tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82706847227087427012024-03-13T14:54:19.899-03:00Nature As MuseMusings on connecting with Nature, absorbing her wonder...Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comBlogger107125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-23746039695415081052023-10-22T13:06:00.001-03:002023-10-22T13:06:04.233-03:00Pass The Feather<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_1e0f_651c_8bc6_a5f8" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AK7aPaBx5zl9Cc17y-NKhp4f47fM2-05U3M-FY6CcOBtFB5vw-5jvRVoLtiGyFUwDy90fs5rVDos2lZ6KoilAuoecmYODqJaYw" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><i>from www.womenswellbeing.org</i><br><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">In a sharing circle</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">pass the feather,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">speak words of conciliation.</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">Expand your horizons,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">open up your heart,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">bleed, shed a tear,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">share in the sorrow.</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">Come together in embrace,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">heal in love and peace.</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">Imagine our solid bond,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">one to another,</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">to another, to another....</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="Gill Sans">*******</font></i></div><div><br></div><div><div><br></div><div><font face="Gill Sans">The circle influences how Indigenous people view the world. That is, how all things are connected. Balance relies on this connection and without balance, health is compromised.</font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans">Everything in circles; cycles. The sun, the moon, the seasons, the journey of our lives from birth to death. Circles are a natural way to walk your path and conduct your life and align with the fundamentals of the natural world.</font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans">Indigenous ways of knowing use and interpret the circle in many different ways but with the same good intentions. The medicine circle (wheel) is used as a diagram for everything from the four directions, a path to health and wellness, the connection between the human races of Mother Earth as well as the cycles of life, seasons and medicines.</font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans">The circle is whole and doesn't end; the circle can be unbalanced depending on what is in it or not in it. But in general, a circle is impartial, fair and representative of inter-connectivity and equality.</font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><i>www.passthefeather.ca</i></font></div></div></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-53693571550080605912023-05-31T19:44:00.001-03:002023-07-03T21:39:18.927-03:00Below The Sierra<div style="text-align: center;"><br><img id="id_587d_a041_2464_7d11" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AFGJ81rUb_fbWCWRdltFRZeas4GYA-lHK1QPAs2PvmogUFXNBQ4HcHZ5y8vTWMFIXDNClFvRqH2ged7GyhBtBXk2CaSTmZVP" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><br><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">Majestic Sierra de Tepoztlán,</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">twenty million years in the making</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">openly embracing indigenas, conquistadores, </font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">now faces acquisitive globalist undertakings.</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">Old man volcano Popocatepetl</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">fumes, he threatens to all-out blow;</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">the Earth may shake and rattle and slide,</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">ashes rain down and lava flow.</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">These mountains will as always survive,</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">Nature, stirred and flushed, will recover,</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">human hands will re-build from ruins once more,</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Verdana">this land will remain on guard, abiding forever.</font></div></div><br></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-5507322747351281562023-05-20T19:48:00.001-03:002023-07-24T11:46:04.415-03:00Tepoztlán - Myths & Mountains<img id="id_1942_c54b_a0ef_8d73" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-zZ9y0XaSxPx8h38dc3CajKy_csP4FUXZ6-OQop2Dmp_7iALGVfOBiFIRm43ZS1cFmBp9WYPyViNJvWBUUa_0QxiQsomA" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 514px; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><font face="verdana">Margarita Vargas Betancourt writes in Legend of the Tepozteco - Mesoamerican and Catholic Mythology: "The legend of the Tepozteco is a perfect example of the syncretism that characterizes Mexican folklore. Catholic influence is as obvious as pre-Hispanic impact. The immaculate conception of the Tepozteco recalls the marvelous birth of the Hero twins (as told in the Popul Vuh, the story of creation of the Maya), but also that of Jesus in the New Testament."</font></div><div><font face="verdana">She concludes her thesis: "The legend also discloses the process by which two mythologies have come together into Mexican folklore: Mesoamerican and Catholic mythologies. The stories of Tepozteco, the Popol Vuh Hero twins, Mixcoatl-Camaxtli, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and even those of Jesus and Moses have several things in common: a miraculous conception, a confrontation, and a peregrination. It is very likely that these elements are universal. However, there are several “authentic” Mesoamerican characteristics in the legend of the Tepozteco. First of all, Tepozteco was a trickster. He was a trickster-hunter like Hunahpu, Xbalanque, and Mixcoatl-Camaxtli. He is reminiscent of Quetzalcoatl, because like him, Tepozteco embodies the forces of wind and water. His final association with Mesoamerican cosmovision is that he is one of the four hundred pulque gods that are related to the mountains of the region, to the agricultural cycle, and to the astronomical phenomena of ancient Mexico."</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><i><font>Firecrackers galore, outside the church</font></i></span><font><br></font></span></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Tepoztlán carries the legend of Tepozteco, its pre-hispanic past and its Catholic heritage with fiery pride as can be seen by the celebration of religious festivals and spiritual rituals, the vibrant murals adorning town walls, the regular community and barrio fiestas, firecrackers and all. The pueblo preserves a communal system of land use that was established in the early colonial period. This system is recognized under the 1917 Mexican Constitution, under the name 'communal'. It is similar to, but not the same as, the ejido designation, which has caused headaches for many foreigners looking to buy property. This makes the municipality proud and resistant to change from outside interests, especially well-heeled ones. The community famously twice voted down golf courses proposed by wealthy developers. Tepoztlán is the only municipality in Mexico with a law expressly prohibiting their establishment. Multinational chains like Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King have been kept at bay, as has the otherwise ubiquitous Mexican supermarket chain Oxo, while pulque, mezcal, tequila, cerveza are readily available along with a rich variety of local produce and cuisine, with some dishes dating back to pre-hispanic days. This is a community where each barrio, or neighbourhood, and neighbouring pueblo is serviced by regular minibus <i>combi </i>public transit - every ten minutes! People work hard, spending long days growing and making products and selling them at market or in tiny stores. They also celebrate heartily and welcome crowds of marauding visitors from the big city on weekends and holidays.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_a469_8117_21f6_2a61" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-z-LUZpN0tzBc3cnCYhi010eYVebbe4uqj8b6k7XMwsKnEQSNtWeOhLT_-RyUlSB6kNunJPVmPAwXYcmHuIsCUu36OV2g" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="verdana"><i>One of countless murals depicting a cosmovision</i></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><font>Tepoztlán has been traditionally a proudly <i>campesino</i> (small-scale) farming and local market community. Its State of Morelos is, after all, the birthplace of the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, founder of the land-rights Zapatista movement. Eyes were opened when anthropologist Robert Redfield published the book “Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life” in 1930, painting the village as an idyllic contrast to modern life. Redfield lectured at the University of Chicago on the folk society, which he saw as "essentially a stable, isolated extended family". The first expats and tourists were not long in treading a path to Tepoztlán. A highway connecting it to Cuernavaca, a little over a half-hour drive west, in the 1940s allowed tourism to begin in earnest. Now an express toll highway linking Mexico City with Acapulco and the Pacific coast skirts the town. Luxury</font><span> hotel chains are still nowhere to be found. There is not even a hospital in this pueblo of 14,000 in a municipality of 55,000. They turned that down too. There is a health centre, clinics, spas, yoga and meditation centres, health treatments of all kinds, including plant (maguey, nopal, huitlacoche, mushrooms) and psychedelic (iboga, ayahuasca, psylocibin) medicines. In this semi-arid region of Mexico are more than 3500 species of plants that have been identified and used as natural alternatives to treat different ailments and have been used through the years as traditional medicinal agents and that practice and knowledge have been passed down from generation to generation. For a fullsome inventory, visit</span></span></div><div><font face="verdana">https://www.aztlanherbalremedies.com/collections/mexican-herbs.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><i>Temazcals</i>, a type of low-heat sweat lodge, are widespread here. They originated with pre-Hispanic Indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica. The term temazcal comes from the Nahuatl word temāzcalli.</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_ddc3_4cc8_47e2_f0b8" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-zYDVpCDz1Pbum0MZt0E_1OuAD5KcaSifRtSYRrcun8fSUrLOgyshEtSWartR4mhp6O3mxroVhJtyYq2nsdZIBcyMnpLQ" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="verdana">Medicinal herbs at the market</font></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><font face="verdana">As written elsewhere (https://natureasmuse.blogspot.com/2023/05/pulque-nectar-of-gods.html), I have been enjoying the local home-made tangy, creamy pulque, made from the fremented sap of the maguey (agave). On our way to find <i>artemesia absinthium</i> (wormwood) at the market to quell a two-day high temperature, we came across a well-stocked homeopathic pharmacy in town. I bought some artemisia drops along with the recommended pomegranate tincture to complement it. We have also been drinking the refreshing <i>te de jamaica </i>(hibiscus flower tea) as a digestive. Gundi snagged a combination arnica/rhus tox (homeopathic poison ivy) cream to settle an itchy rash on her leg. One afternoon, after sampling my pulque, in viscous combination with sparkling mineral water, she lay down after being ministered an <i>hoja santa</i> tea, picked from the garden here by Angelina, our 'Juanita', who swears by it for an upset tummy, that Mexicans seem to know all about. Ten minutes later she perked up, stomach fine again, and I too recovered! For more on hoja santa, see https://www.thespruceeats.com/hoja-santa-mexican-herb-2342959. Thanks to our friend Alfredo, we have a new discovery - he picked and brewed a pink bougainvillea flower tea to quell a stubborn cough.