London rain

There's a theme emerging - I last wrote about getting caught out in the rain in Suchitoto, and today all 35 of us were caught out in the rain in the London Wetland Centre, an event totally appropriate to being in the wetlands.

The glorious swans and colorful ducks found it all delightful, but for me it was a rude reminder of just how cold and wet rain can be in a cold climate.  Getting back to St. Katharine's in Limehouse meant riding across almost the entire breadth of London on various Tube lines, but then we were warm and at home, inside, which is the only perfect place to be in a rainstorm.

I am loving the double experience of being in this great city of London, with all its delightful and bewildering variety of peoples and languages and being with my Sisters and Associates of St. Joseph of Peace community, whom I miss greatly when I'm in El Salvador.  Our times of prayer and deep reflection are powerful - and so are the times of laughing over card games and counting noses on the Tube.

Suchitoto to London

Tomorrow morning I get up very, very early to fly to London.  And I have to say that it sounds so unlikely as I sit here, stewing in the wet heat of September - to be going from this quiet village to one of the world's great cities, from this tropical heat to classic British weather (chilly and gray, I believe).  I'm going to be part of a Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Program - we will be learning about responses to climate change, to poverty, to trafficking, hearing from inspiring people, and inspiring each other with our prayers and reflections. 

Today I would have been happy with sunny, hot and humid, the normal mix.  But about an hour after I hung some laundry out to dry, rain started, and I had to rush to take it in, half wet.  I had one errand outside the house, mailing some letters and paying a bill and yes, I got caught in a downpour without an umbrella.  Saved the letters from getting wet, but not myself.  We need the rain here, I'm not complaining... well, not complaining a lot.  I hope Suchitoto will get plenty of daily rain while I'm gone, and I hope I'll come back from London longing for the heat and the warm rain. 

Vacation into Retreat

We had a lovely week, my sister Kathy and I, driving down and up the west coast with Robert Caro's Passage to Power on the iPod, visiting cousins, and revisiting our childhood days at the Hahn family vacation home in Dutch Flat, California (it's on the road to Lake Tahoe).  Our cousins Margie and Mike Jager and Dowrene Hahn welcomed us to a home that looked very much as it had when we were all young, right down to the exact shade of dark green paint.  The town hasn't changed much either: the store is still where it's always been, the old hotel, now restored, looks ready for visitors, and the swimming hole, which was really a hole in our days, is now properly concreted and tiled and chlorinated, but it still keeps the old irregular shape.  What a rare satisfaction!  I'm far more used to trying to remember what used to be on a familiar corner that's suddenly sprouted a 10-story building.

Dutch Flat is an old mining town set into a dry Sierra forest of Ponderosa pine, western red cedar and fir, a spare and beautiful landscape that in summer is reliably sunny - a pleasure for northwesterners who'd been going through the usual Seattle soggy June.  Here we are in the forest, visiting the grave of my uncle and aunt, George and Dot Hahn.

We managed to visit other cousins, Margaret Rooker and Emilie Sturges Hance, along the way, and we had a grand family time.

Tomorrow I begin the other much-anticipated week of my U.S. time, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace community retreat here at St. Mary-on-the-Lake.  A week without all my electronic toys will be very good for me, and a week of silence even better.  Even the weather is cooperating, as a sunny wave began on the 4th and will - in theory - last through the retreat week.  I'll be back to blogging afterwards.

Vacation pause

I haven't blogged much these last couple of weeks because I've been working hard on our PazSalud report to our donors (done, printed and mailed!) and connecting to my CSJP Sisters.  I've been blessed to be present when our Sister Cecilia Marie Gri went home to God at 98, dying as she lived with clarity, grace and the deepest faith.  I was delighted to join the community yesterday in celebrating our 7 Jubilarians, who've given a collective 395 years of ministry.  And today I head south, driving to northern California with my sister Kathy to visit cousins and have a vacation.  So I'll be back in July, and meantime here's a couple of Suchitoto photos:

From the Corpus Christi procession -

and from a celebration of art and artists at the Centro Arte para la Paz -

A dash of tropical color as I set out on a rainy Northwest June morning.

