Island Time

Pooches on Parade

2012-02-07T09:35:00.002-04:00

The dog parade put on by the Krewe de Croix is an annual event that draws a fair sized crowd to the boardwalk in Christiansted. The Krewe is basically just a bunch of friends who put an island twist on various stateside traditions. Next week is their Mardi Croix parade on the northside, and while it's technically a different group running the St. Patrick's Day Parade, it's mostly the same people.

You can see the story I wrote about Saturday's parade here. This is my favorite pic from last weekend's dog parade. "I'm ready for my closeup!"

AND FYI - The laptop I use for almost everything is now a former computer. For the short term I'm using a much older machine. I can do pretty much all the same stuff, but everything is a lot more difficult and takes longer. So I probably won't be blogging quite as much. Just so you know. jb

Wonder If They Sell Much

2012-02-06T08:49:00.002-04:00

Saw this sign yesterday at the Cost-U-Less. I can certainly see why they'd have to reduce price.

Troubled Times

2012-02-02T09:05:00.003-04:00

I wrote last month about the closure of Hovensa, the St. Croix refinery that was by far (and is for another couple of weeks) the largest private employer in the territory.

I don't want to pretend that a huge oil refinery (one of the biggest in North America) is a great neighbor on a small, tropical island. But for more than 40 years it has been the mainstays – let me say that again with emphasis, THE mainstay – of the local economy.

We'll be visiting this from time to time for a while, because this is a huge event for this island.

Last month the unemployment rate in the U.S. Virgin Islands was 8.5 percent – 7.7 percent on St Thomas/St. John, and 9.6 on St. Croix. That's high. But the loss of all those refinery jobs will push the overall jobless rate in the territory to 12.5 percent and on St. Croix it will climb to 18.7 percent, according to the territory's Department of Labor. And there's no reason to think it'll get better any time soon. There simply are no other jobs on the island and no industries here that might create even a fraction of those jobs, not any time soon.

This came on top of a fiscal crisis for the territory government which is causing pretty heavy layoffs of public employees. And the Senate lacks the political will to do the things it needs to do to resolve the problem. They'd be unpopular, and politicians don't intentionally run around doing unpopular things in an election year. In fact, I covered a Senate session where the whole daylong discussion was Hovensa, and they steadfastly refused to face reality all day.

So the Baurs now have a front row seat at economic chaos. We're okay, at least for now, Everything is going to get more expensive, except rum, and we're losing friends fast. People who work at the refinery have a set of skills that kind find them work anywhere – except here. To work, they've gotta go to where the oil jobs are, and that's someplace else. One family we were getting to know saw the handwriting on the wall early and moved to Panama right after Christmas, before the Hovensa announcement. Another family we know is moving to Texas this summer – although they've said they're taking us with them. Not that we're ever moving to Texas, but their son thinks the Baurs are the funniest people he's ever met, and we've turned him on to Dr. Who. Another family is moving to Oklahoma, and there's also talk of Saudi Arabia and Qatar among our friends and acquaintances. Some friends of Millie's just moved to Florida. They werenit a Hovensa family, but they don't like what they see coming down the road.

And it's all going to get worse before it gets any better. The people who are leaving have skills, education. That just exacerbates the brain drain that has always been a problem on the island.

For us the biggest concern is the school. One of the perks of moving to the territory to work for the company was Hovensa paid private school tuition for the kids. Good Hope will still be there next year, the administration assured everyone, but everyone knows it won't be the same. And Good Hope isn't the only private school facing that problem. All of them – Country Day, Kingshill, A to Z Academy – have some hard decisions to make, and some of them won't survive. I just don't see how they can.

That's going to mean more people without jobs or leaving the island. We're looking at a long stretch of difficult times.

North side beach

2012-02-01T07:34:00.002-04:00

This is the beach at the Carambola, a resort on the north side of the island, looking west towards Hamm's Bluff. The first month we were on island we stayed at a vacation rental a couple of miles east of here. It's very close to The Wall, a scuba paradise where the sea floor drops straight down about 200 feet. The north side is pretty much all like this, but it's not perfect. Cell phone reception is spotty. Darn.

Gross story: They take a LOT of killing

2012-01-29T11:21:00.006-04:00

The centipedes here on the island, I think I've mentioned before, are the most horrible pests I've ever seen. They're big around as your finger, five or six inches long, with stingers at both ends and they look like some creature from hell in a cheesy SyFy horror movie. (I know, cheesy SyFy movie is redundant.)

And they take SO MUCH killing. You don't smack a centipede with a shoe and call it good. Oh no.

You smack it four or five times in the front end, then another two or three in the back, then again in the front. All along one end or the other keeps writhing and aiming its stingers at you.

We tried spraying one with poison. It charged us, so to speak, and kept coming as we backed up spraying furiously. Took about eight feet before the son of a bitch was dead.

So this is what this story is about. Two nights ago I went out to lock the gate before going to bed. As I came back in, I closed the front door and turned to lock it, and peripherally noticed something moving at my feet. Somehow, as I opened and closed the door, a centipede had tried to come inside and I had closed the door on it.

And it was writhing and struggling and trying to pull itself in. So I grabbed a shoe and smacked it in the head three time. It finally quieted down. I decided to wait until morning to deal with it. But Tori had heard the slam-slam-slam, so she knew it was a centipede. Nothing else requires that much killing.

The next morning I grabbed the broom, opened the door and had to stifle a scream. Because the back end of the son of a bitch was still wriggling. In fact, once I cleared it from the door, it started coming forward again. This was 11 hours later! The front half was ruined, it was bent in half at the middle, and it was still trying to get into the house! I took a picture, then dispatched him for good and all.

In the picture below, the top portion is the half that I smacked repeatedly with a shoe. It's relatively flat. The bottom half kept pushing the front end forward, waving those stingers and behaving horribly.

Life in the tropics – It's not all rum and mangoes and beautiful beaches. Sometimes it's monsters from hell. But I can imagine a REALLY cheesy SyFy movie featuring these things.

A Pair of Big Ones

2012-01-27T13:09:00.002-04:00

I don't recall what these are, breadfruit I think but I'm not sure. But they're big. These are growing at the St. George Village Botanical Garden on St. Croix. And they're big ones.

A little flora

2012-01-21T10:01:00.001-04:00

An orchid at the St. George Village Botanical Gardens.

Economic Tsunami

2012-01-18T12:54:00.004-04:00

The island got some bad news this morning. The territory's single biggest private employer, the Hovensa refinery, is shutting down. This is huge. Not just the 2,000 jobs, although that's a giant hole in the economy. Electricity, which is already more expensive than anywhere in the states, is generated by fuel purchased from the refinery at a discount. Rates will soar. Businesses that were just hanging on with the high utility costs will get flung over the edge. Gas prices, which were a little lower than stateside, will jump.

And that's just the start. Everything will get more expensive, from a little more to a lot. This is really big, bad news for St. Croix.

Big ship; Small world

2012-01-17T11:13:00.003-04:00

I don't think I posted this one before. If I did, oh well. I also don't recall how it got so purple. Should be bluer. Still, cool shot. A cruise ship at Frederiksted's pier. I've never seen them come in, because they do it at about six in the morning. Forget that. But I've watched them pull out in the evening, and it still amazes me every time I see one of them move. They're so damn big. How can they move? How can they stay afloat?

The revisions of the book are finished (this time around, it's never ending) and I have to get back into a schedule. Spent the last three days practically chained to the desk, so I feel like I'm coming up for air.

And in the "small world" category, got a comment on the blog post a couple of weeks ago from someone who, inspired by our move to the Caribbean, pulled up stakes in the big city and moved to the rural central California coast. Which is the same place I started my journey more than 30 years ago. So you just never know.

Quick Note

2012-01-11T13:08:00.002-04:00

No blogging this week or probably next. Have a deadline for the revision of my YA novel, Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter hard upon me. Have to focus like a – well, like a really focused thing or person, how's that?

We'll be back soon, if that actually matters.

jb

The Big Parade!

2012-01-08T10:02:00.005-04:00

And finally, the main parade.

They don't call it the Grand Parade, or anything cool like that. It's the Adults Parade, to distinguish it from the Children's Parade. But it's pretty grand.

It's a real cultural gathering, with princesses, moko jumbies, steel pan, masqueraders and parade troupes. The troupes are what you think of when you think of a Caribbean carnival. The picture above is a girl from a Dominican Republic dance group.

It's supposed to start at 10 in the morning. It never does, at least not in our experience. We can hear it forming up from about two blocks away from our house, and we can tell shortly after noon when they get moving, Then we just hop in the car and skirt the main road, arriving in Frederiksted a few minutes later, well ahead of the marchers.

And it takes a long, long time. The first entry steps off at about noon. The last one staggers past the reviewing stand as the sun sets around 6:30 p.m. It's a long damn day. Fun, but long. The photo below is an 8-year-old girl who was jumping up and down with excitement because her sister's majorette troupe was about to pass by.

As it happens, I did not cover the parade this. I did go down and shoot video, which we posted here. The coverage by another Source reporter is here.

So festival is almost over. There's power boat races today and closing ceremonies tonight in the festival village. It's fun, but it's time for it to be over, I think. Time to get back to work.

I Love a Parade

2012-01-07T09:33:00.004-04:00

Is there anything cuter than a bunch of pint-sized baton twirlers clomping down the street? The children's parade of the Christmas Festival took the streets yesterday and even with the rain it was a good time. Bands (including the unbeatable Rising Stars steel pan band.) were highlights this year.

Story for the Source is here, and Tori's video of the event is here.

There was also some rain, and though they didn't use this shot, I thought it was a good one.

'It's a sanctioned incident'

2012-01-05T12:12:00.004-04:00

It starts at 5 in the morning. It's crazy loud. It's like nothing I've seen anywhere else.

It's J'Ouvert (pronounced zhou-vay, apparently French in origin.) Or as we like to call it, the St. Croix Annual Public Humping Festival.

This year the police reported no incidents, unless you consider the whole thing an incident. "It's a sanctioned incident," Tori said.

Six flatbed trucks hauled bands on a route about two, two and a half miles. Thousands of people flock around dancing. Well, that's a very mild word, dancing. There's gyrating, there's writhing, there's humping, a lot of humping, most of it, oddly, between girls. Some guys humping girls, but a lot of girls on girls.

I covered it again this year for the Sour

ce – my story is here and you can find the video here and here. I warn you I didn't shoot most of the most outrageous behavior. I wouldn't be able to use it in my story or video so what was the point? You'll have to use your imagination.

And yes, there were kids there. Kids in strollers. Six years. Nine. Many being supervised by parents who were behaving a lot like everyone else. Lot of high schoolers. And on up into at least one woman in her 70s. I saw a bank manager, and a professor, and the kid who bagged my groceries just a few days ago.

St. Croix is a very churched community, by which I mean there are a LOT of churches, with five or six always in some stage of construction as well, and a lot of people go to church. And then there's J'Ouvert. And the difference is so striking, and the so sincere. And I wonder sometimes which is the real St. Croix. Or is it both?

This picture shows the dense throng of revelers. Moments later, just a little farther down on King Street the road kind of funneled between two buildings and it was wild. The temperature actually went up noticeably from all the bodies packed so close together. All I could do was huddle over the camera bag to prevent the equipment from getting wet or covered with powder. It got a little intense.

Anyway, tomorrow is the Kids Parade, and Saturday is the Adult Parade, which i the real highlight of festival. I'll have videos of both up.

Nice Work if You Can Get It

2012-01-02T11:57:00.004-04:00

This is Tori looking out her second floor classroom window at the Good Hope School. Yeah, I don't know how she gets any work done either. (I May have run this picture before. If so, sorry.)

Actually she doesn't get any work done this week. They're off until Jan. 9, next Monday.

Here's the school. Through those arches is – well, look what Tori sees from her window and you'll get it.

Festival Kicks Into High Gear

2011-12-30T10:34:00.004-04:00

Last night the Festival Village opened, and the Crucian Christmas Festival kicked off for real. Carnival rides, food, games of "chance." Fun. There have been events leading up to last night, the youth Calypso contest, a parade in Christiansted, pageants. But the village opening is the real start.

For the next week very little work will get done on St. Croix. There's the Quelbe Tromp, the J'Ouvert (must be experienced) a food fair and two big parades, plus a lot of other things.

Every Caribbean Island has its own celebration, and the Crucian Christmas Festival's is St. Croix's.

Anyway, here's the story I wrote last night on the festival, and here's the video Tori shot.The picture above is 6-year-old John Hazell riding the merry go round.

Problems in Paradise

2011-12-29T13:11:00.005-04:00

It has come to our attention that some people – you know who you are – get sulky, even snarky, when we post photos of beautiful warm beaches. Especially when the places they live are covered with snow and ice and they spend the winter wiping their runny noses and trying to figure out exactly how many sweaters they can put on at one time.

But to show my heart is in the right place (my chest) I hereby present a list of 12 things that are NOT great about living on St. Croix. To make up for all the perfect weather.

A Dozen Things That Are NOT Great About Living on St. Croix

1 - Hurricanes and hurricane season. Even when there is no hurricane heading for you, it's not fun. It's a low-grade worry for six months of the year, occasionally punctuated by the imminent arrival of a major storm. When a hurricane does come, the power always goes out and stays out for a while.

2 - Grocery prices. Milk is over $7 a gallon, a loaf of bread will run about $4. Virtually everything costs more, except for cigarettes and rum, which are dirt cheap, but since we quit smoking earlier this year only one of those has meaning to us any more.

3 - The price of electricity. The electric bill is always shocking, usually close to $400 a month for us, and it's not like we have air conditioning. And the service from WAPA is crappy. The power goes out for no apparent reason, usually during football games. But when the power bill comes, it's a "sit down and have a drink moment." Fortunately, rum is cheap.

4 - If you love football and follow a west coast team (Seahawks!) you almost never get to see your team play on TV. The networks always assume you want to watch some team you don't care about (the Giants, Jets or Falcons) or some team all right-thinking Americans hate (the Cowboys, Pittsburgh, Philly) when what you really want is the Seattle-San Francisco game.

5 - Availability of fresh water. When the tour guides say, "don't drink the water," they mean it. We get our house water on a cistern that collects rain water from the roof. Certainly it is "green," but we have seen some foot-long centipedes crawling into the dank, watery abyss that is our cistern. We purchase all our drinking water at the supermarket. See note about "Everything is expensive."

6 - Cistern showers. When the power goes out for any length of time, the slab of concrete over the cistern is moved. We tie a bucket to a rope, drop it down into the dark and haul up the water. Our first year we lost power for nearly a week after hurricane Omar. We learned very quickly how to shower with one bucket of water, and to flush the toilet only when absolutely necessary, once a day if possible.

7 - Headlights. Most Crucian drivers keep their high beams on at all times, in fact, they seem unaware they have two settings. Blindness, and hilarity ensues!

8 - Dead Iguanas. Seeing one of these ancient dinosaurs flattened on the pavement just seems so wrong. They are the worst roadkill ever. "Roadkill Iguana" would be a great name for a rock band, but it's lousy to see on the road.

9 - Litter. Speaking of lousy to see on the road, St. Croix is a beautiful place, as long as you don't look down. A lot of people litter here. Just throw trash out the car window with no shame. They also just throw their puppies away. There is a severe, (and sad) problem of overpopulation of dogs and cats.

10 - Customer service is a joke here. There's practically nowhere to shop for the day-to-day stuff except one of the island's two Kmarts. Mix St. Croix's poor idea of customer service with the really bad attitude of all Kmart employees and you can just ruin a whole afternoon.

11 - Shipping. Amazon won't ship electronics to the island. Other places charge an arm and a leg because they say it is "not in the United States." Well, it is! St Croix is a US territory and postage is the same here as anywhere else. And the postal service is unreliable in general. Several times packages sent from the states just never arrived to us, lost in Puerto Rico where mail goes to die.

12 - People stateside, especially in northern, snowy states, get all grouchy when you post photos of beautiful sunsets and warm, sunny beaches while they're shivering in their igloos. Sometimes they even leave snarky comments on the blog. Imagine that!

There. Everybody happy now? Good. Then you won't mind if I post this picture. Just another day in paradise.

Happy Caribbean Christmas!

2011-12-25T16:45:00.004-04:00

Merry Christmas from the Baurs and island friends – from left, Alan, Kate, Joey, Max, Tori (the Queen of Christmas!) and John. The Happiest Christmas ever to you all!

And a new year full of really cool stuff!

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-24T09:06:00.005-04:00

I've posted this picture before, back on the first Christmas Eve we spent on the island. I don't think I've ever taken a better one. This was literally ON Christmas Eve 2008.

When we posted it back then, a friend in the Northwest commented that they were expecting a white Christmas, "so there." As if that was somehow a good thing and she was one up. My only response was "My sympathies." I was born in Chicago. I've seen all the snow I'll ever need to see for the rest of my life, and shoveled it. Snow is why we moved to the island, that and frozen rain and black ice and other such temperature deprived precipitation.

Got a few errands to run today, and Tori is involved in some major construction project that I'm supposed to not see. I can't imagine what it is. And then if we have time, we'll run down to the beach. But we'll definitely run to the beach Christmas morning, because we have to take a family picture.

Happy Christmas to all our friends! jb

Velvety Sunset

2011-12-23T11:21:00.003-04:00

This was taken abut a year ago, 13 months, to be specific. It was opening night for the Good Hope School production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that Tori has directed, and curtain was another half hour away. So I wandered down to the beach behind the school and shot this and a few others.

The show was amazingly good too.

More beachside toes

2011-12-22T07:37:00.002-04:00

I've already shown you my toes in the surf. Tori's are much nicer, and she has better legs. This was after she'd been snorkeling off Dorsch.

Five Pictures From Sunday Afternoon

2011-12-18T16:10:00.010-04:00

'Twas the week before Christmas
And all 'cross the sand
Not a creature was stirring
'Cept Max, getting tan.

Seriously, we just got back from the beach and I wanted to share these. This isn't the beach we normally go to, but a cruise ship was in and Dorsch usually gets a little crowded. This is what we saw when we pulled off the road just north of Rainbow Beach, which is just north of Frederiksted. Virtually empty stretch of white sand.

That palm tree in the distance? This is it, close up.

Max, ready for all sorts of water sports.

And a ballgame on the beach, with the cruise ship in the background. Playing are Tori, Max, Natasha and Alan. Alan is closest to the camera. He's been going to college in Canada, which explains why he's so white.

And that was our Sunday afternoon, and we still got home in time to see some fairly crappy football.

But we have to exclaim to the tropical skies,
"Merry Christmas from us down here in paradise!"

Nice Thing About the West Side

2011-12-15T08:25:00.003-04:00

We get great sunsets over here. Really great. They almost look like a studio photographer's phony prom backdrop, but they're real. This is from Frederiksted's waterfront.

Silly Girls

2011-12-13T10:44:00.003-04:00

This pic is from last Easter, I think. They were making candy in the kitchen, and Millie and Tori got a little silly with the icing.

Millie, by the way, is doing great at school. Just so ya know.

St. Croix Christmas Boat Parade

2011-12-11T09:58:00.007-04:00

It's really the best of everything. Sultry tropical night, full moon, choirs, boats decorated with Christmas lights, fireworks, Santa Claus – who in the islands arrives by boat, not reindeer driven sleigh.

It's St. Croix's annual Christmas Boat Parade. We've gone every year since we've been here. Hard to beat. It's rapidly become my favorite island tradition.

Rather than write about it again, I'll give you these links. This is the story I wrote for the Source last night. This is the video Tori shot .

We had a great time. The only thing is, every year when I go to cover it for the Source, I ask myself, "How come I don't have any rich friends with a boat to invite me to parade with them?" As fun as this is, I'll bet it's a lot more fun from the boat.

Vincent T. Mason Coral Beach Resort

2011-12-10T13:24:00.004-04:00

I don't know who Vincent T. Mason was, but he's got a nice stretch of beach named after him. This is about a mile down the coast from Dorsch, almost to the southwest corner of St. Croix. When I took this I was standing right at the line between this park and Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, where sea turtles nest. Here's a link to a story I wrote on sea turtle nesting a couple of years ago. It was very cool, an amazing experience, although it has nothing to do with this picture. Also, Sandy Point was were they filmed the last scene from "Shawshank Redemption," where Morgan Freeman walks down the "Mexican" beach to where Tim Robbins is working on his boat. Also cool.

Oh, and perhaps most important, this is the beach where Tori and I filmed "Wooing Wenches," a pirate love story. If you haven't seen it yet, don't miss it!

