7 Color Lagoon

Again playing with the first digital camera at Bayside Marketplace in Miami.   Photo ©Howard Dratch, 2007.

It is more than six months since my last sojourn into America and it is always fun to write about traveling and to review or report on places, spaces, tastes and the gritty stuff of travel. My first stop is Miami because there are doctors waiting and my four day was planned for initial appointments for all the medical tests, tune-ups and surgical games I can fit into a month or so of time.

So far I have spent 3 hours with a fine ophthalmologist in Coral Gables (Dr. Mario Sabates, 1385 Coral Way) who is planning to cut up my other eye in two weeks. Since I have been having trouble finding a general surgeon for another reasonably small problem with the time to talk to me within a month, he called his cousin (It is the Tulane Medical School family into which I have happily fallen) , Braulio Sabates who will see me this week before I leave for New York. Tomorrow it will be the excellent electro-physiologist (cardiologist), Efrain Gonzalez who will tune-up the pacing device in my chest with his dedicated computer which will pull out a history and moving, computer-enhanced picture of the beating heart. It is better than a soap opera.

What to review first? The hotel. Because I had tens of thousands of “points” from Marriott and past visits to Miami during medical procedures and time spent with an incredibly incompetent prosthetic group in Hialeah (therein lies a warning to amputees hoping for help who find only incompetence and negligence), I decided I could and should use them for this stay and chose the Courtyard by Marriott near the Dodge Island cruise ship terminal. It is on 2d Avenue downtown in the center of this vibrant, Miami financial district, growing arts area and tourist magnet. It is also a short taxi ride from the ships, in the middle of Miami’s public transport system of people-movers and metro-rail and close to the Bayfront Park and Bayside - Biscayne Blvd. at NE 4th Street, a mall with “food court”, restaurants, bars (and “Hooters” which I have heard is a strip joint with food), live music and waterside restaurants.

Marriott’s Courtyard brand is being touted as a business-oriented hotel at a moderate price. The Marriott Rewards program had annoyed me greatly when it seemed designed to keep customers from using their tiny kick-back because of its muddy and hard-to-navigate web site. Some of that is true but much was my attempt to make arrangements on the ‘Net from the cruise ship at $20 per hour using most of the hour to deal with them. However, I finally sent in an email requesting them to put in my credit card number and finish the process because, after the hurricane and a week without electric service and fresh food, I was too tired and hassled. Amazingly, they did it for me. When I arrived at the hotel at 10 AM the bill had been paid with my “points” (actually $60 for the first 3 days), my room was ready and waiting and the staff were as pleasant as a TV commercial. Service and courtesy should not surprise but the world has become a tense place and I was surprised — pleasantly.

One of the next reviews will be that of my first digital camera, a Nikon D40x which is pleasing me. I may understand cameras but do not yet understand the digital versions so it is still on automatic point-and-shoot.

The first night I looked forward to Miami’s fine Chinese restaurants. None are around here and I haven’t had the energy to journey far for my feedings. The concierge suggested Bayside saying there was a food court. I planned to avoid such a thing thinking it would be fast food, junk food, grease on a stick. But the walk was fun and they have a carousel. That night I ate Cuban food at the Latin American Cafe overlooking the water. The Filetillos de Pollo Salteado (sauteed chicken strips with onion and peppers) that I had with side orders of black beans and rice cost $10.25 and were tasty, fresh, pleasantly served and filling. I wandered home to my hotel satisfied.

Tonight the proximity and fact that I finally had the energy to carry a camera and had figured out how to make the camera basically work. This time I wandered a bit more, found that there was a real mall there — the typical upscale American line-up of Gap Kids, Gap, Gap Pets, Sharper Image plus kiosks for massage, tattoos, toys and people making music and the carousel. I love carousel horses.

The food court turned out to not be made of McPoison, Kentucky Fried Chicken Fat and the other junk food dealers. Instead I nearly stopped for swordfish steaks or Salmon fillets, checked out the sushi, and finally settled down in front of Parillada Argentina with a lot of really tempting beef and spare-rib dishes on the grill. I took the chicken breast quarter with two side dishes — tomato & cucumber and yellow rice (which tasted just like the Cuban Yellow Rice on which I grew but, hey, it is Miami). The bill with a large Coke was $7.21. Except for having to eat with plastic utensils and foam plate, paper cup, it was delicious, well-seasoned and filled with the taste of the grill.

