Seeing the Real Peru

Sometimes in conversations the subject of foreign travel comes up. If I mention that I lived in Peru for nine years, the usual response is something like, "I've never been there but would like to see it." Occasionally someone will say that they have visited Peru, and add that Peru is a beautiful country. When I ask them where they visited, the typical reply is Lima, Machu Picchu, Cusco and Arequipa. I ignore the urge to tell them that they haven't seen Peru; that the locals who descend on them, especially the women dressed in native costumes and holding those cute little lambs, are not representative of 90% of Peru. What they and the hundreds of artisan kiosks represent are "un pueblo para turistas." And that's okay. Like everyone else in this world they are just trying to make a few bucks.

In my previous post I mentioned that the rock I was writing about came from the Chinchipe River near the village of Zapotal. Zapotal and hundreds of small villages like it located in northern Peru's costal desert and mountains are the real Peru. I seriously doubt if a tourist, or even a missionary has ever been to Zapotal. It is not an adventure for the faint-hearted.

The journey begins at Chiclayo, the normal departure point. A bus is the usual transportation, taking six hours on winding roads in the Andes Mountains to reach the city of Jaen (pronounced hi-een). In Jaen there are men with cars who make their living by taking people to outlying villages. This part of the trip is an adventure. 

The Chinchipe River must be crossed. The problem is that there are no bridges, so sometime in the past some ingenious people devised a way to cross the river. By using a series of cables attached to each other and ultimately to winches on shore, people, cars and even trucks are barged across the river.  

There are other, smaller rivers to cross. This is done by simply driving through them, but first stopping to cover the car's engine to the degree possible, because the river water  reaches about one-third of the way up the car doors.

After what seems like an eternity the village of Zapotal appears. The population of maybe 300 people are farmers. Their produce is transported to Jaen via the same route described above.

The Chinchipe River, which is milky colored with a fairly swift current is a focal point of the village. The villagers wash laundry and bathe in it, get their cooking water from it, and use it to cool off during the heat of the day.

You won't find gaily dressed women holding lambs, or kiosks selling everything under the sun, or tourist restaurants and night-life lounges. These are people who work hard from sun up to sun down just to get by. They are mostly content with their lives.

If you've been to Zapotal or a village like it, you've seen the real Peru.

View of Another World

 NASA has released some spectacular photos of the cosmos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The purpose of the photos is primarily scientific...to provide information to physicists to better understand the origin, composition and extent of the universe. For the general public the photos offer the opportunity to be awed both by the sheer beauty and configuration of the celestial objects, but as detailed as the Webb photos are, they still don't get us close enough to see and appreciate the intricate patterns and innate beauty of other planets. 

Still, there are other worlds much closer to home to examine and marvel at, if one has the ability to exercise their imagine and to appreciate nature's wonders. Take a moment to examine the photos below of 'another world.' No...take more than a moment to look in detail at each segment of each photo (don't forget to click on them). If you can open up your mind, you may find yourself feeling this world worthy of appreciation, and asking yourself how such a world could have been created.

 The above photos of 'another world' are of a rock found in the Chinchipe River near the village of Zapotal, Peru. 

I have spent hours looking at the rock through a magnifying glass and still find features and patterns that I missed on previous occasions. Very recently these photos and a description of the rock were sent to the geology department of a university in North Carolina for examination. Hopefully they will be able to shed some light as to how the rock and its unique designs were created.

My take on the Republican debate

 

The eventual Republican nominee for the 2024 election was not on that stage last night. The front runner, Ron DeSantis looked and spoke like an angry mechanical robot, avoiding questions and instead spouting pre-recorded sound bites. On the few occasions when he was forced to go off-script he was extremely awkward. 

I thought that Pence looked good. He showed more forcefulness than I've seen before and I liked his answers and comments. Realistically he has no chance because to the MAGA crowd he will always be a traitor. Asa Hutchinson displayed good objective reasoning on most issues. Working against him is the appearance of a kindly old grandfather giving advice to his grandkids. 

Ramaswamy at first impressed me but as the evening progressed he became more combative and extreme in his views. I dismissed him completely when he said he would abandon Ukraine, and pardon Trump on day one. I was pleased when Nikki Haley challenged him on Ukraine. 

Russia has been a pain in the world's ass for more than a century. Putin is trying to rebuild the USSR and if he's not stopped he will succeed, with the help of China and other allies. In my view the day that Russia crossed the Ukraine border he should have been met with all of the firepower that NATO could muster. 

A different issue that all candidates seemed to agree on was that China and Mexico are responsible for the drug deaths in America. This is pure rubbish. No one is forcing Americans to use drugs. The drug cartels are simply supplying the demand that we have created. We are killing ourselves. Education is not the answer. Drug users know full well what the consequences could be. What's lacking is a sense of values; a sense of right and wrong. I don't have an answer as to why those qualities are lacking. 

