Birthing Turtles in Nicaragua (part 2)

Yesterday I wrote about the sea turtle whom I called Olive (because she was an Olive Ridley turtle) who climbed onto our beach in Nicaragua under the protective eye of the Turtle Police and thought about laying her eggs here, but changed her mind and went back into the sea

Last night, about nine p.m., I was treated to a once-in-a-lifetime experience when Emilio (who is originally from Nicaragua and is now married to our daughter Eleni) took us two beaches away to La Flor Wildlife Refuge, one of seven beaches in Central America which protects the sea turtles who flock here in mass arrivals of thousands at a time (called arribadas) between August and December.  Each female turtle will lay as many as 100 eggs and bury them in the sand.

Then, 40 to 50 days later, the eggs hatch and great flocks of baby turtles emerge from the sand (usually at night) and crawl to the sea, building up their muscles during this dangerous trek when they are at the mercy of seabirds and other prey.

They launch themselves into the ocean and begin to swim--traveling as far away as Chile and Alaska.  Then, when the females are ready to lay their eggs, they return here to Nicaragua.

The biggest nesting crowds come in  November and December, so their eggs are hatching now.  The park rangers who man the  refuge are there day and night.  For about ten dollars (five dollars if you're local) they let you visit the beach at night and watch the babies emerge and  head for the sea.

Last night, when we arrived, they handed us a basket of baby turtles which had emerged during the day and been collected for their protection until nightfall.  They told us to follow the path straight ahead and to deposit the babies on the sand three meters before the surf.

They gave Emilio red cellophane to put around his lantern and warned us to take photos only without flash--I complied. (The baby turtles will follow any light in their effort to get into the water.)

On our way to the beach we encountered a group of visitors gathered around a large female turtle who was straining to lay her eggs in the sand.  We knew it was not our friend Olive from the day before, as she had a chunk out of her shell from a shark bite.

 Farther down we saw several huge flocks of babies emerging from the sand.  I dragged my feet and scuffled along, terrified of stepping on the babies

 Just ahead of the water we deposited "our" babies on the sand and then shouted encouragement as they headed for the light held by Emilio as he stood in shallow water.  He wanted to help the front runner  along, but we insisted he practice "tought love" so Speedy Gonzalez, as I dubbed him, developed the strength to swim to Alaska.

We stood, feet planted in the sand, while many babies crawled right over our feet and began to swim.  It was a thrilling experience--certainly one to put on your "bucket list" of things to do before you die.

Beside watching the birth of countless baby turtles, I saw the stars for the first time last night in all their splendor--a bowl of stars overhead, the familiar constellations I had studied as a child, but behind these familiar stars, there wasn't darkness, but a strange, foggy , bumpy background of light, like a chenille bedspread with a  faint glow.  I figured it must be the light reflected from far distant galaxies I'd never seen before.

The rangers at the refuge keep a hand-written chart of how many turtles come to lay their eggs each year.  The figure varies greatly from around 87,000 to as high as 186,000.  They predict from the numbers so far, that this will be a record year.

We all felt blessed to witness the birth of one of nature's  bravest and most endangered creatures.

Turtle (and Bird and Monkey) Watching in Nicaragua

We’re on Day Five in magical Nicaragua and we’ve encountered a lot of exotic tropical animals and flowers so far.

Yesterday we left the Island of Ometepe, made up of two connected volcanoes in gigantic Lake Nicaragua.  We sailed to the mainland and drove to San Juan Del Sur where, after driving about half an hour on an unpaved dirt road, we reached our friends’ villa on the beach called Playa del Coco.

Last night we watched a magnificent sunset as tiny hermit crabs scurried on the beach, leaving tracks like a zipper’s teeth.  

This morning the big excitement was when a sea turtle—I believe her species is called Olive Ridley-- landed on the beach and began plodding in to lay her eggs in the sand.

The men who are security guards for this complex of villas are also the turtle police, I discovered. 

They make sure no one gets close enough to the turtle to scare her, and once she digs a nest and lays her eggs and leaves, they will take the eggs to an incubator and keep them safe for forty days until they are ready to hatch. Then they’ll put them back in the nest to hatch and crawl back into the water. 

(I learned in Greece that the walk from the nest to the water is the most dangerous part of baby turtles’ life—they are often eaten by birds—but if you lift the turtles and carry them to the water, they will drown, because they need to develop their muscles on the trek to the water.)