Baggage

I am taking the usual motley variety back with me to El Salvador:
eyeglasses for people from our February medical mission who needed special prescriptions;
a wheelchair for a 9-year old boy with muscular dystrophy;
a netbook computer for one of the students on scholarship;
candy for friends and neighbors;
and things I can't get in El Salvador like
almond butter;
organic oatmeal;
Ricola cough drops;
cinnamon chewing gum;
Trader Joe's pop-up sponges -
all held together with odds and ends of clothing, various toiletries, some medications and a book or two.
I'll be meeting Patti Moore at the airport - she's flying down with me and is going to spend a few weeks in Suchitoto studying Spanish and hanging out.  I'm looking forward to the company and to being back in the heat.  But I'll miss the beautiful Northwest and my sister and my Sisters (and Associates and friends and colleagues). 

Ready

That time of year again...

Our medical mission team arrives tomorrow, and at the last possible minute today (4:50 pm, to be exact) I got our franquicia (permission to import our medications and supplies without paying customs duties).  The franquicia is always a nail-biter, the essential part of our process that's pretty much out of our control once the papers have been handed over.  And I have to say that, like the good gringa I am, I really hate having to depend on something that's out of my control.  Illuminating, that.  As if my life or anyone else's was in my control!  But I do love the illusion.

And now, at last, the franquicia is in my hands, I've ironed the necessary shirts and slacks, I've checked my way through the long to-do list, I'm ready to meet the team at the airport tomorrow, and to introduce them to San José Villanueva on Sunday.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying the company of Margaret Gaffney, an Associate of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, who's going to be part of the mission team.  Margie's been brushing up her medical Spanish in Guatemala for a few weeks, in preparation for helping with interpretation and came here on Thursday to help with the packing.  I've heard from Pat Clausen, who'll join us tomorrow at our retreat house lodgings and from Silvia Pleitez, who'll meet us at the airport, and from Hernan, our beloved motorist, who will be driving his new beige microbus to the airport tomorrow.

We're ready.

Delivery

I had a couple of missions today.  The first and easiest was delivering a Christmas basket to Rosita and her daughters and taking them to El Paraiso, the nearest town, for a little shopping.  Then came the serious mission.  When I was in the Northwest in November I sat down for coffee with Theresa Edwards, daughter of my friends Lisa Dennison and Karl Edwards.  Theresa was with the youth delegation from Seattle's St. Patrick Church that visited Nueva Trinidad in July,   When she returned, full of energy for continuing to study Spanish and planning for her next visits to Central America, she painted a picture of St. Patrick's as a gift for the people she'd met and loved in Nueva Trinidad.  And would I take the picture to them?  Oh yes, I said, nothing to it.

And that was today's second mission.  I headed toward the town of Chalatenango from El Paraiso, thinking that it wouldn't take me long to get to Nueva Trinidad, perhaps 30 kilometers further up the road from Chalatenango.  Sounded simple.  Wasn't.  The map shows the road proceeding smoothly through Chalatenango, but Chalatenango is a frustrating grid of very neatly laid out narrow streets that somehow do not get you where you want to go.  On my first try, I followed a bus that said "Chalatenango - San José" knowing that San José las Flores was on the same road as Nueva Trinidad.  I followed the bus as it twisted and turned through the streets, and I almost followed it into - alas - its parking area.  And then I returned, sheepishly, to the Texaco at the entrance to the town, filled up on gas (this was a brilliant move) and asked them how to get to Nueva Trinidad.  Clearly the guy at the gas pump had never heard of it.  "Arcatao?" I asked, knowing Arcatao is the last town on that very same road.  Oh, he said, you mean Arcatao?  - giving it, I swear, almost the identical pronunciation - yes, yes, Arcatao.  Well, you just go up this street and keep going up.....

I've learned to ask women for directions, and so when I thought I might be headed for the road out of Chalatenango (deeply desired after about 1/2 hour of threading through narrow streets full of trucks unloading and Christmas shoppers) I asked a woman selling fruit.  Ah, she said, you're on the right road, but just give a ride to this woman, she wants to go to las Flores (it's the first of the three towns), and she'll show you the way.  Great idea!  So I invited Roxana into my car and she asked if she could take a few minutes to get some lunch.  A few minutes later she came back with lunch and three other women who needed rides to San José las Flores, and we were off.

