I would need to cover windows for privacy and, it appears, for energy efficiency.

I have never liked frilly things nor gossamer curtains and the tropics mean that any such object will soon turn greenish from the mold, be torn or dirtied by the ever-present lizards and otherwise annoy me when they should be making my life more pleasant.

Check out not only the faux wood blinds but the energy-efficient models, wood blinds and luxury versions from the faux blinds to the Roman Shades including the textured linen model with added "cellular liner for superior insulation". Free shipping in the US and help with measuring as well as free sample swatches to feel the products. Amazing what the 'Net brings these days. Social networking, news from Peru and the ability to order window shades. What more could a person want?

There Is Not Always As Much Time As You Think

2007-08-13T19:11:00.001-05:00

Things go on and life skips along on its merry way from good to bad, bad to OK and back again. That, as they say, is life. But then the unexpected happens in a heart beat and life changes or ends.

It tends not to advertise itself. Death's dark and sexy angel comes on quiet feet and might play chess with you as in a Bergman film or might just watch as your car rolls, your plane crashes and burns. If there is time to prepare -- it might be easier. If there is time then it is probably already too late to buy term insurance, other insurance, make a will, say what you wanted to say and do the things that had been put off so long.

The moral of the story: think ahead. Plan ahead. A wise writer on careers once wrote, "Planning without planning for change is not planning at all." Plan for change, plan for rainy days and hurricanes of problems and, perhaps, they results will be less intimidating.

Wanderings On The Web

2007-08-11T16:43:00.000-05:00

This is a sponsored post that included a request to mention an adult site offering "costumes", open tip bras,lingerie and "toys". It is surely not my normal kind of recommendation but I thought of the great photographer, Marplethorpe, being censured for his pictures. They often eluded me as to who and what was doing what to whom. But the image in its shapes, textures and quality often soared beyond the specificity of sexuality to the idea of sensuality in the abstract. In the case of the supplier of underwear designed for sexuality of the kind I left behind in my teen years, there is a certain amusement and even a few stirrings when thinking of people who need someone to wear a nurse's uniform to turn them on. I do, however, rather like the "pirate shirt". Just be warned that it is an adult-oriented site a bit off my usual subjects.

Actually, the more I look at some of the pages -- like the "sexy costumes", the more fun it seems. The sexy nurse (and I have been attracted to or thankful for a number of nurses both sexy and not) costume promises:

If a spoonful of sugar can make medicine go down, then this
sweet-as-can-be Student Nurse costume should cure everything! It starts
out with a stretch polyester contoured dress that caresses the body and
accentuates your hourglass shape. The drop shoulder styling and lace
ruffle trim create a feminine look that will make any man happy to be
your patient. Shiny satin ribbons and bows add all the right touches.
The matching nurses hat and a stethoscope that looks like the real
thing are included.

I love the fact of a fake stethoscope -- genuine polyester too.

The Art Of Office Reorganization

2007-08-11T16:31:00.000-05:00

My newly painted office/study looks better, the piles of unfiled papers hidden, the walls fresh, the windows washed and wood polished. One piece of junk furniture remains from when we bought the house -- a disintegrating, rolling table with shelves and a now doorless cabinet. Quality rating: 1 on a scale of 10 when it was new. In the middle of thinking of moving is not the time to buy furniture. But, if I move, the next study will be studied and planned, the furniture invested in as a part of the appliances, electronics and photography equipment.

Another office furniture site from Pennsylvania offers desks, cabinets and the essentials of Office Furniture Concepts. They add a large section of "healthcare solutions" -- furniture, waiting room furniture and "office essentials" for the offices of health practitioners. What really turned me on was that they also offer a large selection "Corporate Art" which turns out to be photography, painting and prints framed and ready for the office. The photography section included someone I did not know of whose flower prints were quite good and certainly appropriate interspersed with Ansel Adams and what were probably good reproductions of fine old prints. In the abstract art department there were contemporary unknowns along with a fine looking reproduction of a Picasso and this Wassily Kandinsky, Farbstudie Quadrate, 1913, that I thought was a particularly well-chosen graphic for an office.

My walls are empty and need color. Who can work without the magic of pictures surrounding them?

Arts
Office Organization

Seeking Florida

2007-08-11T11:18:00.000-05:00

The attraction of Florida has been continual since the turn of the 20th century. There was a "boom" before the stock market failure of 1929 and a "bust" that came after. As a boy the remnants of ambitious (for the time) development projects still existed as ruins of a past culture -- water towers and partially-built buildings -- pointed out by my mother. For her they were the symbols of her childhood memories of the "Great Depression" and a warning to me to always plan for the unexpected.

As a young man I drove trucks throughout Florida in a period between a southern state university and entering a fine, old Yankee college where they actually served up knowledge and waited for understanding to take root. One of my stops to unload mufflers, pipes, brakes, generators and boxes of spark plugs from the crematory of the closed back of the truck in the Florida sun was Kissimmi, Florida. It was a small town centered around the cattle ranches and its primary claim to fame was the annual rodeo. A sneeze of a town where I knew my delivery of parts would please the local cowboys fixing up their 'rods and pickups.

That was 1965 and 66. Walt Disney had probably just begun his buy-up of a huge tract of land for what was to become another American icon, Disneyworld, which would catapult Kissimmi and Orlando into a place of international importance in the world of those seeking "theme parks". That is a big world as it turned out. It is now Disneyworld and the Orlando cloud of tourism and corporate headquarters in the symbol of Sunbelt growth and dominance.

One way to visit is to prepare for a vacation rental rather than just a hotel room. Settle back and feel more home-like with a Vacation Home Orlando.

I am beginning the search for a Miami sublet for my time there. For someone undergoing any medical procedures, it is far more amenable to recuperation than a hotel. Last visit I rented a overly-large condo in the Kendall area near my medical practitioners. That was a crowded time and all I could find. This time I am looking on Sublets.com for a studio or 1 bedroom somewhere in the Miami area. The difference in comfort is, for me, immense in spite of giving up some hotel services. No room service but who can afford room service? The kitchen lets me make my own carefully controlled meals and enjoy quiet breakfasts as well as storing the left-overs of my Chinese dinner taken out or delivered. There is more of a sense of control and of life lived in reality rather than in the fairy tale version of comfort of hotels.

Travel
Florida

When The Faucets Leak

2007-08-06T19:35:00.000-05:00

Here in Mexico the rule is to have a lot of bathrooms. It is not just luxury nor large families. Some of the plumbing is always acting up. One of our chores has been to slowly replace what were de luxe hardware 25 years ago with locally-available fixtures. Twenty-five years ago the nearest city, Chetumal, was a small, sweaty border town on the edge of the jungle. Now there are new businesses springing up near the new mall with its own fast-food joints, Office Depot and Cineplex with 12 screens.

In the States the secret would now be to look on the Net for shower faucets that have cost me so much annoyance and time.

Thinking of moving again and knowing the need of Mexican houses for renovation -- especially in the faucet and shower controls department -- fills me with some dread. I have been looking at some properties in another state that have already been renovated by industrious, younger urban homesteaders. What surprised me were houses that had been renovated, painted and, even, furnished in taste that would have been my own or better than my own.

The decision to part with my own house is a large and difficult one.