Anyway, this lady turtle,( let’s call her Olive),  was watched from afar by us and the turtle police, (talking to each other by walkie talkies).  They pointed out that she had a chunk out of her shell because she had been bitten by a shark, but was fine anyway.

Unfortunately,  after finding a place for her nest, she was approached by a bird which evidently changed her mind,  and she  staggered slowly back to the water to perhaps  come up on another beach farther down  Olive was a bit off in her timing.  In August and September these turtles  storm ashore in flotillas of 3,000 or more at a time, completely covering the beach—according to  Lonely Planet, Nicaragua.  I just hope that Olive found a safe place to lay her eggs off season.

Yesterday, on the dirt road to Playa del Coco, we encountered some Mono Coco, which our hosts translated as Howler Monkeys. I didn’t hear them howl but was delighted to get a photo.

While still on La Isla de Ometepe we followed a path into the jungle looking for monkeys, but only encountered this baby pig.

 We also had fun eating in the excellent restaurant at Villa Paraiso--our resort of charming thatched-roof casitas--watching the large crested blue birds called Urraca perched near by, waiting to steal our food.  

One of them hopped on a nearby table, expertly removed the Saran wrap cover to the sugar bowl and dove in, evidently working up to a sugar high judging by the loud caws and various begging noises uttered as they begged for more food.  (My computer translates the Urracha as Magpies but I don’t believe it, since Magpies are black and white.  Can anyone tell me the English language name of these birds?)

Here is a photo of a dead fish I found on the beach this morning.  I thought it made a nice design.

Now I’m going out to explore the tide pool.

Billy Joel—Talking ‘Bout My Generation

On the first day of 2011, I was in my car, listening to the radio, when I heard Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

I was shocked to realize I hadn’t heard this song in maybe a decade. (It was released in 1989, when Billy Joel was 40.)

I was also surprised that, after all these years, I still could identify nearly every one of the dozens of names and places he mentions in a brilliant list of events and people that filled the lives his generation—the baby boomers.

In the news as 2011 dawned was the grim fact that the baby boomers, who have started turning 65 by the thousands every day,  may discover they’ve outlived  their  pensions and their social security payments, so they had better not retire just yet.

Because I was born in 1941, I’m too old to be a real baby boomer. (My younger brother qualifies.)  And because I will be turning seventy in February, 2011 is a year when I’ll be thinking about and writing a lot about getting old.  Because when you turn 70, there’s no way you can keep on thinking of yourself as middle-aged.  And you can’t help pondering, especially when you wake up in the middle of the night, the stage of life that comes next.   That would be dying.

Maybe Gail Sheehy will write a book, like “Passages”, on “How to Plan and Organize a Good Death”.  (I apologize for being so morbid, but my mother died at 74.  May of my husband’s relatives lived to well past 90, so he makes fun of me and my generally gloomy outlook.)  But let’s face it, our generation, which invented teenagers and rock ’n’ roll, does everything by the book.  And we need a guide to what comes next.

  When I learned that I was pregnant for the first time, I walked out of the doctor’s office and into a bookstore and bought several books on being pregnant—even though women since the beginning of time have been  having babies without reading a how-to book about it.

Anyway, hearing Billy Joel’s song made me realize that my children now in their thirties, who are very smart and  well-informed, probably wouldn’t recognize 50 percent of the names in that song. 

Billy Joel writes very clever lyrics (and his piano playing always fills me with envy).  I started to muse about how much more intelligent, funny and pertinent were some of the songwriters of my generation compared to what you hear today.   (That's just my opinion.  I'm sure Generation Y or whatever is current would disagree.) Take Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and of course John Lennon.  Leonard Cohen.  Judy Collins. Who writes lyrics like that today?  Lady Gaga?

Anyway, so you can share my trip down memory lane, I’m pasting below the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”  See how any of them you can identify.  Now who’s going to write a similar list for our kids’ generation?

We Didn't Start The Fire

   ------Billy Joel

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television

North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom

Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen

Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning

Since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire

No we didn't light it

But we tried to fight it

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev

Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron

Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team

Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev

Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning

Since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire

No we didn't light it

But we tried to fight it

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac

Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, Bridge On The River Kwai

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California Baseball,

Starkweather homicide, Children of Thalidomide

Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia

Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy

Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning

Since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire

No we didn't light it

But we tried to fight it

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,

Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion

Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania

Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex

J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again

Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock

Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline

Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide

Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law

Rock and Roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning.