Shortly after we left Chalatenango the road got pretty bad - big potholes and crumbled pavement.  I remarked on how "feo" - ugly - the road was.  Wish I'd listened more carefully, because I'm sure I could have learned the Salvadoran version of "You ain't seen nothing yet."  Soon I was shifting into 4-wheel drive and negotiating a road in the process of being built.  I'd heard about the new highway that was being constructed in Chalatenango, but it hadn't occurred to me that it went through Arcatao, Nueva Trinidad and San José las Flores and that it was being constructed under us.  We bumped through gravel, dirt, dirt interspersed with big rocks, work sites with flagwomen directing traffic, patches of pavement, patches of wandering trail, surrounded on all sides by steep hills and steep slopes.  It seemed to take forever, but we did arrive at San José las Flores, where I left my helpful guides (who told me to take the left at the first Y and the right at the second, or was it the other way around?).  The next stretch of road was finished highway, smooth and new and beautiful, but still a mountain road with impressive curves.  And then, abruptly, I was on dirt again, and then on a semi-paved road, and then - milagro - at Nueva Trinidad. 

Theresa told me to ask for Julio Rivera, so I stopped at the Alcaldia and asked a young woman where I could find him.  Oh yes, she said, he's over there at the biblioteca (library), and there he was, blessedly, delighted to receive Theresa's painting, which he said will be placed in just the right spot.  Meanwhile the young woman, Karina, and her cousin Kenia (or that might be spelled Carina and Quenia) asked if they could have a ride back to Chalatenango with me, and I said of course.  We had a grand conversation going back  - I learned how much they appreciated the help that St. Pat's has sent over the years - and they saved me from a couple of wrong turns. 

When I finally got back on the familiar road to the Troncal, the northern trunk road, I felt as if I'd been gone for a couple of weeks, but the journey only took about 3 hours, and it was great fun. And now Nueva Trinidad has a picture of St. Pat's and I have a picture of the path to Nueva Trinidad.

Getting around

After almost three years here I'm almost used to the wild and various means of transportation in El Salvador.  Any truck comes with at least two muchachos riding - and often sleeping - on top of the load.  Sometimes the muchachos really have to work, as in the bottom photo of a refrigerator being perilously delivered.  Pickups fill in all the holes in the transportation system, packing in crowds of standing-room-only passengers.  And the buses are many and various, often dangerous - bus drivers and cobradores (the guys who cram yet two more people into overcrowded buses) are often the targets of shootings when the owners of a bus line are late in paying the renta.  Still, they are inescapable, the only way most people here have to get to work or to school or to the doctor. 

I love the names and mottos and icons on our buses.  There's one called "Love and Jope" which doesn't quite work in Spanish or English, but you get the idea.  I recently drove behind a bus that proclaimed in big type, No es culpa mia, it's not my fault.  Decided to pass him quickly before he could live up to the slogan.  And my all-time favorite is a bus with Jesus on the back mirror, in his crown of thorns, like the 2nd photo here.  Underneath a motto: Salí con tu mujer, I went out with your woman.  That reverence and cheeky irreverence, cheerfully combined - muy Salvadoreño.

On the road

Just for the fun of it, I made a list today of what I encountered on the road between Suchitoto and San Martin, the nearest town. In the 18 miles of this pretty good two-lane highway I encountered:

kids, families, men, men on horseback, women, women carrying large bundles on their heads, people gathered at bus stops, people sitting on the edge of the road (this last I find unnerving since there's no shoulder, but it makes a good seat when the ground slopes away from the road)

dogs, chickens, goats, horses, oxen, cattle (I sometimes see iguanas, but none today), all of them occasionally moved to cross the road without reference to my car coming down it

cars, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, micro-buses, trucks carrying people, road work machinery, moto-taxis (the 3-wheel vehicles called 'tuk-tuks' in Guatemala)

a man with a vending cart - he seemed to be selling cold drinks of some kind

many houses, many milpas (corn and bean fields), cattle fields, orchards, several pupuserias (roadside eatery selling pupusas, the Salvadoran comfort food), a collection of small brick-making businesses, Catholic and Evangelical churches

many tumulos (traffic-slowing bumps - whatever do we call them in English? - which in El Salvador are essentially a pipe half buried in the roadway, and you'd better slow waaaay down or your shocks will be shocked.)

many baches - aka potholes. They multiply with the rainy season and may get fixed when the dry weather comes.

It's crowded, it's lively, and driving it is always an adventure. I sometimes have to pull off the highway in the U.S. because I get drowsy. Not here.

Raindrops

Labor Day in New York City was clear and beautiful, but then it began raining in New York and New Jersey. I looked forward to escaping to New Mexico, where afternoon rains sometimes happen in summer, but where gray days are practically unheard of.

It must be Seattleite karma, but it has been raining in Santa Fe ever since I arrived on Thursday evening. Now this is grand for New Mexicans - everything greens up, forest fires are no longer a major worry, the rivers are running full - but a little discouraging for visitors, especially since this is the Fiesta weekend in Santa Fe.