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall ...

2011-12-08T08:06:00.002-04:00

And when it does, you get something like this. Taken almost two years ago down on Dorsch Beach, I believe.

Serendipity

2011-12-07T07:52:00.004-04:00

Serendipity means discovering something you didn't know you were looking for. And that was the case with this pic. Last week I was covering the World AIDS Day march and candlelight vigil in Frederiksted, and my camera went belly up. All I had was the camera on my phone, and the battery was low and going fast.

The community marchers were followed by the band from St. Croix Central High School, who were followed by police car keeping traffic at bay. And it was dark, so the headlights were on and I figured I could use those to illuminate the pic.

I don't actually remember taking this picture, but I found it later when I downloaded the files to the computer. The police car's headlights backlit one of the band's flag twirlers, and I happened to catch it the moment her red flag flashed in front of her. It's a little soft, a little blurry, but I thought it was a very cool shot.

Like someone or other once said, it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.

Change of Pace

2011-12-05T08:28:00.004-04:00

Like so many people, I have a blog because I don't get enough guilt in my life. Obviously. I mean, it sits there and I always mean to write something, then I get busy.

Then, last night as I was sorting through the computer's photo library and finding all these terrific pictures just sitting there, I realized I had a better option. Instead of feeling guilty about not writing, at least I could post some of these pictures a couple of times a week! Which give you a good glimpse of island life without having me go on and on and on. And someone or other said they were worth a thousand words a piece so I'll be way ahead of the game. So enjoy.

Those are my toes in the surf at Cheney Bay (it's pronounced sha-NAY bay, and was not named for any politician.) OK, that's not a spectacular picture, but it's a place to start.

Chilly Night

2011-12-01T10:29:00.003-04:00

First, sorry so long without a post. Sometimes life just happens. Which is what the blog is supposed to be about – life in the Caribbean – but it gets complicated.

Here's a bunch of little things to catch up on.

It actually felt chilly last night. I checked the temp around 10 p.m. and sure enough, it as unusually cool. I won't insult you by saying cold. But cooler than usual. 72 degrees. I checked and at the same moment in L.A., around 6 p.m., it was 57.

Yesterday was the last day of the official hurricane season. It was a busier than usual season, the experts say, but you couldn't prove it here. And I'm not complaining. Closest action we got was Irene, which was still a tropical storm when it passed here on its way to annoy New Yorkers.

The end of the season means we can let our guard down a little and break into the box of hurricane food supplies. There's a can of beef stew in there, and a lot of canned peaches.

It also means the tourism picks up noticeably. And Christmas and Festival are right on top of us.

Anyway I wanted to get this posted, and have other work I've gotta finish up. I'll try to post more often. If lie doesn't get in the way.

Millie's On Her Way

2011-10-05T08:23:00.001-04:00

Millie left today St. Croix today. After a brief visit with friends in Oregon, she'll begin next week at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles.

We miss her already.

Dropped her at the airport this morning and it was touch and go whether it would be a happy or weepy parting. Happy, as it turns out, because even though we miss her, it's a great adventure for her.

Turned out to be a slightly greater adventure than we expected. After leaving the airport I dropped Tori off at school, rushed home to get Max moving and ready to go to school. Right before I put him in the car, I got a text message from Millie. Here's the string of messages back and forth over the course of 10 minutes.

Millie – We are being evacuated from the airport. I don't now why.

Me – Holy shit! Should I come over?

Millie – Lime green firetrucks just rolled up. Hoping it's just a defective alarm so I'm not late.

Me – Hope so too. Keep me posted.

Millie – No, it's fine. Someone just told us they were gonna board us from outside.

Me – Well, that's good. But jeez.

Millie – Shawn (her boyfriend) asked his dad (who works at TSA) and he said that a door was opened that wasn't supposed to be.

Turns out it wasn't just a door open – an emergency exit was was ajar and they couldn't find it! So just to be on the safe side, they pulled out all the stops. But it all turned out OK. The door was found, the alarm silenced, the pane loaded and everyone was off. If that's the biggest glitch, what a great trip she'll have.

But it's typical Millie. Can't even board a plane for school without excitement and drama. Looks like she picked the best possible career.

Ophelia Update and Vigilance

2011-09-25T10:15:00.007-04:00

Looks like Ophelia will be giving us a pass - literally.

Ophelia, which a few days ago looked ready to hit the Virgin Islands pretty hard, has weakened and veered to the north, just like Maria did a few weeks earlier. Closest pass will be tonight, more than 200 miles north of us. We'll get some rain out of it – maybe as much as a couple of inches, but that's all.

And Philippe, which formed up a couple of days ago off the the coast of Africa, is not a threat to anybody at this point. Every forecast and computer model shows it veering away to the northeast and just sort of fading out in mid-Atlantic.

It's been a busy hurricane season, we're already up to P and it's still September, but so far no big problem. But we can't let down our guard. The season runs through November. Our first year here we got hit by our first hurricane in mid-October. That was Omar, and not only was the storm late, it came out of nowhere, approaching from the south southwest instead of the east.

So we're keeping our eyes open and fingers crossed. Keeps yours crossed for us – fingers, that is. Not eyes.

Random Connections on the Island

2011-09-20T10:03:00.003-04:00

Some random thoughts:

• Tropical Storm Maria was a total bust. Not that I'm complaining, but after you make a bunch of plans, you feel weirdly cheated if you don't get to use them. Maria was storming towards the Antilles, picking up strength. Then two days before it was due here it just sort of stopped and fell apart. Then the remnants sort of meandered away to the northwest, dropping a bunch of rain on the way. We were still getting rain from what had been Maria four days after the storm was supposed to have come and gone.

• You'd have thought the circus came to town. The crowds at the opening of the Home Depot was huge, and it didn't slack off at all. The store opened Wednesday and there were more than 1,000 people there. he parking lot was jammed, and even the adjacent lot had been weed-whacked and took lots of overflow parking. We wandered through but didn't even think about buying anything. The lines at the checkout were insane.

And the crowds didn't seem to abate through Sunday. Every time I drove by the place it was full. You have to understand that people have been waiting for this store for more than four years.

• Had a pleasant Talk Like a Pirate Day evening at a restaurant that was new to me. Pirates Tavern is at Salt River Marina. Non-intuitively, it's a Mexican restaurant, but the food's great. We were there in the evening and with a storm brewing we sat out on the deck, maybe 20 feet from a row of tied up boats, watching lightning flicker over the hillside that rose above the far side of the marina.

The only problem I can see with Pirates Tavern is that it's located in an inconvenient spot from where we live. No easy way to get there. But it struck me as such a fantastic place to kill a Saturday afternoon – feet up on the railing, watching the boats and enjoying a cold beer – that we're going to try that some weekend soon.

• But almost certainly not this weekend. Because another system is moving towards us out in the Atlantic. This one is likely to become Tropical Storm Ophelia within 24 hours. The computer projections disagree wildly about where it's heading, but a couple have it tracking directly over us. Others have it going far south or far north, So it's really way too early to say, but never too early to start preparing.

Maybe we should make a trip to Home Depot!

Here we go again

2011-09-09T07:46:00.002-04:00

Now it's Tropical Storm Maria bearing down on the territory. We expect it to arrive about 24 hours from now, early to mid-morning Saturday.

Shouldn't be a hugely devastating storm – winds around 40, 50 mph. But four to eight inches of rain and the grounds already pretty soaked. Some flooding is likely. And, as I think I've mentioned, there's no storm drains.

So when Tori and Max get home from school this afternoon I'll run out to the store and top off supplies. I'll feel better with more batteries in hand, and one of our five-gallon water jugs needs to be refilled.

Then first thing in the morning I'll check all the windows – no loose jalousies – and then we'll just ride it out. Knowing Tori's excitement we'll probably run out and shoot some video, then try to get it posted before the power goes out. Because the power always goes out.

Oh! Apropos of nothing – I got new glasses yesterday. The first new glasses I've had in five years. Wow! Talk about a whole new world! I didn't realize all I wasn't seeing. Tori almost got tired of hearing me say, "Did that always look like that!"

Leftover Thoughts

2011-09-04T11:01:00.004-04:00

Just a couple of leftover thoughts from the recent passage of Tropical Storm Irene two wees ago and Hurricane Kata passing well to the north of us yesterday.

The most annoying thing about the power going out is not the darkness – we've got candles and lanterns and flashlights. It's not the TV or even the Internet being out. We gathered around the table and played cards. And we read a lot. It's not being able to flush the toilets.

No, we don't have Electric Toilets, although that would be a pretty good name for a rock band. But our water comes from the cistern under the house. Rainwater is funneled off the roof and collected in the cistern. It's pumped up into the house by – you guessed it, didn't you – an electric pump. No electricity, no running water.

Yes, we can fill the toilet tanks manually. We even have gallons of water stored for just that purpose. But when you don't know how long the power will e out, you don't want to waste it until there's a fair amount of waste. After Hurricane Omar in 2008, we were without power for over three days. Using a bucket and rope to pull water from the cistern to flush toilets gets very old.

Fortunately we were only without power about 12, 14 hours this time. Not so bad.
One of my very favorite words learned since I moved here is jalousie. Almost every house on the islands has windows made of those slates that you crank open or closed. Those are called jalousies. And in the hours before Irene fully arrived, I was touring the house to make sure it was all buttoned down. In the bedrooms, I found that both Max's and Kate's beds were damp because rain had been blowing between the slats that hadn't been cranked down as tightly as they should have been.

Going back downstairs with my arms full of damp bedding, I remonstrated with them, and came up with an even better band name than electric toilet.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Give it up for .... Loose Jalousie!
Finally, we've had our eyes on Katia for days, and are delighted to report she passed more than 300 miles from here yesterday, just like the forecasters predicted. They don't always do that. Irene, for example, was supposed to pass south of here, but in its last day before arrival veered to the north and came almost over the top.

Katia was well behaved and stayed where she was supposed to. Now the computer models are predicting she'll veer off to the north and fall apart over the north Atlantic without ever making landfall in the states. Good for her.

We were supposed to get some big swells yesterday, but out at Dorsch Beach the waves were mild as ever. Maybe they were a little bigger on the northside, at Cane Bay, but probably not There's several islands between us and where Katia went, most notably St. Thomas. It may have gotten some big waves on its north side, but I haven't heard.

Instead we had sunshine and light breezes. Just another day in paradise. The uncertainty of hurricane season is just the price we pay for getting to live here.

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-26T00:27:00.003-04:00

It has been a few days since Tropical Storm Irene became Hurricane Irene. We live on St Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Irene formed right over our heads. All through Sunday night we sat in a darkened house while her 50 mph winds and horizontal rain beat a steady hard bass rhythm on our tin roof overhead. And even though she didn't do more than drop several inches of rainwater and mow down some branches and drop a few trees, I am exhausted.

A lot of work goes into being prepared for a hurricane or even a tropical storm, and no matter how much work you do, there will always be something you forgot to do. You have to make sure there is enough food to eat, drinking water and non potable water to flush the toilet when the current (the Crucian word for electricity) goes out. And it will go out. You have to make sure all those chores you need electricity for are completed: clothes washed, dishes washed, (buy paper plates) house clean enough so you don't trip on things stumbling around in the dark, phones, computers, cameras, and game systems all need to be charged. And don't forget to have candles and flashlights in a ready place, as well as a deck of cards or a favorite family board game to pass the time and distract you from the storm outside. A goodly supply of batteries is a must as well.

We found that when the current went out at our house, we had to replace a lot of batteries by candlelight and didn't have enough batteries for our emergency radio. Get gas for your car, gas for your generator and extra cash from the bank - just in case. Remember that ATMs and gas pumps run on electricity, too. And people with pets have as much work to do keeping them comfortable, safe and calm during a big storm.

By the time you think you are finished running errands and prepping the house, car and yard -bringing in all the plants and outdoor furniture, securing trash barrels - the most difficult part begins: the waiting.

Waiting for a potential disaster consumes a lot of energy. Although it makes you feel anxious, it is exciting in a weird way, much like waiting to go to the most popular kid's birthday party, but knowing that raging out of control bully will also be at the party. And he will punch you in the arm. Several times. Hard. He'll probably pants you as well.

With Tropical Storm Irene, the sounds of the storm when it hit full on were frightening. The wind screeched through cracks in the walls and between the spaces in the windows. The rain pummeled without letting up. Tree branches crackled. And it was more intense because everything was so dark.

Tropical Storm Irene was a doozy. And when she passed over us, she was only a lowly tropical storm.

Now, she is a cat 2 hurricane (expected to be cat 3 by 8 a.m. Friday) moving towards North Carolina and other populated Eastern cities. I can't imagine what she will do with even more energy, as she was so angry and intense last week before she grew up.

I would urge anyone in her path to take her seriously. Be safe rather than sorry. Our web video on The Source has had over 45, 000 hits and if you watched it, it can't convey the intensity of what we really felt that night. What the video does show is how quickly it rolled in: Now you don't see her, now you do.

Please, be prepared. Be smart. If you are in her path, get out. If Irene was a maniac as a lowly tropical storm, she is a Super Bitch as a hurricane.

(Written by Tori Baur, posted by John)

Picture Perfect

2011-08-24T09:17:00.003-04:00

Don't know if you can make out the sign in the background. It's the name of the restaurant where this palm tree fell.

Coconuts on the Beach

Just seemed an apt place for a palm tree to have been blown down during Tropical Storm Irene.

And here comes Irene

2011-08-21T10:24:00.004-04:00

(UPDATE – An hour later, and Irene is now a hurricane. Just so you know.)

Alex came to visit this week, and she'll be here until the start of September and we couldn't be happier about it, she's been gone for a year.

BUT – there's an unwelcome stranger knocking on the door, and I'm not talking about the guy who traveled to the island to see Millie. Alex got here just in time for the season's first close approach of a tropical storm.

Irene was upgraded to a tropical storm yesterday and was supposed to pass about 120 miles south of here. Which would have been quite close enough, since tropical storm-force winds extend out about 150 miles. But she wobbled during the night, and that brought her lurching right onto our doorstep so to speak. At this point they're calling for a pass of about 28 miles away. Which is to say, right here.

We're prepared, although now that I think of it we could use a little more in the pantry. We've got plenty of "hurricane food" put away, but you don't want to break into that right away. So a trip to Plaza Extra (grocery store) is next on my to-do list. And make sure everything we've got that takes a battery is completely charged, because it's a sure bet the power is going out. The power always goes out.

We don't expect a lot of damage, although you can never be sure. But it's really annoying, we had plans for the weekend, and they didn't include huddling inside with flashlights while 60 mile and hour winds blow at the windows. Among them, Millie's birthday is tomorrow and since she has to work Monday, she was planning to spend the day at the beach with friends. That ain't happening. Nor is the pirate video shoot we'd planned. We could do it, but it won't be the same in the driving rain.

Anyway, 'tis the season, to borrow a phrase from a completely different context.

I Ain't 'Fraid ah no Jumbie

2011-08-14T11:31:00.003-04:00

Last night was the annual Jumbie talk, and Max and I – who went last year – brought Tori along.

I've covered the event twice for the Source. This is the link to this year's story, which was affected by some heavy rain a couple of hours before it was scheduled to start. It's a good story, but last years (linked here) was better, I thought.

A Jumbie is, essentially, a ghost. Or as one guy – a Catholic priest who wrote a book on Jumbie tales – said "Ghost is Yank and jumbie done be Crucian. We got no ghosts in the Virgin Islands."

Anyway, the event is held at a camp up in the rain forest. There's a hike right down the middle of the road, in the dark, where the guide points out haunted spots on the road. There's a dinner of local food, performance by a quelbe band, and, when its good and dark, jumbie stories. Anyone can tell one, but the best are from the old timers. Jumbie stories were a big art of island lore before television and smart phones and the Internet, and the event is a chance to recapture some of that oral tradition.

Tori noticed this first, but when the old timers told a story, it was almost always about a jumbie as a malevolent spirit. "Jumbie gonna get you!" Being chased by jumbies, running away from jumbies, or advice on how to avoid or fool jumbies. Jumbies are apparently kind of stupid. Wear your clothes inside out or backwards and that fools 'em.

Jumbies were something parents used to make their children behave or teach them lessons about what's expected of them in Crucian culture.

But when younger people, especially people who moved here recently from the states, tell about them, it's always a warm fuzzy, very new agey story about spirits. Not nearly as entertaining.

Anyway, we had fun. The rain cut the crowd from about 200 last year to about 60, 70 this year, so there was more than enough food to go around. The organizers made people take extra plates home. And of course it made everything wet, but since there were so few people, there was plenty of space at the picnic tables for everyone, and no need to spread out a blanket on the soggy ground.

And, by the way, jumbie is not to be confused with his benevolent cousin, the moko jumbie, portrayed by stilt dancers in parades and at festivals. The moko jumbie is originally a Trinidad tradition, I believe, a guardian of the village. Because he's so tall, he can see danger coming a long way off.

Just remember that if a jumbie is following you, go into your house and leave 99 grains of rice on the porch. The jumbie, who is apparently also an obsessive-compulsive, will have to count them, and spend so much time trying to find the 100th grain that he'll forget all about you. They also don't like lime, garlic or salt.

Just in case, you know?

That was a mistake

2011-08-07T11:20:00.002-04:00

Well that must have surprised anyone who happened on it while it was briefly online.

I posted Mark's 46th chapter of a story he and I are writing on a different blog, but instead of putting it where it belonged I posted it here. If you're a follower of Island Time you might have briefly been aware of the chapter on this blog. I deleted it and put it back where it belongs. So everyone move along. Nothing to see here.

And why was I posting Mark's blog? About the time Google acquired Blogspot and required you to have a Google address to use it, it all got too complicated for him. He is NOT my co-worker with whom I once had the following real conversation:

Co-worker – The printer is broken.

Me – It's not broken. It's out of paper.

Co-worker – Well that's broken to me!

But he's not a lot more comfortable with anything more technical than a bottle opener. And that's really all it is. Comfort. Mark is as smart as anyone I know. He just prefers his comfort zone. And who can blame him?

Anyway, you might want to go over to "The Curacao Caper" on The Ships Log o' the Festering Boil and see what's up with the story. I figure the caper has about three chapters before it's done.

jb

Where's Emily?

2011-08-03T07:12:00.003-04:00

After days of preparing for Emily, the tropical weather system that was churning towards us across the Atlantic, we were braced for whatever she might throw at us. And all the forecasts had her strengthening into a pretty good storm, and coming right over the top of us.

But over the weekend, when it should have been organizing, it didn't. And then the track shifted south, so it looked as if it would be passing about a hundred miles south of us. Not that we're complaining. Just because you think you're ready for something doesn't mean you want it.

Emily finally did reach the designation tropical storm Monday, and Tuesday passed about a hundred miles south of here. Sine rain and wind. That's it. Here is the video we shot of it and posted for the Source.

The photo shows pelicans lw over the waves, battling the wind from Emily Tuesday afternoon near Good Hope.

Emily was good practice for August and September – the heart of the hurricane season. Becase you don't want to wait until the storm is on tp of you to get ready. She was a wakeup call. Out here you just never know what's coming for you across the ocean.

Rainin' to beat hell

2011-07-23T23:55:00.003-04:00

Just a note - a tropical wave is passing through with rain to beat hell and thunder and really impressive lightning.

Flood watch (not warning) in effect through Sunday. No place I have to go tomorrow, so I'm not going anywhere. Very small chance of this system developing onto anything bigger.

Maybe I'll even get some work done! Although Losing power is a good bet.

The Sun Also Rises – Twice

2011-07-21T17:03:00.003-04:00

Couple of weeks ago I was driving Millie to work at the crack of dawn. Literally. That's the whole point of the story. We left the house before sunrise.

She works at a patisserie near Sunny Isle and once a week has to open, so since we only have the one car, once a week I have to get up damn early and drive her to work.

So anyway, we're driving down the highway when it happened. We saw the sun rise twice. Absolutely true.

It's easier to visualize than to explain, ut ll do my best. We were near the end of the highway, it rolls up and down the feet of a couple of hills. In the near distance there was another hill certainly not a mountain, I'm guessing a coupe of hundred feet high at most. It was less than two miles away. And the stretch of road we were on was shorter by maybe a hundred feet, maybe less. Got it more or less in your head? I'm probably explaining this badly. Sorry.

At 5:48 a.m. we approached the end of the highway, the highest point of the trip. The hill ahead was still taller than where we were, but not by much. And as we neared the top, the sun rose over the hill. I noticed because we were driving due east and it burned a hole in my eyeballs.