Faucets
Homes
Plumbing
Mexico

New Zones of Depleted Oxygen in Gulf of Mexico

2007-08-04T10:48:00.001-05:00

It has been reported that scientists have located yet another "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico where oxygen has been seriously depleted. These zones have been found every summer since 1970 or earlier have changed the basic ecology of the Gulf. One has been recurring below the mouth of the Mississippi. A new one has been found off Texas. They threaten marine life and, many of their effects appear to be permanent.

Reuters reported that the blame falls primarily on human actions. The zone of oxygen depletion below Louisiana seems to be caused by fertilizer-laden water run-off from the farms along the shores of the great river. The Louisiana dead zone is about 20,461 square kilometers (7900 square miles). The nitrogen-based fertilizers present on American farms assists in the algae growth of the Gulf which uses up the oxygen in the water. The rapidly increasing popularity of ethanol used as a gasoline additive/alternative comes from corn grown in the "heartland of America" but also uses more fertilizer that other crops.

The new zone found off the coast of Texas is said to have been caused by the heavy rains earlier this year that added layers of fresh water to the Gulf. The fresh water lays as a layer above salt water and prevents oxygenation.

The largest dead zone in the world's water is in the Baltic sea and is also a man-made area. It is 4 times larger that the Gulf zone.

In 1998 my wife and I made a trip from Tampa/Clearwater where I grew up, around the Gulf to the Mexican border at Brownsville/Matamoros. We then continued down the coast (I can stand no altitude and the coast was mostly sea-level except around the lovely village of Santiago Tuxtla north) with some routes a little inland until we ended up near the Caribbean on the Yucatan Peninsula. I had loved the clean Gulf around Clearwater and St. Petersburg when I was a boy and it remains one of the best areas on the Gulf. Tecolutla, Veracruz is another.

However, the overwhelming feeling of touring the shore of the Gulf of Mexico is its contamination and destruction. From Pensacola and sleazy Biloxi through Louisiana and the coast of Texas the smell and air pollution from refineries is all-pervasive. The waters of the Gulf touch the shore with foam colored a bilious green that seems to have more the texture of styrofoam than seawater. In Mexico there is less until Poza Rica, Villahermosa and Campeche where the Pemex fields and installations have altered the ecosystem. Further evidence of this alteration is sad indeed.

The Modern Real Estate Hunt

2007-08-04T01:12:00.001-05:00

It is a digital world, a Web 2.0 interactive world of custom searches, niche web developers and the time of the bubbling fears of volatile markets.

Whatever the market does there will still be people seeking elegant homes, starter homes, land for the future and vacation homes. All come down to a real estate broker. Of those there are many and varied. Now comes the Internet with its webs of electrons carrying pictures and virtual tours of properties, email, access to MLS and more.

After weeks of surfing housing, rental and sub-let sites I have become familiar with the new Internet way of seeing the world. Sometimes with the all-encompassing virtual tour done with attention and slide shows of excellent pictures that show the place and the feelings that surround it. And sometimes not.

As I begin to think of where I might go if I sell my Laguna Bacalar house I have been virtually visiting Mèrida and the surrounding Gulf Coast and suburbs along with Florida's south. In America I might need to go 1 or 2 or more hours from Miami (I thought a dose of urban life, museums and galleries would be good for me) in order to afford to be there. There is a temptation to live back home in the States but I fear that the States have changed in the decade I have been gone -- and the prices 10 times higher.

It is a puzzlement and here in Mexico where finding reliable real estate information is so difficult, it has been difficult to decide on a price and I continue to waver a little. The process is beginning, however, and life will change. It is the part to remember. Life will change whatever happens.

A new sponsor has added their link for Puerta Vallarta Real Estate. Puerta Vallarta is north on the Pacific coast. I have not been there but the site shows big swimming pools, modern condos and villas with the kind of amenities that we have not seen until recently in the more distant part of the country where I live. Real estate is on my mind these days.

Getting The Office Straight

2007-07-31T19:41:00.001-05:00

I am really thinking of my home office/computer room and disorganized catch-all of papers, gizmos, cables and pictures. It is a mess but is slowly being sorted out.

A real office -- well-planned, laid-out and effective would have helped me when I had my own freelance business and would still be a help in merely running my house and life both on and off line.

If I were running an active business that required space to meet people, give presentations, hire people and have them help me with the work, then the organized and attractive space would be an absolute must. Office furniture, office desks, couches and cabinets that make work more effective and more pleasant can be ordered from a California company that designs some really good-looking furniture there and has it built in China. They ship within the US and Canada, have a very well-designed site and great references. Some of the coffee tables and couches tempted me as home furnishings although I will probably either take the pieces I designed for a local Mayan carpenter or will look for the informal comfort I always turn even the most formal things into with my haphazard life.

As an update: the painters have almost finished the house. My office/study was the last room on the list as I tried to put things in enough order to disorder them against the onslaught of strangers and flying paint. Now it is done. The change is amazing. Perhaps rooms become more unpalatable here in the tropics with walls that sprout mold in the rainy season, water leaking into or being forced into any opening as the winds from the Sea and the lagoon pump up for their season. A coat of fresh paint and the ability to put everything in a corner and then seemingly start over is another idea for office re-organization.

Office Organization

Preparing The Couch For Better Potatoes

2007-07-30T17:14:00.000-05:00

Today I discovered the mother lode of home theater sites. If I go back to the States I will do it up neatly. If I stay in this country I will still jury-rig something more attractive than my old iBook on the coffee table playing movies from the Internet Archive. They recently added The Lady Vanishes and Young and Innocent to their public domain offerings. These are great Hitchcock films from his British days. Favorites.

This site for home theater really offers the fixings for a home theater from the modern hardware of plasma TVs and sound systems to a real ticket booth, concession stands, a popcorn maker and the fixings for popcorn like cardboard buckets and hot butter dispensers. This is the place for the rich to make yet another room in their sprawling house suit a single purpose or the kid in us all to finally have his own movie theater with a concession stand filled with candies and popcorn.

Back to my memories of the Tampa Theater (in the South called THE-AY-Tor) with its ceiling painted to be the night sky with constellations of lights, plush seats and fake opera-house boxes. I saw Dial M for Murder there when I was young enough to fall asleep during it -- Grace Kelly then being another “old lady” to me. That is young!

This may have been a sponsored post but the site is filled with toys and ideas for making my next living room a far better entertainment center of books, movies, music, audio books, ebooks, Internet surfing and whatever new goodies arrive on the high tech pipeline that I can afford.

Movies
Home Theater

The Case For Earphone Addiction

2007-07-28T00:30:00.000-05:00

Today was Friday in a kingdom by the sea. That meant the tense drive into Chetumal and the hour of drilling and restoring tooth after tooth. We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I take some Valium and let myself float along side of the pain-producer.

Each visit I drift into a meditation where I try to hide from both the pain and that cutting noise of the drill that grates in my head. He, Dr. Albert Solis of Merida, now uses anesthetic injections which he does particularly painlessly and effectively. Now the pain and discomfort are generally negligible and the worst problem is the sound.

The solutions, which I used to have in my cd-playing Walkman, were Bach, Mozart, Handel and Beethoven coming from earphones to fill my head with the music of gods and not with the song of the drill. Music works. One way I am thinking of living a more urban life is to stick audiophones in my ears and fill my head to bursting with music.