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Unfortunately for us, the mountain trails all around Tepoztlán are closed at present, a seasonal hazard of extended hot, dry conditions that makes forest fires an extreme hazard. Maybe a good thing for seniors like us, but one we would like to have experienced is described by AllTrails thus: "This trail begins from the tiny village of Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl, just east of downtown Tepoztlán. This route is said to pass through a portal of positive energy, as it ascends to a lookout point on top of the mountain Tlamanco, which is considered to be a place of religious offering, as well as boasting amazing views. Towards the end of the trail, there is a short bit of a rocky climb, where you need to put your hands and feet in holes in the side of the cliff. Prehispanic petroglyphs may be visible along the trail. The route passes by "La Puerta," a spiritual retreat center." AllTrails has 60 scenic trails in the Tepoztlán area. See https://www.alltrails.com/mexico/morelos/tepoztlan.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><font>Tepoztlán and its breathtaking surrounds are a magical gem, symbolized best by its enveloping cloak of monumental peaks that maintain their Nahuatl names, like Tlacatepetl, Tepoztecatl, Cuaxohualoltzin, Topiltzin, Ehecatepetl, Tlahuitepetl... This is an enduring, resilient place and people, built on myth and mountains, cultures and beliefs, food and farming.</font><font size="4"> </font><font>There's an energy around here - they call it <i>la vida.</i></font></span></div><div><br></div></div><br><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div></div><br><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div></div><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-65599576520305879872023-05-15T14:54:00.001-03:002023-07-24T11:52:01.362-03:00Pulque - Nectar of the Gods<br><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_82b5_d21f_9653_b66a" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-zQZM55K0vrtMWjktQUO7CZ0pBXKfz6PWo7Y0gpgox1rGmUQ1PUtIdqBQ1Wo7gaXYbCCyOpsJ1aPr4O2nelId4iKqpHPw" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><i><font face="verdana">Maguey (agave plant), prepared pulque</font></i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-family: verdana;"><i><br></i></span></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">There is evidence that pulque has been drunk for over two millennia and its origins are the subject of various stories and myths. Most involve Mayahuel, the 'goddess of the maguey'. It was said that the aguamiel collecting in the centre of the plant was her blood. Legend has it that the great god Quetzalcoatl was watching humanity and noticed that at the end of the working day the people did not dance and sing but, instead, seemed rather miserable. To brighten up their lives Quetzalcoatl decided to give them something which would lift their spirits. Falling in love with a beautiful goddess Mayahuel, Quetzalcoatl and she, having embraced, turned into a tree with two branches. Mayahuel's grandmother was not best pleased with this turn of events and so, accompanied by a troop of fellow demons (tzitzimime), she attacked the tree, splitting it into two. Mayahuel was then ripped to pieces and eaten by the terrible demons. A heartbroken Quetzalcoatl collected the bits and pieces left of his lover and tenderly buried them. Eventually, these remains grew into the first maguey plant and humans used it to make pulque. In the end, Quetzalcoatl's wish that humanity might benefit from a drink which increased their happiness came to pass.</font></div><img id="id_7c23_7652_54bf_8d32" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-wD-ygadVqRB6-SeFkPu-MoUK5yzI0DmANUPqLbFEJ1jZ7xqny7QcSuhbU8GCcrXgdUbCtMTCgJcIF9YYnBp0cAhU8H6Q" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">Mayahuel, often seen as the goddess of pulque, is often depicted emerging from a maguey plant with a cup of pulque in her hand. Some sources name Tepoztécatl, one of her sons, as the god of pulque. El Tepozteco, a pyramidic temple on a hill in Tepoztlán, is dedicated to him. is an archaeological site named after the deity. The site was a sacred place for pilgrims from as far as Chiapas and Guatemala, and is now a popular tourist attraction. According to Aztec myth, Tepoztēcatl was one of the Centzon Tōtōchtin, the four hundred children of Mayahuel and Patecatl, the god that discovered the fermentation process. As a deity of pulque, Tepoztēcatl was associated with fertility cults and also with the wind, hence deriving an alternative name of Ehecacone, son of the wind.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">MexicoDaily News.com reports that "In pre-Hispanic times, pulque had many functions. It provided nutrition, was used in religious ceremonies, as medicine and in special events, like weddings and feasts honoring warriors. It was also given to the priests performing human sacrifices and also to the victims. But it began to fall out of favor with the arrival of the Spanish.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">Although they did not ban it outright, the Spanish did their best to discourage its consumption, seeing it as unclean and something that was corrupting indigenous populations. The biggest threat came in the late 19th century when German brewers arrived in Mexico and a campaign was begun to promote beer and denigrate pulque."</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">Through the Mexican War of Independence and the Mexican Revolution, waged against the government of Porfirio Díaz by revolutionaries like Emiliano Zapata who hailed from this State of Morelos, pulque remained an important and valued beverage. (Zapata's agrarian movement lives on to this day through the Zapatistas, in Chiapas, for example). But pulque was more than just a drink: it was medicine, culture, and a significant moneymaker. The introduction of railways sped the perishable drink from the producing haciendas in the hills into the valley of Mexico City and other cities, where there was growing demand. Toward the end of the 19th century, pulque was the main alcoholic drink and maguey production occupied an outsize role in Mexican agriculture. However, following the revolution, President Porfirio Díaz courted foreign investment - including from breweries, which ended up pitting pulque against beer for drinkers’ pesos.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">Through Naomi Tomky at SeriousEats.com we learn: “Pulque,” says Mexico City–based food and travel writer Arturo Torres Landa, “like many things in Mexico, is a story of resistance.” When beer came to Mexico, an aggressive marketing campaign, assisted by government efforts to increase local demand for beer, sought to repeat the colonial-era framing of pulque as dirty and low-class, the stuff of a rural backwater. “It was seen as primitive and rustic,” Torres explains, which made it easier for rumors to be spread - generally assumed to originate from beer companies - that pulque was unhygienic and possibly fermented with feces. But the drink persisted, much as it had through the destruction of a great civilization and the crush of a colonial power.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">Today, like the dream of the 1890s, pulque's resurgence serves as an example of how everything old can be new again: at bars like Las Duelistas in Mexico City, three-day drunks bob their heads at the bar while young hipsters share pitchers. Garrido bought the 106-year-old bar 12 years ago out of his love for pulque. He’d been working in pulquerias since the ‘70s, and he heard business at Las Duelistas was bad and it would close. So he bought it. “How could I not?” he asked. The pulque-drinking crowd seems like a jumble of people of all ages, but Torres says there’s a generation missing—the one that lies between the young people and hipsters who have fueled the drink’s revival and the older folks “who grew up drinking it like it was water.”....</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">For the curious tourists, the hipster locals, the older men alone at the bar with an oversized, chipped stein, each glass of pulque is a little bit of Mexico. It helps visitors feel close to the location, helps the long-timers remember earlier days, and helps the youth feel connected to the past. The pulquerias all across Mexico City, both new and old, bring what was once the drink of gods and emperors, then of the rural poor, to the urban masses, one sip at a time."</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">Because of the limited transportation and the limited area where the maguey (also known as agave) grows, the drink stays pretty local to Mexico City and surrounding Mexico and Morelos States, and the nearby states of Tlaxcala, Puebla, and Hidalgo. The fresher the pulque, the better, cleaner, smoother and more refreshing the flavour.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_8917_53f5_dbca_9adb" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-zK0EcH8IOUWFhiiWs76wfZTixXvSyppUqeCrdnR7_yOfaKe6--WpJOOVIpfFhxESGoAmWtThOb29eBmDlfXnhYgXwx" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><font face="verdana">I have been sampling the local pulque, freshly prepared poured by Don Alejandro at El Buen Pulque, </font><span style="font-family: verdana;"><font>opposite the main church in Tepoztlán. He calls the drink Pulque del Abuelo, as it was his grandfather planted and grew the maguey and made pulque from it in the Tepoztlán area two generations ago. Don Alex's brew tastes good - complex, creamy, slightly fruity, </font><font>fizzy, and tangy; it picks up the essence of the Mexican dry tierra and hot sun. Pulque is said to have curative properties and high nutritional value, containing minerals, amino-acids, proteins, enzymes and vitamins as well as probiotic potential. Thanks to the high presence of lattobacilli to regenerate gut flora, it is considered particularly effective in the treatment of gastric and duodenal ulcers and the management of cholesterol, and thus helps to treat cardiovascular problems. It is highly diuretic and the enzymes it contains are very</font></span><font face="Verdana"> effective in invigorating a slow metabolism. A Mixtec Oaxaca Slow Food Presidium speaker claims "Pulque represents a symbol of identity for Mixtec communities that we have managed to preserve in the course</font><font face="Gill Sans"> </font><font face="verdana">of time. We have fought to ensure that this beverage does not disappear from family diets, despite the invasion of junk and industrial food."</font></div><div><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div><div><font face="Verdana">Salud. Here's to Mayahuel, Quetzalcoatl, and Tepoztécatl,</font></div><div><font face="Verdana">Y Viva la Revolución!</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_4744_287_abc_ec1c" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-zUz4Le-d21UyIA6JXLHpKu4gyShPLwUlPP16mEbMpQlhdiWxou5K_iB7M1N2d2mllxZwih_qBZSqZ_C3p7Lvd9D_ARLw" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><font face="Verdana"><br></font></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br><br><br><br><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></span></div><br><font face="Gill Sans"><br></font></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></span></div><br><br></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-70938008408807990522023-05-10T12:47:00.001-03:002023-07-24T11:57:03.069-03:00Tepoztlán - Pueblo Magico<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_3202_5b47_18fa_1b90" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-yYf46_BllbCbAhPuVuceIN7a-upNuc3k2CSaJtw2ZCw_lrP8tcDPqPBrlYlafFrDavt03zHv2-B2eBxNoC2kDzksBM" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><font face="Gill Sans">"Ni la tierra ni las mujeres somos territorio de conquista"</font></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><div><font face="verdana">Yes, the apellation 'pueblo magico', now with over 130 members has been overplayed. But you can't argue with the sense of magic in the air.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana">In the mountains of Morelos, Mexico lies the town of Tepoztlán, nestled up to a powerful towering mass of volcanic basalt sierra. The rocks maintain their Nahuatl names, like Tlacatepetl, Tepoztecatl, Cuaxohualoltzin, Topiltzin, Ehecatepetl, Tlahuitepetl...</font></div><div><font face="verdana">To the north, over the mountains sprawls Mexico City, at 1,750 metres above sea level some 500 metres higher altitude than Tepoztlán; to the south the land slopes off past the Valle de Tepoztlan through the tierra caliente eventually to the sea and the Pacific Ocean. Now, in May, the hottest month, the temperature reaches a steady 30 - 32 degrees by day, dropping to a more comfortable 15 - 18 by night. In the dark, the warm winds pick up, whistling through the trees, freshening up the sultry air. Until the much-anticipated rains arrive around July, the heat is dry (although there was a brief, refreshing shower last night). And yet, the vegetation is mixed, the crops varied. Amazing crops grow. This is land bathed in eternal Spring. In a month or two, the landscape will explode in buds and blooms in many shades of iridescent green. The mountains will turn from hazy tan to lush verdancy.