Then we topped the rise and started down, and as we descended I could see again because the sun dropped back down behind the hill. Or the relative position of the hill, our car and the sun put the hill between us.

Moments later we drove up the gentle grade to the traffic light at Sunny Isles (some of the worst traffic on the island at midday, hardly any at 6 a.m.) And as we climbed – and as the earth spun, of course – the sun popped back up over the hill.

Tried to repeat the experience, but we mistimed once and got there too soon, and there were clouds the other. But I'm going to keep trying, because that was pretty cool.

My first day with two sunrises.

Anniversary and Mangoes

2011-07-01T13:41:00.006-04:00

This is the three-year anniversary of our move here. I'd actually gotten off the plane the day before with Alex, Kate, Millie and a pissed off cat. On July 1 I met Tori at the airport with Max and Janet.

It's been great and we have no regrets, except that we miss friends and it's hard to travel anywhere from here. On the other hand, we live here, why would we travel? It's like the ads we've been seeing on TV urging us to plan a vacation in Michigan, or Nebraska or Missouri. WE LIVE IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS!!! We may visit any or all of those places at some point – as a matter of fact I've traveled through two of the three in my life. Bu I cannot imagine the circumstances under which I would choose to leave my tropical island for a vacation on the plains.

Last weekend was the annual Mango Melee. It was one of the first events we went to when we got here three years ago. This year I covered it (again – also covered it in 2009) for the Source. It was something of a milestone. None of the kids wanted to go, so for the first time ever, the Baurs' Fun Family Outing was just me and Tori. And you know what, it was nice.

A video I shot for the Source is online here.

The mango eating contest actually was kinda exciting, neck and neck. And next year Tori is thinking of entering the Mango Dis, Mango Dat cooking competition because it looks like fun.

Anyway, it was way too long since my last post. I'll do better.

(July 23 - Just noticed and fixed a really stupid typo.)

Pretty Good

2011-04-26T09:01:00.001-04:00

We were sitting on the beach yesterday watching a squall move over the water, the sun poking fingers of light through the clouds, when Tori laughed.

"What?" I asked.

She pointed out at the beautiful scene and said, "If this is as good as it gets, this is pretty damn good!"

Here It Comes

2011-04-07T08:10:00.002-04:00

Very exciting times. Every time I drive out to Sunny Isles, I pass where they're building a Home Depot store. It'll be open by fall and we couldn't be more excited.

Why is it exciting that they're building another big box store? Understand first that there aren't a lot of places to buy things you need here on St. Croix. There's two Kmarts, which I find myself in two or three times a week. Want shampoo, or paper products, or cat food or socks or vitamins? Kmart is pretty much your only choice. There are a couple of decent grocery stores, but no other choices for general "stuff."

There's an Office Max at Sunny Isles, it opened about year before we moved here. I'm told people were so excited they actually made a day of it, going out to see what the store carried. It's pretty good for a lot of the office supply stuff. But unless you're looking for very basic stuff, they never seem to have what you need. I was recently there looking at laptop computers. They have a whole display of them, a dozen or so models all set up to look at. But they don't have a single one to sell - and couldn't tell me when they're likely to! Same with cameras when I was looking for one. I'd like to look at that one Don't have it. How about that one? Not in stock. That one? Also not in stock. I finally was able to buy my fifth choice.

There are several hardware stores on island, but only one worth going to. Gallows Bay Hardware is good, but it's in a difficult place to get to. This is a small island, but depending on traffic, it can take as long as 40 minutes to drive there, which is kind of a pain in the ass. It's also one of the few stores on island with good customer service.

You want terrible customer service? Kmart is your place.

So here comes Home Depot. They had actually announced it was coming in early 2008, but then the economy went sour and their plans were delayed. During last year's gubernatorial election the challenger made a big deal about how it was never going to be built and it was the current governor's fault. Didn't help his campaign when they broke ground two weeks before the election.

So I've been watching. The grading and foundation seemed to take forever, then suddenly the walls flew up. About six weeks ago, driving by at dusk, was the first time I saw lights on inside. I can't tell you how cool that was.

Yes, Home Depot will probably be a problem for some of the existing hardware stores. The one out here on the west side will probably survive, because it's the only one out here if you need something simple and obvious. And Gallows Bay will survive, because it's much handier to people from the east side, and has a well-earned reputation for service and a loyal following. If it was easy to get to I'd go there all the time. They've also been planning for years how to survive Home Depot.

The others will be in trouble, and I can't work up a lot of sympathy. The biggest one on the island is terrible. I've never been able to find what I'm looking for there, or anyone to help me find it. You see people in the aisle with name tags and they either ignore you or run the other way.

Maybe that's the best thing about Home Depot coming. My experience with Home Depot in the states is that service is key. I like a hardware store where you know generally what you need to do and they can't wait to tell you how to do it, and what you'll need. When Home Depot opens in the fall, locals will treat it like a trip to Disneyland. I certainly will. I've already warned the kids that all Christmas presents this year will be bought at Home Depot.

But its biggest impact might be if they can bring that idea of customer service and instill it in the local employees. That'll be the gift that keeps on giving.

'Toot!' Cut Right In!

2011-03-31T10:26:00.003-04:00

"Why did the Crucian honk his horn?"

I looked over at Tori, in the passenger seat. She was staring straight ahead, with that smile that said she'd come up with a good one.

"I don't know, Tori," I said. "Why did the Crucian honk his horn?"

"Because he was driving."

Honking horns are nothing new. In lots of places people seem to steer with their hands plastering down on the horn. But in almost everyplace else in the world, it's either aggressive, impatient or a warning. "Get out of my way, jerk!" "Can't you see the light has changed, idiot!" "Don't even think about pulling into this lane you moron! I'm drivin' here!"

On St. Croix, and probably elsewhere in the Caribbean but this is what I know, it's different.

First, you have to understand that there is only one multi-lane road on the island. The Melvin Evans Highway boast two lanes east and two lanes west. All the rest have room for only one lane in either direction, and many don't really have that much room but they painted a line down the middle anyway.

The point being, the roads can get crowded and if you're on a side street waiting to get acoss traffic or just turn into traffic, there are times and places - especially early morning or between 5 and 6 p.m. – where you could be waiting a long time.

Except for Crucuan driving courtesy. You can pull up to a stop sign on a cross street of a busy line of traffic extending out of sight, and can rest assured that someone will stop, toot their horn (or flash their lights, but horn tooting is far more common) and let you go. Honestly I think it's very rare that I've had to wait more than a minute, no matter how heavy the traffic has been.

I can't do the horn toot. Whenever I've tried, it sounds to me a little too loud, to aggressive. So I go wth the light flash. Tori does the horn perfectly.

And, yes, I have heard an aggressive, "the light has changed, idiot" car horn once in a while – three times, maybe four, in the almost three years I've been here. Usually, almost always, the tooting of car horns is the melody of the road, a polite musical accompaniment to the morning commute.

So at various times a car horn honk can mean:

• Go ahead and cut in front of me please.

• Thank you for letting me cut in front of you.

• Hello friend! I haven't seen you since yesterday!

• Look! My car is equipped with a horn!

Sometimes someone will stop to let you turn in front of them or cross traffic when there's no one behind them for a quarter mile. All they have to do is pass on by and you can do whatever it was you intended to do in perfect safety. But the whole driving courtesy is so engrained in them that they can't not. And it does no good to wave at them or blink your lights to suggest they have the right of way. They will not move until you turn out. Not always, but it happens at least once a week to me.

Because they just want to be polite. And really, there's nothing wrong with that.

Sunday Surprise

2011-03-29T10:59:00.002-04:00

I put down the book I was reading, "And Another Thing," by Eoin Colfer, and looking out at Tori, Max and our friend Alan in the water decided to join them.

It was Sunday afternoon and we were at Ha'penny Beach, a beach on the southside we'd heard was the nicest on the island. It was nice, a white beach circling a perfect little bay. But the nicest beach on the island? I mean, how do you choose? It's a small island, but it's almost all beach.

Still, it was the first weekend of spring break and we decided to try a different beach than our usual one – Dorsch Beach, a three-minute drive from our house – as an adventure.

The water was shallow and you could wade a long way out. I was waist deep and still about 20 feet away from Tori, who was about shoulder deep, when a shadow passed over the water between us.

It was a bright day, hardly a cloud in the sky. The shadow was small but distinct. I wish I could say that, like Aragorn in "The Fellowship of the Ring," I had realized immediately that it was moving swiftly, and against the wind. I admit, it was only later that I realized the shadow was moving west to east, while the breeze was coming from the east. At the moment, all I realized was that it was all wrong to have been cast by something passing between the sun and the surface of the water.

It was something big under the water, passing right between us.

Tori realized it right away, and it made her jump.

"Ray!" she shouted. And no, she didn't mean a Corvette Sting Ray or one of those bikes with the banana seat and butterfly handles. This was a ray, a flat, diamond shape fish, about four feet from tip to tip.

Tori has seen them in the water before. She snorkels, and has found herself more than once passing over one. She gives them a respectful distance. She has also noticed them noticing her, and circling underneath her as if trying to decide whether she posed a threat or would be good to eat.

This one had apparently been enjoying a snooze on the sandy bottom (a good name for a rock band) when it was annoyed by the sudden presence of a school of people splashing about. So it took off in a huff.

It had been closer to her than to me, but since there was only about 10 feet between us, it was a tight fit. And a little alarming, I admit. He swam away, but Tori and I decided maybe we'd get out of the water for a bit.

Max and Alan (he's the 19-year-old we've known since Tori's first on-island teaching job) weren't in the least fazed by the experience, so they stayed out. And Tori and I both went back out in the water, though I admit I didn't wade out as far as I had. And none of the other 30 or so people at the beach had noticed a thing or showed any concern if they had.

That's all it was. A thing. The sort of event that happens from time to time when you live in the tropics and go in the water. And if you don't go in the water, what's the point of living in the tropics? Other than the rum, I mean.

We stayed at Ha'penny about another hour, as the sun worked down the sky. Being a sunny Sunday, the beach was "crowded" by St. Croix standards – I counted 38 people in the water or on the sand in that almost mile stretch of beach.

Here's the other thing about St. Croix's south-facing beaches. From any of the north beaches you can usually see St. Thomas, sometimes St. John and even up to Tortola in the BVI. From the western beaches, on a clear day you can see all the way to Vieques, the island just off the southeast coast of Puerto Rico.

From the south, it's nothing but blue, bending horizon from the east to west. There's nothing to see but the occasional ship and Venezuela about 500 miles to the south.

Staring out to sea at the deep blue of the Caribbean, I shook my head again. How did we get so lucky?

Cheesey Ecstasy

2011-03-23T07:49:00.004-04:00

Four things we most missed about living in Oregon –

• Friends, of course.

• The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A great theater experience, and one that, when I was still a reporter for a daily newspaper in the state, I got free tickets to. It was terrific, and I still read the reviews of their productions and wish I was there "on the bricks."

• Two businesses - Les Schwab Tires (they give you meat when you buy tires! and they always come running – literally running – when you pull up. They also repair tires free, even if you didn't buy it from them) and Oil Can Henry's. Two places where customer service is alive and well.

• And the blocks of Tillamook Mediom Cheddar cheese. My favorite cheese, made in Tillamook Oregon. I'm not a big cheese guy, but it's far and away my favorite. Here on the island we were reduced to the mass produced Kraft cheddar, not the same thing at all.

Well guess what we just found at one of the local stores. Not our friends or Oil Can Henry's. Two pound blocks of Tillmook, and less expensive than the Kraft!

It's been 10 days since Tori spotted it at Cost-U-Less (an interesting take on Costco, which I also miss,) and we've gone through about six pounds. I'm sure the novelty will at some point wear off, but it will still be delicious!

Grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, anyone?

Thank God for Bill

2011-03-21T07:28:00.003-04:00

This is where I was supposed to tell you about this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade in Christiansted. It's a great event, and for the third year in a row I was designed to cover it for the Source. Here's the video I did for last year's parade.

Instead, I'll tell you about this year's flat tire.

The schedule laid out perfectly. I had to get Millie to work at 10 a.m., giving me plenty of time to get to Christiansted, park, and amble over to the parade, slated to start at 11 (which on this island usually means about 12, 12:30.) We headed off down the highway at about 9:30, and I hadn't gone a mile before I heard an odd sound. No sooner had I voiced the question, "What's that?" than the sound changed, became unmistakable. I had a flat on the rear driver's side. By the time I could convince traffic to stop pulling around me (because I was slowing down in the faster lane) and let me over to the broad shoulder of the road, the tire was shredded. Fortunately I hadn't damaged the rim yet.

Naturally I have a spare, one of those doughnut tires you use in an emergency. I'd had an emergency about five months ago, and the doughnut was now flat, with an obvious hole.

So I called my co-worker Bill Kossler. Bill is the St. Croix assignment editor. He also lives on the west end, like we do, and we seem to take turns having absurd car problems. The day he sent an e-mail saying he couldn't make it to a story because "my hood blew off," I e-mailed back, "You win."

I told him the situation and suggested he call Taylor, a young guy who moved here about seven months ago from Arizona, to cover the parade. Then I asked if he could come by, pick up me, Millie and the flat tire and take me around to where I could get a new one.

He said sure. No problem.

In the wait I decided to remove the flat so we'd be ready when he got there. Five lug nuts. All tight and my lug wrench is short so I couldn't get much leverage, but by bouncing on the end I quickly had four of the five loosened.

The fifth turned out to be a problem. Not because it was unnaturally tight, but because it was a slightly different size than the other four and the lug wrench wouldn't fit over it.

How the hell does that happen? I had bought the two back tires in – I believe – October, and all I can guess is that when they put the tire on they simply fished around and found the wrong bolt. Who knows?

A police officer stopped by to see if he could help, but his lug wrench didn't fit either. Then – and this amazed me – he ran off to see if a guy he knows living nearby might have a different one.

In his absence, Bill arrived (in his dark green Malibu with the tan hood) and – Wonder of wonders! – he had a tire iron! You know the kind, a steel X with a different sized lug wrench on each end. They give you options and all the leverage you'll ever need. Within a trice (no more than a trice and a half) the tire was off. At which point the officer showed back up, smiling that his friend had a tire iron as well! But he expressed pleasure that the situation was on its way to being resolved, and drove off. Nice guy. I know the police in the territory sometimes have a bad reputation. All I know is that the three times I have had non-reporter interactions with them I have found them courteous, helpful and really nice guys. Even the one who wrote me a ticket. After all, I was in the wrong and he wasn't an asshole about it.

So not to drag this out much longer, Bill drove us around to the place he gets tires, what he called "the most reliable of the cheap places, or the cheapest of the reliable places," (I had bought my current tires at a place whose primary asset is it is "the closest to my house.") and I eventually got a new tire on. Bill had even stopped to get cash in case the place didn't take credit cards - which it did. But it was nice of him to think of it anyway.

By the time I got the new tire on it was well after 11 and Tyler was on the scene at the parade. So I took Millie to work (she was late of course) and drove home.

Tyler did a fine job of covering the parade – it's hard not to love it. The parade is a bizarre mix of island and Irish that has to be seen to be believed. Well, I missed it this year but I'll be back for it next year.

And I'll have a spare tire AND a tire iron in back, just in case. And Bill on speed dial.

Dear Foxmorton

2011-03-14T14:05:00.006-04:00

After sending out the call for pirates to join us this weekend for Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers, I got this message from an old friend, Mimi Foxmorton, who lives and borrows goats in upstate New York where apparently the weather hasn't been idyllic.

"Dear Asshole,

Greetings from gray, freezing fecking perpetually sunless CNY.

Hope you St. Croixians had a fabulous time.

Don't forget the SPF. I hear sunshine can be a bitch though personally I wouldn't have a clue.

Carry on.

love & kisses

Foxmorton the Pale and Sober"

Hi, Mimi. How're the goats?

First, we on St. Croix refer to ourselves not as St. Croixians but as Crucians. Oddly we refer to things from St. Croix as Cruzan (like the rum.) BUT they're both pronounced the same way, so unless it's a written conversation it's hard to know whether you're referring to a person or a bottle of rum, and often immaterial.

Now, I'm afraid, it gets worse – at least worse from your perspective. Friday at Cheeseburgers was absolutely great. Tom Mason isn't just a songwriter, singer and guitar virtuouso, he's a terrific enertainer. The nine costumed pirates in the crowd were a colorful addition to the proceedings, as always, not to mention quite startling to the large gathered audience. Tom (I call him Tom now, we're buddies, even facebook friends!) knows how to play a crowd. Most of his pirate songs (from his new album, "Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers") have choruses that the audence can bellow along with, which is really the best way to enjoy pirate music, pounding yer mug on the table (beer mug, not your face, although I admit I've never tried the latter.)

For "Throw Me In the Drink," he invited the Crucian pirate contingent onstage to sing the chorus with him, and that was a blast, easily the highlight of the evening as far as we were concerned. When you watch the video (it'll be a couple of days to cut together) you'll even hear some of us going up in high harmony. It's been too long since I shared a stage with Tori, and though it was just a few minutes, damn it was fun!

Another great moment was when he asked for requests. There were two, the classic chanty, "Drunken Sailor," and "Free Bird." He attempted to do them as a medley, although neither he nor the woman who requested "Drunken Sailor" knew many of the words. But "Free Bird" bellowed out as a pirate was priceless! Yes, it'll be on the video. Coming soon!

So a time was had by all. But wait! There's more!

Cheeseburgers (And by the way, it's not just a clever name. they make a great cheeseburger. I prefer mine without cheese, and the cheese I prefer it without is Swiss, but it's still a hell of a hunk of meat, which coincidentally is ... never mind.)

My point is, Cheeseburgers wasn't their only gig on this island tour. They played Saturday night, then Sunday afternoon at Rainbows, which is right on the beach. We wore what I call "pirate lite," because it was quite warm and sunny and the place is open air. Did you hear that, upstate New York? Warm and sunny, open air. Too warm for full pirate gear. Just sayin'

The show was supposed to start at 4. We got there a few minutes late. The stage was all set up for them, but there were no musicians. We ordered beers, which took forever, the place was crowded, and still no band. It was about 15 minutes later that this guy walked up out of the ocean, towelling himself off. It was Tom. I asked if he was concerned about being wet and shorting out on the electrical equipment, but he was pretty calm about it. As he finished drying off and started throwing on his pirate rig over his damp shorts, drummer Paul and bass player Lorne rolled out of the surf, dried off, and the show got under way. What a great gig!

They were joined this time by two local musicians whose names I didn't get, both percussionists, couple of older guys who really knew their stuff. Paul told me later, "Yeah, they were great. I really had to work. I was like, 'Damn, I've gotta be good!'" And they added SO much to the music.

Tom and the band don't have three hours of pirate music, so they interspersed some of their older stuff and an occasional novelty song, including "Sugar, Sugar" (well, they make rum from sugar, and it was a prized commodity pirates seized, so it fit) and "Last Night I Got Loaded." And once again we pirates were back on stage to sing the "Rum diddy" chorus of "Throw Me In the Drink." I think I've got the hang of it, now. Although both times we made sure Millie was closest to the mike, because of all of us Crucian pirates, she's the one who can sing.

Speaking of singing, there was an older guy in the crowd – damn, he must have been as old as me! – who was just hanging out, and then suddenly Tom was calling him up on stage. The story, as I later got it from Tom, was that this guy had come for a vacation from New York in January and sort of forgot to go home, and who could blame him? Tom had heard him singing on the Christiansted boardwalk and invited him out to Rainbows to join them onstage.

He was introduced as "Big Papa," that's all the name I've got for him, and he sang one number, a blues song called "Crosscut Saw," full of wonderful double entendre. Man! He was good! I didn't realize what was up at first, but as soon as I heard the first couple of lines I was on my feet, with my camera, and caught about 90 percent of it on video. It'll be posted this week. And Tom's blues guitar licks were smokin'!

They wound up as the sun went down over the Caribbean. No "green flash," there was a band of clouds right on the horizon, but other than that, it was an almost perfect evening.

Anyway, that was my weekend (with some actual work filling up Saturday from 9 a.m. to about 10 p.m., so you can't have everything.) How was your weekend, Foxmorton?

Nothing New, Just a Nice Pic

2011-02-23T07:53:00.003-04:00

Nothing to add, just had another pic from Monday at the beach that I wanted to share.

This is the section of beach we almost always go to. Dorsch Beach, about a mile south of Frederiksted proper (as if there's anything proper about Frederiksted.)