All the same, I had a wonderful day yesterday with my friends Pat D'Andrea and Mary Lou Carson, visiting Chimayo, up north from Santa Fe (there we are in the photo). One of my fondest memories is of visiting the Sanctuario de Chimayo with my parents on Holy Saturday, 1969 when I was new to New Mexico. It was a simple adobe chapel then, with the room off to one side where you could find the healing dirt that made Chimayo a pilgrimage site. A tiny old woman asked me to help her in the chapel while my mom and dad were still up in a shop on the main road. When they came in to the Santuario, they were horrified to see me up on a chair doing something to one of the statues, and I had to quickly explain that I was helping out by taking the veils off the statues in preparation for the Easter Vigil (though I wouldn't have known about the Easter Vigil at the time, then being mostly an agnostic).

Yesterday, 42 years and a few months later, it was hard to recognize the Santuario, now surrounded by plazas and car parks, gift shops, and some heavy and unattractive stone crosses within archways (in the background of the photo) that will probably become Stations of the Cross. When we got to the end of the long entry ramp, we found the old chapel of the Sanctuario looking simple and New Mexican, much the same as ever, but it was hard to see it surrounded by all the trappings of a tourist destination. Thankfully, we escaped to the Rancho de Chimayo, where the rain had forced everyone inside from the terraces. We almost didn't get a table, but then were invited to have lunch at the bar, where we feasted on tamales, carne adovada, flautas, posole, frijoles and sopapillas, the very best of New Mexico's wonderful food, and talked as only old friends can talk. The rain couldn't dampen that pleasure!

Later in the day, Pat and I walked down her block to pick up some tamales from her neighbor, Jenny Martinez, who also showed us her lovely collection of images of the Virgin - or the Lady, as Jenny called her. Jenny, who has been praying for me during my breathing crisis and return to health (along with the members of Pat's sangha), shared her memories of Chimayo and sadness at its tourist transformation. And she gave me a little cross to carry back to El Salvador with me. I'll remember Jenny when I hold it, and I'll remember my time in Santa Fe as filled with sunshine of the spirit.

A week in New....

I'm away from El Salvador for a long week - four days in New Jersey for an editor's meeting to plan the next issues of Living Peace, our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace magazine, followed by four days in New Mexico to visit with my friend Pat D'Andrea and some other dear friends from my 20 years in that state.

Yesterday Corky Muzzy and I crossed under the Hudson on a long bus ride through New Jersey communities and spent Labor Day walking in Central Park - which was gloriously full of New Yorkers of all sizes, ages, and sorts enjoying a grand vacation day. So I'm visiting New Jersey, New York and New Mexico - if only I could get to New Hampshire, I'd have been in all the News. Have to leave that to presidential candidates, I suppose.

On the way to NYC, we passed a number of pupuserias and stores with names like "Sonsonateco." Alicia runs a bakery and pupuseria and a mile or so further on the bus line is the bakery and pupuseria of Las Hijas de Alicia. El Salvador is not so very far away, and Salvadorans are as enterprising - and as fond of pupusas - in New Jersey as at home. Perhaps one of those Salvadorans away from home was the woman who cleans restrooms in the Newark airport, the woman who was singing softly to herself "Pescador de los Hombres," my favorite hymn. It was so grand to hear her that I joined in - even though I have the voice of a crow with laryngitis - and we sang the refrain together happily, and I said "Gracias." And felt at home.

Terror on the roads

In the last three days, a rash of bus accidents have left more than 20 people dead, more than 100 injured in El Salvador. This is a story at least as familiar and as terrifying as the stories of extortion and intimidation by gang members.

In each case some of the bus drivers were going far faster than the speed limit, and in some cases the buses were jockeying with each other for the lead. The result - not surprising given the age and mechanical condition of many buses here - was a disaster for the people on the buses and for the overworked hospital system, but not for the owners of the bus lines. (photo from La Prensa Grafica)

I'm told that the owners of bus lines have no requirement to buy insurance or to indemnify people when they are injured by wild drivers or bad equipment. In other words, they have no serious financial interest in making sure that their buses are well maintained and driven by competent motorists.

Since most Salvadorans have no choice but to take a bus or one of the many pickups that provide para-transit around the country, it's a matter of justice to give the bus route owners some self-interest in safety. There's been a call to require owners to have insurance, which seems like an obvious next step, but that seems to be mired in a tug-of-war between those who favor a public insurance provider and the private insurance market. Meanwhile, the crashes continue.

