Text to Self

In the course of reading, reading anything at all really,  we make connections between the text or reading material and ourselves. Unfortunately, not all of these connections are productive or positive.

This morning the LA Times carried a story I've followed about a man and his dogs. Out in the Antelope Valley two pit bulls attacked and killed a woman out for a walk in her neighborhood. The man had 4 pit bulls and knew they were dangerous but did not make sure they were fenced in.  In fact the dogs routinely roamed the neighborhood scaring the residents. The two dogs were euthanized, the owner faces criminal charges, and the other two dogs are being rehabbed for adoption.

I've kept track of this story only because I read the paper every day, not because I go looking for it. It's also a story that sticks in your head.  There are so many dogs out and about and so many owners who think their dogs don't require leashes that it's easy to identify with this story.

This morning I put on my pink and blue Nikes, my headphones, and my shades and headed out to walk the neighborhood exercising my arthritic knee. Upon leaving the house I noticed two large dogs roaming the street. I don't know what kind of dogs they were and I didn't recognize them. One had a collar. They looked like boxer/pit bull mixes but I don't really know. Since they were sort of hanging around one house I thought perhaps they belonged to the neighbors.

I continued to walk across the street and they started to show some interest in me and began moving toward me. Normally I'm not afraid of dogs, but am cautious about strange dogs. I'm not stupid. However, with the article about the murderous pit bulls fresh in my mind I turned around and headed back toward my house. Honestly I thought about going on, about how ridiculous I was being but I stepped back anyway. What a wuss!

In the not too distant past I purchased some pepper spray online to defend myself and my dogs against other aggressive dogs. I'd had a couple of close calls with unleashed dogs. But I stopped carrying it and had to do a quick search of my cupboard to find it. It was behind my recipe box, a green cylinder with a red spray button. I made sure I remembered how to use it and left the house again.

This time the dogs were closer to my house and one trotted over to follow me down the street. He gave up after a few yards and turned around to find his friend. I walked swiftly down the street and around the corner and when I got back the dogs were gone. Probably back in their yard.

Did I feel foolish? Kind of.  As far as I know no one around here has been mauled by a dog in at least 10 years. Like lots of horrific news stories I took that one and applied it to myself.  In that I'm not alone. Newspapers, TV news outlets, and other media would have us believe that the world is a very dangerous place. In fact our society is far safer today than ever before. We are not likely to be kidnapped, stabbed, shot, or mauled by dogs.

Every time we make a connection between ourselves and the horrors reported by the media we are incited to fear our fellow man - or dogs as the case may be. Caution is a good thing. Being alert to one's surroundings is also smart. But letting that caution morph into fear and affect our actions isn't so smart and it's pretty stressful too. Thinking of ourselves as prey will not make us safer just more anxious.

Birdless in Huntington Beach

Moving to Huntington Beach from Torrance some 20 years ago required some adjustments.  My yard in Torrance was filled with roses, camellias, and gardenias.  We had a vegetable garden that grew luscious tomatoes and crisp peppers. In other words, we had great soil. This house sits on soil contaminated by oil.  It's hard dense clay and no matter how many times you amend it that wet clay seeps up and takes over. So when we moved here our gardening days ended.

However, we were rewarded by a backyard full of songbirds. The carrotwood trees we planted along with the ficus tree provided food and shelter for an abundance of birds. Redwing blackbirds and tricolor blackbirds were regular visitors to both the trees and our bird feeder. We also had the requisite sparrows building nests under the eaves of our patio. Once or twice we had a large gorgeous yellow headed blackbird on the back wall. Small hawks came to hunt sparrows who hid out in the ficus tree until the hawks got bored. Cormorants occasionally roosted, wings spread, in the trees as well.

After a few years all of the blackbirds were driven out by European starlings an aggressive non-native bird from...you guessed it Europe! The reedy banks of the lake in Central Park a block away which were home to the blackbirds were also taken over by the starlings. The starlings did come every year to eat the red seeds of the carrotwood trees which pop out of hard shells in the spring. They did such a good job that we never had seeds on the ground only the hard shells.

This year, for the first time in 20 years, we have no birds at all in our trees. The carrotwood trees dropped their seeds and shells in abundance only to be swept up and put in the trash. A trip to the park reveals a modest population of great-tailed grackles, a new addition to our area, but no starlings or blackbirds. There are mallards, Canada geese, and cormorants living there. Occasionally a mallard couple will try to take over our pool or a hummingbird will zip by but that's it for backyard birds.

I haven't consulted the Audubon Society to discover the reasons for changing bird populations but I can't help but think that the absence of native birds in my own backyard is a subtle but notable sign of environmental damage. It feels empty and silent in my yard now even with the cars passing by behind the wall. The birds connected me to the natural world while living in world of concrete and slump stone.