We've always been beachophiles. Trips to Newport on the Oregon coast were practically a monthly event for us. Packing up the kids and usually the dog and the car and bringing a picnic lunch, then driving from Albany through Corvallis and Philomath and up into the coast range past a bunch of towns you've never heard of and even if you lived there probably never saw, until we finally came down out of the hills and the kids would lean forward staring to be the first to shout "I see the ocean!" Took about an hour, and when you got there it was always cold and usually rainy (very picturesque) and the water was a couple of degrees above freezing, Just talking off your shoes and wading was literally painful.

This stretch of beach is three minutes from our front door. Millie sometimes walks, but usually calls for a ride home because it's almost all uphill. The sun is almost always shining, there's hardly anyone on the beach, seriously, most days you can look up and down the beach a hundred yards and on a crowded day see a dozen people, maybe 18. And the water is as warm as a bathtub most days. You can see that catamaran I was talking about in the background.

Like I said, not much to add. Just wanted to post the picture.

jb

And How Was YOUR Weekend?

2011-02-22T11:04:00.007-04:00

Good weekend. Nothing huge or explosive. Actually quite the contrary.

The annual Ag Fest was this weekend, and I drew the straw and covered the opening day, Saturday. Ag Fest is just like what it sounds like, with a Crucian twist. It's St. Croix's answer to every county fair or 4-H gathering you've ever been to (and as a reporter on a string of small newspapers, I assure you I've been to plenty.) No elephant ears, but Johnny Cake, which are essentially big lumps of fried dough. Didn't see any deep-fried Snickers, but I'll bet there's no county fair anywhere in the Pacific Northwest featuring kalaloo or fungi.

The opening ceremonies were interminable, and as the reporter covering for the Source I had to be there. First, it started late. Let's be honest. Everything here starts late unless I happen to arrive late, in which case it miraculously starts on time. But since the 9:30 opening parade didn't start until 10:10, there wasn't much chance for the ceremony, which started at 1034 by my clock. By 11 they had introduced all the speakers and the various other officials and high muckety mucks and ... well, basically everyone there. By 11:30 they had finally presented the first award. I got a picture, and realized I had neglected to charge my camera. So, with all the information I needed in the program I'd bought at the gate, I wandered away for a while and joined Tori, who had dispaired of my ever leaving the stage area. We went off to explore.

I don't know if it's the nature of fairs or the nature of farm people. but this fair looked a lot like the Union County Fairs I used to cover in La Grande back in 1980. You want cows? They got cows. You want chickens or rabbits or goats? They got chickens and rabbits and goats. They've got the exhibition hall filled with displays by all the local schools illustrating the fair's theme. There was plenty of fresh produce to buy (we scored a bunch of great tomatoes) and merchants selling all kinds of stuff, from local crafts to clothes to music to you name it. And booths by local agencies, utilities, government groups etc. each eager to tell their story to anyone who made the mistake of slowing down while walking by.

We scored 16 pencils and pends, thee water bottles, three sewing kits, four tote bags, two note pads, some hand sanitizer and some information that will come in handy for Max's science fair project. It was fun. And Tori bought my birthday present, which I will endeavor to be surprised about on Wednesday.

As we prepared to leave we had to walk by the stage area, where I heard the governor starting his speech. He was the last speaker on the agenda for the opening ceremony. It was finay ending, two and a half hours after it began. They've got some serious tolerance for public speaking on this island. So I went back, listened, got a few more quotes and the other information I needed, and we left.

Sunday we wasted the day. And I mean, seriously wasted it. Except for driving around taking Millie to work and Max to a friend's house, we mostly sat and watched the entire second season of HIMYM. I worked editing for the Source that night, but if you asked what I did Sunday, I'd tell you "not much, and it felt great."

And Monday we spent the morning at the beach. Read a great book and got a little too much sun doing it.

There was a cruise ship dominating the seascape from where we were, about a mile or so from the pier. It's been a good year for cruise ships, Monday's was the third in a row. The bring in a couple of thousand (or more) tourists for a day who drop their money and enjoy the island. The population of Frederksted more than doubles while they're here. Sitting there watching it (and watching the tourists strolling down the beach, we commented again how these people had spent a year, sometimes much more than a year, to take a cruise to visit the island for a day. And we get to live here 24/7/365.

As I watched the cruise ship, I saw a catamaran come around the corner to seaward of the big ship. All its sails were set and it was making really good time. Within minutes it was directly off shore of us, dropping its sails. They threw out an anchor and became part of our backdrop. If the two, I'd much rather sail on a catamaran than a cruise ship. I don't like umbrellas in my drink.

Anyway, the photo attached shows Tori in the water with the cruise ship in the background and the cat to the left (south, for you geography nuts.) I kept shifting my position to get the boat directly behind Tori, but it was too fast. I finally settled for the image you see. It shows enough, I think.

Just another day in paradise.

Sign of the Times

2011-02-17T13:33:00.004-04:00

Driving home after taking Millie to work a few minutes ago, I was sitting at a stop light and saw one of the lanes ahead closed by traffic cones. There was a sign that said:

Slow Down
Machine Ahead

And I thought, as I'm sure you did, "Ah, the slow-down machine! THAT'S why things proceed at such a leisurely pace around here."

Couple of months ago I saw one similar. It said

Slow
Workers
Ahead

You can guess what I mentally did with that one.

Life is Good for Max, Too

2011-02-16T07:27:00.006-04:00

I was not the only member of the family that spent an afternoon on the water this week. In fact Max, who is now 12, will be on the water every afternoon this week.

The sixth grade at the Good Hope School is spending the afternoons on Roseway, a 137-foot schooner built in 1920 in New England. Roseway is part of the World Ocean School. During late spring, summer and early fall she's in Boston. She winters in St. Croix, where she's available for educational purposes. The photo shows her at anchor in Christiansed Harbor, just off the fort.

Max and his classmates go out to Gallows Bay (what a great name!) at noon, board and set sail. Literally – the kids haul the lines and set the sails. So far they've been learning knots, navigation and the importance of Dramamine.

The taxi vans bring the kids back to school around 4, and they ooze off like a barrel of cold syrup, exhausted, but excited and ready to go back the next day.

How come we didn't have educational programs like this when I was in school? Oh yeah, wait. I went to elementary school in Chicago. If we'd had anything like this it would have been conducted on The Loop, not a schooner.

Maybe I can get Max to write something about the experience, but so far he's been so wiped out when he gets home he pretty much eats dinner and goes to bed. But he's up and rarin' to go the next morning.

You can read more about Roseway and her history here, and the World Ocean School here.

Life is Good

2011-02-15T10:04:00.003-04:00

Sometimes that's all you can say. Life is good.

Monday morning I got an e-mail about a lionfish trapping project taking place at the Frederiksted Pier. I'm including a link to the story I wrote so I don't have to give a lot of background. If you don't want to read it (it's an interesting story, I think) just remember lionfish = bad.

The message gave a time of from 1 to 3 p.m.

I didn't know what to expect, but I figured a short little spiel for the press. They'd show off the traps, give the "lionfish = bad" rap, answer a few questions and go to work. So I drove down to the pier after lunch. Got there at 1 p.m. on the dot, but forgot to factor in parking. Ended up having to park three blocks away, and walked onto the huge concrete cruise ship pier at 1:07.

And saw a dive boat pulling away. Literally, 30 seconds later and I'd have been right there. But in life as in comedy, timing is everything. Assuming that was the lionfish project, I had just missed them.

I stood thee and stared, waving a little, hoping someone might glance back. Another boat pulled up to the pier, this a small, yellow inflatable motorized kayak looking thing. A young guy, mid-20s, got out and tied up.

"Do you know if that's the lionfish project out there?" I asked, pointing to the dive boat, which seemed to be stationary, about 100 feet off the end of the pier.

"Yeah," he said.

"Damn," I said.

He looked at me funny and I explained I was a reporter who had just missed my story.

"I can take you out to them," he said.

"Great! Let's go."

I scrambled down into his boat, which he explained was used for diving, and was designed for Navy SEALs, which would explain the large opening in the bow. The SEALs could enter the water without having to go over the side. He zipped it up, and we were off. The photo shows the nose of our boat with the dive boat dead ahead. That's what the picture shows, the approach to the dive boat.

Just moments later we were circling the dive boat, where a couple of the people aboard recognized me and waved us over. With permission to come aboard, I transferred my phone and camera to the safer Velcro pockets of my cargo paints and reached for the proffered hand that helped me step up into the dive boat. It turned out the hand belonged to a friend of Millie's, MacKenzie MacQueen. She's a senior at Good Hope, and a certified diver. The trapping project is actually her project for the school science fair, which is a very big deal at GHS.

Along for the ride were her dad Neil, who I've met before and is an interesting guy, the young lad Alex, another friend of Millie's from GHS, Dr. Coles from Fish and Wildlife, the guy piloting the boat, and another diver, Pete, hereinafter referred to as "the ancient mariner," not that he's any older than me, probably not quite as old and certainly in better shape. He's a real lionfish zealot, says he's personally killed more than 14,000 of the bastards.

The whole project is described in the article linked to above and I won't bother going over all that here. I could have shot the whole thing from the pier, watching as they circled around dropping the traps in specific locations, and gotten the information after they came back, or in a phone call.

But who wouldn't want to spend a chunk of the afternoon out on the water, sun shining but a breeze keeping the temp down. The water so damn blue I can't describe it. It was as bright as the blue of a particularly clean swimming pool, but a much darker shade.

And this way I got the story in a casual way, in bits and snatches of conversation rather than a more formal interview – not that there's anything terribly formal about my interviewing style. My very favorite interview of all time was when I got to interview a Nobel-prize winning physicist and started our talk by saying, "I have no idea what you do." He was so startled by my candor – and such a gentleman – that he tried really hard to explain his work and what it meant. Really nice guy.

But back to the point, they kept trying to convince me that I had to take up diving. I kept explaining that I'm not much of a swimmer, that if I go in the water and don't drown, that counts as swimming for me. They claimed that you don't have to know how to swim to be able to scuba, but it sure seems to me like something you ought to know before you take up diving. Maybe I'm missing something, but you're in the water, right? Like, way underneath it? I'm not convinced.

Anyway, in no time at all the traps were in the water and we headed back to the pier.

Being a reporter has its plus sides. Along with the usual crap, I've got to watch a couple of rocket launches, interview some celebrities and high muckety muck politicians and that Nobel winner and walk through a forest fire with a firefighting team. Met a lot of interesting people in interesting places. Got into Disneyland free several times.

But I'd have to put that hour on the water up there with any of it. Even given the serious subject matter (lionfish = bad) it was just a great, great way to spend the afternoon. And I got a good story out of it.

Doppleganger

2011-02-14T08:51:00.003-04:00

So who is that in the picture on the left? Me, or that other guy?

I mentioned earlier that on several instances since arriving on St. Croix I had been mistaken for another guy who apparently looks just like me. His name is Winegar, presumably that's his last name. People have called out the name to me as I drove by, walked up and asked if I remembered them, people who thought they had worked with me (him) sometime in the past.

They're convinced I'm him, surprised – even shocked – when they find out I'm not.

Well, it's still going on. It's happend three more times just since the first of the year, bringing the number of "Winegar incidents" to well over a dozen. I am, of course, guessing about the spelling of the name based on the pronunciation.

Here's what I know about him so far, based on what people have said when trying to prove they know me/him:

• He's got two sisters in Phoenix.

• He worked for a while at the Animal Welfare Center

• He worked more recently at the Department of Planning and Natural Resources. May still work there.

• He appears to play a musical instrument, although I don't know what.

• He seems to be a nice guy, very friendly. No one has ever come up to me with a scowl and behaved angry, as if they had mistaken me for some jerk. No, it's always with a smile, as if they're glad to seem him after a long time. No one has ever shook his fist at me or demanded the money Winegar owes him. They're always happy to see him, or they would be if I were him.

And he must just be handsome as hell. After all, he looks just like me, apparently.

The obvious thing for me to do is call DPNR and ask if he still works there. If he does, ask to speak to him and settle this once and for all. But quite frankly I'm afraid to.

What if he does look just like me, but he turns out to be – by any objective standard – funny looking, odd, or old or fat or – you know – ugly? What would I do then? Do I want to take that chance?

A Top Ten List

2011-02-07T07:49:00.003-04:00

With apologies to both Dave Barry and Dave Letterman, here is The Top Ten List of things you see or hear often on the island of St. Croix that would also make a good name for a band.

10) Copulating Lizards

9) Sea Glass

8) Sheck Sheck and Flamboyant

7) Wild Dogs

6) Roadkill Iguana

5) Feral Chicken

4) Pothole

3) Dead Horse in the Water

2) Leatherbacks

And the No. 1 thing you see or hear a lot on-island that would make a good name for a band is –

1) I Smell Pot

It's That Time of Year

2011-02-01T08:31:00.002-04:00

I'm really not an asshole. Really. I'm actually considered a very nice guy, sympathetic, caring.

But this is the time of year when I particularly enjoy having made the move to St. Croix.

When I'm in the car, listening to the radio, and someone from Oklahoma City says the snow is already up to her knees, I chuckle. When I hear that Chicago (where I was born and lived my first 10 years of life) is bracing for one of the 10 worst snowstorms in its history, I get a warm glow inside. I hear from our friend Larry in Nashville (where I lived five years) that he's expecting snow again there, I commiserate, but I can't help smiling. And when I check the weather in Oregon (where I lived more than 20 years) and see that the temp is 47 and might make it all the way up to 50 today, and it's raining (as if a cold rain in Oregon in February is news – a cold rain in Oregon in February was what made us decide to move here) I feel a deep, deep sense of satisfaction.

Granted, I don't get much kick out of the news from Los Angeles (lived in SoCal 10 years,) where the temp will be in the mid-60s again today. I've got to check the news about freeway traffic and earthquake predictions to get the same smug, self-righteous, innsufferable satisfaction, as if I'm somehow responsible for the weather here.

Right now, at 8:40 a.m., the temp on St. Croix is 77, and is expected to be about 84 by midafternoon. It's always about 84 by midafternoon. There's not a cloud in the blue, blue sky. Tonight's low is forecast at 72, which is a little chilly for these parts.

Sorry – I really, really am not an asshole. Making those comparisons is sort of the point. Yes, there are problems and occasional challenges to living here, but none of them have to do with snowstorms. I promise to write about one of them really soon, if that'll make you feel better.

Or wait until August and September. You can all get back to me while I'm sweating out another hurricane season. Except in parts of the U.S. you'll be sweltering in 100 + heat, and the headlines wll be about heatwaves, and here it'll be about 84 by midafternoon. I'll take that.

An Odd Morning

2011-01-31T07:41:00.003-04:00

Warning: This post has a story that the squeamish, and I'm one of them, might not appreciate. Hell, they'll hate it. I sure did.

Sunday morning was odd. Not odd in a "Oh, things are sure different on St. Croix!" way. Odd in a "Dear God! How did that happen" kind of way.

Started when we decided to run down to the beach. Nothing odd about that. We often go to the beach on Sunday morning. Nice and quiet down at Dorsch, rarely more than a dozen people within a hundred yards in either direction on this stretch of white sand that's world-class beautiful. So yesterday we took the three-minute drive, set up our chairs on the sand under a tree, and plopped down.

Then Tori looks up and says, "There's something in the water." Well that's not unusual is it? It's water. There are things in it. But this time she points and says, "Something dead in the water."

"No," I answer, looking at the gray mass on the water's edge about 40 feet away, where the waves are lapping. "It's a rock."

"No it's not," she said.

So I get up to take a look. I really wanted it to be a rock. Really wanted to be right on this one. Walked about 20 feet. Stared. Walked back.

"You were right," I said. "It's a dead horse."

Now, there are often horses in the water at Dorsch. There's a trainer who brings horses down and swims them up and down the beach. It's cool to watch. But this horse sure as hell wasn't swimming and there was nothing cool about this.

We decided two things. We didn't want to stay at the beach, and someody needed to be called. We didn't know who, but somebody needed to be called. I figured I'd call 911, because if they weren't the right one, they'd know who was. But I'd left my cell phone at home. So we packed up and headed back. We were almost to our house when we saw a front-end loader coming up the street.

"Follow him," Tori said. "I'll bet someone called and he's going to pick up the horse."

We did, and sure enough he pulled over and started onto the beach, right toward the horse. We didn't stay to watch, because – DAMN. But at least we knew it was being dealt with.

We ended up driving to a different beach, about a half mile away, just to try to get the image out of our minds. Ony partly successful – I can still see it. And that's where the second odd thing happened. Odd, but not nearly as disturbing.

We were rinsing the sand off our feet at the shower pole. At a nearby table, four guys were playing dominoes (big game here, and people play it very aggressively. The sound of the tiles slapping onto the table is loud.) and two or three other guys were fiddling with what turned out to be a pressure cooker on a barbecue. Never saw that before, but neither of those were the odd thing.

They had a sound system set up – again, not unusual. The first thing many groups do when they get to the beach is set up a concert-sized sound system with a generator. Usually they're playing reggae, rap or some version of calypso.

Not these guys. They were listening to country music. I'm talking old school country, with the twang and the steel guitars. It sounded like something from about 1958, like some guy gunning to be the next Hank Williams. I'm not describing it well, but it was very distinctive, you'd have snapped your fingers and gone, "Oh! Nashville, Tin Pan Alley. Opry. Got it." Never heard anything like it on the island, certainy not on the beach, where a half dozen or so locals were enjying dominoes and getting ready for whatever was in the pressure cooker.

Between those two moments – the dead horse and the country music (that could be the name of a country song right there, "Dead Horses and Country Music") there was a moment that was distinctive, not odd. We looked up and a rain squall was blowing over the beach to the north, out of a little rounded bay. It was a gray curtain, opaque, with tendrils blowing out of the clouds and coming down to the water. Behind it the greens of the hills were muted, and the cloud's shadows cast a rippling darker shades up and down the slopes.

I lived half my life in Oregon, so I've seen lots of rain. Lived the first 10 years of my life in the Midwest, so I've seen lots of really hard rain. This was nothing like either.

It took maybe 10 minutes to pass, maybe 15, and we watched it the whole way as the clouds blew out to sea. It looked like shafts of darkness traced through the sheet of rain, although that's obviously backwards. It was large shafts of light, but it sure looked like the darker columns were the aberration. Meanwhile, the shadows of the clouds marched up and down the hills like an army, then drifted away leaving nothing behind but the green glowing hillsides.

The rain was falling, of course, approximately where we'd left the dead horse. As we drove by on our way home we had to stop to see what had happened. Because all we had seen was the front-end loader. What was he going to do? Drive back to where he'd come from with the thing in his bucket? Bury it in the sand? What?

When we passed by, the loader was still there, parked on the sand. The tire tracks led down to the water's edge. But there was no sign of the horse, or the driver. All we can figure is a truck must have been coming along behind him. They loaded it up, took it wherever you take such things, and were busy hosing out the bed of the truck.

At least I hope so.

We have no idea how the horse got there. No idea how long it had been there. but surely it couldn't have been there much longer than early in the morning. It's just one of those mysteries.

It was an unusual Sunday morning – not unusual just for St. Croix but really unusual anywhere, I've got to think. All of that, plus a pleasant time on the sand, took about an hour, hour and a half at most.

There's a T-shirt you see here all the time with slogan, "Just another day in paradise."

Sunday wasn't just another day.

Long Time

2011-01-21T10:43:00.001-04:00

Long time.

It's been a long time, almost six months, since anything has been posted here.

It's not like nothing's happened. Quite the contrary. It's been too full.

• Tori's mother, Janet, died.

• Daughter Alex moved off island, back to Oregon.

• Got a new used car, and have spent about $600 on various things, brakes, starter, tires. You know - things.

• Got through hurricane season relatively unscathed.

• Our cat went away and never came back.

• Started a new blog, solely about writing.

• Tori directed a play at the school that is widely regarded as the best show this island has seen in years.

All of those might have been the meat for dozens of blog posts, but we didn't post. Some were too hard to write about, some too transitory to have time to think about. Things are settling down a bit. I think I'll try to take this up again and do what it was supposed to do – talk about a family making this crazy move.

And things are still crazy – well, maybe not crazy, but certainy different than life was in Oregon. Still have things to sa o the subject. But in a sense I feel like I'm starting over.

So here I go. At least one post a week - short, but it'll get done.