We didn't start the fire

But when we are gone

It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

Santorini –The Ultimate Greek Island

When people say “Greek islands” they are usually thinking of  Mykonos and Santorini, the two most popular (and most expensive)  of the countless islands of Greece.  Both are in the Cyclades chain (which includes about 220 islands, some uninhabited.).  They are  characterized by white stucco buildings that look like melting sugar cubes, winding roads that are often blocked by donkeys and stunning views of the sea.

                                                  Santorini 1

A large majority of the travel photos you see of Greece are taken on Santorini, because  it’s impossible to take a bad photo here.  A tip: If you see a photo with an alligator-shaped rock lurking out in the sea, then it was taken on Santorini.

Santorini 2

If Mykonos is the island known for international jetsetters, divine decadence, nude beaches and hard-partying nights, Santorini is the island known for the honeymooners who flock there, and is often called the most romantic island in Greece. 

If coming by boat, you sail into Santorini’s central lagoon, land on the black sand beach and immediately take either the téléferique--a cable car in a tunnel --or a donkey to get all the way to the top, where the two towns of Thera and Oia perch.  (You can also try to walk it if you are in really, really good shape.)

Santorini 3

About 3,600 years ago Santorini was the site of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history-- the Minoan eruption, when much of the island sank into the sea, giving rise to the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis. 

Santorini 4

On Santorini there has been excavated a complete prehistoric town,  called the Akrotiri, but unlike Pompeii, no dead bodies were found there.  Evidently everyone had time and warning enough to leave (although they probably were drowned in the tsunami that followed the  eruption).  Today (if the excavation is open to the public—sometimes it’s closed) you can walk the streets of Akrotiri and look in the houses and see the pots and furniture and wall paintings they left behind.

Santorini 5

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my friend Helen asked me to select some photos that I’d taken of Mykonos and Santorini so that she could select three to have blown up, matted and framed as a Christmas gift for her son Nicholas.  I posted the photos of Mykonos on Dec. 19. 

Santorini 6

All these photos show  Santorini, where the views are to die for because everything is terraced down the side of the volcano.  Every night, everyone  on the island gathers outside, on roofs and balconies and in tavernas and especially in a chic bar named Franco’s, where you can reserve a lounge chair, to watch the sun go down with great drama and music and applause, when it finally sinks below the  horizon.

Santorini 7

As for which photos Helen chose—she picked  numbers 2 and 5 above and from the Mykonos group, the photo of the golden hour gilding the houses of Little Venice.

Santorini 8

A Christmas Eve thought about Angels

Yesterday at the supermarket I bought a Hallmark book called “Angels Everywhere, Miracles and Messages” by Lynn Valentine.  I paged through it last night before wrapping it as a gift.  I’ve always had an interest in angels—especially folk-art renditions of them-- and  so have carved and painted images of them all over the house, especially at Christmas time.

The book was a collection of various people’s experiences with what they perceived an angel because,  at a critical moment when they asked for help from God,  a mysterious stranger appeared  and then, after saving them or giving them a message of  encouragement and hope, he or she suddenly disappeared without any explanation.

The author included, in between these “as-told-to” stories, quotations from various sources about angels.  When I read the first one, from Hebrews 13.2, I suddenly remembered the verse, but reflected that it sounds so much better in the King James Version of the Bible (from which I memorized passages every week for Sunday School) than it does in the Revised Standard Version (which came out in 1952.)

(This is also true about the Christmas story-- in St. Luke, Chapter 2-- which I memorized for a church pageant when I was very small.  Now I recite the King James Version to my long-suffering family every Christmas after we see the children’s pageant at St. Spyridon Cathedral, as we will tonight.)

The passage in Hebrews 13.2 about angels goes like this:  “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Earlier this week I went with a relative who has lymphoma to the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston.  We sat in the huge, crowded adult reception room for hours, waiting for her name to be called.  While there, I was moved by the poignancy of all these people, who were clearly so ill, having to suffer during Christmas week with their disease as they were battling to survive to another Christmas.

A young teenage Asian girl sat in front of me, wearing a red knit cap to hide her bald head.  She had brought her father, who didn’t know any English.  Then a doctor came out and evidently told her that her blood count was too low to give her chemo today—maybe she could come back on Thursday?  She introduced her father to the doctor and the dad fervently shook the hand of this man whom he hoped would save his child. 