Early on, I looked askance at that modern, expensive iPod that took the world by storm. There were, until recently, no Mac computers in the region except for mine and a Canadian man's. Suddenly, however, the stores learned the word, “Mac” and “Apple” and “iPod” and, as it took the world, the kids of the southern frontier embraced their MP3 player. I am going to do the same before next week's “extracciòn”. I can't, after all, sit in the chair with my old G3 iBook in my lap and headphones running from it. Unfortunately that would be uncomfortable, probably the end of the iBook after all these years and a bit cumbersome.

Air Walks

2007-07-24T00:35:00.000-05:00

The sneaker industry may not have started quite like Robin William's friend in Jumanji but it rapidly rode into the American character like jeans were born from the Westward taking of the continent back when there were continents left to take.

Now jeans can cost hundreds for a sequin or label showing, designer jeans for designer tastes and designer profits.

Sneakers, I remember, kids killing for. “Gimme da sneakers, man!”.

Brought to you by your friendly, global Web is the sneaker discount store that will put your feet though the basket. Now you remember what are the top-song Air Jordans that are, as they say, to kill for.

The Time To Organize For The Future Was In The Past

2007-07-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

I am terribly disorganized and have been that way all my life. It may not be possible to change at this late date but circumstances are forcing me to try.

With life throwing worries, losses and despair at me, I am working to bring some semblance of order to my surroundings. Even perfectly ordered desks and files (which they aren't and will never be) cannot change the nature of age and loss nor the fact that I must not only re-organize but move houses -- and maybe states or countries. All the necessary things that should have been done in December primarily remain undone in July. Now I am trying to catch up quickly.

The really major changes I have mentioned and will delve into as time goes on and the solutions emerge. For now I have begun with preparing the house for sale, organizing my office and my computer files and begun to seriously decide where to go from here (physically, financially, emotionally). It is not easy.

Lifehacker is one of the amusing interludes while losing my life to the surfing addiction. As you while away your time researching those things you really don't have to know, this great blog instructs you on ways to save some of the time you are losing. It is hard to resist.

Today the have another DIY way to create a neat “charging station” for all those cell phones and gadgetry that surfers are the first to collect. Recently they showed one made with a very neat plastic box using a drill and it looked so great that I made myself one from a cheap Mexican plastic food storage box. I didn't have a working drill (no do-it-yourselfer-I) so used my trusty self-defense folding knife that will cut almost anything. I will not send them a picture. It isn't pretty but it works and I am now actually unraveling the knotted spaghetti strands of computer/printer/scanner/headphone/mouse/power cables that will one night band together and take over the world.

The other problem is my beautiful desk. It is. I commissioned a local, Mayan carpenter to make it from mahogany and came up with a design to hold my laptop which is used usually as a desktop, flatbed and film scanners, printer, phone and CDs. He made a work of simple, Parsons-like design. However, he did not warn me that I had made the top a bit deeper than it needed to be and he made the hutch separate, brought them into my room and put them nearly seamlessly and permanently.

Only then did he mention that it was now too large to ever leave the room through the door. If I move back to the States which is tempting (until I realize how expensive it is to live there) it would probably not be able to accompany me anyway. If I merely go to another Mexican state or Belize, it would be sad to lose it.

If the States do beckon and I figure out how to afford the tariff for increased security, safety, culture and medical facilities; then I would be shopping for furniture again. It will not be the $180 for a custom-made mahogany desk finished in polyurethane varnish nor the $275 we paid him for the mahogany king-size bed (with screws so it can be disassembled and moved) we designed with a large, solid headboard in the simple slab we preferred. The shopping will be harder.

One sponsor of interest is Bush furniture with on-line shopping and some really interesting and, it appears, fairly-priced office furniture, TV stands, bookcases and the like. The idea of starting over -- especially in my home office -- is highly tempting even if the beautiful desk is left behind. Their furniture may not weigh tons and be fashioned from logs I watched being cut down but it does look very well-designed for efficiency.

Financial Needs, Presentation Needs

2007-07-21T00:12:00.000-05:00

Making those interminable annual reports is only sexy when you get to do the photography as I used to do. The financial reports -- which are now done with financial reporting software --would drive me crazy. However I have far more respect for those who can do it now that so much of my energies have been put into researching companies and industries so as to more effectively manage my small stock portfolio.

Suddenly I read the lists of arcane abbreviations and rows of figures that should add up to 100 and should tell me how the company is doing, will do, could do, might do if this or that happens in the world. This week there was the question os buying a tiny piece of a Greek shipping company. There were figures to read, mere numbers about revenue produced by each worker (”You have nothing to lose but your chains”, he said not knowing that many would love to be welded to a computer terminal by chains of green paper notes. Also there was the question of the industry -- sea transportation and specifically ore and bulk cargo hauling in huge freighters. That I could sink my teeth into. The company made money ($81 million) selling its oldest ships to pay down the debt on their newest and largest. They rented out one of the fleet for $14 million which isn't chicken feed even if they might be used to haul chicken feed.

One report said that they and the industry would continue its rise because India, from whom China needed raw materials and raw goods, had raised export taxes on its raw materials and the Chinese were looking further afield and paying more for this kind of sea-going haulage. That made sense or more sense than price-to-earnings and even revenue-per-share but, in the end all the elements have to make sense of the Internet lets me lose interest in the company in the flick of a new URL, the click of a mouse.

So, yes, I bought some DSX at too high a price. It will go up again because they seem to be running their company well and they pay 6.9% dividends but I should have either not watched the stock perform so long or waited for the natural fall from the heights which was bound to happen by no matter what.

I have been feeling financially needy and have been pushing myself to trade more, research more, earn more. I think it is time for a settle black in the chair and think about things day, a re-assessment of what I am doing, where I am going and what the best way is to get there.

Prophix, my sponsor tonight, offers financial reporting software that allows companies, researchers, agencies and non-profits to set up reporting and financial presenting system in the easiest way possible. Even if the client company needs support and training to use the programs, it is provided with the mission of reducing the number of extensively trained personnel and using the talents of people who are familiar with the business or agency to bring their knowledge to the audience. Prophix promises:

PROPHIX Reporting software uniquely provides a readily accessible tool to suit all of your management, financial, general ledger transactional and ad hoc reporting needs. You can report and perform analysis, produce many types of reports, and deliver those reports to anyone at anytime. This tool is specifically designed for the business user and allows you to create detailed reports without IT involvement. PROPHIX Reporting enables organizations to transform valuable enterprise data into shared information for insightful, timely decisions.

Now, what I need is both the application that will help me track my portfolio really effectively and the wherewithal to actually put the information into the program. The trader does a good job but there are still gaps. I think I did over 21% for the year which pleases me and I know my Apple holdings are up over 92% but some things elude me still. I am working on making it simpler for myself to keep tabs on myself.

Pimping My Car And Truck

2007-07-20T10:36:00.000-05:00

There is a time to enjoy your vehicles. Usually they are a means to get from A to B in safety and, hopefully, some comfort. But there is always some time for affection if not love, a time to name the poor beast and pet it, give it a treat or two. Even a time for auto accessories. This sponsor has a site with a range of the kind of useful and affectionate gifts for car and truck.