Two Years

2010-07-01T08:37:00.002-04:00

Two years ago today I went to the Henry Rohlsen International Airport here on St. Croix and met the plane Tori, Max and Janet were on. I'd arrived the day before with Kate, Alex, Millie and a very pissed off cat. So today marks the two year anniversary of the start of our adventure.

No regrets. None.

jb

It's Plumb Crazy

2010-06-08T16:18:00.002-04:00

No details here. I don’t want you to lose your lunch.

Suffice it to say I had a major plumbing job to do last week. And it was probably - no, definitely - the ugliest thing I’ve ever done, and the words “up to my elbows” could be used in a completely literal way. Everyone got it?

But there is one part I want to tell you because it tells so much about life on St. Croix.

We’ve actually had this problem three times in the past four months. There’s something wrong with the drain pipe. We’re not on a septic system, we’re on sewer. The landlady’s brother - who manages the property, came out to show me. But when he walked out on the street, he got this puzzled look on his face.

“Where’s the manhole?” he asked. “It was right here.”

The road was remarkably smooth for one of the roads out here, and nowhere was there any sign of a manhole cover up or down the street.

The guy who’d snaked the drain out the last time said before anything else, I really should contact Waste Management (VIWMA – The Virgin islands Waste Management Authority) and have them check the sewer line. So they came out with a truck. And they couldn’t find it either. In fact, they had no recollection of there ever having been a sewer line down the street. So they went back out to the WMA office to check, then came back. Sure enough, the charts at the office confirmed that there was indeed a sewer line here.

The Waste Management guy got a disgusted look on his face. “It’s Public Works,” he said. “They do this all the time.”

Roads are under the control of the Department of Public Works. Sewers are handled by VIWMA. And they pay absolutely no attention to each other.

So when Public Works, some time in the past, came down to resurface the street, they didn’t go to the trouble of framing the manholes and working around them. They just paved right over ‘em!

The Waste Management guy shook his head and explained that when they do sewer work, they almost always have to start with a metal detector. That lets them find the cast iron manhole covers, which they then have to dig up, punching holes in the pavement.

That’s a hell of a way to run a railroad, as the saying used to go.

One thing I would caution any newcomer to the island against is making any kind of suggestions about better ways to do something. People here do NOT want to hear, “Boy, back in New York we do it this way.” (It’s particularly New Yorkers, I’m told. The locals are not fond of New Yorkers.) “Ya know what you ought to do is …” "The way we do it back in the states is ..." The locals don’t like it so much, even if they’ve just finished telling you how stupid the situation is. It’s their Public Works Department, and they can berate it, but a continental should just keep his mouth shut.

So I do. I commiserated with the guy, but didn’t suggest that back in Oregon the street pavers don’t typically cover the manholes. I didn’t need to anyway. The sewer worker had that covered, as was his right by virtue of having lived here all his life.

And it worked to my advantage. I was obviously a nice, respectful guy, and they’d brought their truck with the pump on it anyway. So after I’d explained the situation they ran out the hose with the water jet and ran it through my drain pipe in both directions. (And the drain system of this house, by the way, is just the stupidest set up you’ve ever seen, but I won’t go into that.) And in hardly any time at all, it was all clear. It hadn’t been their job, it was actually probably wrong of them to do it since it was on private property. But I have no complaints. They were nice guys and took care of the problem for me.

I’m sure the problem will recur, and I’ll know what to do about it. It’ll be ugly again, but I can handle it. I just hope they never need to get into the actual sewer line. That could get ugly.

Good Hope Graduation 2010

2010-06-05T19:24:00.005-04:00

Millie, right, and classmates sing "Unwritten" at graduation.

Millie graduated from Good Hope Schoo about an hour ago. I'll write something later. Right now here are a couple of pix.

Millie leads the class in.

Tis the Season!

2010-06-01T10:14:00.003-04:00

June 1 is the official first day of the hurricane season. For the next six months we'll be watching the Weather Channel at least daily, and regularly checking in on our favorite weather sites. It's like being a bowling pin, staring up the alley watching which way the balls are coming, hoping they miss is.

All the forecasters are predicting an active season, unlike last year when there was nothing. So we're starting to build up supplies - food, water (a gallon a person a day,) gas for the generator, flashlights, batteries, candles. All that good stuff you've gotta have on hand.

There's no activity in the Atlantic right now and we don't anticipate it for a while. The season peaks in August and September, but you've gotta be prepared for anything. There's a bit of doggerel in these parts that talks about how to prepare:

June, too soon.
July, stand by.
August, a must
September, remember.
October, not over.
November - there's something for November, about how it's almost over but you can't let your guard down. But for the life of me I can't think of what it is. I told you it was doggerel. Shakespeare it ain't, but I don't recall what the Bard had to say about hurricane preparedness. It was probably in "The Tempest."

All I know is they're saying the ocean surface temps will be higher this year, they don't expect as much wind shear off South America, Saharan dust isn't as likely to be as heavy as last year. All those add up to 15 or so active systems, 5 to 7 named storms at least three of which will be Cat 3 or higher. All we can do is hope they pass to the north or south and leave our little island alone.

Is that too much to ask?

And to be prepared in casre they don't.

Wet and Worried

2010-05-28T07:32:00.003-04:00

Spent the last 24 hours worrying about Tori and Max and I'll continue to do so until mid-afternoon.

At Good Hope School the two fifth grade classes have an annual field trip to St. John, the third island in the U.S.V.I. St. John is mostly the national park. So they left Tuesday, flew to St. Thomas and took a ferry to St. John. The program was ambitious, hikes and swimming and snorkeling (St. John reputedly has the best snorkeling around) and ecology lessons. Thank God they have cabins, not tents.

Because yesterday it started raining and for the most part it hasn't stopped. There's a flash flood alert on for the territory - through Saturday evening. And, to help fray my nerves even more, the place they're staying has no cell phone reception, so the earliest I'll hear how they're doing is in a few hours when they ferry back to St. Thomas.

About 25 or so kids, give or take, the two teachers, and a handful of parents.

I'm just glad I convinced her to bring the rain hoodie - the only bit of wet weather gear we brought from Oregon. But I'll feel a LOT better when they're home.

And I do not sleep well anyway when she's not here. I've had three to four hours of sleep a night since they left.

I just hope they had a great time, and the rain becomes part of the legend, one of those things that grows in the telling, that you wear like a badge of honor.

Update: Tori called in at 10:50. All is well. They were about to board the ferry from St. John to St. Thomas, then fly home. She's tired and sore and wet, but they had a lot of fun, she said. It rained all day yesterday on their hike. Can't wait to see her.

My Secret Weapon

2010-05-27T08:11:00.002-04:00

As I said yesterday, I’ve just completed a young adult novel which my agent will soon be peddling to publishers.

Hasn’t sold it yet. Of course, he couldn’t have. He won’t even be reading it until after the first of June. If he has nothing better to do than sit around his office waiting for me to send him manuscripts, he couldn’t be very good, right? And he is good. So I’m happy he’s busy and hope some of that busy-ness will rub off on me. After all, he doesn’t get paid until I get paid.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about my secret weapon that makes me feel really good about my chances to sell the book.

Tori teaches fifth grade at the Good Hope School, a wonderful private school right on the beach, about two miles from our home. Last fall she had me come to her class to talk about writing, plot and lots of stuff like that. She really pushed writing with the kids all year.

Anyway, one thing led to another and she suggested I read the novel to the kids as it progressed. So I did.

What a revelation! The kids were great. Every Tuesday and Thursday they’d ask Tori at the start of the day if I’d be coming with more chapters. I always tried to have two at a time for them, which kept me focused and productive. I hated to disappoint them.

When I was finished reading for the day and said, “And that’s all for today,” they’d always let out a group moan, “Aawwww!” Which suggested to me that they liked the story, or at least liked it better than they do, say, math tests. I’ll take that.

They were also really helpful, and not at all shy about letting me know when the day’s offering hadn’t measured up. “Kinda boring,” they said once. You’d better believe I worked my ass off to keep from disappointing them.

And as the story progressed, I was able to gauge how it was going and what I needed to do to clean up those problems. I actually was able to reorganize so that the second half of the story already was written as if I’d made the changes already. I’d explain to them what was going to happen in the rewritten version. When I finished (they applauded at the end, and loved the last line) and started on the second draft, I already had thought out what needed to happen. I tossed the first six chapters and condensed them into three, reworking it so that the same exposition was told in action instead of me talking. Thanks to those kids, the book is WAY better than it was.

And I like to think besides entertaining it was also educational for them. They saw the process of writing a novel, saw the truth that all writing is rewriting, and maybe got an idea of the difference between plot and story.

They will, of course, all be named and thanked in the acknowledgements. They also had plenty of ideas of what should happen next and while I don’t think I used any of them, they helped me see how the reader would perceive the story and how I could use those expectations in building the tale.

The only idea I rejected out of hand was the suggestion that I somehow include a vampire love story in my pirate novel. Sorry, Shania. That just wasn’t in the cards. And Mason and Ryan wanted every chapter to include explosions. That was their answer to everything – blow it up!

All in all, it was one of the best things I've ever done as a writer. I don't see how anyone could ever write a novel without a classroom of smart fifth graders to bounce it off of.

It worked so well for both me and the class that Tori has already given me homework. There will of course be a new class of kids in the fifth grade next fall. And they’ll need a story.

I’m mulling ideas. Not pirates this time. It’s going be about the “curse” on my family.

Ebullient, then Nervous

2010-05-26T14:00:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I sent the final draft of a new novel to my agent. It's a young adult novel with a pirate theme. Because we live in the Caribbean, I made sure it had plenty of Caribbean flavor. And some of it takes place on St. Croix. Because what the hell? We're a Caribbean island. Why shouldn't some of it take place here?

Anyway, I spent all of Tuesday feeling "ebullient." That quickly faded. I now wait in nervous anticipation for him to sell it. I am not naïve, I know this will take months - if I’m lucky. But you always think, “He’ll open the file, just to see what he’s got, and be so taken with the opening scene that he’ll sit down and read the whole thing, right then and there. And he’ll see the potential and be so fired up that by the next day he’ll have it in the hands of some high-powered editor at some big publishing house who will immediately offer me a huge, life-changing advance. This will all take about 24 hours, maybe 48.”

It’s not true, of course. But you always let yourself think that. Just for a day or two.

This is not my first attempt. My first novel went to a dozen houses. One of them held it for nine months, it made it all the way through the approval process until the very last meeting, the one where they decide these are the books we’re publishing next season. And for some reason I was never told, they passed on it. Last summer, after two years, my agent informed me that the book was “dead in the water, for now.” Not that it was bad, not that anyone had anything negative to say about it. Just that no one was willing to publish it.

I licked my wounds for two days. As it happened, when we had that conversation I happened to be reviewing a book for The Poopdeck. It was a good book, but nothing special. I said to myself, “You can do better than that. Hell, you DID do better than that. And you can do it again.” So I sat down and wrote the new one.

I took the feedback I’d gotten and started the new story. And yesterday I sent it off.

I had one rule and one secret weapon. The rule was articulated by Tori, who had just read the Percy Jackson series. She’s a fifth grade teacher and has to keep up with what the kids are into. The rule is: Your character has to fight a dragon in every chapter. Doesn’t have to win, but there has to be a dragon in every chapter.

Well, there are no dragons, of course, this is a pirate novel. But there’s plenty of “stuff.”

The secret weapon I will discuss tomorrow. It requires a little more space and time than I have right now.

One thing I have learned through the years is that no book would ever be published if it weren't for "lunch." The two books I co-wrote with Cap'n Slappy were both sold after lunch meetings between my agent and an editor. Everytime there was a glimmer of hope for the first novel it was after a lunch he'd had with someone. If agents and editors ever decided en masse to go on diets and cut out that middle of the day meal, the country's literary output would fall to nothing.

Just checked my e-mail again. Still nothing from my agent. That’s the other thing, when you don’t hear anything back right away, your mind starts telling you “That’s it. He hates it. In fact, he hates me personally, wonders why he ever signed me, and will probably quit the book business just to get away from me.” If – God forbid! – he were to die, I would blame myself, assuming reading my manuscript had sapped his will to live.

As I think I mentioned in the post about “Bird by Bird,” writers are crazy. I certainly am.

That was a mistake

2010-05-04T10:46:00.003-04:00

I just accidentally re-posted something I'd posted two months ago. Sorry. Pulled it

I found it on my desktop and didn't realize I'd posted back then. Thought, "Well, went to all the trouble to write it."

My bad. And my apologies.

I will, however, be posting something else on writing, but not this week. Next Monday, I'm pretty sure. Because that's when I'll be done.

(And Alex finished her creative writing class, which she really enjoyed. The teacher was terrific, really inspired her.)

In the meantime, here's an update. Lots of mosquitoes right now. Seems to me we had a lot this time last year too, so that'd make it seasonal which means eventually this onslaught will end. I hope so. Killed eight within 15 minutes of waking up this morning. If I lose much more blood I'm likely to pass out.

Maybe that's why I made the mistake. I must be light-headed from loss of blood.

jb

A Writer on Writing

2010-03-22T12:25:00.002-04:00

I have been reading this terrific book on writing. It’s called “Bird by Bird,” and it’s by Ann Lamott. It’s not the best or the most useful writing book I’ve ever read, although it’s awfully good. The reason I like it is, first, it’s very funny. The funniest book on writing I’ve ever read. And it’s so true. She writes about writing as if it’s a mental illness, which it sort of is.

Lamott doesn’t come out and say, “By the way, all writers are crazy.” But she makes it pretty clear she and all the writers she knows are at least mildly crazy, paranoid, obsessive, with no sense of perspective. All the students in her writing classes are also crazy, she implies. They also mostly seem to want their money back. But that’s between Lamott and the students, I guess.

Anyway, buried in among all the very funny stuff about the ways in which writers’ minds works to keep them unhappy and worried that everyone including their immediate family is talking about them behind their backs – are some really excellent nuggets of advise, including allowing yourself to fail, not sitting down to "write a novel" but giving yourself small, manageable assignments each day that add up to a novel in the end, and my favorite – write a shitty first draft. It may be shitty, but you can’t fix it if you don’t write it down. Perfectionism, she observes, is the voice of the oppressor.

I came across the book, by the way, through our daughter Alex. She’s taking classes at UVI and one of them is a creative writing class and this is one of the texts. Unlike her other textbooks, this is one she won’t be selling back at the end of the semester. If she doesn’t want it, I’m taking it. So there's the island connection for this blog.

Seriously, if you’re at all interested in writers or writing or you just like a good read and enjoy a laugh, pick up “Bird by Bird.” Good book.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T12:19:00.001-04:00

Another long lapse between posts - three months. Sheesh. Sorry. We'll try to do better.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

St. Croix celebrated, as it does every year, with a parade through Christiansted last Saturday. It’s kind of amazing, a combination of Irish and Island that has to be seen to be believed. Sort of "Erin go Bra-less.

I covered it for The Source; here is the story and here’s the video video I shot that went up on the site. For some reason my videos lately aren’t uploading well. This looked crystal clear and sharp when I made it on the computer, but it looks murky and fuzzy on the site. Gotta figure that out.

An old friend whose parents were both from the Auld Sod used to say with scorn that he never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day because, “I’m Irish 365 days a year. St. Patrick’s is amateur night.” And it was he who first pointed out to me the biggest Irish myth in America -- the song “Danny Boy.” It’s purportedly an old, traditional Irish tune sung from a father to his son going off to war and expressing patriotism and love of Ireland. In truth, my friend pointed out, the song was written by an English lawyer, and it’s a love song between a woman and a man. The lawyer actually supplied alternate lyrics for a man to sing, “Oh Ellie girl.”

As it happens, the song was written in 1910, so it’s exactly 100 years old now, not some timeless Irish ballad but one more example of British cultural imperialism. With which the Irish are of course intimately familiar. If you want to sing a real, traditional Irish ballad, try “Eileen Aroon.” Dates back at least 400 years.

Still, I think Dave took things a bit too seriously. St. Patrick’s Day is just fun, and if people whose family came from Poland or China or Nigeria or Brazil want to talk in corny Irish accents or drink green beer and eat cabbage, well, what’s wrong with that? I’m part Irish myself – from the Piper family, I’ve been told although I have no way of knowing if it’s accurate that that part of the family tree once hailed from Limerick – and it seems if the world wants to celebrate Irish heritage, even if they get a lot of it wrong, where’s the harm?

Seems to me it’s a good excuse for a party in a month where typically there’s not a lot to celebrate. And on St. Croix, they know how to celebrate in style.

Holidays 2009: Horses, Ducks and Christmas

2009-12-26T17:41:00.001-04:00

I might have bought a horse on Christmas day. I don't think so, but the duck definitely did not survive.

The horse comes later in the story. First you have to understand that I apparently look almost exactly like some guy who either lives on St. Croix or used to. I've been mistaken for him four or five times. One guy challenged me rather aggressively when I claimed not to be him, asked me how my two sisters in Phoenix are. For the record, I have seven sisters, none of whom live in Phoenix although when we were kids we visited the Grand Canyon, which is in Arizona but I don't think that counts. Another guy was sure we used to work together. It took me several minutes to convince him we didn't. I've had people yell his name, "Winegar!" as I drove by. So I apparently look exactly like him and that may or may not have anything to do with this. (Winegar, by the way, must be a devilishly handsome fellow.)

On Christmas Eve Tori had gone with a co-worker to another co-worker’s home and killed I think eight ducks, cleaning them and plucking them. She came home with one for Christmas dinner, the hunter gatherer returning with the feast and many gory stories about viscera. Also a bit of blood on her clothes. Our son Jack was visiting us from the Bay Area and Christmas morning was great. Then Tori set about roasting the duck – which apparently involves as many steps as launching a small weather satellite – while I had to work briefly. I walked down to Budhoe Park to cover a Christmas concert that was supposed to happen at 6 p.m. Not a bad walk, mile and a little bit, maybe a mile and a half.

Got there, and there was no one. No one was there. No concert. Nothing. That happens more often than you'd think. Something is planned and then canceled, and everyone just seems to know that it isn't going to happen, but I just don't seem to be hooked into whatever kind of social telegraph would have tipped me off. Disappointing, because I get paid by the story, but I saw a gorgeous sunset in the balmy weather. I hung around for a while, just in case, but it was, after all, Christmas day, and a really good dinner was coming up, so I turned around and started walking home.

Walking up King Street I found myself drawing up on an old woman with a cane who was laboring up the hill a bit slower than me. As I passed her, I said, "Good night," which is required, it's part of living here - Good morning, good afternoon, good night.

Anyway, she answered "Good night," then as I pulling away, she said what sounded like, "Savwok."

I turned. She said it again. I said, "I'm sorry, but what?" She repeated it, then seeing I didn't get it, said, "You're going home, right?" I said yes. She said, drawing it out and over-enunciating as you would to a small child, "Have a safe walk."

"Oh, I've been here over a year, but that's a new one on me, thanks," I said. Merry Christmas."

"You too dahlin."

So I head off, walking down the road, and here comes a guy on a horse. So I stepped back to give him the right of way, but he stops, so his horse is blocking me, and tells me he knows me. Well, maybe. Maybe he knows Winegar. Or maybe he's just stoned, which in fact he was.

I'm told people sometimes talk about the white family in Smithfield who never sleep: “De lights and de noise be on all de time.” That would be us. Definitely not the family Winegar, although they may have curious sleeping habits as well.

Anyway, the stoned horseman – for he was indeed seriously stoned – points to my hat and mentions the race car. No, it's my Seattle Seahawks cap but I decide not to press the point.

The guy starts talking about his horse. I think he said something like, "Next time I bring you one, you see." Then I think he was comparing his horse to a dog, with the dog coming out second best but both rating high in intelligence and loyalty. Or he might not. There seemed to be a part with how the horse is around children although I could have gotten that wrong. It might have been something completely different. The point is, I couldn't understand a word he was saying, but he was saying it in a very friendly, enthusiastic way, and that's always kind of entertaining.

The guy was seriously Crucian, which means his patois is right on the edge of my understanding in the best of circumstances. Others in the family have much less trouble, but this guy also was stoned, so there was that. He might have been comparing horses and boll weevils, or Ukrainians. Or it might have had nothing to do with horses, although he did pat the wiry steed vigorously several times. His sweeping hand gestures, which twice almost toppled him from his mount, weren't helping convey whatever the message was.