Then two attractive brunette sisters took their places in front of me.  I assumed they were sisters because they looked so much alike, even though one of them had a mask over her face. Throughout the reception room were people with oxygen tubes, wheel chairs, canes, surgical masks, bandanas and caps in place of hair

But each one of these cancer patients had a caregiver with them. 

When we first arrived, a man in his sixties, with his wife beside him, told the receptionist  “I’m here to check in for three weeks because I’m having a bone marrow transplant.” I winced at the thought of having to spend Christmas and the next two weeks sealed in a sanitized, isolated room where no one could visit you, because of your compromised immune system.

Today, wrapping the last of our gifts and preparing for all the traditions that we enjoy with our children every year—made even better because our newlywed daughter is introducing her husband to our family’s Christmas customs—I reflected that, even if you have the world’s best gifts and tree and food, there’s no joy in it if you don’t have someone there to share it with you.  That’s why Christmas can be the saddest time of year for those missing the person who used to share the holiday with them.

A week ago I dropped off gifts for a family referred to me by Pernet Family Health Services-- something my friends and I do every year.  Pernet gives us a wish list made out by the parents.  These families are so poor that they can’t afford winter clothing or toys.  But at least they have each other at the holidays.

Every one of us, if we stop and think, can come up with an acquaintance who might be about to spend the holiday alone… someone who has lost a spouse through death or divorce, or maybe a single parent whose children have grown up and moved away, or even a pet owner who is grieving the loss of a beloved cat or dog. 

Among people I know, there’s a woman who recently lost her husband of 50 years, and a beloved teacher from high school who may also be alone now that she is retired and a widow.   I also know a foreign student stuck in snowy Boston who can’t afford to go home to her own country.  Foreign grad students are often stranded over the holidays with no place to go.

A telephone call or an invitation to dinner or just  dropping by with some homemade treat would probably be a better gift than the expensive toys and winter clothing I dropped off at Pernet last week.  Sharing the joy of the season with someone who’s alone might be not only the cheapest, but also the most meaningful gift we could give right now.  And our friend or acquaintance might remember that call or visit and think, as the scripture put it, that they had entertained an angel unaware. 

Mykonos and Santorini for Christmas

My friend Helen has a son living in a New York apartment with bare walls, and she promised him some "art" for those walls for Christmas.  He loves the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini --especially the beaches and the waves, she said, asking me to come up with some photos of those two islands so she could choose several that I would have printed in a large size and matted and framed for his Christmas gift.

This gave me a delightful chance to go back through photos taken four or five years ago on those islands to give her a selection to choose from.  The photo above shows a Greek woman meeting Petros, the famous pelican who is the mascot of Mykonos.  It seems that there has been a pelican named Petros wandering the harbor around the fish market since forever.  The original Petros died in 1986, it is said, and the whole island went into mourning.  Then Jackie Kennedy Onassis obtained a new pelican, named Irene, to take its place.   I think there are actually several tame pelicans lurking around the harbor, but the natives will always tell you that the pelican you are pointing at is Petros.

Here is another shot of Petros--or is it Irene?  It's a rather pink pelican, so maybe it's a female.  Helen chose three other photos for her son's Christmas gift, but said she might eventually get this one for herself, as she really loves the pelican.

This church--right on Mykonos' harbor near the fish market, is said to be one of the most photographed churches in Greece.  It's very tiny.  It shows in the background of a painting I did of two men in the vegetable market.  I use that painting on my business card.  And I went back to Mykonos and  showed it to the vegetable seller last year.  He loved it.  He said the old gentleman who was his customer in my painting has now passed away.  Here's the painting.

Here's another photo of Mykonos taken from the second-story veranda of a bar where we always go to watch the sun set.  The row of  windmills at the end of the harbor are the symbol of Mykonos--so this scene is easily recognizable to anyone who has been there.  The  stretch of picturesque buildings on the left is called "Little Venice"

This photo was taken during the "golden hour" as photographers call it--the hour before the sun goes down, when  everything turns a beautiful color, including the white-washed stucco houses of Little Venice.  Fashion photographers often take advantage of the golden hour which makes everything, including their models and their fashions look better.

Here is a view of Little Venice looking in the other direction, when I was standing below the windmills.

While sitting in our favorite Mykonos bar, waiting for the sun to go down, I took this photo of my glass of wine with the windmills in the background.  It was at this same place that my daughter Eleni took the photo of me that I use for my profile photo.