And here was the fun part with the Nikon’s little strobe built-in and just a little iPhoto manipulation:

Chapter the first. Looking for America.

It is travel time, journey time and time to cruise and wander. This man who has so little energy relaxes with his damaged heart at the end of the world on the edge of the jungle. Now he has broken loose and headed toward Miami. What will come in the land of the free?

The trip, this non-Kerouac ramble from jungle-Mexico up to tourist-Mexico, on-board a cruise ship toward Miami, then New York, Tampa and then into surgeons’ hands is moving along. This is not the journey of Jack, Mrs. Kerouac’s son nor his roll of paper to document the journey of his head, the journey across the land. This is not Robert Frank’s pictured-trek across the landscape of American people and faces, waitresses and signs, the landscape of hope and despair. They are the icons of America. The describers of the land and the story-tellers of the stories of America found in a sign, a mirror, a lunch counter and its waitress’ resignation. This trip is to be written on the electron-roll of scrolling weblog, blogging on.

“The same”, you say with an exclamation point! Oh yes, the same, the blog rolls out in its time-reversed way as it rolls down the screen for a time and only then stops at a footer down at the bottom of the header.

This hurricane Dean, who so recently came to call on me, came rolling down my driveway to roar its hollow roar from the empty eye that blindly punished our jungle village. It made it easier to leave my home, my swimming, my garden and comfort because it left it hot and humid, dark or noisy with the snarl of the generator that makes my head swim. It filled my swimming pool with the banana tree that should have been cheerfully standing beside it and robbed my garden of most of its flowers and its bougainvillea fence. The flowers blew away in the wind and the trained arch was lost. The jungle will help. Things grow fast. Things grow big. Critters and pests grow fast, grow big. Big wasps, big grasshoppers (called “<i>langosta</i> or lobster) which are eaten in Mexico so why not call them lobsters. I hear they don’t taste the same and, by the way, the Caribbean lobster from the sea can’t hold a mollusk to a Maine lobster.

So I left home, left it behind with the guard against waves of robbers and the current tsunami of post-hurricane looting of big, coast homes. Their Mexican owners come during the August vacaciones (now over) and then for Easter. The poor are poorer, their homes devastated or their roof gone, their chickens flown the coop and the pig running around the neighborhood.

(more…)

I finished and uploaded a gallery of pictures of my house on the Laguna. The selling process goes slowly because it is hard to sell the home I love. The gallery will be changed as the painters totally finish (after Hurricane Dean passes) and I have time to make some interior shots.

A list of the agencies helping with the sale will also be in order. Visit the gallery at House For Sale: Bacalar. Then the page about the house.

News, links, satellite images and observations about the coming and, I hope, easy passing of Hurricane Dean are being hosted on my neglected blog, Travel Dangers.

Later I will probably write a piece for Blogcritics Magazine if possible.

Bloomberg.com reported today the story of a supplier of parts to the Pentagon billed them $998,798 to send 2 washers with a value of 38 cents to an Army installation in Texas.

The two sisters who owned the company and lived ostentatiously on their criminal activities discovered a loop-hole in the Pentagon’s shipping system. Supplies to combat areas and military installations that had been labeled “priority” were paid automatically. Charlene Corley is the surviving sister and owner of C&D Distributors of Lexington, SC. She is being fined only $750,000 and “faces” 20 years on each count of an indictment for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money. The government is hoping to recoup some of its $20.5 million by selling off “homes, beach property, jewelry and ‘high-end automobiles”. It cannot recover the money from their vactions — a pentagon spokesperson said, “They took a lot of vacations.”

C&D charged the pentagon $455,009 for 3 screws (value:$3.93) to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq. They were paid automatically. They billed and received $293.451 for the shipment of a washer to Patrick AFB in Florida. It was worth 89 cents.

The southern sisters began the scam in the year 2000. They got more and more greedy as time went on. The price for each shipped item was seldom more than $100. During six years of continuing fraudulent activities the total of items shipped was $68,000. They billed and were paid $20.5 million by the vigilant procurement system.

In September of 2006 a purchasing agent (Bloomberg did not report whether the agent was rewarded or promoted for diligence and honesty) noticed a bill for sending two further washers (value: 38 cents) for $969,000. The agent rejected the bill and found the earlier $998,798 payment to the South Carolina women.

