Boogie Down in, um, San Pedro

On our way home from The Road to Volcan Barva, we passed a festival in Barva San Pedro’s town square. Last night, when I wrote this, I identified this village as Barva. This morning, Mr. I-Know-Where-I-Am-And-You-Don’t informed me it is the village of San...

Granny Boo Update

Granny Boo has a very distinguished Southern accent. If Melanie Hamilton, Gone With The Wind’s true heroine, were 96, she’d sound just like Granny Boo. Aunt Gay is there in Washington with her. Gay told us that when Granny Boo woke up this morning, she...

Stop and/or Go

Driving in Costa Rica is a wild ting, mon. Not for the faint of heart. I didn’t drive here for the first six weeks. Scareless me was too terrified to take the wheel. First off, it’s all so confusing. Too many intersections have one too many choices: either...

My Granny Boo

The lady in red is Granny Boo. The date Christmas ’02 at my house in Key West. The year we had the 8′ tall candy-cane peace sign in our yard. Granny Boo’s real name is Nancy Tazewell (the 12th) Lee (my grandfather’s name) Yakel (Aunt...

Key West Crackdown

This from Joe April, head of Key West Code Enforcement: "We are taking care of it [illegal signs] to the best of our ability," April said. "There’s only so many of us, and we have to deal with illegal contractors, illegal rentals and trash and...

To Get or To Give?

Oy vey! Spanish is hard. In its favor, it’s a MUCH easier language to learn than English. For starters, each vowel has ONLY one sound in Spanish. Another huge factor is that there is almost always only ONE verb per action. Most consonants have a single sound....

NEVER Alone

This is my desk where I spend a good amount of time. Right now, out the window on the right, I am looking at the twinkling lights of San Jose off in the valley. It’s like Christmas every night. I can just see the dim outline of the mountains on the other side....

Never Alone

This is a photo of the INS building (the "private" insurance company) in downtown San Jose. See the bright white disc in the upper right of this photo? In that cloud? Guess what that is? Er, who? Visitors, of course!!! UFOs. And everybody sees them!!! You...