Playa El Matal/Jama/Ecuador – Pat Godkin’s home will most likely be demolished today.
“We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don’t like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need.” Frederick Buechner
Jama Ecuador – Buechner’s words articulate this past week’s experience as I’ve taken a slower & meandering trail through earthquake-ravaged Jama. Those that I’ve spoken with have learned the above lessons, and circumstances have steered our conversations to tones of sobering seriousness. We also find humor, though a heavy undercurrent flows through the entire area.
People are smiling, people have hope, yet there is a different energy of emotional heaviness, of unspoken weariness. Continue reading →
“Wherever there are birds, there is hope.”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
Jama, Ecuador – Arriving in Jama just before dark, I was happy to see Luchy Cevallos unloading items from his car at Palo Santo Cafe. “Lisa!!”he smiled, “Come in and have a cafe!” I accepted on the condition that I share the tasks before they opened at 7. He also prepared a pizza that we shared, and then he dashed to the cabanas to prepare #3 for me to spend the night. Yay!
Business was brisk, and I suspected that each dime would help with repairs on his hostal. When I left at ten, people were still visiting while enjoying good food at a very fair price.
I also took photos to compare before and after, so here’s an ‘after’ photo taken in front of Palo Santo…
Jama – in front of Palo Santo Cafe – Nov 2016 What’s missing?
Compare the photo above with one taken a few years earlier:
Jama Before –
More before/after comparasons:
Jama before – (Wear White for Peace)
Jama after earthquake – Luchy’s brother’s house is gone (to the right) as is a two-story house to the left…
Turning back time to 2008: How well I remember walking the lazy streets of Jama as if I’d stepped into a time warp from my childhood. Cowboys nudged their cattle along the streets at the end of the day. The town slowly changed over the past seven years, but the April 16th earthquake turned Jama and neighboring areas upside down.
Many have shared their stories.
“…It began like the usual earthquakes – starting slowly, and we became aware – Earthquake – and assumed it would be finished in a few seconds. But it didn’t, and the slow subtle start sort of tricked us… I was in the street outside my house when it happened… first it wasn’t scary – it was like a normal earthquake and then it got stronger. One house fell and then another and another… and I looked at our house and thought, “Please don’t fall…” – and it didn’t…. A few more minutes, and I think the house would have fallen down.” Continue reading →
Once uponce a time in a world far away (Mississippi!), November delivered a nagging cough, and it stayed with me until about March of each year. It arrived with the package of cold weather. Many people scoff and state, “Mississippi doesn’t have cold weather!” – but it does.
Late Februry 2015 – New Albany Mississippi – Photo by Charles Brunetti
Memories of ice storms and snow-swept landscapes marry well with other memories of burst water pipes that matched countless others when temperatures dropped below ten degrees Fahrenheit. I remember Mother awakening me with the words, “Look out your window,” and with joy in my heart I thought, “No school!”as I peered outside and admired the beauty of the snow. I often caught my horse and rode through snow-covered landscape. Continue reading →
“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate.” Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
Years ago while I was visiting with expat friends and their on-vacation friends in Costa Rica, someone asked, “Did you ever dream when you were growing up that you’d live somewhere like this?”
Turning back time: Costa Rica – After the Competition
My mind peddled backwards, and within seconds I recalled a wanderlust dream from grammar school. I smiled wistfully and answered, “When I was in 5th grade, I wanted to live in Argentina and raise quarter horses.”Continue reading →
The Mississippi River Bridge near Greenville, Mississippi and Lake Chicot, Arkansas
WordPress requested images of signs this week, and I’ve been snapping photos of road signs while traveling up and down that grand Mississippi River. Here are a few peeks of the river! Continue reading →
Timeout for Mississippi has squeezed the Timeout for Art to the sidelines this week. As you read William Percy’s words from his autobiography, “Lanterns on the Levee,”enjoy these images taken throughout the Mississippi Delta.
Cotton at its peak and awaiting harvest… Heavy rains at this critical time would ruin the crop.
“My country is the Mississippi Delta, the river country. It lies flat, like a badly drawn half oval, with Memphis at its northern and Vicksburg at its southern tip…
(Highway 61 near Clarksdale Misssissippi) Memphis is an hour behind in the rear view mirror and Vicksburg is hours and hours away at the other end of the road!
Its western boundary is the Mississippi River, which coils and returns on itself in great loops and crescents, though from the map you would think it ran in a straight line north and south. Every few years it rises like a monster from its bed and pushes over its banks to vex and sweeten the land it has made…
Soybeans near Clarksdale
For our soil, very dark brown, creamy and sweet-smelling, without substrata of rock or shale, was built up slowly, century after century, by the sediment gathered by the river in its solemn task of cleansing the continent and deposited in annual layers of silt on what must once have been the vast depression between itself and the hills.