I mostly spent my life driving Volvos, the wonderful MGA of my youth and other "foreign" machines. Then, back in 1996, we were heading to Mexico and had stopped in Tampa to visit my mother for a few weeks. I realized that my reliable but 15 year old Volvo sedan was not really appropriate for a third world exploration. When we arrived in Mexico I learned how right I had been. It is only in the last few years that Volvo has existed here and parts for almost anything except the few marques to be found here gets the Mexican "No hay" ("There aren't any") accompanied by the shrug that means no one should want such a thing and no one will try to find a way to get it.

Therefore I searched every day for two weeks looking at rusty junk before finding a perfectly-kept Eddie Bauer Bronco -- 1986 302 4x4 -- with only 164,000 miles on it. I sold it finally this year. It was hard to part with such a venerable friend whose perfect engine and still-working 4-by had gotten us out of scrapes and bull pastures, vertical streets in Papantla. One memorable day after hurricane Keith it took us on back roads on the Guatemalan-Belize border with Mexico when a storm-downed bridge had the military telling us we had to back-track 5-600 miles to go around. Finally, they relented and gave me a hand-drawn map into the jungle through villages small and isolated often without electricity. One or two had public cell phones mounted on poles in the center of the village run by a small photo-voltaic cell.

The locking truck box I had bought in Tampa for security in the back of the Bronco still lives in the house as a strong box. Do not under-estimate the power of accessories for your vehicle. It could love you for them and some could save your life or just make you happier with the car of your dreams. As a boy with my MG and my pals with Alphas and Healeys, I never thought the end of my life would ever see me as a Ford truck man but so it did.

Travel Warning For Oaxaca

2007-07-19T17:11:00.001-05:00

For those thinking or planning for a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico -- especially the city of Oaxaca -- violence again broke out in the streets yesterday with looting, lots of tear gas from the TV news reports and images of buses being driven into others to form barricades, a VW camper (they still have them here) being set aflame and rolled down the street as a weapon.

Sadly, the hotels, restaurants and the very people the populist movement pretends to want to help are the ones suffering the most. Hotels and other tourist businesses are nearing bankruptcy and those who work for them and doing without. A sad state of affairs that will, I am sure, be addressed by the federal government under President Calderòn.

The Desire For A Home

2007-07-19T16:57:00.000-05:00

Today was filled with family obligations as people are aging (me, too) and there were calls to make and E-letters to send. I was exhausted from an excursion to the nearby city of Chetumal yesterday for paint for the painters who are hard at work making the house either more comfortable or more salable. They progress and I survive the noise and bustle of 3 extra men scraping and banging.

Since I have yet to decide on a destination if I leave this house, it was a day to explore by surfing the net. There are a lot of alternatives for those of us who have no job to answer to (sadly) but cannot go to any altitude and therefore are relegated to low areas -- normally coastal. It reminded me that the US is even a possibility and offers far more security and safety (but far higher prices). I looked at prefab house plans and read a great article by a woman who built her own rural cabin where she lives with her dogs in 409 square feet. I really don't need my 3000 or so square feet to live alone. One manufacturer had some neat plans for 1 and 2 bedroom homes in about 900-1300 square feet that were highly attractive.

Off I went from there to blue ridge real estate where I was jealous of the sight of homes in the Blue Ridge where I went to summer camp more than 40 years ago, where we drove through from New York to Mexico a few times and marveled at the historic concentrations of sites and towns, the beauty of the valleys and the quality of the light. By coincidence last night I watched episode 1 of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary I had missed years ago when it was first aired. What a great documentary. What a sad time.

If you are visiting this area or relocating to the growing Sun Belt or investing in the disappearing rural nature of the spine of Colonial America, they are worth checking out. I will be traveling nearly through there by train if all goes well on my next visit to the States. Last time I was in Miami for medical needs I sublet a condo rather than searching for hotels, feeling un-anchored and not being able to cook for myself. The result was a far more pleasant time. Hotels and resorts seek to pamper and encase you in a version of comfort but a “place of one's own” for more than a few days really helps.

A Tsunami Of Images Comes

2007-07-16T21:26:00.000-05:00

Web 2.0 is here and 3.0 cannot be far behind. The past few years brought streaming video, YouTube and better video production and presentation to the home, the family, the business and the Blogosphere, Vlogosphere. Soon, even mainstream financial web sites and blogs are telling me there is going to be a revolution in streaming video, video streams that can be downloaded and television programming moving onto your friendly computer screen, Apple TV and all the devices that have begun to bridge the gap from the computer to the living room wall.

Media investigator and blogging expert Eric Berlin recently wrote on his blog, Online Media Cultist that “... until very recently, the television was a highly limited distribution mechanism. The few television networks got to choose what they thought the TV masses would like. The advent of cable television, and later VCRs, DVD players, pay-per-view, and on demand greatly expanded viewer options.

But the ability for the Internet to directly pry its way onto the TV set is absolutely huge. It will continue to make brick-and-mortar video stores irrelevant, for instance. Why take the time and effort when you can do everything from your couch with a remote control?

But the greatest implications are in terms of the nearly infinite number of options people now have to get high quality video content in their homes. The limitations of a set number of cable channels or shelf space in a video store no longer exist. What’s coming next is the ability for online video content distributors to directly compete with broadcast and cable networks for people’s attention. And that’s when things will really get interesting.”

It also implies that the nature of film/video distribution is going to -- has already begun -- to change remarkably. Independent film makers, video vloggers, mashers and industry-crashers are not just threatening the rules of intellectual property rights and distribution profits. When the images hit the fan the entertainment industry, the WorldWideWeb-o-sphere is going to be massively extended. Pictures will be in the living room, the iPod, the iPhone, wireless and ephemeral, saved on some form of media and in some forms of hardware. There will be new chances to go from garage-dreams to Google-billions.

Living in a foreign country where the people have the audacity to speak an entirely different language, I thought it best to learn it. Movies helped. TV helped when it wasn't too terrible on the 5 local channels. Best of all were movies in Spanish with English sub-titles, in English with Spanish sub-titles and, finally, in Spanish when they were visual enough to carry me through. TV with closed captioning was a great help.

As I became more fluent I began to see the gaps in the sub-titles and the errors often made in translations. Some errors were totally understandable -- difficult to translate concepts that were muddied by cultural differences, for instance. Idioms that are hard to deal with (In Spanish things that are hidden are not done “under the table” but “under water”) cause problems and sometimes there is just a translator who doesn't really understand one of the languages -- numbers translated wrong, simple words given incorrect meanings and worse. It is now and will continue to be an extremely important service in a world that had its tower of Babel and cannot always communicate without the help of intermediaries.

A commercial request took me to the Video Caption Corporation where they provide English and Spanish closed captioning as well as “multi-language subtitling for video and DVD production. They do it in-house and can handle Spanish, French and German subtitles even for feature films.

As the digital world takes further leaps into the possibilities of personal production, small independent production and nearly instantaneous distribution; the need to make video and film accessible to the World Wide Audience of the World Wide Web will become even more important. The new video-casting, vlogging, streaming and downloading technologies have begun but they are the ripples before the waves, the surf and then the tsunami of images that promise to ride into all your iThings.

Ps. A note on the great astronaut photo of Earth from space: it is courtesy of the Johnson Space Center and NASA. Other pictures and different resolutions can be found at Image Science & Analysis Laboratory of the Johnson Space Center.

