Gabriel is 25!

It's a birthday, and I'll be brief!  My dear son is 25 today, and I wish I could be with him to celebrate. He is the best thing in my life, and I am so proud of his integrity, his musical gifts, his kind heart, and his sharp intelligence. He's pretty awesome-looking, too!

I'm so proud...

So Far, So Great

The sunsets seem more ephemeral than ever as I count down the days until I move into my new house in the hills. Mike and Beth often spend that time of the day in a pillared temple affair they call the gazebo that sits atop the property right on the sea wall. Drinks in hand, we watch the fireball sink into the horizon. Very tranquil.

After a lifetime of wanting to live by the sea, I can now attest to its charms most emphatically. The luscious crashing of waves, the unexpected lulls in sound, the bobbing lanterns of nighttime fishing pangas, the protean surface of the ocean, with its palette of blues, greens, grays, and whites. I shall miss the relentless march of waves to the shore, the whitecaps on windy days, the grandiosity of a sunset in a cloud-dappled sky. Happily, my new home is just an hour's bus ride from the sea, and I expect I shall be scratching that salty itch by and by.

A few weeks ago, Brynn and I started walking in the opposite direction for our early constitutionals, towards Casares. This morning, I captured a few views of our pleasant 2 1/4-mile roundtrip. This is the roundabout that joins the road east to Diriamba to the north-south highway that skirts the coastline between La Boquita and Casares. This being Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the inner circle is studded with banners

 Looking toward the sea at the rotunda, the national tourist promotion department (INTUR) thinks a young lady has nothing better to do at a lovely beach than talk on the phone...

Further down the road, we waded through a group of zopilotes, bustards who gather when something is dying. They are hungry, and do not disperse much when we stroll through. 

 A Brahma bull pokes among the littler by the road where nary a blade of grass is to be found.

Here is my turn around and head back point. Welcome to Casares!

The seaside of the road has large vacation homes. The other side of the road is mainly scrub brush and small trees, and lots of garbage. Here are a few houses, most impossible to appreciate because of the walls around them. This first, Las Ventanas (the windows) has none in sight! They must all face the sea.

Las Garzas (The Cranes)

This is the newest, built near the rotunda, reportedly by a wealthy coffee family. It is called Sorrento, which may explain the Italianate architectural features.

And here is last evening's sunset. I shall miss these most of all.

What, No Apple Tree?

Well, I am not persuaded that the last entry, Next Big Thing. was needed, as it garnered only two actual views, but still, I think the news I am about to relate warrants something of a buildup. I have decided to move; not only that, but I have found a new home in the cooler highlands near Diriamba.

When I lived near Johnstown, I lived on Route 403, which went way far from Johnstown. It was a very long and, I thought, important road.  Well, my new house is on the actual Pan-American Highway, which starts north in Canada and ends down in the southern tip of South America. That's a pretty fucking long road No one who passes my new place will notice anything but a large cement block wall with a pair of black metal garage doors.

But behind that wall is a little Eden!  The wall is the western edge of the space, which is a corner of a larger family-owned multi-acre property. The northern edge is lined with coconut trees.

Looking south from the northeast corner is a small 2-bedroom house. That tree on the far side is:

An avocado tree, with a nearby lime tree!

And the view from the lime tree is through the porch to what I thought was a grape arbor.

But turned out to be an off-season chayote frame -- My new landlady, a radiologist with the National Police, assures me that the frame will be covered with the savory green  pear-shaped vegetable by mid-summer.

 Here's the living room.

The kitchen, taken from a small dining area.

The larger bedroom

And there, to the right of the larger tree -- where the gate has been opened --that is the Pan-American Highway!

More to come! I will be back in the chicken business in May, and I have already hired a gardener! Stefan, my Managua rock, is handling dog fencing and kitchen retiling. Updates coming!

Next Big Thing

A big shift in my life in Nicaragua is in the works!  I'll have pictures and more in a few days. Stay with me, please!

A Night at the Opera

Many years ago, I was pleased to be a regular panelist judge of high school musicals in friendly competition for Tony-type awards each spring in Pittsburgh. In fairness, the various productions were compared only to others in their budget class; well-funded musicals in wealthy suburban districts enjoyed distinct advantages in hiring professional directors, students often took private singing, dancing. and acting lessons, and stage facilities were held to much higher standards than many small professional companies made do with. In fact, I preferred judging the lowest budget category productions, which relied most heavily on creative solutions to technical issues and could turn on the talents of a single gifted performer.

I was excited to see a local production of Puccini's Turandot last night at the 50-year-old Rubén Darío National Theatre in Managua. Not only was it my first opportunity to hear live classical music in the eight months since I moved here, it was my first visit to the national theatre and a chance to gauge the local appetite for such fare. I did not expect a lavish production, and I found plenty to appreciate.

It surely helps the survival odds of live opera here that the son of President Ortega is a well-trained tenor with a growing repertoire who has trained at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan. For this production, Laureano Ortega was cast in the male lead as the mysterious prince who comes to Peking to woo the cold-hearted princess. The role of Turandot, daughter of the emperor, was also  played by a Nicaraguan artist, Elisa Picado, in a pairing reminiscent of Dame Joan Sutherland and her slender swains in "Daughter of the Regiment." Mr. Ortega cuts a fine, if diminutive figure on stage, where he was apparently given little direction beyond striding slowly and purposefully to his next mark.