Life's just not the same without birds in the yard.

Ur / gent: adj., requiring immediate action or attention

My urgent care provider opens at 8:00 AM  which I don't consider early since it's called urgent care which implies one needs medical attention before or after one's regular physician's hours. That day I'd been waiting anxiously at home since 5:30 AM. I arrived promptly at 7:55 for reasons which shall remain confidential and are unrelated to this post. I was the second person in line (8:01 to be precise) and we both had to fill out new patient forms. So far the two of us were neck in neck in the race to be seen.  But at 8:00 AM there were only 3 people staffing the facility, 2 clerical workers and a health assistant, the guy, in this case, that takes your weight, blood pressure, etc. I know this because I followed them in. The other patient and I waited in silence for over 30 minutes after turning in our paperwork. Sometime after that a young man, the doctor, I presumed  and the man for whom we were waiting, strode into the office and disappeared through the inner door. Then more waiting. Turns out he was a physician's assistant, no doctor ever showed up.

As I sat there I thought, albeit a little irritatedly, about the meaning of "opens at 8:00". The comparison between my job and theirs struck me. (I know I'm retired from teaching but I haven't developed amnesia!) Here, the staffers stroll in getting themselves settled before calling a name. No rush.  And the person we're here to see doesn't even roll through the door until well after the posted opening time. Nothing "urgent" about this scene. No one is in a hurry except the patients. And as civilized adults we just wait and wait and wait, accepting apologies for having to wait so long just grateful to be seen after 1 1/2 hours!!!

Teaching is a little different as you well know. For one thing 8am is not that early. If school starts at 8am, faculty and staff have to be there 20-30 minutes beforehand and most arrive even before that. Teachers must "settle in" before their "clients" arrive not afterwards. Neither can we just saunter in 30 minutes after school starts. Try to imagine a long line of kids waiting calmly and quietly on the blacktop for their teacher to arrive. Nope, I'm not getting a visual of that.

Once our clients arrive they immediately begin clamoring for attention, no waiting quietly to be seen one a time. Instead they insist their needs and wants be met at once each jockeying to be first. And so it goes for the entire day, 25 -36 children in one room, each one demanding a teacher's undivided attention at some point. Mixed in with those kids are a few who require constant attention. Sometimes an emergency arises with a nosebleed, vomiting, or a child who conveniently forgets to come back from the restroom prompting a search and rescue operation. And let's not forget the ringing of the telephone with non-essential requests from the office in the midst of all this. It's like doing triage while performing surgery.  A teacher's day begins at a run and ends with a sprint toward the finish line.

So from all appearances, despite protests to the contrary I'm sure, urgent care providers don't really understand the meaning of the word urgent. I wish I could explain it to them.

First Excursion

Where the rivers meet the sea.

Mangroves – the word sounds a little dangerous, like a flesh-eating forest maybe. I looked it up and a mangrove is simply a tree that lives with its roots underwater. Pretty simple. A mangrove swamp is just a lot of those trees.  So we took our first tour in the southern Pacific  part of Costa Rica through the mangroves. I know I thought it would be a lot more interesting than it was. In the mangroves a little goes a long way. But on our way out we stopped by a tiny island inhabited by birds.

Frigate birds

bird island

The sea was choppy and the ride out was rough. I’m sure I was at least three inches shorter by the time we got to the mangroves. Every time the boat rode a wave up I came down hard.  I could feel my vertebrae

compressing. Frigate birds roosted on the island as well as sea eagles and black vultures.  Interesting but let’s get out of this chop!

Enter the mangroves where the ocean meets fresh water. High tide marks are clearly visible on the trees. At first it seems as if the mangroves are simply large rivers lined with trees but further exploration up the rivers reveals a different world altogether.

Hanging roots

The rivers narrow and the exposed tree roots reveal a natural world more fantasy than science. Some roots hang from above while others create a piece of art curving over and over in endless repetition. Birds flit through the swamp and tiny hermit crabs skitter across the dry roots. Caimans hide in plain sight waiting for a chance to slip into the water.

Juvenile caiman

Quiet is the word for a mangrove. The river moves slowly out to the sea and rises and falls with the tide.  Insects do not buzz and there are few animals in the narrowest canals of the mangrove. With the roots exposed and dead looking the silence is eerie.

Artistic roots

Tangled roots in a narrowing canal.

School Daze

Since 1994 I have worked at a school that somehow missed most of the wear and tear of other schools of its vintage. (1965) In many ways this was the result of teachers who worked their entire careers at that school and were solidly invested in it.  The school had a new stage with curtains a few years back.  Old carpets that had come unstuck from the cement were replaced and all of the carpets were cleaned every summer. The teacher’s lounge was repainted by a teacher and blinds installed. The classrooms were spacious and well cared for with windows on one side.