According to a spokesperson for the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency, Dawn Darden, said that the government ran right out and looked at “all billing records…” and that this kind of fraud is “…not a widespread problem.” They have found some other “questionable billing” the Carolina company’s took the award. For something that is denigrated as “not wide-spread”, they noted that the “next-highest billing for questionable costs totaled $2 million.” A pittance.

Bloomberg understands money. Take this $20.5 million, that $2 million, add up the rest of the fraud and corruption and what would you have? For those of you dealing with the high cost of living in a nation embroiled in a war against evil attackers, a credit crisis (could fraud be a part of that, too?) this example of federal effectiveness will be undeniably reassuring.

Those looking for a new business should seriously consider a shipping service directed at the military. Get a UPS and FedX account and a lot of Express Mail envelopes (they are free) and keep the bill in the range of “negligible” — under $2 million. Let the troops support you.

The last “little” upgrade of the Wordpress blogging platform left me blog-less, frustrated through a week of trying to find it in the shambles of the files for the beast and vowing only to upgrade again for the most dire reasons or tempting changes. The developer of Wordpress also had the audacity to suggest blogging about the experience and how easy it was.

“Hah”, thought I, “not very likely.”

I had just written an article for Blogcritics Magazine as a satire on the complexity and problems of running even the smallest site. Even there I had to admit to the seductive beauty of WP all pimped out and tweaked with her shiny ebony skin.

Who was I to rock the boat to go from 2.2 to 2.2.2 in one fell swoop? What would happen if the whole site was lost no matter how many backups I made? I made lots.

Then I found the plugin, Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, made by Keith Dsouza. The man is flirting with genius: it worked.

Instead of the hours on hours of mistakes, repetitions and worry of the last time when I followed WP instructions line-by-line and still had problems; this time the whole process took about 15 minutes. That is not counting the extra backup(s) I did beforehand just in case it did not do as promised and backup my database and all my WP files automatically.

With the magick of the Little People this plugin not only did the deed of the upgrade but my blog seems to function better. Perhaps Keith’s program was far better than my first attempts to upload a Wordpress package?  We shall see how she works.

So I have now ended up doing just what was suggested: sitting back to congratulate myself on a job well-done and blogging about it to try out the old WPware freshly minted.

Bacalar and its resources have been ignored here for some time. Culinary delights are limited. They have increased slightly over the years but the gourmet will be happier elsewhere or renting a place with kitchen facilities. Chetumal offers more restaurants but is also limited in scope and quality — but that is a subject for another time.

1. In the village of Bacalar I can recommend the Restaurant Orizaba at Avenida 7 (the main street in front of the church) between 24th and 26th, phone 983.834.2069. This is a palapa — thatch-roofed, simple building — restaurant owned by Señora Escobar and run as if part of her kitchen. It is inexpensive (3 course lunch is about 40 pesos with a soft drink or fruit drink — $US3.75), sufficiently clean and very popular with both foreign residents and the local middle-class. The menu is limited to very pleasant breakfasts, Mexican staples like tortas and tacos plus cochinita pibil (a Mayan, long-cooked pork dish), chicken breasts (make sure to order a la plancha or ajillo which are simply grilled or grilled with a red sauce or you will get empanizada — breaded and fried), and a few beef dishes. Ask what is preparado/prepared. These specials are often the best. The photo is of a recent meal with a piece of chicken in a red (chipotle) sauce, a small plate of rice, tortillas and a chicken broth with pasta shells.

2. La Cosa Nostra is a new restaurant on the side of the park (the town square in front of the fort) owned by an American and his Mexican wife.  They are always pleasant. The food can be described as Mexican/Italian/Tex-Mex. It is very clean, friendly and welcoming. There is an inner room protected against the insect hordes by glass.  It is air conditioned. There are tables on the street but safety against dirt and crime suggests against eating on the street.  I have only eaten there once since I very rarely eat out in Bacalar but it was very pleasant, tasty and moderately-priced.

3. The Cenote Azul is south about 2 miles from the village. I have not eaten there in years. The chef, Carlos, is excellent but the previous owner died and I do not know his children who are now running it. It has become a popular tourist stop and is often crowded. The water is deep and beautiful.  The cenote is a delicate and closed eco-system visited by growing numbers of people and large tours.  I do not therefore know its present state of cleanliness especially during the vacation-time crowds.