One rough day

I put Kathy Garcia on the plane this morning after what has to have been just about her worst day ever in El Salvador. It began with digestive upset & stomach cramps, which left her drinking Gator-Aid and eating toast for the day. Then, when she was lying down in the afternoon, she heard a scrabbling, and looked up to see a couple of rats running along one of the ceiling beams. The usual furor ensued: Kathy yelped, the rats fled, we moved her into a different bedroom. This was a little discouraging for us, as we hadn't seen rats for months and were happily convinced that they'd gone to live elsewhere.

This would have been more than enough, but then at 8 PM our neighbor started up the disco music at top volume, playing until after midnight. Not unreasonable on a Friday night, and usually I would just curl up with year one of The West Wing, which Korla has kindly loaned me - but Kathy and I had to get up at 3 AM to get her to the plane on time. We each got perhaps two hours sleep, but luckily there's no one on the roads at 3 AM, and after dropping her off I dozed for a couple of hours in the airport parking lot, in a blissful quiet interrupted only by the squacking of the grackles that live there.

At about this time, Kathy should be reaching home in Oregon, very, very tired and very, very glad to see her husband and daughter and quiet bed. I hope tomorrow will be perfect enough to make up for Friday.

We had a wonderful time

In Copan, Honduras, and we got there and saw the Mayan ruins and visited the birds and got back with no serious misadventures, though it turned out that we did enter Honduras without stopping at the border office (we couldn't find it) - but were forgiven by a very kind official on the way back.

Dia de los Muertos

On Tuesday, November 2nd, everyone in Suchitoto, and probably everyone in El Salvador, headed to the cemetery to celebrate All Soul's Day, or the Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It's a simpler fiesta here than in Mexico (from what I understand), and it's very beautiful. On this day, everyone cleans and paints and decorates the family tomb or tombs (in our local cemetery in Suchitoto there are a variety of gravesites, ranging from the grand and elaborate to the simple mound of earth that one woman was lovingly weeding). Flowers, both artificial and real, are placed on the tombs, families gather to share memories, and mass is celebrated. It's a joyful and sorrowful occasion, all wrapped up in one.

Tonight it was time for another very special fiesta, the Dia del Motorista. Sirens and blowing horns alerted us to something out of the ordinary, and we opened the door to wave to this procession of buses, decorated with balloons and happy passengers. Bus drivers and conductors are the most essential and most endangered occupation in this country; almost everyone relies on the buses for transportation, and they are all too often targets for gangs and extortionists. It was a joy to join in celebrating these ordinary heroes.

A new(er) car for PazSalud

After a couple of costly repairs to the 1996 Toyota 4Runner last year, Kathy Garcia and I asked PeaceHealth about the possibility of purchasing a somewhat less used car for the project, and were given the go-ahead. Today I finished the purchase of a 2006 Nissan X-Trail (seems to be a car sold in Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, the Phillipines, the UK, and briefly in Canada, but not in the U.S.). It's a crossover SUV that promises to get better gas mileage than the 4Runner, while still being tough enough to manage campo roads and it's a pleasure to drive. It will be good to lighten my carbon footprint a bit! But I felt a little sad as I parked it next to the 4Runner at the Centro Arte para la Paz, remembering the unfailing reliability and toughness of that old workhorse vehicle. Happily the 4Runner is going to be purchased by Berty Rivas and Yanira Cano, the couple who work with Peggy O'Neill to keep the Centro Arte running, so I will still have visitation rights.

Special thanks to Kathy's husband, Victor Garcia, for his help in finding just the right PazSalud vehicle!

I can't resist adding the last paragraph of the Wikipedia article on the 1st generation X-Trail: "In 2006, Nissan launched a Nissan X-Trail Bonavista Edition commercial featuring a Nissan dealer speaking in an incomprehensible Newfoundland accent. The commercial itself backfired when Bonavista Mayor Betty Fitzgerald claimed it had portrayed people in Bonavista as people who cannot speak properly. To further expose the commercial's lack of linguistic authenticity, CBC News reported the sales rep was played by an actor from Cape Breton." I don't think our new car is a Bonavista, thanks be!

Packing

When I flew north, almost a month ago, I had to take my big, expandable bag as well as my traveling backpack with wheels to fit in all the things I was bringing north - gifts for friends, artesania for our PeaceHealth tables, an ancient laptop that proved to be DOA as well as my very lively MacBook, a few clothes that fit the climate of Seattle better than that of Suchitoto. I thought that maybe on return I could put the backpack inside the big suitcase, check that in, and travel lightly with just the MacBook and a purse.