</font></div></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br></span></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Living on the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny village of fifty inhabitants, we have escaped for a few weeks at least to soak up the hustle and bustle of a small Mexican town on market days, and even busier weekend days when chilangos descend en masse escaping the city. It is a sharp yet refreshing contrast. In Little Lorraine at this time of year, the energy of the sea and the wild coast drive us; we love the sound of Spring peepers in the pond, waves breaking on the beach, and lobster boats leaving pre-dawn on their daily harvest mission. Here, the mountains and people energize us with their hearty embrace. Sleep is gently stirred, and sometimes rudely disturbed, by roosters crowing, dogs barking, neighbours chatting, church bells chiming, bursts of loud fireworks announcing birthdays, fiestas, and God knows what else.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana">The Friday organic farmers markets are a joy to behold. The produce and goods on offer are freshly picked, mixed, brewed, baked, and squeezed. Oranges, limes, figs, mangoes, wild berries, spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, breads, cheeses, smoked meats, kombucha, fruit wine, medicinal herbs, skin creams are eagerly snatched up by happy faces, generous with bright eyes and radiant smiles. In the evening as the sun goes down, we walk around the corner to Piantao and seat ourselves outside in a charming garden looking up at the expressive rockface. Giovanni serves us fresh empanadas de carne and the best prosciutto, arugula, shaved parmesan pizza. Chef is Sergio - Sergio Pezzutti, an amazing artist who paints hauntingly evocative figures, depicting the angst of modern existence. After dinner we view his gallery with him. </font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_f594_1156_601a_4311" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-wc4y3Gz9tyBHj1Oenn6x48CYpAcJM3uh5G49yz5LUSEPod5fZhcgQMCzHJ2dPWh94FeKuqM9AytrcHrAN0J-p8mIjsJg" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;">w<br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strike><font face="Gill Sans"></font></strike><br><br></div><div><div><font face="verdana">From Argentina, Sergio and family have settled in Tepoztlán after fifteen years in Cancun. It is good to meet such creative souls, who inspire with their flashing eyes, their warmth and vision.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Another day it was time to belly up for some authentic pre-Hispanic dishes at Cuatecomate, a busy food stand slap-bang in the middle of the daily Tepoztlán mercado. Don Hancel introduced me to the tlaltequeadas - I chose two each of the squash blossom, chaya leaves with carrot; beetroot with Castilla rose petals; hibiscus flower, celery stalks and toasted oatmeal to take home. </font></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_29f6_1e34_1414_cf8d" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AITFw-y_Jlar7IendAZybilp7GzMB6dbcosgunsAon4sbN5kvJKaDm32tZMatDBomMxTaPv51yFu_VoZv97hwWC9KtFbDhny8w" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><i style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><font face="Gill Sans">Tlaltaqueros at Cuatecomate market stand</font></i><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="verdana">A committed omnivore, I also wanted to try one of the meat dishes. On offer were iguana, armadillo, wild boar, rabbit, snake, and venison. The venison in a spicy red salsa with nopal leaves and fresh tortillas was amazing, washed down with guanaba juice. To make this a more genuine pre-hispanic dining experience, pulque would have been a more apt accompaniment. Pulque (an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant), widely sold and consumed here in Tepoztlán, comes next. It was banished by the conquering Spaniards to make way for beer, but the spirit, like the religious symbols, could not be eradicated! Then, of course, we have the tequila and mezcal in all their varied guises....</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br></div><br></div><div><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br></div></div> </div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-57372347709450267622022-11-07T14:33:00.001-04:002022-11-07T14:33:06.654-04:00Wandering Through Ice And Mountain Peaks<div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_c69d_5e39_f978_66d5" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Tx700y-5Kl1LUNDIw0Qwrp5TAP5NbZ8JISbkNcQS93KtNPEYYgGZRRHfOFUUxqun0ME" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><i><br></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, painting by Kasper David Friedrich</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><font size="4">Have just embarked on the epic Nietzsche Podcast on Spotify. It is penned and narrated by Keegan J. L. Kjeldsen.</font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">Episode 2 (of 50 plus to date) bears the title above. </font></div><div><font size="4">"In this episode, we discuss the character of The Wanderer. Der Wanderer appeared in multiple Nietzsche works, mainly during the period from Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, through Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Evidently Nietzsche identified himself with this character. The wandering that Nietzsche did throughout Europe, and while hiking the Alps, paralleled the metaphor of 'philosophical wandering' in Nietzsche's work. We'll also discuss a potential inspiration for Nietzsche, in the motif of "wanderers" in German culture. The significance of philosophical wandering as Nietzsche's approach to philosophy is that Nietzsche's project ends up looking very different from that of most other philosophers. Episode art is Caspar David Friedrich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer."</font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">Keegan concludes the episode with a lengthy, powerful quotation from Nietzsche acolyte Stefan Zweig:</font></div><div><font size="4"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>"How is it possible to be placed in this amazing uncertainty and multiplicity called ‘existence’ without questioning its meaning, without trembling with curiosity, and without the voluptuous emotion engendered by questioning ?” </i></font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">Thus did he rail at our sit-by-the-fires, and make mock of those who are easily satisfied. He, the typical adventurer in the long savannas of thought, was not even inclined to possess his own life; here again he demanded a surplus on the grand scale: </font></div><div><font size="4"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>“What is of genuine importance is eternal vitality, not eternal life.”</i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="4">For the first time on the ocean of German philosophy the black flag was hoisted upon a pirate ship. Nietzsche was a man of a different species, of another race, of a novel type of heroism; his philosophy was not clad in professorial robes, but was harnessed for the fray like a knight in shining armour. Others before him, hardy navigators of the spiritual world, discovered continents and founded empires; they were animated to a certain degree by a civilising and utilitarian intent, hoping to win those unknown lands to the profit of mankind, to complete the map of the philosophic world by penetrating further and ever further into the terra incognita of thought. They set up the standard of God or of the mind in these new-found lands, they built cities and temples, planned out streets and avenues in the unknown, while governors and administrators followed in their steps in order to reap the harvest of the pioneers’ labours — commentators, dons, men of culture and the like. </font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">But the aim of these forerunners in the philosophical universe was repose, was peace and security. They desired to increase terrestrial possessions, to promulgate norms and laws, to inaugurate a superior kind of order. Just as the filibusters invaded the Spanish world towards the close of the sixteenth century — a lawless gang of desperadoes, lacking restraint, acknowledging no king, men without a flag and without a home — so Nietzsche made an irruption into the philosophical world, conquering nothing either for himself or for those who should come after; his victories were not achieved for the sake of a monarch or dedicated to the greater glory of God, but purely for the intrinsic joy of conquest, since he did not wish to possess or to acquire or to conquer. He was a disturber of the peace, his one desire being to plunder, to destroy property relationships, to trouble the repose of his fellow mortals. </font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">With fire and sword he went forth to awaken the minds of men, an awakening as precious to him as is a fusty sleep to the vast majority of mankind. In his wake, as in the wake of the filibusters of old, churches were desecrated, altars were overturned, feelings injured, convictions assassinated, moral sheepfolds sacked; every horizon blazed with incendiary fires, monstrous beacons of daring and violence. Never did he look back to gloat over his acquisitions or to appropriate his conquests. He strove everlastingly towards what had never been explored and conquered; his one and only pleasure was to try out his strength and to rouse up those who slumbered. He was a member of no creed, had never sworn allegiance to any country. With the black flag at his masthead and steering into the unknown, into incertitude which he felt to be the mate of his soul, he sailed forward to ever-renewed and perilous adventures.</font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">Sword in hand and powder barrel at his feet, he left the shores of the known behind him and sang his pirate song as he went :</font></div><div><font size="4"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>I know whence I spring.</i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>Insatiable as a flame,</i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>I glow and consume myself.</i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>All I touch flashes into fire,</i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>All I leave is a charred remnant.</i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i>Such by nature am I — flame.</i>"</font></div></div><br> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-33489782830532197562022-01-13T11:40:00.001-04:002022-01-13T11:43:55.584-04:00The Diddly Squib Pox<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_310a_abe_7b68_76ca" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Qv3bUk0r_7zHq7UjSjGnBoorGrEZVppxhi3YjCE9RAK2jDq6mPyw25tk3bT3ZBSBzbQ" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><span style="text-align: start; caret-color: rgb(160, 160, 160); color: rgb(160, 160, 160); font-family: founders-grotesk, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 8.800000190734863px; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.8999999761581421px; text-transform: uppercase; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A DETAIL OF NANCY EKHOLM BURKERT’S ILLUSTRATION FOR EDWARD LEAR’S “THE SCROOBIOUS PIP.”</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><i><font face="Arial">Written March, 2021</font></i></div><div><br></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><b>The Diddly Squib Pox</b></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>"The Scroobious Pip went out one day</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>When the grass was green, and the sky was grey.</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>Then all the beasts in the world came round</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>When the Scroobious Pip sat down on the ground.</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> The cat and the dog and the kangaroo</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> The sheep and the cow and the guineapig too--</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> The wolf he howled, the horse he neighed</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> The little pig squeaked and the donkey brayed,</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> And when the lion began to roar</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> There never was heard such a noise before.</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> And every beast he stood on the tip</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> Of his toes to look a the Scroobious Pip.