As the sun set, we saw this wonderful view of an anchored sailing ship silhouetted against the sky.

Here's one last photo of Mykonos taken from the beach of Aghios Sostis--Eleni's favorite place in the world.  The beach is fabulous and up the hill there's a small taverna with heavenly food cooked in the simplest way on a grill.

Mykonos is a very sophisticated island filled with international visitors and very expensive stores.  It's all white stucco buildings and shocking pink bougainvillea and narrow, winding streets meant to confuse raiding pirates  The island is known for its hard-partying ways and the significant gay culture there.  There are many nudist beaches and loud nightclubs, but there are also wonderful  isolated spots like this one.

Next blog post I'll show you the photos of Santorini and tell you which ones Helen chose for her gifts to her son.

A Christmas Tree Nut

Right now I should be addressing Christmas cards but I'm in the grip of my seasonal craziness which involves decorating...lots...of...trees.

I also decorate doors and chandeliers and kitchen shelves and the grand piano and of course the mantel piece, but what I do most is trees.  Each with a theme.  In every room.  Well, not EVERY room because my husband has started to crack down on that--especially in his office, despite the lovely all white (sprayed snow and icicles and pine cones) tree I did one year.  It shed.

I think this is a genetic thing inherited from my mother.  At Christmas time she decorated so much that you couldn't find a flat surface available to set down your cup of eggnog.

So far I've only put up, um, four.  And I'm going to show them to you now.

On the day after Thanksgiving came the Real Tree, which goes in the living room.  I realize that's much too early and it will soon be very dry, but daughter Eleni and her brand new husband Emilio, with some other elves, insisted on dragging it home and putting on the lights as soon as the turkey was digested and the cranberry sauce was gone.  I usually pick a color scheme, and this year went with silver and white, with the only color coming from some crazy peacock ornaments I got from Pier One (which has great ornaments!  Have you seen the under-the-sea collection?  Squid and fish and lobsters and crayfish and mermaids.  Now there's a theme I haven't tried.)

With the peacocks, I also used lots of white butterflies (from the Dollar Store) and white birds and angel wings, so I guess the theme of the wonderful-smelling Real Tree this year would be wings.

In the dining room I always put a wire tree to show off my antique ornaments.  And I put a wire from the tree to the window so that it (hopefully) can't get knocked over.  You can see that we don't have snow yet in Massachusetts, unlike Minnesota, but we will soon.

Some of these ornaments are reproductions, but most are the real thing.  My grandmother had a whole tree decorated with blown-glass birds with those spun glass tails and often a metal clip to hold it on the tree.  I still have a few of hers.  I really love the fragile teapots once sold at every Woolworth's for pennies. They cost a lot more now.  The blown-glass ornaments usually say "West Germany" on the metal cap.  The  glass ornaments that were once screw-in lights were made in Japan between 1930 and 1950 and are a lot less likely to break.

In the library I always put my Shoe Tree, which started when the Metropolitan Museum in New York first started selling ornaments based on shoes in their collections.  

This became a kind of mania and now I can't afford to buy the newest ones from the Museum, but I've added lots of cunning real (baby-sized) shoes, and people keep giving me more.  My favorites on this tree are the Chinese baby shoes that look like cats and the fur-lined baby moccasins and the tiny Adidas sneakers.

On the porch I've put the  Kitchen Tree, or Cookie & Candy Tree.  This was inspired by some friends who live in a tiny apartment and decorate their tree only with cookies and candy and pretzels and candy canes.  Then, when Christmas is over, they put it all outside for the birds and other New York fauna to enjoy.

As you can see, I've cheated quite a bit--adding ornaments that look like kitchen utensils and non-edible gingerbread men and peppermints.  An authentic Kitchen Tree should have chains of real popcorn and cranberries (which we did back when I had children small enough to enjoy stringing them.)

Last year  Trader Joe's sold little gingerbread men with holes already punched in their heads so I could string them on the tree, but this year the gingerbread men are frosted but the holes are missing, so I just  stabbed them with the wire hooks and it worked fine (and any that broke, I ate, of course. They taste better frosted.)

That's four trees so far and counting--I still haven't started decorating the tree in my studio that holds my stash of ornaments from Mexico and India, but that will come soon, and I haven't  shown you my Santa Claus collection and the miniature town in the bay window in the kitchen and the many creches we have from around the world....But let's face it, I have to get back to those Christmas cards.