Almost 40 years ago we bought several carvings in an Indonesian village dedicated to woodwork, which somehow started an interest in indigenous art. Over the decades, we built a small collection of 2- & 3-dimentional works of art of peoples of North America, whenever possible purchasing directly from the artist or craftsperson. Here in Costa […]
He came by early this morning. As he had done a number of times during the last two months. He settled on a branch of our gigantic yellow jacaranda (Schizolobium parahyba), called ‘El Gallinazo’ (chicken-footed: the shallow root system can look like bird feet). Well hidden as he was in the bright green shimmery fuzzy foliage […]
Visiting a waterfall naturally implies a lot of moisture. However when we spent the morning at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens with our visiting kids last week, there was a whole lot more water falling from the sky then crashing down those waterfalls! We were forced to purchase lovely “Pura Vida” ponchos conveniently offered in the […]
Starting today, I am moving forward and refocusing on pura vida with a first plunge into the lap pool this year! The water is still a little murky, granted, but in those high-end spas people pay top dollar for algae packs and assorted nonsense. I figure a few greenish clouds won’t do me any harm. Thank […]
“Ihr Lieben Goldigen” this has been my greeting for my far-away family for most of those decades I’ve lived abroad. It was the header in uncountable letters to my parents, those real, pre-internet letters, written on crinkly onionskin stationary to reduce the cost of overseas postage. This very personal address is composed of “My Dears” and […]
We continue to stumble across minor and major reminders of the explosion which blew up part of our home last April. The acid vapor cloud penetrated into the far reaches of the house in an intriguingly random pattern, so elusive that we still find evidence of damage here and there after all these months. Two […]
It was our gardener’s assistant who sounded the alarm. The undergardener had been clearing underbrush behind the laundry drying area in the far corner of our “plantel”. El plantel is the level area of a property on which people build their homes. In our mountainous Central Costa Rican neighborhoods, a pantel is usually carved out of the face […]
Living abroad and learning to navigate through a new environment and to assimilate into a different culture is exciting, fun, frustrating and as time-consuming as any actual full-time job would be. For one year and seven weeks now we have been splitting our time between one Central American and one European country. Since neither of […]
Switching between Othernesses isn’t as easy as you might think. I shall expound on the Otherness theme later one. Presently we need to focus on birds, if for no other reason than to seamlessly join my varying Selves through the observation of birds. Since these will be my last tropical bird pictures for this year, I’ll bombard you one […]
NOT IN A STRAIGHT LINE by Photolera Claudinha 