Recently I have been beginning to photograph my house as the painters make their way slowly toward the end of the project. They have, of course, disappeared for a time. It is vacation time in Mexico. The City is emptied and every Mexican has headed for a body of water, a place for their jet ski and boat.

I have been looking for normal days here — hot, sunny, blue and humid — and catching them for the real estate shots. The rainy season is beginning — hot, grey, stormy (inter-leaved with blue skies) and humid. This was one of those days.  There was a sudden blast of tropical storm that suddenly ended and left its prize — the perfect rainbow.  I was at the end of my dock to enjoy the rainbow and wanted to share it.

The lagoon is called “The Lagoon of the Seven Colors” (La Laguna de las Siete Colores) and is usually a stripe-painting of moving bands of color as the clouds change the light on the turquoise water. The water usually is filled with color, often stealing scenes from the sky. Not on this day. The sky won. It held most of the color of the world for a time.

Princess Martha Louise of Norway, the fourth in line to the throne, is in trouble with some of the population for her latest business enterprise. She and a friend (Elisabeth Samnoy who said she is a “former ship mechanic who…attended a holistic academy”) have opened a private school called Astarte Education.

The school teaches “magick” and is most interested in helping its students to “contact angels”. “Aha”, they are saying in Norway. She “saw the light” in 2002 when she married a (gasp!) writer, Ari Behn, in a storybook royal wedding in Trondheim. Her partner in angelic crime has publicly described the program as a way to get “… in touch with your own truths… (by using) readings, healing, crystals and hands-on treatment.”

Astarte, of whom the school is named, is said to be “… one of the oldest goddesses in the Middle East.” Her royal parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, are tight-lipped although many national officials, politicians and religious figures have been chastising the princess for her use of her position in the royals to push the school. However, one poll by a Norwegian newspaper, VG, reported that 40% of Norwegians think people can develop supernatural powers and could communicate with angels.

Another site of the Temple of Astarte should be checked out for the colorful story of Carroll “Poke” Runyon, “Gentleman of the Old School”. He describes such a being as : “One who recites classical poetry to heartless beauties
while wrestling alligators.”

Astarte, herself, is “Consort to Baal, she is here depicted with two foals in ecstatic dance, her typically upraised arms grasping serpents. She was the Great Goddess, all-powerful, creating-preserving-destroying, an
embodiment of Mother Nature. Also known as Ashtoroth, in some poses she is identical with images of Kali, while in her role of virgin she is an ancient prototype of Mary.” The mother goddess was also connected with Venus, Aphodite and is the granddaughter of Beelzebub.

How could a mere princess resist the ability of speak to those socially above her, the angels, and align herself with an early Mary. We are also told of the current feast of Easter being “stolen from her” by the Christians.

The princess is surely doing little harm in spite of a certain flakiness. Look at Di, after all, the princess who wanted to be common. This one has had enough of royalty and wants to move up to angels. She is even willing to teach her clairvoyance and only asks to make it profitable.

The apple and orange debate over the status of citizen journalists who have appeared out of the Blogosphere, has been decided. The final arbiter of all things political (the spooks are the ones with the real power, after all), the Central Intelligence Agency, has publicly declared the blogging community (or “popular” parts of it) as “journalists” with rights to the “special treatment once reserved for old-school reporters,” according to a report by ABC News.

The twin secret agencies lodged in the shadows of Washington have decided to take blogging seriously. Other government agencies are “actively reaching out to the blogosphere.” The CIA has changed its policies. Requests by some bloggers for unclassified papers under the Freedom of Information Act will be accorded “special treatment” that had been the province of established journalists only. The same proof is offered in reverse by the directive issued by the NSA last August for its workers to blow whitles when they discover leaks of classified information “to the media” which now includes blogs.

When I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was being tried on perjury charges that had come from the leak of a CIA spook’s undercover identity (Scooter had been a Cheney aide, Scooter was) a pool of bloggers were allowed to cover the trial along with media representatives.

‘The press’ has been expanded,” said New York University journalism
professor (and blogger) Jay Rosen. “It’s not fundamentally different
than other moments in earlier eras,” Rosen explained. “Radio reporters
had to be added to newspaper reporters, which were originally ‘the
press.’ Public institutions had to make accommodations for television
cameras when they became part of ‘the press.’

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