Category Archives: Uncategorized

Janis Joplin should be celebrating her 70th birthday today.

Those of us of a “certain age” remember the Alan Sherman song that started off, “Hello Mudda, hello Fada…” This morning surfing the site called Bits and Pieces I came across this gem:

Dear Mom,

Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and got worried. We are okay. Only one of our tents and 2 sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily none of us got drowned because we were all up in the mountain looking for Adam when it happened.

Oh yes, please call Adam’s mother and tell her he is okay. He can’t write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue Jeeps. It was great. We never would have found Adam in the dark if it hadn’t been for the lightning.

Scoutmaster Ted got mad at Adam for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Adam said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn’t hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas will blow up? The wet wood didn’t burn, but one of the tents did and also some of our clothes. Matthew is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Ted gets the bus fixed. It wasn’t his fault about the crash. The brakes worked okay when we left. Scoutmaster Ted said that with a bus that old, you have to expect something to break down; that’s probably why he can’t get insurance.

We think it’s a super bus. He doesn’t care if we get it dirty, and if it’s hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the bumpers. It gets pretty hot with 45 people in a bus made for 24. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the policeman stopped and talked to us.

Scoutmaster Ted is a neat guy. Don’t worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Horace how to drive on the mountain roads where there aren’t any cops. All we ever see up there are huge logging trucks.

This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out to the rapids. Scoutmaster Ted wouldn’t let me because I can’t swim, and Adam was afraid he would sink because of his cast (it’s concrete because we didn’t have any plaster), so he let us take the canoe out. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.

Scoutmaster Ted isn’t crabby like some scoutmasters. He didn’t even get mad about the life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the bus so we are trying not to cause him any trouble.

Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Andrew dived into the lake and cut his arm, we all got to see how a tourniquet works.

Steve and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Ted said it was probably just food poisoning from the left-over chicken. He said they got sick that way with food they ate in prison.. I’m so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was doing his time. By the way, what is a pedal-file?

I have to go now. We are going to town to post our letters and buy some more beer and ammo. Don’t worry about anything. We are fine and tonight it’s my turn to sleep in the Scoutmaster’s tent.

The recent run of mass shootings has brought the gun nuts out from under their rocks. The cry is that the only way to stop gun violence is to arm everyone. Really? Chances are, no matter how good you think you might be with a gun, or that you’re going to be able to defend yourself or anyone else if you have a gun on your person is just plain bovine excrement. Why? Check this out:

Sometimes I don’t want to live on this planet any more…

I came across this extremely interesting site this morning. Filled with interesting low-tech solutions, either new or adaptable from old technology, you can easily waste a few hours browsing through:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

I just learned from a neighbor that the person responsible for the wonderful fireworks displays in our barrio came from the generosity of Boquerón resident Carlos Ruiz, the Philadelphia Phillies all-star catcher.

Despite his fame and fortune, Carlos is just a local boy who made good and gives back to his community.

Thank you, Carlos, everybody here appreciates your efforts.

p.s. This is my 600th post to the blog.

In answer to my cyber friend, Linda, who commented on my Christmas Eve fireworks here in Boquerón, yes, they DO shoot off fireworks on New Years Eve. About a quarter to midnight you could hear explosions all over the area. Up and down the hill. One neighbor down the street has some high-powered bottle rockets and then at the stroke of midnight the real show began. The people who shot off the display I recorded Christmas went all out for New Years Eve. Some of them were as good as anything you’d see at a municipal fireworks display in a modest city in the States. Some of them actually had me applauding they were so good and at the end I had to yell, “Bravo” at the top of my lungs. What those people shot off would probably have bought me a fairly decent car. Sitting on my porch I could see big displays being fired off up near the town center, right in front of my house and down by El Cruce (where the Boquerón road and the Interamerican Hwy. meet). To say I was impressed would be an understatement.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 45,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.