Let me get back to the candidates. Chris Christie, the man I've been in favor of has gotten some favorable reviews regarding last night but in my opinion he came up short. He was a non-factor. He did on occasion display his objective thinking, but not nearly enough and his combative attitude toward Ramaswamy was distasteful. In the coming debates he must use his reasoning ability on the issues that Americans are concerned about.

Of the eight candidates, I could support Nikki Haley. Her stance on most issued mirrored my own. I like the way she handled herself on that stage. I liked her candidness, especially in her opening comments when she said that Republicans were partially to blame for the economy. My sense is that she has her own agenda that she believes in and is not trying to be all things to all voters. That's called conviction.

But as I said, none of the eight candidates will be the nominee. Baring something unforeseen it will be Trump. For Trump supporters these debates may as well not even take place, though it does give them an opportunity to boo the hopefuls. 

Yesterday in an antique shop Maribel found a "Goldwater in '64" campaign pin that I have been looking for for many months. Comes November of next year if the choices are Biden or Trump, I'll be wearing my Goldwater pin and voting for him just as I did in '64. 

Dreaming on a Chickamauga park bench

 It is a hot, lazy Sunday afternoon. Too hot to do any serious outdoor walking. Earlier in the week we'd done our antique shops circuit and mall walking so we didn't have a lot of options as far as getting out of the house goes. What we did was hop into the car, backed out of the driveway and just took off, with no destination in mind. We ended up in Chickamauga, which is not really surprising as it is one of our two favorite small towns in the area, the other being Ringgold.

Chickamauga is what could be called a bedroom community for Chattanooga, and to a lesser extent for Fort Oglethorpe. It has lots of newer subdivisions with nice homes, a large modern high school, an historic pre-civil war mansion open for tours on Saturday, and that's about it. For restaurants there is a Mexican restaurant, two pizza joints, and an ice cream shop that also sells hot dogs. For shopping it has...pretty much nada, and zero manufacturing.

Main street is about two blocks long and, like many small towns, half of the buildings are vacant. But the town has a friendly feel to it, and a park bench in the shade in front of one of those vacant buildings was just the ticket for us this afternoon. 

We talked a bit about the history of Chickamauga, and then narrowed our focus to three buildings across the street. This is not the first time we've talked about those buildings. Both Maribel and me are fascinated with their age, appearance, and what we imagine to be their past. Of the three only the middle one is in use, as a dentist's office. The other two are vacant. 

It is the building on the right that intrigues us. We wonder what purposes it served in the past, and what it would have been like to live on the second floor. And we speculate on what we would/could do with that building. To me it reminds me of one of the old time saloons we saw in Virginia City, Nevada. I can almost hear a honky-tonk piano and the sound of cards being shuffled. I can see the 'scarlet ladies' on the balcony waving handkerchiefs and shouting taunts to the men on the street. Maribel sees it differently.

She envisions a restaurant - her own, called Mary's Place. She is sure that with attractive ambiance, good food at a good price and exceptional service that the Mexican restaurant and pizza joints would soon be history. And that's not all. These buildings are lengthy, nearly running to the street behind them. There would be plenty of room for a Peruvian gift shop, stocked with inexpensive items that she and her fellow Peruvian Americans would bring back from their annual trips to Peru. 

We would sell our present home and move into the second floor. The only drawback we can see is that active railroad tracks are only a few feet from the building and it appears that switching railroad cars takes place very nearby.

Of course these plans are dependent on a thorough inspection by a competent building inspector.  And finding out who owns the building and if they are interested in selling. And us being able to afford the building, and whatever remodeling is needed, and the equipment to equip a fully functioning restaurant. 

In the end, Mary's Place has about as much a chance of happening as that 200 seat theater in Ringgold that I drew up plans for. But hey...life is not always about reality, and dreaming dreams on a park bench on a lazy Sunday afternoon is a perfectly valid way to spend quality time. 

Thoughts on a Sunday morning

I haven't kept track of the number of Republican candidates for the office of President in 2024. Not that it matters. Soon they will start dropping out one by one. DeSantis has plateaued and is on his way down. Christie, who is my choice for the Republican nominee is last in the polls, I believe largely because he is taking the wrong strategy. You don't win by attacking Trump. Doing that just provides more fodder for his followers. I don't think that there is a strategy that would influence the Trump faithful. They're not interested in truth. What they want to hear is rhetoric that supports what they want to believe. Civility, reason and objective thinking have no part in the present political climate.  

All Trump has to do is say something, anything, whether it makes sense or not and the faithful nod their heads, wave their arms and erupt in wild agreement. He proclaims that the ballots were fake, the election was rigged and the crowd shouts in angry agreement. He says that "I am being indicted for you" (this is a characteristic of the Savior/Jesus Complex) and the crowd becomes wildly indignant. As for all the noise being made about his present legal issues, I think it is just that...noise, that will fizzle out and disappear.  

