There are places in this broad land where once there were dreams of riches, of flipped condos
and dreams of easy money, of massive developments cheek to jowl based on sub-prime sense and prime corruption.
Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007.
Lately I haven’t been writing nor posting much. Perhaps from a period when communication was difficult and I was wrapped up in myself. Nor was I making pictures.
Luckily I made a new friend during a recent trip to Chetumal. Nice enough fellow if a bit abused. Some might even call him “cute” although I see a diabolical side.
Although concentration on getting my house sold this year is paramount, I visited a house on the coast road that is up for sale by its Mexican owner. He is asking more than I am at the moment.
I shot a couple of façades of the house but I am not hired to shoot it nor am I involved in its sale. I did enjoy this little detail — a personal aside in the business of living.
I removed myself from my car not to far from Chetumal’s museum and marketplace. One direction offered a decent fruteria. The other took me to this fence where I could meet new friends, these figures holding on by sheer will and the winds of change blew Christmas away.
A picture from my garden as a post for today. Appropriate for Sunday.
It has been so long since I have been posting to this and to my other blogs and sites that it is hard to get over whatever block has kept me from it. One way is these short posts and pictures. The pictures are important to me and have become so much easier since I bought my first digital camera in September.
My velador — gardener/guard/assistant — pushing me to get out of the house more than I have been tempted me with a nursery in the jungle nearby. He wanted to do some planting in the “front” of the house facing the lagoon. The winds and slight salinity of the air may make it hard to grow things there but we chose bougainvillea (bugambilla in Spanish) for its sturdiness and beautiful blooms. We motored over to the newish nursery (vivero) and then creeped home with the Jetta laden with plants.
A gallery of the pictures is being readied or I will post some more here but, as a teaser, is the young son of the Mayan family who tend the plants. It is not mall-world in L.A. This lad was as fascinated by the pictures floating in the screen on the back of my Nikon D40x as he was by the old foreigner who spoke with an accent. Of course, this campesino Mayan family did not exactly speak the king’s Spanish either. Their local accent was thick. I collected some plants and some images.
This game that seems as if it would go so quickly and seldom does lets me post a photo in a more elegant manner, more often. The HPOD today is a recent shot of a rainbow. There were others to be seen here and on the gallery of my house on the market for sale that were less rainbow-ish. This one at this point in time made the perfect arch for me underneath the Mayan sun, near the water and filled with hope and absolution.
It is mounted in a gallery page to itself at HPOD: RAINBOW.
An update of the Page for a Gallery Menu is due since these Picture of the Day galleries and adding up until I find a better alternative.
Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007.
The view is from the terrace of my home on the shore of the Lagoon. It is now, formally, on the market. Real estate agencies are listing and featuring it and presenting it as an excellent choice for a Bed&Breakfast. Given the advances being made on the highway down from Tulum, Playa del Carmen and Cancun (which has already been finished from Chetumal and Belize up to Bacalar and then to Limones which is the turn-off to the Costa Maya and Xcalak Peninsula; developers and investors have already made an appearance. The real estate “bubble” here has just begun to inflate unlike Miami, Tampa and the other over-built cities in the midst of the housing/credit crisis.
Contact me at hfd@7colorlagoon.com for more information or follow the links to the trusted agencies that are offering the property: Mexico International
and Mexico Caribbean.
The new HPOD (Howard’s Picture Of The Day) actually got made a day after the first. Daily as it were. Not only that but the magic of digital photography allowed it to be shot as dark fell, processed in iPhoto, made into a web page by the great app, JAlbum, and uploaded to my web host the same night. Click on over to Tree Frog — 1 picture–a short trip.
The slimily enchanting little creature, this tree frog of a tropical persuasion, thinks the antenna of my Jetta will do as a tree to let him hang out on and eat the passing smorgasboard of insects. Still, he is a wise looking fellow. No telling what other thoughts are dancing through his head.
The pornographic tuliapan charmed me into playing with it a little more and mounting the first of my HPOD galleries — Howard’s Picture of the Day. Which I will never do every day or anything close but it is a nicer presentation. It is not yet on any of the gallery menus or links.
I have been taken over by the vicissitudes of the stock market and have been riding its volatile waves for a time. It seemed a necessity to by more active and aggressive but the fact of the matter is that it is no place for a man with a weakened heart. Especially not recently.
It is time to take care of pictures and words as well and even to make myself something less of a hermit. That part is difficult in Mexico but there are pictures to be made and places left to explore.
Don’t forget the gallery of recent digital pictures
Plus a few more from cruising from Miami to Mexico. I indulged in an encyclopedic start of work vessels — living near a port would be fun — a design game with the cruise ship accoutrements and mechanisms and a shot of yet another condo project still under construction in Miami which is one of the top 10 cities for foreclosures with a highly over-built housing stock. Which should help for renting or buying there as the mortgage crisis begins to hit bottom sometime in the next year or so.
There was also the great display of work vessels while leaving Miami Harbor. They are just as much fun as the years of shooting everything that moved on New York highways.