If you are interested, this is the space scientists' explanation of the image:

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across.

Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles. Global city lights, derived from 9 months of observations from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, are superimposed on a darkened land surface map.

Technology
Photography
Space
Internet

IPhone Users Get Dog Food Discounted

2007-07-13T10:09:00.000-05:00

As part of a commercial break I planned to mention Premium dog food on the K9Cuisine web site. It fit in nicely with my plans -- still amorphous while I decide what country in which to live -- of getting a dog.

K9 Cuisine is also offering a discount to the users of iPhones who place orders. I approve. Full disclosure: I have a position in AAPL which is making terrific money on the hype surrounding the latest Apple product that seduced the world even before it existed. Please use your iPhone, run out and buy one or two. Make my day.

It also reminded me of the Dobermans I met at Baptist Hospital in Miami in their Rehabilitation Center. They were being brought it by volunteers to visit with patients and took the time to stop and chat (the owners chatted, the dogs stood for petting and nuzzled a bit) with someone with a good-sized fear of strange dogs and especially of Dobermans. (I was bitten as a child by a small dog and many years later in upstate New York by the vicious Doberman-Rottweiler pet of a man out on bail for murder. Nice dog. Nice guy. Nice bite. Doctor bill for tetanus shot.) It was good for me to see both the use of dogs for therapy and to meet sweet Dobermans.

K9 Cuisine also intrigued me with its organic and holistic dog foods and treats. A resident of Woodstock for 25 years I am not unfamiliar with holistic practices, organic foods nor with people who pamper their pets. This is the place to do it.

They sell, among myriad other such products, Brown Rice and Ocean Fish in bags, and, perhaps my favorite, Evangers Game Meats -- cans to add to dry dog food -- “100% Pheasant”. Yes! It is definitely possible to feed the dog far better than yourself. It has been a decade now since I ate pheasant -- probably different parts of the bird than those the dog eats -- and I am jealous. There are a pair (brace?) of pigeon-like birds that nest in my garden, remind me of quail and look tasty. However, they are part of the garden and not on my menu. They are not, after all, the same as the crows that work hard to annoy me.

Molecular Biologists Are Yet Another Niche Market Of The Blogosphere

2007-07-05T22:17:00.000-05:00

The sponsor for a link today is a company in the Dallas area whose CEO went to a public college nearby and started a business in the 1980s in the peptide and chemical industry. Most was a bit beyond my ancient organic chemistry -- way beyond. But being in the dark is part of the fun. As I read and wandered the website it began to make sense and the commercial applications for medical researchers and testing laboratories began to clear.

Besides having started a bio-tech company the CEO of BioSynthesis, Inc., Miguel Castro, works with that same college as well as Texas A&M UT Southwestern,UT Dallas,and the U. of North Texas Health Science Center. He is on the “Collin County College Biotechnology(CCCB) Advisory Board; the mission of the Board is to advise the College in ways to improve the curriculum and to establish cooperative programs where the CCCB students /graduates perform internships with local biotech companies, where they can learn valuable hands on experience and give the local companies a chance to observe the performance of the students for possible permanent hiring.” In my mind that makes a small bio-tech company something special even before its products are examined.

The products and tests that it performs and for which it is developing testing kits and the provision of testing and research services are impressive -- and leave even this inquisitive mind a bit behind.

The DNA Synthesis Division of Bio-Synthesis Inc is happy to announce another custom service: Mini Gene synthesis; with the capability to synthesize 100-200 bases long oligonucleotides we can put together small genes together; a small gene can be defined as one that encodes for 30-60 residuesin length. The ability to chemically synthesize proves very useful to the biomedical researcher that studies control of gene expression; a minigene can code for a peptide that can be an antagonist to a regulatory protein. We can deliver minigenes in about 5-7 days. For more information please call the DNA Synthesis Division.

BioSynthesis was the first maker of synthetic DNA and now is offering DNA paternity testing and DNA/RNA services to “the molecular biology community”. There are myriad niches to be found in this world, on the Internet. The molecular biology crowd is a fascinating one. The world that knew little or nothing of the DNA double-helix when I was a boy has now mapped the human genome and has small biotech companies that can “provide quality DNA services.” This group offers its services in the service of “studies ranging from PCR diagnostics to cancer research and the Human Genome Project.” Impressive.

I sincerely hope all my readers in the molecular biology field check out this service. And entrepreneurs thinking about the concept of niche marketing.

Phantom Hotel and Addiction Treatments

2007-07-04T17:12:00.000-05:00

I have good espresso again. It isn’t great like the coffee a friend used to bring back for me from Milan but it is drinkable happily. There is also a way to make a traditional Mexican coffee that is roasted and mixed with “spices” and sugar. I think the spices are cinnamon and nutmeg. The end result -- often boiled in a pot, strained and served -- is quite delicious albeit lacking the Italian perfection of even my un-traditionally made espresso.

So far this week I have neglected some of my strict dietary rules (cardiological) to have hotcakes with syrup and Kalua, some eggs where some yolk managed to slip into the whites, a favorite drink of tequila, cranberry juice, fresh lime from the tree in the garden, and even (verboten) a touch of salt on the rim of the glass.

There are so many addictions to be suffered in this world. Most give some pleasure, some are pure addiction. Sugar, caffeine, nicotine (the worst of all), sex, eating, eating fast food, pornography and recreational drugs. I gave up nicotine after the heart attack and hate fast food, am bored or freaked by pornography. The really dangerous addictions -- some drugs, nicotine, self-destructive behaviors might need addiction treatment.

Sunset Malibu promises that it"... is a fully equipped residential alcohol rehab and drug treatment center located in Malibu with magnificent 180 degree whitewater ocean views just outside the sunny confines of Los Angeles, California. Our facility is one of the most prestigious drug rehab centers in the country specializing in alcohol detox, substance abuse treatment, painkiller addiction treatment, and the treatment of co-occuring disorders such as depression and eating disorders." If you need help and separation from the daily world, a beautiful setting to remember yourself, your needs and the beauties of life without alcohol (or whatever) is just what the therapist ordered.

(Photo © Beringer-Dratch, 2007 of the Phantom Hotel)

Bacalar has even grown a reasonably civilized looking treatment center supported by the state. I know nothing about it except that it is here and looks clean and functioning. However a past governor of the state -- now in the slammer -- invested heavily in “the phantom hotel”. It is now abandoned after sitting for about 8 years. It had a grand opening and then closed. The primary investor was put away at the urging of the US government for money laundering and drug-involvement. Nothing could be then done with the property. It would have been highly fitting to use it for a rehab center.

Please note, since this post is partially sponsored by the Sunset Malibu Treatment Center, that there is a disclosure statement at The Full Disclosure Page of my main web log.

Hot Sun of the Yucatan

2007-07-02T18:19:00.000-05:00

Living in the bright sunshine of the tropics, the subject of skin care products has come up and does come up. Warnings abound as to the absolute necessity of sun and UV protectors. As a swimmer I also consider that this includes waterproofed sun screens. This site I came across has a blog on skin care as well as a selection of products which includes products for men and sun protectors which are the areas of my concern.