We had a beautiful library filled with books of all kinds enabling kids to read, research, and learn how to use a library. Primary students had story time on the rug there.  Upper grade students could find books supporting their interests in science, history, biography, or fiction. Frankly, it was one of the gems of our school supported by many teachers, librarians, and parents over the years.

The school also boasted a wonderful computer lab with a computer for every child and internet access for all. Students learned to keyboard, do research and create graphic presentations there. They learned about the power and dangers of the internet while writing blogs and doing research. Lessons in English, early reading and mathematics were also available. Here was a place where real life skills were taught every week. Teachers decided to make keyboarding important and many students left our school with skills far beyond those of their teachers, ready to write and publish reports with graphics of every kind. The faculty fought to retain our computer aide who kept the lab clean and the machines running. We didn’t always have the most up-to-date equipment being a small school with little federal monies but what we had was used daily and repaired when broken.

When a “modernization” bond was passed our school packed up and moved to another site. Although a decade newer than ours it looks much the worse for the wear. Regular rooms have but one small window in the door and most of the campus is crowded with aging portables rusting and crumbling from the outside in. Of course all portables lack sinks contributing to the squalid and temporary feel of them. The library there is organized according to an outside reading program and bears no likeness to a real library, the kind students will encounter later in their academic careers.  The computer lab too is small with too few computers for our now large classes. Clashes with the “new” school’s computer aide over curriculum have been largely resolved sometimes by using the lab when our aide is there.

So we’ve all made adjustments. Students bring commercial wipes for their hands, water bottles, and paper towels. Many teaching materials remain in boxes for lack of storage. In my class good students must give up their recess in order to go to the library. The rest simply don’t go, there is no time in the library schedule for my class to go. So no lessons on how to use a library and no books for them to borrow. Sad.

The modernization going on at our school consists of making changes to conform with the Americans with Disabilities Act such as flattening the thresholds to classrooms, removing cabinets under sinks and reducing the teacher’s restroom to just one handicapped stall. Perhaps a new heating system? No one really knows or if they do it’s a state secret. It does seem odd to me that at one school cabinets are being removed for wheelchair access under the sinks while at the other, sinks don’t even exist in classrooms.

But now the other shoe has finally dropped. Our lovely school will be used to house other schools due to be modernized and we will combine with our current site to form one large school. Granted, having to move all our materials once again would be burdensome but at the end we would be back in our nice neighborhood able to take advantage of the amenities like sinks, a fully stocked library we helped create, and a working computer lab for which we also lobbied. The educational environment we created along with our community is gone. We can’t recreate it at a site that’s never been ours.

Oh, and yes the teachers are great at our “new” school and working with them is terrific but teachers spend the vast majority of every day in their classroom with children or working there alone after school. And just because working in a decrepit portable with no sink and inadequate storage may be the norm in California that doesn’t mean teachers have to like it.

It’s a damned shame.

From Wild to Wilder

On to Drake Bay via San Jose

Tortuguero, Caribbean Sea and canal

San Jose from the air

That's what the guide said to us as we left Tortuguero for Drake Bay and Corcovado National Park on the southern Pacific side of Costa Rica. We packed up for another boat ride across the canal to meet our plane. It was barely sprinkling when we took off for San Jose.  After a short 25 minute flight we landed at San Jose to change planes for another 40 minute hop to Drake Bay.  Unfortunately the air turbulence was pretty intense during that 40 minutes and a few members of our party required airsick bags. But what fantastic views out of windows.

Beach landing

The airstrip at Drake Bay is surrounded by green fields and we were met by a driver and a few barking dogs. He threw the bags on the top of the van and we hopped in for a short ride over the hill  down the main street of Bahia Drake to the beach where we waded into the water to board the boat to the Drake Bay Wilderness Resort. Frankly, beach landings are pretty much the standard in this part of the world. The drivers back the boats up as far as they can onto the beach and you scramble in or out as best you can trying not to be knocked over by the small swells or step on a big rock. Try not to lose your shoes, backpack, hat, or whatever else you've brought along.

Drake Bay Wilderness Resort boasts a dock so no beach landing there. It also boasts a good deal of sunshine and not much rain so we anticipated some drying out. What fools were we! Down in the south the humidity is considerably higher regardless of the sunshine. And of course it does rain, especially at night which really bugs the howler monkeys for some reason and their noise making can be heard a mile away. Humidity does have an upside: no need for moisturizer, anywhere. On the flip side the sheets always feel a little damp and your bathing suit never drys unless you lay in the sun letting your body heat dry it. You can try to hang your clothes out to dry but 3 days later nothing will have changed. Ah, but there was a solution. The resort had washers and dryers and washed and dried your clothes for free, even your shoes. I didn't know about the shoes until we left so I came home with really stinky shoes.