</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>At last they said to the Fox - "By far,</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>You're the wisest beast! You know you are!</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>Go close to Scroobious Pip and say,</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>Tell us all about yourself we pray-</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>For as yet we can't make out in the least</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>If you're Fish or Insect, or Bird or Beast."</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>The Scroobious Pip looked vaguelyy round</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>And sang these words with a rumbling sound-</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i> Chippetty Flip; Flippetty Chip;-</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>My only name is the Scroobious Pip...."</i></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4">(Edward Lear)</font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4">There once was an island whose folk were jaded and bored. Their land, though once rich with natural beauty and endless resources, was tired and abused. The people had forgotten how to tease food from the earth or become too lazy to do so. They had plundered the soil, poisoning it and depleting its once-abundant productivity. Rivers ran laden with effluent, the rains unleashed acrid torrents, and the winds whipped up fierce storms of fire and smoke. The seas all around pressed in on the shore with pounding waves and the highest tides in living memory. The air became a cauldron and the forests began to burn out of control. </font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4">When the people became paralysed by a strange inertia that overtook their will to counter these rapid, worrying changes in their lives, they started to believe they were done for. It was then that things took a much bleaker, way scarier turn for the worse. Out of nowhere, or so it seemed, came a pox that leaked a virulent venom and started striking down the vulnerable - the old, the sick, the tormented among them. They say it came from 'nowhere', out of the wild, from the deepest jungle one day, on the breath of a diddly squib (<i>esquibus diddlus silvestris</i>). This semi-mythical creature got loose causing havoc, borne by the wind, spreading fear faster, and pestilence further, than wildfire ever was able, like a dragon of old.</font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4">The islanders were so startled, so stricken by fear, they panicked, they did. Their leaders assembled and set down laws to deal with the dubious squib pox, to exterminate the beast, that were so unprecedented, so extreme, so draconian, so disproportionate, so lunatic, so farcical, so barking mad, that the people piped up, almost in unison, OK, enough, we will comply, but just for a while, until we bend back into shape. We will stay home and wait things out, we will cover up and keep away from others and bathe devotedly - as long as you deliver us food and wine and satellite news, oh... and more toilet roll and soap. And please, get rid of that diddly squib and its pestilential pox. It is driving us crazy!</font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4">So, the lofty leaders got together, by satellite. They were guided by their geneticist-in-chief, a lauded man beyond reproach, and his trusty epidemiologists in the Fatality Allocation Review Team, the esteemed FART. They sat and conferred with the government and came to a conclusion. They must exercise their power, act, conclusively, exert control, direct the deaths. They must stand up definitively to the diddly squib pox (which, in hindsight, became universally labelled as EDS2020). They would throw the kitchen sink at it, dirty washing and all. In a fierce flash of lightning, a mere instant, they would come up with a magic potion that would melt the pox away, stopping the manic spread of EDS2020 and protecting the whole island. However, there were two catches, the first proviso being that treatment would need to be universal and the second - because eradication was out of the question - it would have to be regularly administered, with updates forever. There was no guarantee that the magic potion would work since this was a novel concoction developed in a laboratory and did not use the tools of Nature. Such a daring sleight of hand, such an act of sorcerous wizardry had never been hysterically undertaken before, but this didn't matter because the people were sore afraid, suffering from panic overload. It was untested over time in real life conditions and nobody could say how safe or efficacious it would prove to be, not even the geneticist-in-chief, lauded though he was. But magical thinking was deemed necessary to defeat this fearsome foe. Time was of the essence. "We are smart, we hearty FART", the leaders chanted in unison.</font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial" size="4">So it was that the fear-stricken populace lined up in an endless slow-moving procession of possession to receive their dose of potion - a shot in the arm that was to become the first of many aiming to deal the fatal death blow to the devious, evasive pox. But with each dose delivered, the pox became emboldened and invigorated. It mutated and variegated. When and where would it all end? Perhaps - a few among the many mused - it would have been better, wiser to leave the beast well alone, unconfronted, unteased into lashing out.</font></div><div><br></div></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-51854220746367596562022-01-13T11:25:00.001-04:002022-01-13T11:25:04.178-04:00Revelation<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_5088_fcd9_75cd_270b" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/HhYmpbLeE6_gqtd2WKYUJJfBrF8DDa84xCnTTgSbw43gDlrILDpLQv7H2ZhGj9y6pRY" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><font face="Arial" size="4"><i><br></i></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>First comes the ploy,</i></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>then the narrative spin.</i></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>Revelation scatters the pigeons</i></font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="Arial" size="4"><i>and revisionism rushes in.</i></font><br><br></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-49360130521406143442021-03-24T11:16:00.001-03:002021-03-24T11:16:12.692-03:00Spring Fever<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_94ca_e5dd_caf7_81f2" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/254ohCDjhyitVh3XiyPBwhiszxcFJGlF-yawBOMzVQspDVREmNUH5GATsbSiKHWRMaE" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div><font size="4"><i><b>Can we please....?</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b><br></b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>.... just turn around,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>look beyond our noses,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>beyond imagining, dreaming,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>and get on with doing...</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>dinner parties, family picnics,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>messing about with friends,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>musical concerts, partisan crowds,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>noise, applause, frenzied excitement,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>gawping at volcanoes, </b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>waterfalls, the green ray, </b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>sipping margaritas, the sun sinking</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>into vermilion ocean,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>bustling markets, full-faced smiles,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>bawling with laughter</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>at badly-told jokes in poor taste,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>holding hands, bear hugs, loving glances.</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b><br></b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>Let's put this year of winter behind us,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>open our hearts and eyes,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>smell the roses,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>and live, for each other.</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b><br></b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>It is Spring, high time </b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>to see some green shoots, </b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>listen to the wind,</b></i></font></div><div><font size="4"><i><b>for the world is born anew.</b></i></font></div><br><br></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-18237731525260169652020-08-25T10:53:00.001-03:002020-08-25T10:53:09.348-03:00Becalmed<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_7fb_e90b_1858_af63" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/tn1q2N0Rp8Kfi3Un8oOg02zEj69zYOpaIZ2rkW-cjc_9JJ6PrkdDuG8UeET9oho" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><br></span><br><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">Becalmed</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans"><br></font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">Ah, to slip softly</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">into that stilled summer sea,</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">to glide away, swimming</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">midst silky seaweeds,</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">to let sundry stresses</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">seep away from the skin</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">as the salty tang</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">cleanses, energizes.</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">The rising sun sparkles,</font></i></div><div><i><font size="4" face="Gill Sans">the fresh water becalms.</font></i></div></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-10795514615014349022020-05-23T14:02:00.001-03:002020-05-23T14:02:09.148-03:00Serenade to the Stars<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_157_cc14_3fd1_af3d" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/NE21Pg_P_q5rAsdzPn1N-M-Pi6B5HPS7bJZwLjeSqWZ_NG5cziGiD6P1KzILvWQ" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>The earth lets loose a forlorn flood of tears,</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>Human lives founder on elemental fears.</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>The world we knew not solid as it seems,</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>Eyes open now from puffy clouds of dreams.</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>They look up to the stark night sky ablaze</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>To marvel at that arcing trail, the Milky Way;</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>Mercury glows dimly beside bold Mars</i></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Trebuchet MS"><i>As the pond's spring peepers serenade the stars.</i></font></div></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-52909419521217303572020-03-20T12:42:00.001-03:002020-03-20T12:42:03.659-03:00Cocooning At Home - All Together Now! <div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_98e0_b260_a6b7_1739" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5gOyvfq0jAgvGVfRuVt1KC8BfjxRmvKXzvHS4wkcU436z-FlzyfktN4EaGo0XvA" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br></div><div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Here we are, on this blustery grey day of pelting rain, cocooned at home. It is a great day to be so cocooned; we have power and so heat and light, we have food supplies, we have our cosy home, communication with the outside world, and our magnificent view out over the cove to the open Atlantic beyond is still there, albeit a litlle blurry through the rain-streaked windows. In truth, it is always a great day to be cocooned at home. With the weathers forever in flux, the scene is constantly changing. Tomorrow will be such a revelation when the sun comes out again and the light shimmers on the water and the snow dazzles with effusive brilliance. We will step outside and inhale the fresh salty, seaweedy tang on the breeze.