Cardiac problems call for gentle, regular exercise. As a swimmer that means I swim almost daily for limited time but it seems to be enough to increase my strength a bit. Without swimming the heat and humidity would severely limit the opportunities for exercise. Since I will be visiting Mérida shortly I will have a taste of the hottest city of the Yucatan Peninsula. It is often 40C there (104F). I would like to see if it is livable as it is a large and more cultured place with a great deal of beauty. The swimming remains a question although I know there are swim clubs there as there is an affluent, professional class. The Gulf of Mexico is about 30 miles north. I had always planned to visit Progresso, the port city on the Gulf coast and never got there. Now might be a good time.

Originally, the first trip to Mexico was part of my plan to do a book on pictures along the entire Gulf coast from Fort Myers to the coast east of Progresso. The Gulf was a disappointment in its filthy state except around Clearwater, Florida and Tecolutla, Mexico where the beaches and the water were still white sand and clean. Tecolutla has since been washed away in a hurricane back in 2000 and may or may not have been rebuilt. Brigitte Bardot stayed at the oldest hotel there while making Viva Maria. I had already loved that silly film saved by its charm and having Bardot teamed with Jeanne Moreau We stayed at the hotel. It was charming and totally unacceptable in terms of plumbing. The pool was excellent. Tecolutla needed a good cleaning but the catastrophe was overdoing it.

Health
Tropics
Yucatan
Skin Care

Columbian Army Tries To Rescue Politicians

2007-06-29T12:22:00.000-05:00

Canal Once, the Mexican TV station of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City (the Mexican equivalent of PBS) reported today, 29 June, of a rescue attempt in Columbia to free 12 diputados (Congressmen) who had been kidnapped and were being held by FARC,Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, the guerilla army.

In the rescue attempt by the Columbian army, according to a spokesman of the guerilla group, 11 of the 12 politicians held were killed in the crossfire.

The 12th man, the survivor, is Sigifredo Lòpez. He was not in the same place as the other kidnap victims at the time of the attack.

The rescue attempt occurred on 18 June.

Latin America
Columbia
Guerillas

Mexico May Provide Refuge For Venezuelan TV Production

2007-06-20T11:40:00.001-05:00

CNN and the AP have just reported that Marcel Granier, the head of the Venezuelan TV station forced off the air by the Chavez government, may find a broadcasting platform in Mexico.

"Our commitment ... is to re-establish that contact [with Venezuelans], either from Venezuela or from abroad, by any means possible, by cable, by satellite, by Internet," he told reporters after meeting with the former Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar. Aznar spoke against the growing populist movements in Latin America warning that their ascendancy could force the region into "tyranny and irrelevance".

Granier promised to continue his attempts to reach the Venezuelans any way he could. He said he had friends in the two major, Mexican TV networks and might broadcast from Mexico.

It was earlier reported that the former Venezuelan opposition station now is on YouTube and is broadcasting from "RCTV's Colombia-based affiliate, Caracol, (which) agreed to transmit the evening installment of "El Observador" over its international signal." I did not find too much new on YouTube -- although this piece from its final days is interesting.

Sadly, it looks like a pretty mediocre station catapulted into fame by its censorship rather than by its effectiveness. Still, kudos to Mexican TV if they support the TV-station-in-exile and, good or bad, their need to exist without dictatorial intervention is important to the concept of freedom and democracy in this volatile region.

They Are Made Out Of Meat

2007-06-20T02:36:00.000-05:00

The New York Film Academy had this on YouTube. I have not been paying much attention to YouTube. There was too much junk and little of substance. Obviously I missed the metamorphosis and growth.

They Are Made Out Of Meat

On YouTube from New York Film Academy . I was impressed and entertained.

Force Quit Man, Restart Earth

2007-06-19T15:09:00.001-05:00

I will post the whole article on 7 Color Lagoon.com later but note that it has been posted on Blogcritics Magazine The Meteor Crater in the state of Arizona was the first crater to be identified as an impact crater. Between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, a small asteroid about 80 feet in diameter impacted the Earth and formed the crater.

The crater is the best preserved crater on Earth and measures 1.2 km in diameter. For many years, scientists had denied that there were any impact craters on Earth. The origin of this crater has been a source of controversy for many years. The discovery of fragments of the Canyon Diablo meteorite help prove that the feature was in fact an impact crater.

Space

First Gallery Of Photographs Of Bacalar

2007-06-17T02:48:00.001-05:00

I have added another gallery today of pictures from Bacalar, Mexico. and I updated the gallery with just a few recently scanned images.

There is a menu page with links to the present and future galleries and the two photoblogs I have on Blogger.

Visit. I have realized how far behind I have fallen with photography. Before being ill I felt rusty if I did not shoot every day. Now I am afraid I have come close to rusting solidly closed. It is time to push myself to get some work done. It is a necessity for my head.

This is also a test of MarsEdit, an editor and uploading client that is supposed to allow me to work on a few blogs quickly and easily. We shall see as time goes on -- but results must be seen before the 30 day trial is up.

Ancient Chile Peppers

2007-06-15T20:01:00.000-05:00

An archaeological study recently proved that Meso-Americans were growing and eating domesticated chile peppers as long ago as 4100 BC. Until now it has been hard to trace the antiquity of the use of chiles because they don't tend to leave anything durable behind such as husks or shells.

The new study which shows cultivation and use of chiles (what would Latin America be without chiles?) thoughout the area from the Bahamas to Peru. The 4100 BC find was in Southwestern Ecuador. The study was led by Linda Perry at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

The study has also shown that these early peoples had extensive domestication of food stuff ("maize, achira, arrowroot, yucca, squash, beans and palm fruit") and that the people of South America had much contact with different peoples and shared a "rich culinary tradition".

Often I have questioned where different foods originated. The answers sometimes surprise just as the horse was not found in the New World until the Europeans brought them. Chiles were not introduced to cuisines like India's and Thailand's until the 16th century when they were brought back to the Old World.

Today I picked some red (and red-hot) chiles from a small bush that grew from a crack in the wall outside. They flavor well although, even for me who loves very hot food, they should not be chewed up with dinner as I did the other night by accident.

Inside there are fresh bougainvilla as well as some silk trees just for a permanent spot of color in an all-white house. The roses are coming back as the rainy season enters (and they received some fertilizer).

I don't eat out much in Mexico but stopped recently in Orizaba, a local thatched-roof restaurant in town rather than on the shore of the Laguna. It is run by an older, local woman and is attached to her house and kitchen. In spite of the thatch she keeps it clean and it is a favorite with local people and some of the foreign community. Her special for the day was pollo pibil, a long-cooked chicken in a red sauce of chile and anchiote (a Yucatecan spice much like paprika mixed with lime and salt). I must go back to eating out once in a while. It was served with a dish of rice, piece of lime, a sopa of small shells in a chicken broth, tortillas and my Coke Light. The bill was 45 pesos ($4.10) which is more than it used to be but still reasonable.

Mexico
Food
Travel
Laguna Bacalar

Using Herbs And Alternative Medicines

2007-06-13T02:02:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it works, sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t. We used a brilliant dentist for many years who prescribed homeopathics as well as traditional medicines. Some worked. He also tried acupuncture, hypnotism and was a follower of a guru in orange robes for a short time. Gurus have a tendency to disappear or have their clay feet discovered.