Drake Bay croc

Mural in our room

The resort can be reached by hiking from the town across the river or by boat. It sits on rocky spit of land surrounded by water and jungle.  The actual bay is home to a couple of crocodiles and some shorebirds.  A crystalline river snakes out of the jungle to meet the ocean here. Toucans are abundant if not always visible. Our rooms are like small cabins, again with no glass in the windows just screens and shutters to keep out the light and the bugs. Built of renewable Costa Rican hardwood with porches and painted murals inside they are charming and comfortable. The views to the ocean are only slightly obstructed  by flowering plants and palm trees. Hammocks rock gently in the breeze and the pool is salt water.  Lunch is served at the bar overlooking the pool and the ocean. Every afternoon the chairs that line the rail around the bar area are filled with people reading while the tables accommodate families playing games or even checking email.

A spoonbill of some sort, never did get
his name.

When we arrive we get a list of the activities available to us and since we're there for 6 days we have at least 5 activities included.  Our meals are paid for, including wine with dinner. We can order drinks from the bar after 3:30 in the afternoon which are not included but cost little in comparison with U.S. prices. So after getting the 411 we unpack and get together to decide which activities interest us. The rest of the adventure begins the next day.

Drake Bay Resort - ocean side

A Jungle Christmas

All I wanted for Christmas (actually all I always want) was a trip to the unknown, a voyage, an expedition. A place far from concrete, the internet, and commercials. A place of peace and discovery. Somewhere to rest my eyes on the beauty of nature. So with family in tow I traveled by plane and boat to the Costa Rican rain forest. We traveled to places unreachable by road. Canopy covered outboard skiffs ply the canals of Tortuguero on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and move people and supplies in Drake Bay on the southern Pacific.

Rain on the river

Tortuguero 

On the boardwalk

In Tortuguero, known for the green sea turtles who lay their eggs on the beach there, we stayed in rooms built on stilts connected with covered boardwalks.  Screens instead of glass cover window openings, nothing to keep out the sounds of the forest growing around us. Rain poured from the sky in torrents at night prompting loud complaints from the howler monkeys. The metal roofs intensified the sound of the rain and one night a monkey cavorting on the metal roof woke everyone at 1:30 leaving us wondering what in the world was going on. We took a boat tour up the canals of Tortuguero National Park to see wildlife. It takes a very good eye to spot animals in the rain forest. The forest there grows right down to the water, dense and green. We started in sunshine our guide pointing out birds and plants and continued in a downpour clad in thick army green ponchos. When the rain finally ceased and we pushed back our hoods many of us were quite wet. You'd need a poncho sealed to your face and neck with duct tape to be completely dry.

Muddy boots

Mud, mud, and more mud. Sticky, thick, slurping mud. We donned rubber boots for a trek through the forest surrounding the lodge. We didn't see many animals, our slopping around wasn't very quiet. Our guide proceeded confidently through the mud along the trail stopping to tell us about the trees growing above and around us. Their adaptations for growth and reproduction  in near constant rain are fascinating. Their roots are tall yet shallow and spread out around the tree to keep it anchored in place. On the ground we trudged through and around ankle deep mud trying to keep our boots on. Our feet made loud sucking sounds as we pulled them from the muck toes curled to keep from leaving the boots behind. The sky was clear then but the dripping of water from leaves continued sending rivulets of water down our backs or faces. In fact the constant dripping left me unsure about  the weather. Was it raining or was I just walking under some trees?

A little blurry but....

During the rainy season, we were there during the "dry" season, the sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. No pictures or ponchos are allowed and tourists must be quiet as possible. But during the dry season those eggs hatch and the baby turtles race unerringly toward the surf to be swept into the vast ocean. To hell with watching the mamas lay eggs, our guide rounded us up and we caught a boat across the canal to the beach. The babies were hatching! We hurried down the beach in time to see a nest of new turtles scrambling up from their sandy hole and dashing to the sea. For this experience you need only watch where you step, turn your flash off, and be amazed. We took pictures and video and oohed and aahed like proud new parents. We warned each other not to step back or to be still. Those babies weren't deterred by the deep footprints we left in the sand nor the three foot sand cliff that stood between them and the sea. Falling off the cliff they'd land upside down exposing their white undersides, right themselves and scoot toward the water to be swept away. I was giddy with excitement and wonder. In less than 30 minutes the nest was empty and the turtles were at sea. What a truly awe inspiring experience.

This was why I'd come. Wonder, awe, peace, discovery.