</div><div><br></div><div>In truth, we have been cocooning for decades, sheltering from the ill winds that blow in the turmoil of gathering storms. For a decade, we escaped the city by cocooning in rented homes on the Niagara Escarpment; for two decades, we escaped the encroaching populace of the Golden Horseshoe by cocooning in our first purchased home - a farm on 55 acres, no less, tucked away in the Northumberland Hills; and then we escaped encroaching industrial agriculture by selling the farm and buying a smaller home on the Atlantic Ocean on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Further east we cannot go without falling into the sea, and so here it is that we will cocoon for the coming decades, without losing our social spirit. One year is almost in the books already. We had not envisaged missing the community of friends and fellowship in the hills as we do, but we will make amends by visiting when circumstances are more conducive. </div><div><br></div><div>We are still getting to know community around here and remind ourselves that it took many years to establish strong social bonds in Ontario. Cape Breton Island is of a size that encourages cultural and social interaction as well as appreciation of beauty in nature and the great outdoors. A nascent local community built around food and farming is a very timely development in this time of cocooning. With so many people at home, it is vital that farmers and producers step up to service their local community by providing fresh, wholesome food close to cocoons. Wild animals live within a territory or environmental niche. Butterflies forage for food and produce their honey within a small localized area. We should adapt their ways!</div><div><br></div><div>The present cocooning of an entire populace in each community, region, in most countries is an unprecedented, extraordinary effort to protect health by containing the spread of contagion. Perversely - from our cocoons - it draws us together in common cause. By and large, we get it, grasping that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For once in our lives, we all get to pull together in mutual aid, by helping those less able to look after themselves. Forget the survival of the fittest of neo-Darwinism; Darwin knew very well that our survival is more a question of adaptation than of competition. There will be casualties and fallout. Many among us will be ill, many around the world will die, and many things we took for granted will be wiped off the menu, almost overnight, never to return. Not to be under-estimated, this will be an extended, vital change in our lives that will test our resolve, one that, nonetheless, should be embraced with compassion, civility... and cocooning. All together now.</div><div><br></div></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-21255761535246930142019-10-15T11:18:00.001-03:002019-10-15T11:21:22.490-03:00The White House, Margaree<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_11e0_7ff1_76f3_b959" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/pWdra6BUFg9I5R3zxaKg6ZKuUWO4JUDEjZGX8R-K73avidAiN5n1HlOthp8" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><br></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">If pictures could tell stories...</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">then I would love to hear the history of this white farmhouse, located right off the Cabot Trail in the lower Margaree Valley, just south of Fordview. The views across the broad river valley are sumptuous, especially with a full colour array of fall foliage. The sculptured old apple tree laden with plump red fruit raises her outstretched arms skyward as if in proclamation, perhaps in anguish. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_b011_fea_2ee6_f79f" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/bNQ2fCN0U2RzCoZHzmfby03pSdD6Xawd8n-XcLBnIz8ii6RF2K1b5z34gcY" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The river glides on by as it has always done in its patient path to the embracing sea. One would never guess from the far vantage point over the other side of the valley toward the house that it now stands abandoned, in disrepair, moulding, sagging, fraying, creaking. The mountainsides it is sheltered by stand sturdy, strong, ablaze with autumnal vigour.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_af4_4527_951a_a27" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/tBBmbtlTbYF0DbnpCvhFzHKaUDFkPiHD5bc5Pj-o3I4xUupfjs2iOXLyO3M" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span><p></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What merriment rang out in the dining room in Thanksgivings and Christmases past? What joy was beheld by the pastoral prospects? What spirited ghosts inhabit the wood-panneled bedrooms? What foods did they grow and what animals roamed the barnyard?</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The bumpy backroads of Margaree (and the length and breadth of Cape Breton Island beyond) lead past many such homesteads entangled in vegetation and throttled by trees, soon to be swallowed up entirely, reverted to wild land, almost without trace of the stories they could tell.</span></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-44035325880262578762019-03-08T17:35:00.001-04:002019-03-08T22:58:21.812-04:00After The Volcano<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_87a6_2af9_1c5e_37af" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-42W3UjmcFYo/XILgJbPPCZI/AAAAAAAACIM/a-uOmzQDUyoxVvwRJ7L6g1VCb4gX1tkNACHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><br></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At the end of our twelve-week stay in Guatemala this winter, we stayed for three days at the lovely Hotel Bambú, nestled in splendid owner-designed gardens on the bay on the edge of Santiago Atitlan. The hotel was founded in the early 1990s by José Ramón de Castro, who originates from Vigo, in Galicia, Spain. As we were departing, two close friends of José were saying their goodbyes after a weekend visit. We were awaiting our tuk-tuk taxi, headed for the lancha to take us across Lake Atitlan to Panajachel, thence by minibus to Antigua. Jose's friends invited us to travel direct to Antigua with them in their Jeep. Perfect - yes please!</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Our route took us for our first time on the southern "coastal" road via San Lucas Toliman south along a well-paved stretch downhill through coffee plantations, majestic trees, and open green grasslands before turning east to Escuintla on a terribly bumpy and potholed divided road reminiscent of Cuba with its vast tracts of sugar cane and associated processing plants. The bustling town of Escuintla reveals more modern dress among the locals than the traditional Mayan costumes we are used to seeing on Lake Atitlan and in Antigua. Having negotiated our way through the busy streets entirely lacking signage, we headed north and up past towering volcanoes on the last stretch, the highway to Antigua. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">With little warning, the otherwise smooth road kinked and became a twisted surface of dusty ash and gravel, a grey moonscape. We were crossing the wide river valley where rainy season torrents bring down heavy precipitation. This landscape has, however, been transformed by the cataclysmic eruption of Volcan Fuego in a massive surging pyroclastic flow over 20 kilometres in length on the morning of June 3 last year. Pyroclastic flows are hot, fast-moving avalanches of ash and rock debris of all sizes, that wipe out everything in their path. The height of the ash plume first rose to an unusual 10+ kilometres, then decreased to 5 - 6 kilometres for most of the eruptive phase. There was no warning of the ferocity and speed of this monumental event. According to our hosts, La Reunion golf course ordered evacuation by 11am. Two towns, El Rodeo with a population of 14,000, and San Miguel Los Lotes 2 kilometres north, did not receive official evacuation orders until 3pm, by which time the damage was already done, the warning too late. Both towns were buried in deep, hot ash. Though official estimates put the death toll at around 300, the fast burial of these towns make it certain that many thousands perished, and salvage efforts continued for many weeks, with survivors desperately seeking their missing loved ones. Witnessing this scene of devastation, with rooftops peeking out above the carpet of grey, with rocks and boulders strewn around, was sobering indeed. Above the valley floor, the land remained completely untouched by this savage onslaught. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It was good to get back to the civility and charm of Antigua so fast, in such comfort, delivered right to our hotel, having seen a whole new part of Guatemala, and having avoided the schlepping of heavy baggage from taxi to boat to taxi to minibus.</span></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-32686240470635219552019-02-21T13:04:00.001-04:002019-02-21T13:04:42.140-04:00Cerro de Oro <div><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_edc8_b276_bbe4_dc86" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6wlP6uRiKeQ/XGxMBejQYBI/AAAAAAAACGw/jPZTvFx9x5EnqQ0UIQMnBYx8nnie4-zvwCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><img id="id_dee9_130_d076_4a21" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-CzEhkFQDv54/XGxMB48QhPI/AAAAAAAACG0/cTeIwwtrCXIsjviM6qI3G5Pu6L5HRPt9wCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br></div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Helvetica;">Chico invited me to climb Cerro de Oro with him, Monday, departing at 5 am, before sun-up, the air fresh and cool.... He duly picked me up, a little late, but ready to head off across the lower slopes and up the mountain, Cerro de Oro, a giant lava dome that towers 330 metres above </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">Lake Atitlan. It was dark when we left with daylight peeking over the crater rim to the east. At first by torchlight, we meandered along paths, mostly ancient, through red-beaned coffee groves and dry-stalked corn fields. The coffee groves are shaded by huge, ancient avocado and jocote trees. Chico has his two dogs and a machete. Farmers we pass have just machetes and greet Chico in Kaqchikel, *xseqër k'a!*,then me in Spanish. *"Buenos dias!"* As the sun appears over the horizon behind us, we see Cerro de Oro bathed in orange dawn light up ahead. The mountain is steeped in Mayan mythology; legend involves an elephant, a serpent, and a giant. One legend continues that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry came to Lake Atitlán where he saw Cerro de Oro: the “hill of gold” became the model for “the boa constrictor digesting an elephant” on the first page of</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;"> The Little Prince. He said when the Spanish first came to Lake Atitlán, they looked for gold hidden by the Maya in the caves and tunnels under the hill where they became lost and never returned. Other legends say the tunnels run all the way to Tolimán volcano, and that the Tz’utujil people hid from the Spaniards in the tunnels. The colossal steeped mound has the look of a crouching beast with a bristling head, lit up now in its fiery morning glow.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And a beast she was to climb. Not that high, but steep, on very dusty narrow trails, with sheer drop-offs down arid, dry-season-denuded slopes. At a cluster of massive boulders which serve as a ceremonial altar, the slope eases, winding like the snake around a wooded glade to the rocky, treed summit. The views are magnificent over Lake Atitlan, from Santiago, to San Pedro, to Panajachel, all the way round to San Antonio. The air is hazy; the sun glistens over the little peninsula of Pachitulul, where we have come from, way down below. The morning sounds of traffic and activity from the strung-out village of Cerro de Oro drift up on the pleasant breeze. At 8 am, the sun is already hot and our time of rest, re-hydration and contemplation is most welcome. Chico tries to assure me that this climb is good for the heart, legs, and soul. To him, the elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor seems sacred and hallowed. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">His world stretches before us - Lake Atitlan in all her glory. He says that when he was a youngster, the lake lapped at the feet of the now giant amate tree at Casa Pitaya where we regularly sit on a hillock with the lake some thirty feet below! The fields he farms today were, back then, under water and this whole shoreline is reclaimed. He says the lake level goes up and down in 45-year cycles, suggesting that another rise is due. As we gaze from this eagle's nest some 1100 feet above the lake, anywhere near a thirty foot rise over the breadth of this vast expanse of water seems unthinkable, but the twenty five feet drop in recent years is indicative of the possibility. It would certainly upset more than a few foreigners who have built homes and businesses perched close to the water's edge. The locals know better, of course.