I miss Woodstock where I shopped much of the time. A town with 2 or 3 health food stores at all times. You could have your palm read, your aura described and buy the latest New York City styles all in one small town. You could not get your shoes fixed. Even the two hardware stores stocked the usual and the little bins of screws and bolts along with expensive fixtures and gadgets to catch the eye of City-folk looking to look the look and walk the walk of us country folk.

One of these products is Tenuate which shows a variety of diet and sexual dysfunction products along energizers, immune boosters and the world’s great invention -- the pill splitter (see my post today on Lizard Stew on sexual dysfunction in otherwise healthy men as a predictor of coming cardio-vascular problems).

As we age -- some of us so much more quickly that we wished or planned -- all manner of things become necessary like disposable underwear. A close relative had cancer of the prostate and these are things to accept. Caring for my wife during the time she survived after a violent attack pushed me to deal with things I might not have been willing to do for someone else. Being a caregiver is far more difficult, demanding and complex than one ever thinks before it becomes necessary. But for those we love nothing is too much. It is a difficult role.

At least, for now, I still have my hair and am not ready for a Hair Transplant. When I look at my grandfather’s picture I am taken with his more-than-receded hairline. I inherited his heart, sadly, rather than his hair line.

Health
Alternative Medicine

Note My Post On Impotency Predicting Cardiac Disease

2007-06-12T16:18:00.001-05:00

Bacalar, Mexico. ©Howard Dratch, 2007 from the series on Bacalar. Watch for a new Photo Gallery at my site, 7 Color Lagoon.
Do note the post on my blog, Lizard Stew titled "Impotence Could Kill You". It is about another study, this one in Sweden, which looked at men who were otherwise healthy and manifested impotence. It would appear that this hated defeat is symptomatic of growing arterial problems. Using it as an early warning system could put men on sounder diets, smoking cessation and exercise and therefore prolong their lives.

Health

The House and The Web

2007-06-08T11:25:00.000-05:00

Today I am relaxing from yesterday's painters for estimates. The problem with a big house is that it takes even more maintenance to stay even. Two groups of painters measured and came up with 670 square meters of wall space inside and a bit more outside where they have terraces and cement staircase down to the shore. 670 meters squared is 7212 square feet. Too big. We didn't want such a large place but it was one of the only houses for sale in this part of the lake which is, by far, the nicest. Mexican families are gigantic by First World standards and therefore those families with some money build for masses of children and the extended family along with massive parties on a regular basis.

There is also a need for more and better lighting in the house and two roughed out areas in the overly-high ceiling set up for ceiling fans or chandeliers. I am slowly working on getting it done and looking at potential places to move -- either nearby or in SE Florida. It all takes time.

Not as much time, however, as the struggle to make a website of my own. The WordPress upgrade has been a horror that has my website, 7 Color Lagoon, totally out of service. WordPress for all its good press seems to be almost unusable. I am working today to try to restore what I had let alone the "upgrade" that WordPress promises will be repeated with all its annoyance every few months. I can hardly wait.

Web Design and Pressing Decisions

2007-06-08T02:43:00.000-05:00

Web Design. These are unsung heroes, these designers who can find themselves in the midst of myriad little files and arcane charms written in code on little digital tablets they call "editors". I was trying to be one -- at least to run my own web site ("How hard can that be?" asked the fly of the spider.") Very hard, say I, having been working at it and failing.

Do not try to access my blog, "7 Color Lagoon", this night. I "upgraded to a new version of the WordPress blogware and, following dismal directions, ended up with no blog, no image, no nothing. It was frustrating after so much work and thinking that I had finally gotten it down a little better.

Coupled with the frustration of a digital world where, instead of Spanish in which I gain fluency, they speak
geekspeak. I must learn to follow the 'thread' into the Web.

The day was also made of house painters coming to leave their estimates to repaint all the inside and outside of this barn of a house. 670 square meters of wall space they both came up with. It is partly a result of someone's idea to design a living/dining room with hight ceilings -- 5.5 meters or 18 feet high at the peak. Spacious but a bit of a pain when it is time to change light bulbs or paint the walls.

That is probably why I am considering selling and moving to something smaller or moving back to the States. There I will not get into golf although there are places where Ping Golf would be of use with its pretty drivers.

Branson real estate has a property for investment with Missouri's top golf course in Branson, Missouri. The idea of a "community" begins to look more enticing after years of having to hire a guard to watch the house and help me both protect it and care for it. America has places where other people do that for you. Amazing.

Concert, Sports & Theater Tickets On line

2007-06-06T14:59:00.000-05:00

(File photo of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic ©Beringer-Dratch)

I was impressed with the plethora of : concert tickets, theater and sports tickets in a number of American cities (like Miami) that are available from this on-line seller.

Before heading off to buy tickets to a concert check out the reviews at Blogcritics Magazine. There is always a long list of music reviews available. It is a premier source of information, discussions and criticism. I know because I write for them, too -- although not normally about music.

The Gate House

2007-06-06T00:24:00.000-05:00

Today the latest mason, who I do like working with, left an estimate to rebuild the casita, the guard- or gate-house. It has had a hard life. When we bought the house the guard and his family had been living for a number of years during which the house was not used nor were they supervised. It was wall-to-wall kids and grandchildren, dogs, cats and chickens.

Now if I resurrect it there could be a place for visitors or passing tourists. There will be other work to get it ready. New doors and windows, a little furniture, some under cabinet lighting, simple lights and simple bedding.

Writing Again In Blogcritics Magazine

2007-06-05T02:16:00.000-05:00

Some time went by during which I was not writing much for Blogcritics Magazine. Now I am back at it with the last two articles:

Astronauts Prepare To Ride The Rocket

and one I just posted for editing on a diary of a teenage girl in Poland, like Anne Frank in Holland, growing up as she prepares to die. Tragic but a fascinating glimpse back to '43 in a frenzied world.

Here at the bottom of the Yucatan Peninsula the rainy season is coming but so is the vacation season of national tourism as Mexico City empties in July and August as everyone who can flees the City.

In Miami where I may visit for a surgical-style vacation in the summer, the thoughts of those who live in big condos and elegant houses turn to things like Crewed Yacht Charters and penthouses overlooking the Ocean or the bay. It is amazing at the acceptance of roads overly-trafficked with Hummers, Porsche SUVs and Jaguars. Each fender-bender seemingly a treasury of work for the auto tradesmen. What, I wonder, is the price of a Maserati fender?

Mexican Real Estate

2007-06-03T20:44:00.000-05:00

If I decide to move back to the States I will need a real estate hunt for rentals or maybe a condominium. It would be hard to adjust to living in a complex. Security and medical care would improve but I cannot yet decide on my day-to-day life there.

Here setting a price is harder because everyone is quite secretive about it and the public records are not of use, the publication as appears in the papers in the States does not here.

Brokering is done on a rather haphazard basis, unlike in the US where they are licensed and somewhat regulated. Here most Mexicans try not to use "brokers" because, un-regulated, they do not have a good reputation. Commissions are highly negotiable or informal and one way to look is to visit the guards and handymen of the nicer houses. They know all the gossip and what is happening with whom. Being able to deal with a regulated agency would be a great help here.

House Holding

2007-06-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

It has been dominating my life lately, this house and its needs. This is the back that was, before the pool, boring and dark and is now open and be-gardened.