At the five-minute mark I was looking hard for a way to end it. Every time there was a slight slowing in the flow of words I'd try, "Well, gotta ..." but that's as far as I got. We shook hands two or three times, fist bumped a few more. He wasn't going to stop until he'd said what he wanted to say. Finally I heard something that again sounded like, "You see. I show you. I bring you one next time." And, smiling and nodding, I thanked him again and finally was back on my way.

It was a safe walk, and an interesting one. And as I neared the house and the fabulous Christmas dinner of roast duck and pork and potatoes and salad and fresh bread rolls, a thought hit me. In my nodding and smiling and all, had I just agreed to buy a horse that the stoned horseman would bring over “next time?”

I don’t think so, but if I did, I hope Winegar has a place to keep it.

Kind of Cool

2009-10-23T08:50:00.004-04:00

There is still no storm activity in the Atlantic basin. With the hurricane season down to its last six weeks, it's been unbelievably mild. Not that we're complaining.

We've had a couple of alerts. This time of year - basically June through November but mostly August and September you keep one eye always on the Atlantic, and try to keep plenty of hurricane stores on hand. We even got a small generator this year.

But so far, nothing. Nothing at all. between the wind shear coming off South America, the heavy Saharan dust and dry air, no big storms have formed up and come marauding into the Caribbean, despite the warm surface temperatures of the ocean.

But this is kind of cool (since it's about a hundred miles away. Otherwise it might be anything from worrisome to terrifying.) The volcano on Montserrat has started erupting again. This is a photo taken by the International Space Station (where they sometimes talk like pirates!) The picture is from the NASA Web site.

To help orient yourself - the ash plume is drifting west, the narrow end of the island points almost due north. Montserrat is south of St. Kitts & Nevis, and Nevis is about a hundred miles due east of us here on St. Croix - where we're still keeping an eye on the Atlantic Basin.

A 'tiring' but interesting day

2009-10-19T09:57:00.002-04:00

The left front tire on Bertha (our '97 Nissan Pathfinder) was in a bad way. I could feel movement in the steering wheel, could see the belt peeking from the corner, knew it was coming apart.

So Thursday I dropped the family off at school, drove gingerly home and went to change it.

Peeled back the cover on the spare mounted on the back and it looked good, hardly worn at all, plenty of tread. So I pulled the cover off and got my first surprise. It would not be the last.

The spare was held on to the frame by three lug nuts – and a big, rusted padlock. I checked all the keys – we had no key for that lock. I don't recall the guy who sold us Bertha last year ever mentioning it and I hadn't checked then or since. Searched the car from top to bottom. Found some interesting thing, but no padlock key.

As fate would have it, I had to drop by Tony's Wrecking Yard that day to pay $30 I owed for something else. (Equally long, convoluted story I won't go into here.) So I gave him a call. "You don't happen to have a bolt cutter I could borrow for two minutes, do you?" Turns out he did. So that problem would soon be solved.

Drove carefully over to Tony's. about five miles. Tony's a funny guy – probably about my age, shorter and rounder than me, bald, and with a crusty exterior that makes him a little off-putting at first. The previous day I'd been there I'd had to wait and watch while he directed his crew in moving some junked cars around the lot to make room for something. It was like one of those wooden Chinese puzzles – pull this one over there, start that one, back it out, slide another past it, then put that back. Etc. Tony stood on the building harassing, shouting, raining out a torrent of colorful invective that blistered paint, but it was all somehow good natured and accepted by everyone.

But when dealing with me he was unfailingly helpful and courteous, and the strongest language he used was comically mild. When I pulled in and he saw the lock and heard that I had no key, he rolled his eyes and said, "Ho-o-o-ly matrimony!"

He had several more opportunities for that one as the day went on.

We were able to snap the lock off without trouble. The tire was just a tad soft, so I figured I'd drive to a service station, put air in it and put it on the car. But Tony said, "You want us to do that for you? We've got air and we can take care of it and get you on your way." I let myself be convinced – fortunately.

Backed the car into the service area and one of the guys had it jacked up and the tire off in no time. Meanwhile Tony himself took the spare, put air in it and ran water over it to make sure no air was bubbling out anywhere. Nope. Looked good. The guy popped it on and with six quick zips of the pneumatic wrench it was ready.

I thanked Tony, offered to pay him, he declined, I gave him the cash I had and he said, "I'll give it to the guys."

I got in, started Bertha up, put it in gear and gave it gas.

Bertha didn't move. Instead there was a horrible grinding noise, which – if I tried to transcribe it here – would be all Gs and Ns and Ks. I got out to check but it wasn't still jacked up and there was nothing blocking any of the wheels. I tried again.

More Gs and Ks.

Tony looked closely at the front end of the car, looked at me and said, "I don't think that wheel's the right size."

He was right. The tire was the same size as the others, but the wheel it was mounted on wasn't quite right. I'm not even sure how you do that.

Now what? Even if I wanted to I couldn't drive it. All I could think was to put the bad tire back on and go down to the nearest tire shop and get it straightened out, as if that was something I could afford.

Tony, however, had other plans. He told me to wait, "We'll get you on the road" – and sent one of the guys out into the lot to find a Pathfinder he was pretty sure was out there. I waited maybe half an hour, and the guy (the one who told me he'd been 9 years old when Woodstock happened a couple of hundred miles from his home and he still hasn't forgiven his parents for not taking him to it) came walking through the rusted hulks with a wheel. The right sized wheel. Then they mounted my tire on the wheel, took another 20 minutes or so – and the new wheel was zapped onto my car. And I was good to go, and Tony wouldn't hear of me paying him for it.

Changing a tire is not rocket science. I've changed more than a few in my life and times and it rarely takes more than about 15 minutes. This had taken about three hours starting from when I'd decided to do it. But I've never been happier about a tire change.

Later I was doing some other chores and mentioned something to the cashier about "the way my day's been going." She commiserated about "the bad day" she assumed I was having.

Not a bad day, I replied. It was certainly an interesting day, and it could have been a very bad one, but it wasn't. Tony is a helluva guy and his crew are really something and they made all the difference.

And I've learned another valuable lesson:

Just because the car you're buying has a spare tire attached to it doesn't mean that the spare actually goes to your car. Check it out.

And go to Tony's.

Celebration - Part 2

2009-09-23T09:24:00.002-04:00

Okay, so apparently I was wrong about how long it would take me to post the next part of the anniversary adventure. Not the next day, but two weeks later.

What can I say, we got very busy. It was, after all, the two weeks leading up to Talk Like a Pirate Day. Which I will discuss in a later post. How much later? Excellent question.

So when last I wrote, the power was out, the rain was pouring down, the room was leaking a little. Time for dinner! The restaurant was supposed to open at 6, but we didn't see how it could without electricity. But no, the woman at the front desk told us it was open. They must have a generator.

The restaurant at Sand Castle is an open air affair, and given the really remarkable rain it was hard to see how that was going to work. There was one small area near the bar under cover, and about nine, ten people were crowded in underneath the canopy at the few little tables. We pulled the last table out of the rain right next to another and sat down.

And that's how we met Larry and Chris. They were a couple vacationing from Nashville. The arrangements made it all very cozy, and when Chris moved around to the other side so he could smoke without bothering Larry, we were all basically having dinner together.

And that was fine. These were two funny, funny guys. Larry does something in banking – he explained it but I couldn't follow it exactly. Chris is in oncology. I have no idea if he is a doctor, a nurse or some kind of technician, but he had some stories. I also found it interesting that he smokes. Just seemed odd.

Anyway, they'd been on island about a week, and Larry couldn't wait to move there. Chris seemed more cautious, but everything was funny the way they told it. They asked – and we tried to give – some of our impressions about island living, being transplanted here and making our way in this life that is both similar and foreign to stateside living. But wherever a conversational gambit started it became another joke, or another funny story.

We learned a lot about their lives and families. We learned about their cat and their home and their pool, saw their family photos. We hadn't brought any with us, the house was only half mile away and we hadn't really thought we'd end up sharing time with anyone but ourselves. Still, it was a pleasant dinner. Lot of laughing.

At some point – roughly about the time the waitress brought our prime ribs – the rain stopped. About the time we were asked about dessert, the power came back on. There was general applause.

The cook had something new, an incredibly chocolatey thing served in a martini glass – not pudding but much thicker than mousse, almost like one of those cans of frosting, eaten directly from the can. Tori ordered that (and Larry insisted on paying for it as an anniversary present.) I had a brownie with coffee ice cream and chocolate sauce - way too much for my stomach but not nearly as rich as Tori's dessert. I tried hers of course, and I've never had chocolate that burned. I'm telling you, the spoonful I had left a burning chocolate aftertaste that lingered for several minutes before I cooled it down with my own dessert.

Larry and Chris just fell in love with Tori – pretty much everyone does – and when we paid the check we realized we'd been there for three hours. We went back to our room, where I recited the little bit of poetry I could recall – NOT including "The Cremation of Sam Magee." Our book of poetry is still in storage in Oregon.

It wasn't easy to check out the next day. We'd had a nice time, alone with no kids or phone or anything. Just us. And now the sun was out and there was the beach. Oh well, that's the nice thing about living here. The beach is ALWAYS there. But we had to admit we were a little worried bout the family – they'd been without power too – so we loaded up our one small bag and drove home.

It had been a nice getaway, and we'll be doing some more of those soon, I think. In the meantime, I'm going to finish with the sonnet that I always recite to her every year on Sept. 5 – the most important day in my life.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Ah, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on storms and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be folly, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

An Explosive Celebration

2009-09-10T11:47:00.003-04:00

Last Saturday was the 20th anniversary of the best day of my life – the day I married Tori.

In Oregon we always spent our anniversary sitting under the same tree, one we'd carved our initials in, and read poetry while sipping wine and eating bread. Now, partly we did that every year because it was romantic, and because our schedules were so hectic. Sometimes we'd have no more than a half hour or so before one of us, or one of the kids, had to be somewhere. But I have to admit, part of it was that we were kind of broke when we first got married. This was both romantic and inexpensive.

But I always thought Tori deserved a better anniversary than that, and when the city of Albany cut down that tree a couple of years ao, we knew it was time to go.

We're hardly rich now, seriously that's just laughable. But this year we were able to do a little better. (Tori got a great new job. I'll let her tell you about that another time.) I thought it would be nice this year to have some time for us, without having to worry about the kids or the schedule, making dinner or anything like that. So, without telling Tori, I made a reservation for a room at Sand Castles on the Beach, a resort not more half a mile from here, right on our favorite stretch of beach. We'd be right at hand if anything went wrong at home, but we'd be alone. We'd walk on the beach, maybe swim, maybe use the resort's pool. Not worry about anyone but us. We didn't bring the cell phone, didn't bring the laptop. We'd have a sort of island getaway vacation without actually going anywhere.

The weather was dicey that day, cloudy all day with some light sprinkles. Mind you, this was the day after what was left of Tropical Storm Erika had already passed by, and there was nothing on the weather horizon. But instead of sun, we got clouds, gray skies and a little rain.

No problem, I was sure we'd find something to do indoors. And we did.

The room was nice, a suite actually, with a living room, bedroom and small kitchen off the patio. The patio was covered, so even a little rain wouldn't be a problem.

But a little rain was not what we got. After we'd been there a couple of hours we were, sitting in the living room, resting and watching the Notre Dame game (Go Irish!) when there was a flash of light outside. Then a boom. Then more light. Then the roar of rain.

Understand that when we get rain here it's usually brief. Even when it's intense, it's rarely as long as 15 minutes. But this was amazing, a downpour like we haven't seen since Hurricane Omar. Lightning and thunder right on top of us – literally. There'd be the flash and the boom almost simultaneously, which means it's close. And the rain pouring down.

That's when we discovered the kitchen window couldn't be closed. There was a screen, but no glass. It shouldn't have been a problem since the window was perpendicular to the open end of the covered patio, where the rain was coming from. In a typical cloudburst, not even an issue.

But this rain was coming down so hard for so long and blowing so hard that it flooded the kitchen, water pooling up on the floor. We had to run down to the desk and get a lot more towels.

The rain, the thunder, the lightning. It was spectacular. Naturally, the power went out, so we never did see the end of the game (which Notre Dame won, we found out later, 35-0.) And it went on more than two hours. I mean, this was a storm like I hadn't seen here without a hurricane warning attached to it.

Dramatic doesn't begin to describe it. It as an amazing experience, and a spectacular backdrop for our anniversary. And it wasn't the last amazing experience we'd have that weekend.

But we'll tell the rest of the story tomorrow.

Weather Watch

2009-09-09T07:55:00.004-04:00

Last week we had our eye on Erika. It was kind of funny, the hurricane reporting sites we monitor had all been predicting that system would turn into something potentially serious, and as the week wore on they all sounded really annoyed that it wasn't. It's like they were blaming Erika. By the time Erika rolled through the Caribbean it had pretty much dissipated into nothing. Ironically, it was the day after what was left of Erika rolled through that we got quite a bit of rain with some pretty cool lightning and thunder.

Now Fred has formed up off the African coast and is lumbering across the Atlantic at 13 miles an hour. Unlike Erika, Fred has gone from tropical wave to depression to storm to hurricane very quickly, and is continuing to build up steam. But, as is often the case, when a storm builds up a lot of strength early, the rotation causes it to veer north. Also, there's plenty of wind shear blowing from the southwest, which tends to break up storms, and dry air and Saharan dust. So right now we're cautious, but not worried.

Sure enough, all the computer models and tracking maps show Fred heading almost due north, where it will rage out without ever seeing land. So that's a good thing.

Of course you can never be sure. These storms sometimes have a mind of their own. So you keep prepared, with a supply of food and water and flashlights and candles and plenty of books. And you hold your breath until the end of the hurricane season, Nov. 30.

Island Living

2009-09-07T11:52:00.000-04:00

Max couldn't get the game cartridge into his Nintendo DS this morning. We tried shoving it in, vigorously, but it wouldn't catch.

Tori – who is both smarter than me and has significantly better eyesight than me – peered into the slot. A tiny – barely an inch long - lizard had crawled in, and when we shoved in the cartridge we'd impaled it on the prongs.

We have written Nintendo customer support (I think this will be a first for them) seeking advice on how to extract the former lizard in a relatively non-gooey and less disgusting way and how to clean lizard entrails off the contacts. I suspect we may have to wait a few days for it to mummify a bit, and perhaps pick up some barf bags.

Because, Damn!

Chicken in a Hole- Not a Recipe

2009-07-20T13:53:00.002-04:00

A Caribbean math problem:

How do you get a baby chick out of a three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence post hole?

That's the dilemma we faced recently when a newborn chick fell into a hole in our yard and proceeded to cheep, cheep, cheep for dear life.

My daughter Alex heard it first. As this is St. Croix, chickens roam freely everywhere. That is one thing that surprised me most about living here. Chickens. Everywhere. In the streets, in yards, on the beach, in the cities, behind businesses, in front of businesses, even in the trees. Yes, chickens have been spotted in the trees. I am reminded of a jaunty, animated Sesame Street ditty:

"There are chickens in the trees,
Chickens in the trees..."

At the end of the animated song a small voice proclaims ' silly man, chickens do not climb trees.'

Yes they do. Virgin Island chickens climb trees, poles, roofs, fences, cars, small children, large children and horses.

And while Virgin Island chickens climb trees, poles, roofs, fences, cars, small children, large children and horses, they also fall into holes.

All year long mother hens strut around with baby chicks in tow. Sometimes the hens will have a dozen babies following them around, pecking and scraping their tiny little feet at the ground looking for bugs. But it is a good thing they have a lot of babies, as chickens have no natural defenses and there are a lot of predators: Cats, mongoose, (or is it mongeese? Mongooses? Mongi?) cars, the weather, young Crucian boys who have to bring dinner home or face the wrath of mother, and the big damn Rottweiler next door who has used chickens as chew toys on more than one occasion, and three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence post poles that have been cut off at the base and left as a trap for poor little chicks to fall into.

When Alex heard the sound of a muffled chick squealing, she had to investigate and soon found that a chick had, indeed, fallen and could not get out. This little guy was jammed in. He was small enough to fall all the way to the bottom, but tight enough that we couldn't get anything under him to lift him without crushing his fragile body. We couldn't dig him out as the pole was set in concrete. We tried a curved stick, a coat hanger, two sticks used as chopsticks, a rope on a stick, a rope on two sticks, but to no avail. We even talked of flooding him out with the garden hose, but rejected that idea, as despite being Monty Python fans, we didn't really know if the chick would float. (And if it didn't float, it'd be a witch and we'd have to burn it. Too much trouble. Better not to know.)

We were frustrated in our failed attempts to save this poor baby chick. We couldn't think. It seemed hopeless, the chicks cries were slowing down. He'd been in the hole for an hour or more and we nearly gave him up as a casualty to the bitch of nature, when suddenly, along came a spider.

We had a flashlight beam shining down the hole on the chick and suddenly, the light picked up a curious glare on top of the chicks head. Two curious pinpricks of light, only it wasn't exactly pinpricks of light, it was more like pea-sized, giant pea-sized points of light reflected back to us at the top of the hole. And dear, sweet, God, I can't describe how freaked out we were to realize that a huge, giant, enormous spider had crawled on top of the baby chicks head. I kid you not, a big damn spider was covering the baby chick's head. Bad to worse.

There is nothing like a super creepy arachnid with glowing eyes perched on top of an innocent, fluffy, chick to inspire some creativity! The stakes had immediately gone up. Now we weren't just facing an unsolvable dilemma of nature, we were the good guys battling evil. If we failed, then all of mankind would fall into the darkest depths of chaos. The forces of evil would win. The spiders would win. But oh! How terribly creepy it was. I am not generally afraid of spiders, but this scene made me feel sick to my stomach. My creep-o-meter was on full tilt. What to do? What to do? We just knew Shelob was waiting for us to go away so he could inject his venom, wrap his victim in silk and claim his prize, his precious.

We had to defeat the spider.

Our sticks prodded the hole with a new fervor. We'd poke the spider, he'd fight back, lifting his legs up to ward off our wooden swords. We prodded, Shelob rallied, we screamed feeling particularly oogie. Finally, my husband John joined Alex and I in battle, and when he thrust his stick, er, sword at the venomous monster, it fought back aggressively, raced up the shaft of the stick and out into the open, but before it could attack, John hurled the minion of Sauron into the street and crushed him, stomped him again and again under his mighty Rockport tennis shoes.

Our hearts were racing! We triumphed over evil! If only we could save our symbol of hope and purity!

Damn it! We are Theater People. Surely we can think of something. And out came the duct tape. Within minutes of defeating the spider, Alex had rigged a long stick with a wad of inside out duct tape. She fished into the hole, gently, gently, gently and suddenly, hopefully, felt the chick stick to the tape. She lifted him up, slowly, slowly, carefully. We held our breaths. Stuck to the end of a stick in a wad of duct tape was our baby chick.

Elation! Shrieks of joy!

We had to unstick him from the duct tape, and the little guy lost some bits of fluff on his back, but he was alive and intact. Nothing broken, no spider bites. We raced the chick to the back yard where his mother was pecking and scratching at the ground with about a half a dozen babies all around. We set him down and watched this adorable, innocent symbol of Easter, run towards the hen and the other chicks cheep, cheep, cheeping all the way.

We spent the next ten minutes gathering small stones and with a last burst of heroic adrenaline, we filled in the three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence-post hole and capped it off with a coconut shell. We sealed the slippery gates of hell.

The lucky little chick cheated death. Today. Tomorrow? That's a different story. I can report that I have seen the chick with the bald spot pecking and scratching and chirping days after his big ordeal. So the answer to the math problem, how do you get a baby chick out of a three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence post hole is easy: duct tape and a stick. Of course, the motivational spider is optional.

Wildlife

2009-05-15T08:55:00.001-04:00

Tori went out back this morning, as she does most mornings because the mosquitoes tend to congregate out front in the a.m., and came back in looking quizzical.

She was wondering what the horses were doing in the back yard.

Two horses. Can't say I've seen them before. We've got a couple of horses that live in a lot down the street and wander a bit, quite a lot actually, but these two are new to me.

We often have chickens in the yard - there are chickens all over the island that don't seem to belong to anyone, they just wander around making more chickens (and roosters do crow at sunrise, but only because roosters crow all the damn time, sunrise, sunset, 2 in the afternoon, 2 in the morning) and we get iguanas back there, big ugly guys, sometimes as many as four at a time. I often wonder how iguanas ever reproduce because they're so ugly they must be ugly even to other iguanas. And other birds, lot of white egrets. No goats – the goats seem to congregate on the center of the island, not so much here on the west.