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Back home, a refreshing swim in the tranquil waters of the bay washes away the dust of the trail. Later on, Chico cut a fabulous bunch of a dozen ripe bananas and delivered them. A fruit salad of fresh-picked bananas and lemons, with sweet pineapples and mangoes from the market drizzled with local mountain honey was so juicily delicious.</span></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-47052871339462949792019-02-09T13:09:00.001-04:002019-02-09T13:14:01.512-04:00San Lucas Toliman, revisited<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_f2fe_d07_7f34_590f" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JrI2m_yrhhs/XF8JTtYbyxI/AAAAAAAACGQ/Y56JafG4s_IhD6hBJqaVzEMKoU-jTFv2wCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><br><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Market days are Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. On these days, several streets are closed to traffic and thronging with vendors, their produce, and customers. The vibrant colours of Kaqchikel Mayan women in their *trajes* and the fruit and vegetables on offer, comined with the hubbub of banter create a boisterous and lively atmosphere. A large proportion of this food is locally-grown on small plots of land and brought fresh to market. We have never experienced anywhere else the depth of intense flavour of the beets and carrots, mangoes and melons of the markets around Lake Atitlan.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">On non-market days, these same streets look desolate and unkempt. Any number of *tiendas* sell mostly packaged junk food in a sea of plastic. Any number of *farmacias* sell pharmaceutical drugs, largely to medicate and treat against this junk diet. Sugary carbonated drinks and salty snacks made using industrial-strength glyphosated GMO corn and soy doused in unhealthy trans-fats help to fuel malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes rates.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><img id="id_fe79_2957_75d7_50c6" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3vzbqDs-D0c/XF8JyfS18gI/AAAAAAAACGY/3PqQB6TNU3oGVp85mvtLEElRam69wYuDQCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 510px; height: auto;"><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>The view from Hotel Toliman, towards San Antonio Palopo</i></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Apart from a handful of hotels, including the lovely Hotel Toliman, this town of 17,000 inhabitants, 90 - 95% of them Mayan, barely caters to tourists and travellers at all. One cafe, Cafe Jade, offers free wifi and freshly-ground coffees. The restaurants and fast-food eateries in town service mainly locals. Hotel Toliman sits on a knoll overlooking a swimming pool, beautiful gardens, the bay and the open waters of Lake Atitlan beyond. The far view takes in San Antonio Palopo on the shore and Agua Escondida further along, up on the crater rim. The accommodations look delightful and the cuisine is sumptuous, making full use of fresh ingredients from their one-acre organic garden, fresh fish, and 100% grass-fed beef. What could eclipse this?</span></p></div></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-51960056049915240752019-01-15T16:53:00.001-04:002019-01-15T16:54:50.934-04:00The Valley of San Marcos <div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_b6ea_d495_60ab_38d" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-mSXhibaqaYw/XD5IPlGZIEI/AAAAAAAACEI/qaY7KuSR-UseXHJK7DJTu4YOHS86bmg1gCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 500px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br></div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The walk up and around the valley behind San Marcos is a delight. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We love to saunter, thereby taking in the sights, sounds, smells, moving slowly, inhaling deeply. As John Muir so smartly noted: "Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We began our saunter at our home base of Pasajcap where we enjoy a panoramic view of Lake Atitlán and the sweeping contours of the three fully-forested volcanoes that frame our horizon. The walk into the village of San Marcos is along a dusty unpaved road where we encounter locals that greet us warmly (including this father, son, and dog returning from firewood harvesting). </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We also pass fellow-travellers and tuk-tuks that operate as the local taxi service. We have established that even small paths and alleys lead somewhere, so we just follow our nose, uphill out of town. The way zig-zags past simple dwellings inhabited by local Mayans, past walled and fenced properties with beatiful lush gardens mostly owned by foreigners, aka gringos. Some properties are rented out, as lodges, hostels, rooms, yoga and meditation retreats. The Yoga Forest "is a sacred sanctuary with ancient Mayan altars and natural springs that have been protected as a Natural Reserve in order to honor the land and the heritage of its people" according to its website. It has towering trees and sits nestled at the base of a gigantic sacred rockface. "The Yoga Forest shares conscious living as a spiritual practice, offering a unique retreat space for self connection, connection to the Earth, and personal growth. We live, work & play harmoniously in nature, creating inclusive abundance and a safe space for personal transformation and authentic self expression. Through intercultural relationships of respect, we weave together local and global visions that inspire positive social and ecological impacts in the world."</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Up the trail beyond the Yoga Forest, the habitation thins to a few wooden structures perched high, soaking up the view. There are banana, orange, avocado trees shading the coffee trees with their ripening red beans. This trail, winding through solid boulder steps, feels like it has been here forever, helping local Mayans to ferry wood, fruit and coffee down the mountainside for hundreds of years. The valley is deep and broad and leads all the way up past its rim to the village of Santa Lucia Utatlán, some three hours distant, up on the plateau. As we paused to drink in the view to the lake, up came three petite Mayan women with big machetes and gauze bags; they were off up-valley to harvest firewood, which they will bring down to the villages strapped to their backs. They were chatty, cheerful, and giggly, radiant in their colourful local dress.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><img id="id_7152_1ba6_fe2a_c24b" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IUP1cAhcGaE/XD5IWYIb-8I/AAAAAAAACEM/UIlKNG3Hg3Q6wz-8hDgafnfzH5IB5DhvwCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 508px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">After an hour or so of climbing, we took a trail that led across the river (dry at this time but a raging torrent in wet season). It led us down the other side and offered up spectacular views out up the mountain, past the rockface, and down to the villages of San Marcos, San Pedro, and San Juan, the lake and the perfect green cone of Volcan San Pedro. Here, the land is like a jungle garden, with flowering trees spreading their ample limbs laterally. A local woman with her toddler son warns us to be careful. (Yes, we did encounter three women with machetes....) We returned via the tidy upper part of San Marcos down steep paved streets to the centre.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><img id="id_e226_600e_a282_a3b2" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ReQYCn-0sg0/XD5IYgU83_I/AAAAAAAACEQ/sGyphIHr2_8v8Uz2ps67Or2ag1unq3k9wCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 508px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It was time to finally check out the eclectic Japanese restaurant Allala, tucked away down an alleyway that leads to the garishly astro-turfed soccer pitch. Hungry for a late lunch after our sauntered stroll, we tucked into miso soup, tempura vegetables, and arroz con pollo, or chicken rice. A quick shop for supplies, then back to Pasajcap by tuk-tuk too weary (or blissed-out) for Happy Hour with our fellow travellers. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We did, however, get to met white-haired, gnome-like Yves from Quebec. He has been living here for a year in his schoolbus/van, jacked up on boulders to level it on the sloping hillside. He was first on the lake thirty years ago when there was just one motorboat daily between Panajachel and San Pedro. Now they come by every fifteen minutes or so, so there must be more than fifty a day in each direction. Yves spends half his Canada Pension helping local families here. As he says: "It's no good to me once I'm gone."</span></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-75907431376831600732019-01-08T12:22:00.001-04:002019-01-08T12:22:53.113-04:00Wider Perspectives<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_7059_6470_8db5_edec" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3aKL0ENeHwg/XDTOWVMjO4I/AAAAAAAACDU/G3nHmOh4IegPouKEWwQ9ndsAAmAn4cWMwCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 523px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><br><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gazing out over Lake Atitlán, the horizons are far and wide and dramatic. They engender wider perspectives on life and the world beyond immediate view.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In floaty San Marcos, the air is eclectic, and perspectives are many, manifesting themselves in mind and body healing modalities such as cranio-sacral, chiropractic, shamanism, yoga, Mayan Temascal, Ayurveda, Samatha, Vipassana, Reiki, Shambala, Chi Nei Tsang, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Tarot, even Kambo (frog secretion), and more...</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">With no disrespect to adherents of such practices everywhere, at least whilst here on the lake I prefer to practise my karma closer to home with a casual and very flexible morning routine. Swivel stretches work for me, prompted by deep inhalations, deep exhalations... Starting with the toes, through heels and ankles, knees, sexual core, hips, solar plexus, hands, elbows, shoulders, chest, neck, face, brow, and finally head, the energy of the outside world enters the body from the earth below. It is channeled through its length and breadth and, after its journey through the body's energies, is released through the top of the head to the sky above, all through swirling motions along the way. En route, the outside world cleanses and motivates the body, and enlivens mind, spirit and soul. Ancient cultures know that all living things carry a life force with them; they call the centres of energy that move inside of us the seven chakras. They are the Root, the Sacral, the Solar Plexus, the Heart, the Throat, the Third Eye, and the Crown.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A wonderful way to start the day immersed in this magnificent landscape - with profound gratitude and integration.</span></p></div></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-10075551346277435952018-12-17T18:35:00.001-04:002018-12-17T18:35:51.142-04:00R...x<div style="text-align: center;"><br><br><img id="id_8d41_fa2a_3f35_9458" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hI-5FxpkKKY/XBgkw1Lq8BI/AAAAAAAACA4/2lZUujzAFKYIBJ00B9AelWpR_mEX_8nJgCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="lakeatitlan, guatemala" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 508px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><br>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Relax.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Replenish, Replace,</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rejuvenate, Rejoice,</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Refresh, Reform,</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Recharge, Renew.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Recycle, Restore.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And,</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Relax, once more.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-85573456504141843082018-03-18T13:53:00.001-03:002018-03-18T13:53:35.911-03:00Always Look on the Bright Side<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_7dff_99a_5e90_9f9b" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NPo-N9m3UWg/Wq6Ziuw0WJI/AAAAAAAAB6c/hDxWczcwlG4uTYiwDTZz3RapJGylKtergCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 500px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>We always have nature as our earthly guide.