On November 18, 1978 James Jones, an American preacher who moved his temple from San Francisco to Jonestown, Guyana called on his followers to commit mass suicide before killing himself. Authorities found 909 bodies; men, women and children. How to explain the hold that Jones had on his followers? What would happen if Trump told his followers to arm themselves and march on the Department of Justice? Sounds far-fetched...until you consider that many on the far right are calling the present divisiveness in the country a cultural 'war', and there were cries to "hang Pence" during the January 6th insurrection, as well as self-proclaimed freedom fighters decked out in tactical clothing with weapons in the crowd.

My guess is that the names on the ballot in 2024 will be Biden/Harris and Trump/?. Margorie Greene is working awful hard to ingratiate herself to Trump, McCarthy and others. She is such a loose cannon that I doubt if even Trump would select her as a running mate but I wouldn't be shocked if it happens.

Another four years of Biden/Harris concerns me. The blatant moves toward socialism are upsetting. I don't want to see student loans forgiven. I don't want to see illegal immigrants coddled. I don't want to pay reparations to blacks whose ancestors were slaves. Most of all I don't want to see Biden die or be unable to perform his duties. In a Kamala Harris administration there would be no room for straight white male conservatives. Her whole deal is apologizing to minorities of all flavors. 

As I stroll through antique/junk shops I continue to look for a Barry Goldwater campaign button. I voted for him 60 years ago in 1964 and as it stands now he'll get my vote in 2024.

The Waiting Room

 Let's get one thing straight right off the bat; sitting in a waiting room ain't fun. Don't make no difference if you're waiting for your own name to be called or the name of someone whose with you or if your waiting for someone who has already been called in to come out. Or maybe you're at an airport waiting for the announcement that your flight will begin boarding shortly or that you got lucky and your name was called from the stand-by list. Waiting just ain't fun.

Waiting rooms come in all shapes and sizes. Some waiting rooms are big and impersonal like at an airport of a county court house. Others verge on tiny with maybe 5 or 6 chairs like at the clinic that I just left. It was a physical therapy clinic. It was tastefully decorated as far as that goes but that doesn't help with the feeling that if I'm sitting there doing nothing a portion of my life is slowly fading away. 

I was waiting for Maribel who has a problem with her shoulder. A  doctor in Chattanooga says the problem is what's called 'frozen shoulder'. A doctor in Peru diagnosed it as tendonitis. Both prescribed physical therapy. It doesn't help the situation with me not being a fan of physical therapy. I rank PT right up there with chiropractic, acupuncture and voodoo as effective medical treatment. I firmly believe that anything that PT might help would have cured itself in time. 

One thing that waiting rooms all have in common is people, and more precisely people with cell phones. Some have it to their ear but most are scrolling or typing. Of the 4 people in the afore mentioned waiting room 3 had cell phones in their hands. Not me. And I didn't have one in my pocket. I don't now and never have owned a cell phone. No reason to get into why.

That doesn't mean my hands are empty. I know that someday a young person will approach me in a waiting room and say..."Mister, can I ask you what that is you have in your hand?" And I will reply..."This is called a book." I'll go on to explain that it has pages made of paper, that it has words printed on that paper, that a person wrote those words, that a publisher published it, and that books have souls. I will also show to the inquirer the book marker I use to keep track of where I left off reading. It's an elongated plastic marker blue in color with a pair of dolphins on the front and Barnes & Noble on the back. It has a tassel, also blue, on the top. It is cracked in several places and is held together with transparent tape. It has been my constant companion for at least 25 years. 

I imagine that the inquirer will probably return to their chair and Google 'book', and will read that books, like newspapers are extinct artifacts that previously were used to convey written information. I doubt that the article will mention that books also served a useful purpose in waiting rooms.

Trump Shows no Fear

 Trump is not afraid to take on anybody. Now he's added the mutants to his enemy list as having a hand in the recent indictments. I think he probably knows that it is risky to piss off mutants...those people have really wicked powers, but he's willing to take that risk because he has seen that no matter what he says or does, his fund raising and support from the MAGA group increases. Look for Marjorie Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Kevin McCarthy to spearhead a War on Mutants soon. 

There is an unsubstantiated rumor that Trump's next target will be the ALHP...Association of Left Handed Plumbers, because a poll from an obscure university showed that a majority of said plumbers living in Driggs, Idaho do not believe that the election was rigged. A militant group of MAGA folks dressed and equipped with tactical gear are reportedly in route to Driggs to peacefully protest against those heathen plumbers. Which will raise more campaign funds and support for Trump. 

These are crazy times.