Oh, and two night ago, around 10 p.m., I was driving Millie home from the theater down the island's one multi-lane highway. We glanced over the divider and there were about half a dozen cows and a bull wandering east down the road while we headed west. I hope they stayed in the slow lane.

But these are the first horses we've had actually in the yard - that I know of. All I can guess is, I was up late last night and didn't close the gate until after 2 a.m. They must have wandered into the yard, and then got caught when I locked up. Either that, or they wandered in and don't really care where they are. One place is as good as another to horses.

I'll keep an eye on them, because what the hell am I supposed to do with them?

Max, of course, wanted to ride them to school.

jb

Extreme Frustration

2009-04-24T13:01:00.002-04:00

Sorry about being gone so long. We've been extremely busy between work and school and the theater and stuff.

I'll talk about those next week – promise. Right now I just need to vent.

I knew I had a car problem, Bertha was dripping brake fluid for a couple of weeks – not a lot but noticeable. I planned to nurse it along until the end of the month. Keep a close eye on the fluid level, watch the drips in the carport.

That's not the frustrating part. A week ago Wednesday, on April 15, Tori got in and the brake pedal went down to the floor. Not because she has such powerful leg muscles (although she does) but because the slow leak had suddenly become a really bad one. You could sorta pump up the brakes, but it wasn't what you'd call a safe ride.

Last Friday I took the car down to the shop – THAT was an exciting ride, let me tell you. I got there, the guy said the calipers were shot. Not a surprise, I'd seen fluid leaking out from inside the brake unit. Had to be something like that. The problem - the part did not exist on the island. The part is never on the island. It had to be ordered. It would be in Monday.

It is now Friday and the part is still not here. It got shipped, it went through Miami, it got as far as San Juan and then disappeared off the face of the planet. Puerto Rico is the bottleneck where mail to and from the Virgin Islands goes to die, and this is gone. So they've re-ordered the part and with luck and help from the post office we'll have a car – next week. Which, not that I think about it, is just about the end of the month, which was my original plan but no real help.

Talking on the phone wth the guy at the mechanics, I could tell he felt awful, and I apparently was not the only customer who had this problem this week. So yelling wasn't going to do any good. But man, it's frustrating.

Meanwhile Tori and the family have had to get too and from school every day in a cab, which is not money we'd planned on spending. And I've been walking everywhere, taking the island's taxi vans (they're actually kind of cool, you can get anywhere on the island for $2.50, if you're not picky about when you get there.) Can't get to the major grocery store. This is getting old. Old old old.

There. Needed to get that off my chest. No, I don't feel one bit better, but at least I got the chance to vent.

jb

Plenty of daylight here

2009-03-09T14:04:00.001-04:00

So back there on the mainland, you've all switched over to Daylight Savings Time. You're getting up in the dark for the sake of squeezing a little extra sunlight out of the late afternoon. Either that or you've been an hour late for everything today.

Here in the U.S.V.I. we don't worry about DST. People here are too relaxed to get all excited about the clock, which explains why islanders can be late for something without having daylight savings to use as an excuse.

Here, this close to the equator, the sun rises every morning right around six, and in the evening it sets right around six. And that's good enough for everybody.

From our perspective all your switch to DST means is that instead of being one hour ahead of the East Coast, we're at the same time. And instead of being four hours ahead of our friends and family on the West Coast, we're only three hours ahead. And all that means is when sending an e-mail you have to adjust when you send an e-mail how long you expect to wait for a reply. it also changes the calculations when making a phone call.

And it makes watching TV a little more convenient. I love "The Daily Show," but waiting until midnight is just too much. 11 to 11:30 I can do.

Enjoy your new schedule.

There'll Always Be An England

2009-02-19T08:52:00.003-04:00

SPORTS UPDATE: You will be relieved, no doubt, to learn that England has regained its cricket form and now beaten the West Indies team twice in a row after losing the opener of the series, which I wrote about here.

Or, as the AP has it, "Swann helped dismiss the home team for 285 in reply to the visitor's first innings of 566-9." Actually, the more I think about it, the more comprehensible that becomes. Quick! Must stop thinking!

No stunning yorkers or nudging to second slip in the AP report, but I was delighted to read that "the seamers did such a good job with the reverse swing ..." I imagine you're delighted, too.

Just thought you should know.

Physics update

2009-02-14T10:14:00.002-04:00

A friend writes to say that St Croix must be "an entropical island."

Wish I'd thought of that.

jb

Today's physics lesson and what it means

2009-02-13T10:07:00.005-04:00

"As entropy increases, order decreases."

That's physics. Some rule or something. I heard it in college a gazillion years ago, although what I was doing in a class where someone was talking about physics I can't now recall. There must have been a reason.

But that little kernel of information remains with me, one of a small handful of facts that I have unaccountably retained over the years, stubbornly clinging to the inside of my head like a sodden Wheaties flake that dried on the table and now can't be scraped off. What it means, if I remember rightly and that's almost certainly not the case, is that entropy is a measure of order or organization, the lower the entropy the higher the organization. A heavy element, with it's cloud of electrons and it's massive nucleus has more order than a hydrogen atom. A molecule represents more order than an atom. A galaxy has more order than a diffuse cloud of gas. (I'm almost certain I'm getting this wrong, because I don’t think I understood it completely in college and that was a long time ago.)

And, in this universe we live in, the tendency is for entropy to increase. Order is always breaking down, big things slowly devolving into their constituent parts until someday (hopefully not soon but you never know) the entire universe (including all of us) will be one evenly spaced field of sub-atomic particles a tiny flicker of a degree above absolute zero.

Something like that.

And what in the world am I writing this for? Even if I'm right, and that seems highly unlikely, what could possibly be the point of wasting blog space on it?

Another way of stating that law - As entropy increases, order decreases – would be this simpler statement: Stuff breaks. A new law of physics! Call it Baur's Universal Constant.

That seems particularly apropos today. As I've noted, we had car trouble the last couple of months. We've had water problems. And those problems have redoubled this week. The water went out Wednesday, here it is Friday and we still don't have running water in the house. The plumber (nice guy, moved here four months ago from Texas) is here again and has tracked down three leaks in the supply line that feeds from the cistern to the pump. It doesn't mean water's leaking out, it means air is leaking in, the pump can't hold the prime and I can't take a shower. And I really need a shower by now. Three days without running water. I think I've told you the process I have to go through to flush the toilet, I won't belabor the point.

What's weird is (and here's where the physics lesson comes in,) nothing happened to suddenly cause these leaks. It's not like I ran over the pipe with the car, or a meteor hit or something. Tuesday everything worked fine. Wednesday, not. I can only think it has to do with a sudden, localized burst of entropy.

Bertha (our car) is similar. We bought her from a guy moving back to the states, so it's not like he was dumping a lemon. She's been a good rig for us. Until the ignition problem started in December. Then a brake problem in January. And a tiny leak in the cooling system the mechanic couldn't find, but he told us to keep an eye on the radiator level and carry a jug of coolant with us at all times. That's how it is with cars, they run great, but once a problem starts, there's a cascade effect.

Tori was driving to school yesterday morning with Max and Millie in the car. They had just turned off the highway (the island's only four-lane road) and were heading up East Airport Road when there was a tremendous crashing/grinding sound, as if they'd been hit. Tori pulled over and looked. No damage. She got back in and started driving - and immediately the car started shaking violently. It was barely controllable. She pulled into the gas station just up the road and looked underneath. The rear torsion bar had snapped like a twig. Had it happened 10 minutes earlier, when she was driving 60 on the highway, it's horrifying to think what might have happened.

As luck would have it, the gas station she pulled in at was not more than 200 yards from an auto repair place. She VERY slowly drove to it, then called school and got someone to come out and pick them up.

The guys at Unique Auto Repair were able to fix it at a fraction of what I thought it would cost. There was no replacement part on the island (that's often the case) but a torsion bar isn't a big, complicated thing - it's a bar that essentially holds the rear wheels in place while you drive. No big deal. They welded it back together, reinforced it, and charged us very little. When school was over she was able to get back out there, pick it up and drive home, rattled but otherwise safe and sound.

So that story has a happy ending. Considering how it could have ended, we'll take it.

But it's just another warning to be on the lookout for entropy in your life. I've got a birthday coming up, and ever since I turned 50 I've felt my personal entropy rising exponentially. Here on St. Croix, it's even more so. This is a high-entropy part of the universe. So perhaps for my birthday I'm going to see if anybody sells an entropy meter. Probably Radio Shack. Or Kmart. Or Mr. Dollar - one of our favorite stores on the island. He sells everything, and like the sign out front says, "If we don't have it, you don't need it." Since I need a personal entropy meter, it stands to reason that he must have it. Although I recall vaguely from another college class (Logic) that "universal affirmatives can be only partly converted" - whatever that means - so I should probably call ahead first and ask.

But that'd be a really useful tool to have. It wouldn't stop entropy from increasing, but at least it'd give me a warning. That's all I ask. Although, given local entropic conditions, the meter would be the next thing to break.

Waiting for the Plumber

2009-02-11T09:14:00.003-04:00

Here's the thing about water on St. Croix and most Caribbean islands - There isn't any.

Oh sure, we're surrounded by water - we're on an island, after all, and from almost any vantage point we get views of some of the most spectacularly blue waters on Earth. But it's like in the Coleridge poem:

Water, water everywhere,
and all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

(Yes, I know most people think it's "but not a drop to drink." Tell them to look it up.)

But all that water is, of course, salt water. You can't drink it. St. Croix doesn't have any huge freshwater aquifer to drill for, no rolling rivers or reservoirs to draw from. We've got -

The rain. Virtually all the drinking water on St,. Croix falls from the sky, runs down your roof and is funneled into a cistern below the house. Then it's pumped up by your water pump and that's your water supply. So rain from time to time is a very good thing. (And by the way, rainwater doesn't have any minerals in it, so residents are advised to take a vitamin supplement with minerals. Just thought that was interesting.)

So fresh water is a pretty valuable commodity, and a Crucian takes pride and/or comfort in a large, brimming reservoir the way friends of mine back in Oregon take comfort and pride in a huge wood pile for the stove or fireplace.

This all comes to mind because there's something wrong with our pump today. We actually have two cisterns - one under the front porch and another under the kitchen, with pipes and valves to switch from one to the other. Between them we can probably store around 10,000 to 12,000 gallons of water. But the back one is empty, and the front one is kinda low. But more to the point, the pump is not drawing water out of the cistern (yes, I've checked, the valves are set for the front cistern, but thanks for the suggestion.)

To flush the toilets while waiting for the plumber (due in about another hour) I have to open the cistern (the concrete lid of the thing is heavy, maybe 80 pounds or more,) drop a bucket down on a rope to pull up a couple of gallons to pour into the tanks. Same for washing dishes last night.

It doesn't pay to look too closely into the reservoir. A big concrete space, and when they're empty a kind of creepy nothing. They are not particularly clean. The water is clear, but there's "stuff" in there. That's why we have a filter on the kitchen tap, and buy bottled water for drinking. Showers are short - Navy showers, where you get wet, turn off the water, soap up, turn on the water and rinse off. And you don't flush for just anything. In fact, there are actually restaurants down here with this little jingle posted on the walls:

In this land of fun and sun
We never flush for Number One.

Just to keep the poetic theme going.

I also suspect our gutters may be plugged, which would explain why the cisterns don't seem to charge the way I'd expect despite the fact that we've had a couple of good rainfalls. But that's a different problem for a different day and a different blog post.

Right now I'm just waiting for the plumber, because I tried everything I know and there's still no water running in the house.

jb

The Very Wide World of Sports

2009-02-10T08:26:00.002-04:00

Out here in the Caribbean, surprisingly (to me) cricket is pretty popular. It's not like you see kids playing it on the streets, but the papers cover it all the time. Most of the words seems normal, and the sentences seem to be saying something, but then all of a sudden the writer just starts making stuff up!

The British national side is touring the region, and here's some excerpts from the lead story on the St. Croix Avis sports section, of the match in Jamaica.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - West Indies bowled England for 51 to sweep to an incredible win by an inning and 23 runs just before tea on the fourth day Saturday of the opening cricket test.
...
Taylor continued his destruction after the break as he bowled champion batsman Kevin Pietersen with a stunning outswinging yorker for 1.
...
Benn broke the stand when Sidebottom was leg before wicket on 6.
...
Cook snicked to second slip where Devon Smith held a juggled catch while Bell chased a wide one and edged to wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin.
...
Benn reduced England to 26-7 when Broad nudged to short leg for a duck in the next over.

I think the "stunning outswinging yorker" and "snicked to second slip" were my two favorites. Or perhaps I should say favourites.

And "leg before wicket?" It sounds as if it means something, but there you go. It almost sounds like the start of some mnenomic or something - Leg before wicket except after tea, when snick leaves a duck in the Caribbean Sea.

jb

I have been remiss, I know, not posting in a month. My bad - we've been very busy. Besides more car woes and some plumbing problems and work and things, we've also been involved in a play at the local theater. We'll write about all those in the next two weeks, I promise.

jb

Tying Up Loose Ends

2009-01-13T07:51:00.002-04:00

I have been remiss, I admit it, and not followed up on a couple of things. Here they are.

Christmas on the island: We enjoyed the holiday. Didn't do everythin we might have, there were parades and events all over, and we didn't get to many of them. Partly it was the car, which was giving us fits. On a good day it would start in three or four tries. There weren't many good days. Then we'd go and run errands, including shopping trips, and I'd be afraid to turn it off for fear of the hassle of starting it again, so I'd circle the parking lot while Tori shopped. We also had shopping to do, kids to ferry, work, and rehearsals. Tori is stage managing "Evita" at Caribbean Community theatre, and Millie and I are in the show. So that's taking a chunk of our time as well.

But we had a nice holiday, and being together in a new place reinforced the feeling of family.

Max made people Christmas gifts. He took a couple of odd-shaped rocks and turned one into a cat for Alex and another into a puppy for Millie. He got me a backscratcher (always a great gift for dads - that's a shopping tip for you kids out there) put a face on it including glued-on googly eyes and wrote, "Mr. Scratchy, (copyright sign, which I can't find on my keyboard) Max, 2008.

We shopped at the Annaly Farms (pronounced Anna Lee, but a couple of our number insist on using a ruder pronunciation, thinking it funny) butcher market for Christmas dinner and got a pork roast that was - literally - the entire leg of a pig. The butcher cut the hoof off because it was kind of unsettling, and cut it in half so that we ended up with two seven-pound roasts. It was delicious., if unwieldy.

Shopping for gifts on the island is sometimes tricky. Some things you'd think anyone would have, no one did. You had to be lucky, and the first in line. We're still waiting for one gift that was ordered two weeks before Christmas. I can hardly wait. It drags the holiday out a bit, and that's always nice. It ought to arrive in time for my birthday in February.

Festival: I promised more on the festival parade. The best thing I can offer is this link to the story I wrote for The Source. And I'll get some of the photos over to the Web Wench for posting on the Talk Like a Pirate Day Flicker page.

The parade start time was posted as 10 a.m. It stepped off just before noon. Several people mentioned they were happy it started a little early this year. It ran about four hours and it was amazing. Moko Jumbies, steel pan bands, masqueraders, soca bands, calypso, dancing troupes with wild colorful costumes. Think Mardi Gras with a Jamaican rhythm. There was also some kind of cowboy group that performed what had to be the longest line dance in the history of St. Croix. But not a single pirate in the whole thing! This cannot stand, I sez to meself. I'm going to rally the local crews and see if we can't right this travesty next year.

The Moko Jumbies I mentioned are stilt dancers, a West African tradition that came to the islands via Trinidad. Costumed, towering above the crowds, strangely articulated as they dance, they're an amazing sight. They represent spirits that look after the village. Their height lets them see problems approaching before they get there. And makes them an awesome sight in a parade.

Time flies: Two weeks ago marked our six-month anniversary on the island. We didn't even notice it as some sort of milestone. We're too busy living our lives.

A Perfect Wasted Day

2009-01-12T10:40:00.002-04:00

A wasted day in paradise, and what could be better than that?

I was supposed to cover a trial at the federal courthouse. It was tricky, because Bertha is in the shop until this afternoon, when her longstanding problems will be all cleared up at last. (Please, God, please.)

So I took the cab with Tori and Max and Millie to school, the courthouse is just about a mile or so beyond that, so I walked.

Got there and found that the trial I was supposed to be covering was continued to an unspecified future date. Nothing "island" about that, I've covered a lot of trials that never happened. So I had the day free.

Walking back to the school, I could glance to my right and see the incredibly blue Caribbean shining between the buildings. A sunny day, 80 degrees with a good breeze to keep the heat at bay. Someone had taken a horse down the sidewalk, so I had to keep my eyes open and tiptoe through the tulips, as it were.

I heard a buzzing noise and glanced up - a small float plane was lazily swinging in the sky, making its approach to Christiansted harbor. But no, glancing up did not cause a misstep that made my feet fragrant,

The businesses to my left were all fronted by and/or separated by palm trees, their fronds blowing in the breeze, and bougainvillea.

I've got some business I can take care of by phone while waiting for the garage to call to tell me that Bertha's all better. I found the mechanic by asking around, and everyone swears by him. He's got the perfect name for his job - Mike P. Huebner. He uses his initials for the business name - MPH Automotive.

But he's not in the phone book, you just have to know that he's there.

Anyway, I'll be sitting out in the sun making a few phone calls now. Hope you're having a good day too.

Wow!

2009-01-03T17:28:00.002-04:00

Just home from the Crucian Christmas Festival Parade and that pretty much says it all. Wow.

I will say more of course, but not right now. Have to write it up for The Source, after I do something about what I assume is a case of heat stroke. Out in the sun all day, and working.

I will have something to say, of course. And many, many pictures. Many of which we will post, plus some video for youtube. Just let me catch my breath.

jb

(Oh yeah. And Tori danced with a Moko Jumbie. Just so you know.)

Happy (Warm) Holidays

2009-01-01T15:04:00.002-04:00

The Christmas Boat Parade was just what the name promised - and more.

Twenty one boats decorated with lights and manned crews of revelers dancing and partying (and with enough Santa Clauses to take care of a LOT of shopping malls) looped around and around Christiansted Harbor. The shore was lined by about 4,000 revelers and everyone had a great time. Max found some other kids to play with (Max always finds some other kids to play with) and Janet came and enjoyed the spectacle.

And it finished with fireworks - a really good show of them over the water. Anything that concludes with fireworks is okay in my book.

The traffic getting out of town was impossible, so we went east, cut across the island and took the South Shore road back to the highway and home. And yes, we're very excited about the fact that we knew how to do that. We almost never get lost anymore.

-----

Our decorations were modest this year. We have two boxes stuffed with Christmas decorations, but they're still in storage in Oregon waiting for us to ransom them.

One thing I insisted on getting, something I wouldd have scoffed at back in Oregon, was a three-foot-tall plastic snowman, lit from inside, with a kind of scary leer on his face. I think that's supposed to be a smile. I don't know, but we immediately dubbed him Ugly the Snowman.

In a snowy, cold locale the thing would be beyond kitsch. But here it's wonderfully ironic, and it made me smile every time I plugged it in.

------

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree,
Your palm fronds delight us.

Oh yeah, we went with the palm tree for our Tannenbaum. You can get traditional trees here, shipped in refrigerated containers, but they range from badly overpriced for scraggly, four-foot trees, to hideously overpriced for five and six foot trees. Remember, living in Oregon we had never paid more than twenty five bucks for a tree, full, tall and lush. We just couldn't, although Tori did bring home a few lopped off branches so we could sell the "Doug fir smell. Instead, for sixty bucks we got a six-foot live potted palm that carried the few ornaments and lights we've bought. It's beautiful, and it's alive - we'll have this tree for ages.

----------

If you've been watching this blog at all, you've already seen the picture of Tori on the beach three days before Christmas. On Christmas day we went down to the beach so she could try out the new snorkeling mask she got for Christmas.

The water was a little choppy, she said, but the mask worked beautifully, no leaking and better visibility than she had with her old Kmart special. And considering that back in Oregon there was snow and ice and all manner of crap all over the ground, complaining that the water was a little choppy seems sort of rude.

-------

We have been watching the weather back north, and we try not to taunt people, but it's hard. I mean, one of the main reasons for moving here is the weather. And I remember how cold and miserable we were every winter. So I hope you'll forgive us for a little taunting.

People keep sending us pictures of the snowfall on the streets, houses and landscape with notes saying, "Isn't it pretty?" "Isn't it beautiful?"