Near Yazoo City Mississippi
Near Yazoo City, Mississippi
This ancient depression, now filled in and level, is what we call the Delta. Some say it was the floor of the sea itself. Now it seems still to be a floor, being smooth from one end to the other, without rise or dip or hill, unless the mysterious scattered monuments of the mound-builders may be called hills…
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. – William Faulkner
The above drawing hangs on a butterscotch-painted wall in my son’s kitchen. When I recently looked at it, memories of that long-ago 1993 pre-spring day came flooding back, and we were once again at No Mistake Plantation in Yazoo County. Charles had injured his ankle during a sports event, and we were sitting on the grounds of a daylily farm and soaking in the warm rays of sunshine. The hen ambled along with her chicks, fluffed out her feathers and settled into a comfortable pose not far from where we sat. The pencil drawing captured the moment much better than any camera, and the memories were branded with each stroke of the pencil.
New Albany (Mississippi) Heritage Museum
A few days ago I visited the Union County Heritage Museum in New Albany, Mississippi, and the back gardens provided an abundance of artsy material. They will represent the first of many attempts to capture the essence of Mississippi!
Enjoy the walk through the gardens, and don’t forget to apply mosquito repellent!
Coming up for a fast gulp of cyber air, I am thrilled to upload photos in less than a minute instead of several hours!
The flights from Guayaquil Ecuador to Quito, and from Quito to Houston went well; after hearing that grand, “Welcome back,’ greeting at immigration, I boarded a flight to New Orleans. Landing there 12 hours after leaving Guayaquil, I received a second ‘Welcome Back’ greeting from a friend, Danny Bond, who drove from Gulfport for a fast visit before I made the last leg of my journey.
After checking in at the Amtrak station and confirming a seat on the 1:30 ‘City of New Orleans,’ we visited several salvage shops crammed with antiques and relics from old houses. Hundreds of old wooden doors and wavy-glassed windows, claw footed tubs and wooden mantles triggered creative ideas, and I asked Danny if my family had paid him to take me to those places to tempt me to move back!
The $50.00 six-hour Amtrak journey from New Olreans to Greenwood Mississippi was surely the best travel value for the year! There is so much to share, but for now, enjoy the views from the City of New Orleans! Continue reading →
“Welcome back,” a straight-faced immigration officer often says when he returns my just-stamped passport.
Those two unexpected words always touch my heart, and I reply with a heartfelt, ‘Thank you’and legally enter the United States of America.
Are the agents required to say that to all returning citizens, or am I just lucky to be greeted with those words?
Quito International Airport (Arrivals) – Hey, I think I know those people! Hank and Marie Groff (pictured above) illustrate their mastery of positive airport experiences.
After placing my passport back in its proper place and double checking the boarding pass gate details for my connecting flight, I proceed to baggage claim – if needed – and then follow the maze of signs.
While preoccupied with flight arrivals and departures, one rarely has time to notice the other travelers and workers in the airport setting. Many times when I step on that ‘this will get you there a bit faster’ moving-floor option, I always look at my fellow travelers. Few people are smiling. When eye contact is made, I quickly smile or grin before they have a chance to look away, as if one might be arrested if caught interacting with a stranger!
There are other reasons to stay serious while navigating airports; those little bullet trams demand intense focus – to confirm you’re getting on the right one as a computerized voice reminds you to stand away from the door. Most of the people seem catatonic, as if any personal interaction might cause them to fall from the tram or miss their flight.
Long long ago, a 4-H judge awarded me top prize in showmanship after my ‘runaway steer’ pulled me around the arena. The judge quietly said, “Honey, don’t you EVER lose that smile.”
Realizing that I am also caught up in the hamster cage, I release that clenched-jaw tension and smile. I smile to remind myself that the world will not stop if I miss my flight. I then try to pass that smile to others and remind them to savor the moment. To watch someone’s tightened expression suddenly transform into a light-hearted smile touches my heart. There are times when a tired irritable toddler refuses to stop crying. When possible, I look into his/her eyes and ask, ‘Hey! What’s wrong? I’ll bet you are tired. Or hungry.’ That almost always halts the crying, and the child adjusts to the unexpected encounter (distraction!) with the stranger.
Surely these children were obediently sitting with orders not to move! They did not want to smile either!
If English is not their primary language, I then start chattering in English, and the child looks at me as if I am the star attraction of the circus! I talk for about a minute, then tell the child, ‘Goodbye!’and go on my way. Almost always, the tears and heavy heart are forgotten, and the airwaves remain blissfully peaceful as the child and baffled parents wonder, ‘Who was that grinning woman?”
Some days my inner smile expands so much that I wonder if my heart might burst, and during those times of self-inspection, I worry that I might cry. Why is it so easy for me to find joy in the everyday experience of Life, and why is it so difficult for others? I do not know why, but I am grateful that through the random luck of the genes that make me ‘Z’ – I have evolved into a very happy person.
2011- Brookhaven Airport (Mississippi) Surely the man didn’t just say, “You can use it as the courtesy car”!!!
This next month I will be traveling back to the alluvial flatlands of my childhood – the Mississippi Delta and surrounding area.
Atypical of my usual WordPress writing style, I will be observing and recording my thoughts with pen and paper and will pause every so often to transcribe and share with you. A month is not a long time when the circle of my loved ones stretches from the Gulf Coast to Memphis, across the Mississippi River to Little Rock Arkansas and back down to Natchez. Continue reading →