Laureano Ortega as Prince Calaf (Photos by Noel Carcache)


Was there ever a sillier premise for an opera than an ice princess who demands the solving of three riddles to win her hand, and death to those who fail? Why would the prince want such a vexatious beldam in the first place?  A trio of "ministers," Ping, Pang, and Pong, in Puccini's politically very incorrect times, have some of the best vocal material, and all three were portrayed by Italian opera veterans. A slave girl, Liu, was also portrayed by an Italian soprano, and was just sensational.


L-R Tiziano Barontini, tenor; Elizabetto Zizzo, soprano; Raffaele Raffio, baritone; and Ugo Tarquini, tenor.


Mr. Ortega is not blessed with a brilliant tenor, but rather a warm expressive tone, and the conductor should have held back the orchestra, which too often overwhelmed. The gorgeous "Nessun Dorma," Turandot's most famous aria, was nicely realized, and received the biggest ovation of the evening for Ortega. Ms. Picado has a vibrato we used to say, "you could drive a truck through," and wobbles about the correct tonality at times. Neither of the romantic leads displayed much acting ability, but this is opera, and the music is everything. The chorus was fine, if zombie-like, and the orchestra was wonderful, with many pristine solos. I was thrilled to hear Puccini's last work, which, like Madama Butterfly, is heavily influenced by Eastern musical scales and themes. So beautiful.

Laureano Ortega as Prince Calaf and Elisa Picado as Turandot

Odd Juxtapositions

Here are a pair of post-scripta that deserve to be included and may be filed under "odd juxtapositions."

Yesterday, we lost our electricity for most of the day. Before we lost power, I had noticed a couple of plump ticks attached to Brynn, and as she is highly distrustful of my efforts to sneak up and pull them off, I dosed her with a teaspoon of children's benedryl. I  planned to do a load of laundry in the morning and hoped she would doze off at some point. No power equals no washing machine, so I settled myself in the hammock with my Nexus to continue the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel (This Side of Paradise) I'd started the night before, only to find that my Nexus was itself out of energy. Great, I grumbled. I'll have to get a real book.

I did manage to cart a few boxes of old faves and classics to Nicaragua, and, why, if it wasn't old Homer calling out to me! I opened The Odyssey, to find that I had inadvertently filched a high school debate team gift to my son from his team advisor (and wonderful English teacher), Mrs. Bowman. I happily cracked its spine, perused the forward, and launched myself into the absolutely worst trip home ever.

Just as Telemachus was setting sail for Pylos in search of word of his father's whereabouts, I noticed that Brynn was sleeping deeply nearby on the porch. I quietly attached a leash to her collar JUST IN CASE and then chickened out and asked Salvador, our cuidador, to try and remove the ticks, one of which was attached to HER EYE! Of course she woke up and struggled to get away and showed her teeth and growled, but Salvador has a way with dogs. He calmed her and deftly pulled out the tick from the eye. Which immediately began dripping blood -- the eye, not the tick. I raced for wet paper towels and Brynn actually allowed me to put some pressure on her eye, and all was solved. She even let Salvador to remove the other tick without complaint.  And unlike Odysseus, I did not anger Poseidon for shoving a hot poker into the eye of Polyphemus. Just mopped up a little blood and all was well.

Today, I did yesterday's laundry, put it on the line, and grabbed a bus to Diriamba to pick up a few necessities. When I settled my self and my shopping bags into a seat for the return trip, I opened my now-charged Nexus and rejoined the aforementioned F. Scott Fitzgerald. As the bus filled up -- it has a slot at the Diriamba mercado, and does not leave for La Boquita until the bus is full-- somebody in the rear had a rooster in a covered basket, and an evangelist got up in the front to begin his cant, as they do. A group of children giggled when the rooster crowed, and I do not think anyone was actually listening to the man with his Bible, but after about ten minutes, he finished his lecture, and thanked everybody for their attention. There was a moment of silence, and then the rooster crowed very loudly, and the whole bus laughed. The motor started and we began the trip home. It was not easy getting back to daiquiris and foxtrots, I promise you.

February Blows

The month is half-gone and I have yet to post a damned word. I find nothing of sufficient interest to merit my own notice, let alone yours.

It has been a very windy, dirty two weeks. Actual dunelets of windborne dust appear daily on the floors, along with leaves, dead insects, bougainvillea blossoms. Several times a day, I shake out my bed coverlet and sweep the bedroom floor. The dust is prodigious! The wind continues through the night, which finds me nose-deep in polvo when I wake up. The wind keeps both the heat and the mosquitoes at bay, so there is an upside to all the grit and dust that blankets everything.

Some of my time has been occupied with sorting out tax forms and retirement savings. I spent a whole morning in Diriamba walking from one "Fax Available" storefront to the next, only to find not one functioning machine.

Reading remains my salvation. The four Neapolitan novels of  Elena Ferrante are packed with the denizens of a single neighborhood; their entanglements with good and ill fortune and each other are absorbing and shocking in equal measure. Now I am halfway through "The Door," by Magda Szabo, which has apparently become a Helen Mirren film. Yum.

This Sunday, I have a ticket to see "Turandot" in the Ruben Dario National Theatre in Managua. I think it is a local production with lead singers imported from Italy. Report to follow.

Word from Pennsylvania regarding my house sale is depressing beyond belief. Not only does no one want to buy it, but someone has helped himself to the copper piping. This definitely was not part of the plan. I begin to understand why so many houses fall into neglect. People work rather diligently to forget they ever existed.