It is, for here on the Mexican frontier with Central America, expensive and in a particularly beautiful piece of the lagoon. It is not, as in America, a luxury home. There I see on sites like Elegant Homes. com, houses are mansion-ish these days, pricey and filled with elegant materials, rooms for this, that and everything. Impressive.

Mine is worth in the millions -- of pesos (at about 10.6 pesos to a dollar). In the US whether or not there has been a "bubble", the prices are quite phenomenal. So are the houses.

The Mexican House Caper

2007-06-03T18:29:00.001-05:00

Owning a house is by far the most secure and financially-rewarding way to live. It is not, however, without its hassles, responsibilities, problems and expenses. In Upstate New York in our previous life it was a small house in the country between Woodstock and Saugerties. That one was hard because of things like exorbitant New York taxes and the cost and difficulty of finding labor.

Here in Mexico there are different problems. Labor is not expensive but not reliable and prices are often gouged with foreigners. Construction materials are different and, sometimes, of far lower quality -- sometimes not.

I am continuing the never-ending battle to maintain a large, cement house on the shore of a lagoon. There is always something to repair. However, more difficult is the decision process I am going through as to whether I will fix it up to sell, fix it up to rent out surplus rooms upstairs that would be a lovely tourist rental, or continue to live in it as the recluse my wife and I were and the equally reclusive person I am now that I am alone. Being a recluse with someone who is your love and your friend is far easier than being reclusive alone.

The choices of materials and the quality (if not the price) of labor are far better in the States. Just today I looked at a site in the US that offers mantel pieces of different materials (made me homesick for the cheery fire of a winter's evening) and a really fascinating outdoor fireplace.

The mason here, a young Mayan man, even fixed my outdoor kitchen's bar-b-q grill of brick and cement built into the terrace wall. It had begun to crumble even though I have never used it. Perhaps I will now. Or it will just look better for potential guests or buyers.

Remembering The Challenger Disaster

2007-06-03T01:02:00.000-05:00

Spectacular failure is as historic as spectacular success, perhaps moreso. It was the day before my birthday in January, 1986. My wife and I had journeyed out to California on my notion that it would be good to relocate our work (We were photographers partly specializing in performance photography) to sunny California where the world of work moves fast and looks for the newest of the new. I wanted to leave New York where things move more sedately if not more slowly and changing to a new pet artist was nothing to be taken lightly. So I thought.

We had stayed in Santa Monica which was already preparing for the boom to come. My wife didn't like cities so off we went to live in Laguna Beach. Laguna is an odd little town that boosts itself as the home of artists but mostly people went surfing and lay on the beach. The art was pretty backward and the atmosphere stultifying. The rents astronomical.

I went out on the birth day to celebrate with breakfast out and some diner-like hang-out near the beach. It was long before my heart attack and eggs over light and hash browns were still a great treat done right in the way of a decent diner. I was surprised at the long faces on people and, trying to be friendly, spoke to two men nearby.

Finally I learned of the Challenger exploding 73 seconds into its flight, its crew of 7 suffering the long drop to the ocean from the border of space in an accelerating piece of a shuttle without control, the altitude making the wait to die so long. Among them a woman teacher whose students and students over the country were rooting for and proud to see the lift-off broadcast to schools. Then the cylinder exploded and the parts traced a dismal trajectory toward the sea and death.

The problem was O-rings, those seals that keep liquids and gases from leaking, that maintain the security of the rockets that push the shuttle to altitude in a many-G thrust.

The same kind of companies that make O-rings make RFI Shielding which protects against Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) or Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) -- electromagnetic disturbances that interrupt other electronic devices. I don't know if this company, New England Die Cutting & Gasket Manufacturing, works with NASA or not. Their business is based on "government supported businesses". They are, as is the hitchhiking astronaut waiting for Atlantis on the International Space Station, Sunita Williams, a "SBA-certified, woman-owned business".

Sputnik Days and Atlantis Nights

2007-06-03T00:34:00.000-05:00

An official NASA portrait of the crew of Atlantis for mission number STS-117.

There is a new article of mine on Blogcritics Magazine about the start of the countdown for the space shuttle Atlantis. It reminded me of being young and fascinated by astronomy. A friend's father took us camping on Cocoa Beach to watch a morning lift-off that didn't come off.

We were young and entertained being on the beach with tons of people all waiting for the space ship to entertain them. It was not that long after the spectacular Vanguard failures and it was before the big rockets were built to race to the Moon with the Russians.

Then came the Sixties with a capital "S". Fun and games, shooting and looting, the draft blowing people away, and our lives beginning in the winds of change.

Science
Space

Note My Post On Cyber-Kidnapping

2007-05-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

Visit my blog, Travel Dangers or the better-edited version at Blogcritics Magazine for an article on the new wave of "virtual kidnappings" that has begun to thrive in Latin America.

Visiting Ambergris Caye In Belize In Summer

2007-05-29T18:09:00.000-05:00

It has been some time since I visited San Pedro, the town that is the population center of Ambergris Caye in Belize, Central America. It may be time to visit again and get away from all the masonry and painting that has been and will be going on here. I am either fixing up my over-sized house (for a widower) to be responsible, to enjoy it more, to rent out part of it in the future or to sell it -- although that would be a big step toward...what, I wonder?

Ambergris Caye (pronounced "key") is a barrier island off the small country of Belize just south of our location on the southeastern tip of Mexico. Ambergris can be reached by ferry from Belize City but bear in mind that Belize City is highly dangerous. An alternative is Maya Air/Tropic Air flights from Corozal (10 miles south of the Mexican border). It costs more than the ferry but takes about 17 minutes.

Summer, the Belizean sites are proclaiming, isn't all that bad. It won't rain all the time even though it is the "rainy season". True. It won't be crowded since the country only has about a quarter of a million residents and most couldn't afford Ambergris. True.

My recommendations if you visit Belize is The Villas at Banyan Bay. We have stayed there in the past and, though expensive, the condo-like suites are very luxurious. The restaurant used to be limited but good and I see they now have a much more elegant one, Rico's Restaurant. Rates are less in summer at $225 for 1-4 people in a suite. All the suites are 2 BR, 2 Bath with jacuzzi tub & shower in the master BR, full, equipped kitchen complete to silverware and utensils. Each has a "veranda" (terraza here in Mexico) either overlooking pool and gardens or the ocean (about $25 more for ocean view in summer). We preferred the pool view as there were less people around the apartment since it was not on the beach.

Golf carts are a primary means of transportation on the island along with water taxis. It has been a temptation to move to the Caye so as to hear a lot of English (much spoken in the Belizean Caribbean patois) and to live with the pressing ownership of a golf cart. I have no idea what the golf cart parts situation could be there.

Check out Belize News. com which includes a description of Elvi's Restaurant in downtown San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. It has been our favorite place with terrific Mayan specialties and seafood. The new Belize News also touts it as "award-winning" and there is a link to a Cosmopolitan magazine review. Great food, pleasant and clean.

Donors Choose: Non-Profit Site For Education

2007-05-28T11:17:00.000-05:00

BlogCatalog, a growing blogging directory to which I belong has asked its members to bring DonorsChoose.org to the attention of the blogosphere.

Donors Choose appears to be a non-profit I approve of. It channels money from donations to projects for schools that have been created and begun by teachers, schools and students. The range seems fascinating and any project for arts in schools, literacy and all the basics of education turns me on. Visit and check it out.