</b></i></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>We always have our ancestors as spiritual guide.</b></i></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>We always have love as our moral compass.</b></i></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>We always have intuition as our sensual compass.</b></i></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>Following these guides, we can together overcome all adversity.</b></i></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>Life is a precious gift not to be passed up lightly.</b></i></span></p><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_3481_1511_f363_a28" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3U2pS0cBwkA/Wq6ZjswMVHI/AAAAAAAAB6g/PPa-WGcR3o8wep6StKV2DRSV7BrC9kkvACHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 508px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><br><br></div> Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-77927061746739067402018-03-02T18:40:00.001-04:002019-01-15T14:56:23.920-04:00 It's all about the Seeds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;">I have been immersed, during my days and weeks on Lake Atitlan, reading "The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic" by Martin Prechtel. HIs writing glows throughout with indigenous wisdom. His words about the origins, durability and vital importance to us all of the Seed are particularly memorable:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"But our souls, like the seeds, remember. We need to find them, or we shall go mad or destroy ourselves trying to speed away from the incrementing trail of suffering unsung ghosts we leave in the wake of our flight into amnesia. Make the effort to look into the real past of the seeds you plant. Go as far as you can get, even into the annals of the standard empire-serving common system of belief, and you will find the people of the seeds and the seeds of your own past. Look into the people, and you will find your “seeds,” for all of us have them. Like all the languages, clothing, songs, ways of living, the seeds too have been taken from us, but their memory lives on, waiting to burst forth again if we just look beyond the Great Wall of cultural and historical prejudice and self-hatred. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In every family, if you are courageous enough to stay on the trail beyond the prejudice of a family’s selective memory and belief, and don’t get your fate stunted by getting mired in some self-involved psychology, there are vestiges of customs, sayings, beliefs, that if assiduously looked into could easily lead to the more ancient evidence of your people’s unique version of the original spiritual “Agreement” with the Holy in Nature that all peoples have. Strange little shoots of bigger vines that have miraculously survived the simple-minded revisionist imperial histories we have all been taught yet dangle there unnoticed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">These little leftover things are the signs of the “souls of our seeds.” The stories of these souls and our plants are the stories of our people; between the people, the seeds, and their stories, evidence of the ritual agreement with the Holy almost always pokes through if you know what you’re looking at when it does. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In this way, whether you plant a small garden or sow a larger farm, if you know that many things about what your seeds carry on their backs, then you are cultivating origins to whose story your own story is then attached. By tending, growing, and worrying about the welfare of the living things you have planted, you are both caring for and are part of a true origins, and you are no longer stranded in time. You have become a vital part of the long umbilical cord of a life attached to the Holy in Nature."</span></div>
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Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-48799443818519268272018-02-27T11:25:00.001-04:002018-02-27T11:31:27.037-04:00The Future of Lake Atitlán<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_94e1_1389_ba0b_1e6" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9hHZ57g5eOo/WpV4RVI86UI/AAAAAAAAB5c/c4uC49Fx7fkeoyHIJLfSDuMX-Ild8VTagCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 517px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As I look out this bright mid-afternoon in this middle of the dry season, Lake Atitlán is in its gloriously shimmering element, all abuzz with dancing movement and vibrant light. As is normal, the winds swept a front across the lake south west to north east around noon, erasing the calm serenity of the morning. Whenever at the lake, I like to take a swim, straight off the dock if possible, bathing in the clear cobalt-blue waters, with the deep blue sky reflected on the surface. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It would be nice to think that the pristine-looking waters of this mesmerizing 1,100-foot deep caldera lake will always remain as clear and clean as they have been historically. But sadly, Lake Atitlán already faces immense ecological pressures.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bacteria counts are on the rise, especially at certain pressure points, where effluent of sewage and chemicals enter into the lake in increasing volume. Water quality is continuously monitored and anaysed by organizations such as Amigos de Atitlán (www.amigosatitlan.org), AMSCLAE (www.amsclae.gob.gt), the government authority for the sustainable management of the lake basin of Atitlán, and Save Lake Atitlan (www.savelakeatitlan.com).</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Amigos de Atitlán reports: "After years of contamination, the lake has presented signs of severe environmental stress."</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"The lake is going from oligotrophic – crystalline and potable waters - to mesotrophic – turbid and green – and if this degradation continues it will go on to become an eutrophic lake impossible to recuperate."</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"The principal threats that must be addressed in short term are:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sewage water</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The use of the soil, which includes three principal factors: the expansion of the agricultural frontier, erosion, use of fertilizers, and use of agro chemicals.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Solid waste"</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"AMSCLAE, the authority responsible for the protection of Lake Atitlán presented in 2015 an initiative to develop a Master Plan for drinking water supply and wastewater treatment. This plan includes technology options, institutional framework and community consultations for the introduction of drinking water supply, sewerage and sewage export outside the Basin. Wastewater treatment plants installed in some municipalities are only part of the solution, treatment plants alone fail to remove pathogens and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus that feed the cyanobacteria."</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Since the start of the Master Plan development, Amigos de Atitlán allowed for dialogue and has spread information of the plan at a national level. The association has gained support at all levels to stop wastewater from entering the lake. Additionally Amigos de Atitlán has promoted the comprehensive drainage system as the only feasible economic and environmental solution to preserve and restore Lake Atitlán."</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">savelakeatitlan.com reports:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"There are not enough wastewater treatment plants around Lake Atitlán to treat the ever-increasing amount of raw sewage produced by the area’s growing population. Most of the existing plants operate well below full capacity. They simply remove solids and do little to reduce the volume of pathogenic bacteria entering the lake. Only one of many planned new facilities has been built so far, and municipal authorities do not have the resources they need for maintenance and upgrading.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As a result, thousands of metric tons of raw sewage or improperly treated wastewater from households and businesses in more than 20 towns enter the lake each year. The ecosystem is under constant siege from putrefactive bacteria and other pathogens."</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Since the 1950s, local farmers have been pressured to abandon natural farming and instead use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. These toxic products are highly subsidized, and poor farmers are strongly encouraged to use them copiously to boost their production. The fertilizers, which are particularly high in phosphorous, run off into the lake during the rainy season. Waste water from coffee processing is also acidic and high in natural effluents." </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Lake Atitlán is a ‘Protected Area’ under Guatemalan law, but commercial tilapia farms are being allowed to operate on a massive scale, even though all the nutrients that they leave in the lake are accelerating the destruction of the lake’s ecosystem."</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A perennial problem is the lack of consensus as to how to proceed that often leads to paralysis, inertia, foot-dragging. Locals are understandably reticent to throw support behind large infrastructure projects, given the checkered history of granted funds being utilized as mandated. And where does the funding come from? How much control will municipalities and communities have over their own precious and finite resource - water? Who 'owns' the project? The future fate of the lake is far from clear, but bold concerted action from all stakeholders is called for.</span></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-89329421856647470072018-02-17T20:17:00.001-04:002018-02-28T22:24:41.617-04:00San Lucas Tolimán<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_a04f_55d4_a353_fa5a" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-mHa8_vB1Z_Y/WojGBHcYgOI/AAAAAAAAB4w/SzBnCfw9VLgXCUDz2q_usBYz27j30kYlgCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 507px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>San Lucas Tolimán</i></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Our visit to all twelve towns and villages around Lake Atitlán is now complete. And we think that with the last on the list we have found our Shangri-la! After Panajachel, San Pedro la Laguna, San Juan la Laguna, San Marcos la Laguna, Santa Cruz la Laguna, Jaibalito, Tzununá, San Pablo la Laguna, Santiago Atitlán, Santa Catarina Palopó, San Antonio Palopó, we finally disembarked the lancha at the tranquil backwater of San Lucas Tolimán. What a magical day we spent there!</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It was like a dream - Sunday in the Country meets Picnic at Hanging Rock. We took advantage of a new 3-times daily public boat service, departing Panajachel at 8.30am, returning from San Lucas Tolimán at 4pm. The cost of the half-hour trip (for, sadly, just three passengers each way), was 20 quetzals, or $3, each.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As our boat rounded a headland, we left the open waters of Lake Atitlán behind and entered a bay with clear blue water, flooded tree trunks and weedy rim. The park that takes up the waterfront is shaded by big trees and lined with thatched bars serving simple fare and beer. Tuk-tuks were conspicuously few and the locals, while exceptionally friendly, are not perturbed by stray visitors. The whole town is paved with broad streets. A walk up the hill takes us to the vibrant central square. Off to our side are several streets taken up by the twice-weekly market. The vendors are mostly women dressed in an bright array of traditional weavings and offering their family's fruit, vegetables, flowers, meats, fish, dried goods, eggs, cheese, weavings, carvings, and household utensils. The scene is lively and convivial and, even as rare tourists, we cause no undue attention beyond welcoming banter. We asked a couple of locals for a place for a good coffee and they directed us to the sweet little Cafe Jade, which served the best lattes, 'fuerte' as requested.