Unlikely. I've just finished prepacking, and I'm using every inch of both suitcases. The Spanish and bilingual kids' books are in the backpack, along with a few books that attached themselves to me. The water filters, ginger marmalade, assorted medications and vitamins, 80 or so cards with Salvadoran photos, a couple pairs of shoes, the crossword puzzles my sister has carefully saved for Margaret Jane and me, 37 tea bags and assorted clothes are nested in the big suitcase. Everything in both bags is wrapped and surrounded in soccer jerseys - the 16 bright orange soccer jerseys given by my dental hygienist, Ellen Hawks (bless her) for Alcides' equipo de futbol in Suchitoto. I'll check in both bags and carry on my purse and two laptops - one, an ancient-of-days reconstructed by PeaceHealth's peerless Jeff Bruer with Ubuntu software, is for Walther, whose laptop was stolen in a raid on the bus he was riding in. But there's no way to think of myself as traveling light, and I don't suppose there ever will be. I'll just have to content myself with traveling happy.

Up and Down I-5

This week and next, Kathy Garcia and I are selling artesania from El Salvador at our PeaceHealth regions - yesterday at St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham, today at St. John Hospital in Longview, tomorrow at the System Office in Bellevue, next week at the Riverbend and University District campuses of Sacred Heart Hospital, Eugene. It's been great to see many friends from mission teams, meet some folk who are eager to travel to El Salvador, and sell a few Christmas ornaments. We've been delighted as well to have many contributions to the fund for water filters and to our Support-a-Tub program that pays the cost of shipping our tubs of medications to El Salvador.

It's been fun, too, to travel up and down the I-5 corridor - especially with Kathy in the car, so we could sail along in the HOV lane. But after El Salvador travel, it's almost too peaceful - I've had to drink vast quantities of coffee to stay awake, which has never been a problem in El Salvador, where the many interruptions and potential catastrophes breed hyper-alertness. Not complaining, you understand!

The cost of being safe

Every time I come back to the U.S. I have a few days of being stunned by the differences - the empty streets with no food stands, impromptu markets, funerals or parades ! the smooth traffic moving along the loops and lanes of elegant highway with no cars ever parked on the side! the shops with no gun-toting guard posted outside! This time I started thinking about the cost of all those miles of carefully maintained roadways and highways, all the required parking lots in front of stores, all the elaborate security kept carefully out of sight to make you feel safer.

You see, in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America, the kind of space and speed and convenience we take for granted in the U.S. is simply too expensive. For example, you consistently enter and exit U.S. highways via exit lanes that end in overpasses, underpasses, clover leaves, each one enormously expensive to build and maintain. They're very safe, because they allow drivers to change direction and exit rapidly (except at rush hours) without colliding with competing traffic. In El Salvador, on most highways you change direction by using a paved U-turn space in the center. You enter the highway by turning right and merging with the traffic flowing in that direction. If you want to go the other direction you wait for 500 meters or so for the next official turning space; you slow down to turn into this, wait for a clear space in traffic going the other direction, turn in that direction and speed up again. As you can imagine, this system means a frequent slowing down and turning from what should be the fast lane, so it's both dangerous and congestive. But it is light-years less expensive to construct than a system of underpasses, overpasses, and one-way exits.

Think about what those choices mean. The U.S. choice is to make speed, flow, and safety hugely important at a huge cost which most U.S. drivers never think about. The Central American choice is to spend a great deal less money for roads that are slower and not as safe, but pretty adequate to move a lot of vehicles and people from one point to another. Which is the saner choice?

Grounded

A long blogging delay... I flew back to the Northwest on Saturday, about to enjoy a month-long combination of vacation, CSJP community time and work in cool rainy weather. Instead the cold that showed up last Thursday and was going strong when I got on the plane ripened into pneumonia, so that on Sunday I clocked a temperature of 102.5 - and felt like I was still in the climate of El Salvador. It's much better now, thanks to medication and rest - the temp is gone and I'm no longer coughing, but I have just about enough energy to get from the bed to the chair and back again.

The worst of this is missing the lovely three-day trip to Portland and the Olympic coast my sister and I had planned. The best of it is being at beautiful St. Mary-on-the-Lake where I look out my window onto beautiful old western red cedars and can take a walk around our meditation garden or down to the lake when the sun is out. It's also grand to see my CSJP sisters and have tasty meals cooked for me. But I'll surely be glad to be through this siege and back to normal!