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><img id="id_65c6_7728_3466_fa8c" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7DoHqImvFvw/WojF6DNIRZI/AAAAAAAAB4s/gMEq238KRZwbSBUGDhss0KMN3cJb9RE1gCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 439px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><br></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">After sidestreet meanderings taking in several species of tropical trees in extravagant bloom, we strolled down the hill to the tiled-roofed communal outdoor lavadero, where many women were doing their laundry, using water channeled from the mountains, in ancient large concrete basins. The grey water is filtered through sand catchments before draining into the bay. A crew of men was hauling out thick weed mass from the bay, piling it up for removal and making into compost. With wet, cold hand outstretched, Marlon introduced himself. Out around the bay, the pavement finally gave way to dirt. Here a quiet, mixed community of homes from the grandiose to the humble sits quietly looking out over the water. Small coffee plantations grow shaded by banana trees, single farmers prepare and plant fields of corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, celery. We decided we could quite happily live here, cultivating our own little backwater just outside this pueblo, with a small self-sufficient garden beside our simple home, making our way into market to purchase fresh local organic goods, with a boat ride to Pana once week to top up on supplies. On our way back into town Marlon and a mate awkwardly asked for 10 quetzals (75 cents) to buy tortillas as they were hungry.</span></p><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Having worked up a hearty appetite, it was time to visit the elegant Hotel Tolimán (www.hoteltoliman.com). Set in beautiful landscaped gardens, the hotel offers luxuriant accommodation with local character. The kitchen makes full use of the most complete and impressive organic market garden that takes up half an acre adjacent to the hotel. The views over the bay and lake beyond from the covered terrace dining room are jaw-dropping. Our prix fixe three-course lunch, which included a day pass for swimming in the pool and a tour of the market garden, was very reasonable at 150 quetzals ($20) per person. The food and drinks were fresh, delicious, tastefully presented, and service from our server Lionel came with a smile and affable chat. This was a fine dining experience.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><br></p><div style="text-align: left;"><img id="id_ec34_b46_7cc7_a120" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vwV54rxGWk8/WojF4glmUVI/AAAAAAAAB4o/W_lyfZ73kig0AqXUlQIaXQUnWqMhYzb6ACHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 517px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;"><img id="id_c938_7a53_3f99_9c7a" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-e1tWBMRPRuY/WojGEelBtLI/AAAAAAAAB40/KNvXHBJCIp4j7gnuAnBCVSj8YW5jxWioQCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 507px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"></div></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br></div>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Back to the waterfront to await our return boat, we passed a beach designated for boats, another for baptisms, and another for bathing. Bathed in afternoon sun, teenagers, girls and boys, stripped down to shorts and swimsuits and joyfully, loudly dived in. A young couple doffed tops to splash around playfully and wash hair and body, innocently oblivious to the world around. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then our boat launched us three passengers back onto the open waters, across the volcano-rimmed lake, out of daydream, back to Panajachel, thence onward home on a second boat, this one crammed full and heavy with well over twenty tourists, luggage, and locals, sprayed liberally with water on a choppy ride. We feel blessed to have enjoyed this memorable travel day soaking up such a rare traditional, vibrant, happy culture set in harmonious surroundings. </span></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-25281673904240270272018-02-13T14:11:00.001-04:002018-02-14T11:07:18.443-04:00Indigenous Soul<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_f7c_4ae1_8753_8802" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l6ty3aM0I8g/WoMqX6SGRTI/AAAAAAAAB2M/JMecNwqGuv8qWDrCXSW9cuoHgevzoIFigCHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 507px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: center; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Luna Moon Rising by Mara Friedman, www.newmoonvisions.com</i></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Martín Prechtel writes: "Every individual in the world, regardless of cultural background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I have always struggled with the notion of a "soul", and the attribution of an adjective such as "indigenous" makes the grasping even more intangible. The word "spirit" is more appealing, less dogmatic. I appreciate that historians, anthropologists, writers, philosophers, healers, shamans all derive deep meaning from cultural and earthly connections, given the rich evidence unearthed by study of civilizations and cosmologies such as those formulated and perfected by Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Aztec, Toltec, Incans, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Moors, Ottomans (and more) at the zenith of their Empires. Who wouldn't sense an innate "soul" underpinning such powerful displays of human ingenuity and grandeur? But do Empires derive build on a collective Indigenous Soul, do they imbue it, or do they depend on manipulation of such a Soul as a means of exercising tight central control?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Do we - born English, Irish, Canadian, American, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Australian - have a "soul" that is attributable to our homeland? Most of us are certainly proud of our nationality that bestows us with part of our personality. Yet these modern states are surely but fabrications, transitions drawn on a map and evolved from deeper, more indigenous entities, like the Vikings, Native Americans, Aboriginals, Celts, Slavs, Iberians that preceded us, and that we subjugated with our "guns, germs, and steel"! Yes, some of us are direct descendants of these proud peoples, but many of us - in North America, for example - are not. Some of us are unwillingly uprooted refugees, some live in self-imposed exile. Our "civilization" attempted to tame, even wipe out the "indigenous soul", so that our morality could take its place. And the battle is ongoing around the world to this day, as native peoples are threatened, marginalized, and have their "soul" (their homes, their lands, their very means of survival) stripped away from them by violent force. The soul is laid bare and goes underground, is exterminated, or co-opted by the conquering culture or religion.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Many of us try to seek a connection back to where we came from, whether it be through our family tree or the histories of our heritage. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I am readily reminded of my own indigenous spirit when I recall (buoyed by nostalgia) endless playtime in the woods, bluebells, country walks, seaside holidays, chalk cliffs, folk music, Morris dancing, church choirs, village pubs, Saplings, Mill Lane, Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire (the physical soil into which I was born and became rooted), football Saturdays, cricket Sundays, foggy mornings, rolling countryside, downlands, grey drizzle, light and bitter ales, mischievous banter, a laugh and a giggle, Mum & Dad, my sisters ..... Childhoods anchor us to a semi-mythical past. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Now my world has been flavoured by Canadian, Chilean, and German influences. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Stories written, visual, and oral help us in filling out our sense of self as we pore over books, art, sculpture, symphonies, faded photographs, utilitarian objects, myths, legends conjured up by ancestors of ours. And we go gallivanting around the world in search of meaning in exotic and far-flung cultures alien to our own. There is, perhaps, after all, "soul" everywhere, whether indigenous or not, and we end up picking up smatterings from all over. Modernity, mobility, mutability have blurred the lines and created a soup of ever-changing mores and cultural practise that is richly entertaining and edifying, yet ultimately unsatisfying in finding a new home for our soul. We are in large part the creation of where we came from; we have set down roots in places along the way, and we know not what the future holds. It is up to us to seek out our spiritual home, dig in, nourish those roots, plant more seeds, tend our garden, and keep looking. The perpetual quest for love, beauty, connection, and perhaps even "soul" continues and deepens.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Francis Weller writes: "The indigenous soul lives close to the ground, to moss, river and loon. It moves in springs and wind, is close to the breath of coyotes. It is scratched on rock walls around the planet, is seen dancing around firelight and is heard in stories told under the canopy of stars. The indigenous soul is the thread of our humanness woven inextricably with the world. Where all things meet and exchange the vitality that is life, there is soul."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">If we strip away human depredations of war, greed, conquest and overreach that are poisoning and collapsing our societies, we are left staring at raw Nature, true Earth soul. This is the foundation for human or "indigenous" soul.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;">
</p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Weller continues: "The recovery of the indigenous soul is imperative. We are in serious trouble as a people. Nearly every biological system is in peril: our watersheds, oceans and topsoil are experiencing rapid deterioration. We face a future that will be seriously impacted by radical changes in our climate. We are also witnessing the daily loss of the wild as we encroach ever further into wetlands and forests. We have forgotten our place in the world. And this woe is not confined to us alone; it extends to the others with whom we share this world. Many species find themselves threatened by these changes: grizzlies, blue fin tuna, spotted owls, coral reefs, Atlantic salmon, autumn buttercup, golden-cheeked wood warbler, Baker’s cypress. This list goes on and on. There are 2,269 endangered species in the United States alone. They are caught in a cascading net of sorrows, powerless to change or adapt. We must reconnect with this ancient ground of being that is our indigenous soul and recall that we are all of the earth."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="Arial"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Martín Prechtel likes to incant a blessing </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">common among the Tzutujil Indians of Guatemala: “Be blessed with long life, honey in the heart, no evil, and thirteen thank you’s.”</span></font></p><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div></div></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8270684722708742701.post-70395078750581361282018-01-28T17:55:00.001-04:002018-01-28T17:55:45.235-04:00Water has escaped...<div style="text-align: center;"><img id="id_910f_b031_c4aa_73b8" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-uGlfh2wvdVo/Wm5G31g9D-I/AAAAAAAAB0s/mapc_jgHMRgKysulr8blkXodrEyAneAOACHMYCw/s5000/%255BUNSET%255D" alt="waterfall cascada atitlan guatemala maya" title="" tooltip="" style="width: 507px; height: auto; margin: 4px;"><br><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><i><font size="4">"Water has escaped the rocky prisons of the Moon's springs in the Mountain Stronghold of the Sun's sky, and in love with the sparkle of the Ocean, seeps secretly through the Mountains, gathering in hopeful streams, to rush as a long swollen river to the Ocean, where dismembered by the electric heat of the sky, she lives on in a massive diversity as all the world's plants, whose tree and plant breaths become the clouds carried on the back of the Southern Hummingbird Wind back to her origination in the mountain lake. Inside the pot (the lake) under the Moon's bed (the night sky) she is then "cooked" like the wild greens that the Mayans love and depend on daily for their food, and it is here that water finally goes from plant form to become all the animals hatched from eggs and born from wombs."</font></i></p><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><font size="4">Martin Prechtel, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun</font></p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10156248662074946259noreply@blogger.com