Sorry, but no it's not. I have driven and walked and suffered through enough of that in my life to say no. What's beautiful is that stretch of beach three minutes from my front door.

-----------

Christmas morning was good. The kids seemed to enjoy things, everyone got something they really liked, even though sometimes choices here on the island are limited. Even better - the kids all seemed to feel really good about things they got other people. As a parent you always like to see when they get it, you know?

Lots of books under the tree. I'm now working my way through "American Lion," the bio of Andrew Jackson, Tori already whipped through the New Toni Morrison, and Millie flew through the four boo she got.

We'll have a little more before we wrap up the holidays, but this is getting too long.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all the other joys of the season (no matter which season you celebrate) to all our friends, from the Baurs tucked away warm on their island.

jb

Good Freaking Morning!

2008-12-30T17:44:00.012-04:00

Usually we get woken up in the morning by roosters. Yes, actual roosters. Cockadoodle doo! Yes!

Seriously, there are chickens and roosters all over the island, thousands of them, and from about 6 a.m. on there's this cacophony of crowing. The poultry don't belong to anyone, heck it's a rare day when there aren't a half a dozen of them in our yard. There are a couple of hens out back clucking right now. And the roosters don't just crow when the sun rises, they crow all damn day and sometimes at 2 in the morning.

But the roosters weren't the culprit this morning. Oh no. I wish it had been roosters. The roosters are nothing. We got woken this morning about 6:30 by the loudest music I've ever heard. And I've been to a few stadium rock concerts back in the day.

Think the loudest pickup truck stereo you've ever heard going Boom-da-da-Boom-da-da-BOOM!-da-da-BOOM!!! Now imagine someone parked that truck in your bedroom.

Turns out this morning was J'ourvert, part of Festival. Every Caribbean Island has its own festival, and St. Croix's is in the weeks before and just after Christmas. We're in the last week of Festival right now.

J'ouvert is the morning tramp - a tramp being when they put a band or a DJ on the back of a truck and drive slowly down the street with people dancing and bouncing in its wake all the way into town. They do several of them during Festival. And J'ouvert is the one they do in the morning. I don't know why, but there you go.

Now, understand that this Jouver't was forming up THREE BLOCKS from our house, and that tells you how loud the music was. It was fucking LOUD. About 8 million decibels, I'm thinking. Louder than a jet plane, that's for sure. I know this because a jet plane actually flew over our house while this was going on, altitude no more than a thousand feet as it descended towards the airport, and I didn't hear a damn thing. THAT'S how loud J'ouvert was. And it went on for about an hour before the truck got moving and they finally faded from our range of hearing.

And the good news is, they started late. They were supposed to start at 5 a.m., according to the schedule. Thank goodness for island time. Nothing starts at the advertised time, unless you're running late and then it's early.

And all that noise didn't wake the kids up.

I'm looking forward to (seriously, I'm looking forward to it) the Saturday Festival parade. It starts about five blocks from here, and it's sort of a super tramp (for those who like their '70s references musical. Get it? Super tramp, Super Tramp? Never mind.) Bands on trucks. People dancing down the street behind them. The winner is the band that gets the most people following its truck. They toss out T-shirts and CDs to get people following them. I've seen photos, and the street is just a mass of swaying, writhing bouncing dancingcelebratingfunhaving humanity. But it starts at the relatively decent hour of 10 a.m. And we'll be there, dancing.

In the Caribbean - you don't WATCH a parade. That's for wimps. You dance it.

UPDATE: A story on Tuesday's J'ouvert, including a photo that really gives a feeling for the event (click on the photo to make it big enough to see anything), is online at The St. Croix Source Web site. The Source is the online newspaper (a paper with no paper) that I work for. Judging from Bill's story, I must have several of the details wrong. I don't care. It looks like fun!

What a Place to Live!

2008-12-28T12:08:00.001-04:00

Tori and I were at the Caribbean Museum Center of the Arts in Frederiksted Saturday covering an open house. (I works for the St Croix Source, this was an assignment.)

Anyway, after the event we headed out. Walking through the door we saw the arched portico framing the last blush of the sunset, lights from the cruise ship pier reflecting off the water. Stars and an incredibly bright Venus shone in a velvety blue sky, while a warm breeze played on us.

"We live in a good place," we agreed as we crossed the street to the waterfront and sat on a bench.

Tori tried a couple of times to capture the scene with the camera, but it was impossible. This was more than could be taken in by the senses. It filled our souls.

We'll have a longish post wrapping up all the Christmas activities in the next day or two. But this has to be said.

We live in a very good place.

jb

Update – You'll Never Guess What We Found

2008-12-25T12:36:00.002-04:00

Fruitcake.

Yes, we found fruitcake. Sort of. It's cakey, a little light fr fruitcake (that is, I could lift it.) And it's round with a hole in it, like a Bundt cake. So I don't think you could use it as a doorstop very well.

But it's cakey and it's got that awful fruit in it. And Janet is delighted.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve in Paradise

2008-12-24T11:43:00.002-04:00

By Mad Sally

The day before Christmas in paradise. A day before Christmas just like any other day before Christmas. We've spent too much money and still have tons of shopping to do. Boxes and bags of potential delight hidden all over the house. Where's the wrapping paper? Do we have enough tape? What about batteries? There are never enough batteries on Christmas morning.

Shopping in paradise had been a challenge. The island seems to be about ten years behind in everything, especially commerce, so those little things on everybody's Christmas list are difficult to find, if not impossible.

Like fruit cake.

My mother wanted a fruit cake for Christmas. God knows why. They really are one of those (edible?) creations that would have been better left undiscovered. But she is of an age where fruitcake is a tradition.

Bless her.

But is there a single fruitcake on the island? Not that I have been able to find. I ask one of the many locals who sell their home-baked delectables in front of the gas station door, "Good morning" -always start the conversation with 'good morning,' 'good afternoon,' or 'good evening' or you will not get a reply- "Do you have fruit cake? My mom wants a fruitcake for the holiday."

With a look of incredulity, the confident, buxomly older woman dressed in a tight plaid apron with her hair wrapped high in matching plaid replies, "De fruitcake? I have de fruit bread, look at de fruit bread!" She grabs my hands and takes me to the back of her minivan, pulls out a bowling ball sized loaf of bread dotted with color, and thrusts it in my hands.

"What's in it?" I inquire with a smile.

"De fruit! De fruit be in de bread!" She laughs at me.

Stupid tourist.

I politely decline, which is a very difficult thing to do here as people with their insistent tones of voice and infectious passion for all things make it difficult to ever say no, and I quickly get away in hopes of finding a "real" fruit cake.

Needless to say, a few days later and 132 miles on the car, I should've taken "de fruit bread."

That is just an example of what is not available in paradise. There are no crossword puzzle calendars, no boxed sets of "Twilight," no CD section at the local Kmart, no reliable video game dealer, no copy of the movie "Amalie," no Bionicle "Mistika," and the list goes on. Sure if we'd been on top of it, we'd have ordered online in advance. But anybody who knows us understands that organized is not our forte.

Really, I am not complaining. It is just another aspect of my mentality that needs to adjust to island time:

Wants and needs require modification, accepting that desirable is the closest available option. In other words, take the fucking fruit bread.

Two days ago I spent the morning at the beach in Frederiksted, which, by the way, is a mere three minutes away from my front door. There was nobody else there.

Nobody.

I read a great book while lounging on the sand.

I snorkeled in the pristine cerulean waters.

I witnessed flying fish leaping out of the water.

I watched sailboats tack into the Caribbean trades.

So worth the loss of a fruitcake.

Mad Sally

Bertha's Better

2008-12-20T13:51:00.003-04:00

We had been running Bertha, our '97 Nissan Pathfinder that had gotten a tankful of bad gas , trying to burn off the gunk, but it was still taking several minutes of cranking to get her to start. I had learned what to do to make her stall in traffic and, more importantly, how to recover before she completely stalled out. As our friend Brian - who apparently reads the blog from Oregon - commented, we would have to replace the fuel filter because it was undoubtedly fouled with whatever bad was in the gas.

We had heard something similar from a guy here who commented that filters have a tendency to foul more quickly on the island anyway. So we made up our minds to do it. After doing a little research on Nissan Web sites I decided not only could I do this, but it would actually be pretty easy. Maybe the easiest thing you can do on the car. We don't have a mechanic here yet, and finding a good one you can trust is hard under the best of circumstances. So we were game to DIY it, even though virtually all my tools are still in storage 4,000 miles away in Oregon. I have here one small crescent wrench, a couple of pairs of pliers and four screw drivers. But based on my research that ought to do it.

It's a typical St. Croix story. This (Saturday) morning Tori and I walked four blocks or so to the auto parts store, got the filter for 15 bucks, went across the street to the hardware store where we got a couple of clamps for the fuel line. I was thinking, "I really should have a socket wrench for that bracket, cuz the bolt is probably frozen." But I already have two socket sets – in Oregon. It was hard to decide to spend the money, so we decided to forgo the new wrench. We walked home and got to work.

First - disconnect the battery. Always a good idea when you're working on the fuel system. Then clamp off on the tank-side hose and remove the hose. No trouble. On to the bracket that holds the filter in place.

And that bolt was stuck. I mean stuck solid. WD40. Still stuck. It's been in place for 11 years and wasn't going to loosen without putting up a fight. Part of the problem was the bracket frame had a small lip on it so I couldn't get wrench or pliers or anything on it squarely. Finally I said to Tori, "Gotta have the right tool. I'm going back for the socket wrench." She just said fine, but didn't get out from under the car where she continued tinkering with that frozen bolt. (Frozen Bolt would be a good name for a rock band, wouldn't it?)

I walked to the hardware store. Now this is the most typically St. Croix part of the story. The hardware store only had half-inch drive socket wrenches, but only had 3/8-inch drive sockets. So I also had to buy an adapter - which thank God they had! I knew from my research that the bolt was 10 mm, but I also bought the 9 and 11 mm sockets "just in case." I was tired of walking to the hardware store.

Thus armed, I walked back home. Where Tori was sitting on the porch. "It's done," she said. Two minutes after I'd turned the corner she had worked the bolt loose enough to undo the clamp. The rest of the job was absurdly simple, and she'd finished it up before I got back. I did use my new socket wrench to tighten the bracket – the 10 mm socket was right. I was able to get almost two more full turns on the bolt, so it wasn't a complete waste. That filter won't be coming loose until the day of judgment.

The first time I started Bertha up it still took five minutes of cranking. "The line is empty, drained of fuel. It's supposed to take a few minutes," I told myself with more hope than certainty. Bertha finally roared to life and I drove to the gas station, the good one, the uphill one, where I paid a lot more for the gasoline but it's worth it to just get gas, not gas and something else. I had to turn off the engine to fill it of course.

Now here's where the rubber meets the road. I got back in the car and turned the key.

And Bertha fired right up! Huzzah! We did it! It's certainly no worse (always a concern when I crawl under a car with tools) and it appears to be fixed.

So we seem to have a functional car again. And a good thing to since we haven't even started our Christmas shopping. That'll be the subject for a post in the next few days.

The Topography of Fuel

2008-12-18T10:53:00.002-04:00

Our 1997 Nissan Pathfinder – named Bertha for the tropical storm that passed the island two days after we bought her in July - is ailing. It's not, I believe (and fervently pray) a fatal illness, more like a bad flu.

Sunday I bought gas - not at one of the two stations I usually fill up at. I was on the road and noticed the needle was almost on E. The station I pulled into happened to have the best price I'd seen in a while, about 20 cents less than the other stations I'd noticed that day. So I was feeling pretty clever as I filled the tank. 15 and a half gallons into a 16 gallon tank. I figure I saved somewhere around $3.

And then the trouble started. The next morning the car died right after I'd dropped Tori and the kids off at school. It took almost two minutes to get it to start. Trouble getting started the next time and the next. Tuesday morning it started up fine, but that as the last good news - automotive-wise – since. Yesterday it actually stalled for Tori on the highway (the one actual four-lane road on the island.) It was rough getting back home.

Clearly I'd bought a bad tank of gas. Almost certainly there was water in it. What seemed odd about that is that every station on St. Croix gets its gas from the same place – the Hovensa oil refinery on the south side of the island. So it can't be the source. What had happened?

At our regular service station Tori put in a half tank of premium. While she then tried to restart it – another two or three minute ordeal - a guy on the corner drinking offered the observation that the place we had bought the bad gas is situated in a small depression.

You have to understand there are no storm drains on the island at least none I've seen. Rainwater runs down the street and guts, and pools in low spots - like that gas station - and sits there, seeping into the tank. He pointed out that our regular station – where Tori ran across the guy – is actually raised slightly above street level, not much but enough, so that the rain runs away instead of forming a lake.

So there you have it. On St. Croix you can't make your fuel-buying decision solely on price, and quality is a non-issue since it all comes from the same place. You have to consider the topography of the station. Is it nicely elevated? Or do you have to worry about what might be in the underground tank besides fuel?

Anyway, we've run about half the new tank out, and I added a water-treatment product (which cost slightly more than the $3 I saved on the cheap gas.) We drive over some fairly bumpy roads (of course we do, we live on St. Croix) so that should mix the dirty gas, the new gas and the additive. This morning Bertha started after less than a minute of cranking instead of two or three. All the way to school and back it ran pretty well, except for once or twice when I sort of goosed the accelerator and the engine hesitated and hiccupped. Backing off the gas smoothed it back out.

The problem will probably continue another week or so, but it should clear up eventually. Sort of like when you get over a flu. You're not better all at once. But eventually everything's all right again.

A Sports Fan's Lament

2008-12-12T10:19:00.004-04:00

You pull up roots, move halfway across the hemisphere make new friends, develop new habits.

But you never lose your connection to your sports teams.

I moved from Chicago almost half a century ago, but I'll always be a Cubs fan - even though I don't even follow baseball anymore. I was born a Cubs fan, the son of a Cubs fan. That means I have a family legacy of some of the most painful memories in sports. Summer of '69? That might mean all sorts of political and social upheaval to you, but mostly to me it means the Great Choke, the year the Cubs fell apart in August and lost the pennant to the Mets.

I lived in L.A. in the '70s and still have an affection for the Dodgers, although as I say I don't care about baseball anymore. (I figure if the owners and the players don't care about the game, why should I?)

Now I've left the Pacific Northwest after 28 years in the region, but my heart as a sports fan is still there. And it's been a very, very bad year to be a fan. It's even harder watching from a distance.

You see, part of a fan's job, his or her duty to the team, is to always be supportive, always to believe, always to care so damn much that collectively we fans can will the team to victory. (See, you can tell I'm a Cubs fan. I still believe, even though it's been a century now.)

The year started with a bad season for the Portland Tailblazers. Seattle lost the Sonics. Not just a game - they lost the whole damn team! Oregon State's men's basketball had a pathetic, awful season, fired the coach and hired a guy who happens to be the brother-in-law of the president elect. Not that that will help. The Mariners started the MLB season with high hopes based on their huge team salary, and turned out to be the worst team in baseball this year.

But the hardest part has been football season, because I'm mostly a football fan and it's been terrible.

I've been a Seahawks fan since they started the franchise. Seriously, I was still in L.A. when the team first took the field, but I've been a fan from the beginning. I really, truly believed they were Super Bowl bound this year. Instead, for one reason and another having mostly to do with a vengeful God, they pretty much suck this year. Almost the same personnel that won the division last year, and they've lost all but two games so far in 2008. It's been crazy. They've had so many injuries, so much bizarre trouble, that it can only be ascribed to the diety. (They will win this weekend - they're playing the Rams who are much, much worse - but all that'll mean is they'll drop down the list for next year's draft and lose a chance at a better player.)

And if the 'Hawks have been in the toilet, the Northwest's college teams have been much, much worse. U-Dub didn't win a game this year. Not one. WSU won two games, but one was against the Huskies so that doesn't really count.

The lone shining spot was the OSU Beavers. They started shaky (they ALWAYS start shaky - when will Riley get them to start the season sharp?) but then they went on a roll. They won six straight games. They beat highly touted USC (I hate USC. Beating the Trojans was great.) All they needed was one more win or a USC loss and the Beavers would go to the Rose Bowl, which they'd last visited in 1965 (or 4 B.C. – Before Choke - for any Cub fans keeping score.) All they had to do was beat the hated University of Oregon Ducks in the Civil War game two weeks ago.

It took quite a bit of effort to find a way to listen to the game. We finally found a station in Oregon that streamed the game live, downloaded software, and gathered around the computer to listen to history in the making.

So of course, having built up our hopes, the Beavers lost. And they didn't just lose. The Ducks crushed them, exposed them, made us see that the whole six-game winning streak was a sham, even the win over SC. It was pretty awful. They'd just been setting us up to break our hearts. Why would you do that, Beavers? Why?

But it wasn't quite the end. The Beavers could still smell Roses if USC lost to its bitter cross-town rival UCLA last weekend. It could happen. That's the stuff that makes sports so engrossing, the possibility of the impossible, of the underdog rising up and bringing down the bigger, cockier rival.

Which of course they didn't. The Trojans ran roughshod over the Bruins. It wasn't as bad as the Ducks dismantling the Beavers, but it was a steady, workmanlike victory that put the nail in the coffin that was the Beavers' season.

Really, I can only blame myself. Even though I've moved 4,000 miles from the region, the fact that I still care about teams from the Northwest is enough to doom them.

Don't believe me?

Remember, I am the son of a lifelong Cubs fan. Dad brought his sports jinx with him when the family moved to Los Angeles in 1970. The 1972 Lakers were the greatest basketball team of all time. Don't give me Michael Jordan's Bulls or Larry Bird's Celtics or the Kareem-Magic-Worthy Lakers of the '80s. For one season the 1972 Lakers were better than any team ever. They finished 69-13, won a still-record 33 straight games. Think about that. For almost two months they didn't lose a single game. In the finals they beat the Knicks four games to one. Chamberlain, West, Goodrich, Hairston, Riley, Erickson, Ellis. They won all but five of their home games - they were 36-5 at the Forum.

My dad went to four Laker games that year. They lost all four. What are the odds?

So even though I'm now out here on my warm sunny island, as far from the Seahawks and the Beavers and the Huskies as it's possible to be, those jinxed fan rays that shoot out of me are still beaming clear across the continent and dooming my teams.

But just wait. Next year the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl. I know it. I'm sure of it.

I believe.

jb

Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T08:35:00.002-04:00

An interesting holiday, to be sure.

First, I'm sure there are Crucian Thanksgiving traditions, but I didn't learn them this year. I heard something about potato stuffing. In the store I saw yams bigger than my head – and I have a largish noggin! But we went very traditional this year. Turkey. Bread stuffing. Mashed potatoes. The green-bean thing with the mushroom soup and French fried onion bits (yes we could find them on the island! Surprised me, I'll tell you!) I've always assumed that recipe came from Minnesota.

But all was not smooth sailing. Two days before the holiday the water started spitting when you turned a faucet or flushed the toilet. II checked the cistern and it was full, so that wasn't the problem. Except, as it turned out, it was. We have two cisterns, and we'd been drawing from the back one, which when we opened it up was empty – an excellent place to store a body. Or a whole LOT of bodies.

So I learned a lot about the plumbing of the house in the next 12 hours. Tori figured out how to switch from one cistern to the other. I had to glue back a piece of PVC pipe that had come loose when the pump ran dry. Then I got to learn how to prime a pump.

It's not perfect. You've heard the phrase describing something as "being held together with baling wire?" Well, literally, that's what ours is like right now. Saturday I'll take it apart, re-glue it and put it back together. But that'll mean being without water for at least 24 hours. That takes a bit of planning.

Which means that "pie day" was delayed. Pie Day is the day before Thanksgiving when Tori and the kids make a dozen or more pies – sometimes a lot more. Once I think they made two dozen. This year, what with the late start, only seven pies were made. Which turned out to be more than enough.

Pie Day was also slowed down by the fact that Wednesday was also Alex's birthday. And the next day was Thanksgiving, which is Alex's very favorite holiday. Seriously, she likes it better than Christmas. It's always, all her life, been a time when we get together with crowds of friends (hence all the pies) and it means a lot to her.

Her birthday Wednesday, then her favorite holiday. So, naturally, she got sick on Tuesday. Spectacularly sick, with lots of throwing up and other unpleasantness. Which – let me tell you - was a LOT more fun with no running water for 12 hours. Poor kid. She couldn't have her birthday cake because she'd just toss it back up. She couldn't eat Thanksgiving dinner for fear the sight of the food would make her sick.

So that part of the holiday – not so good. But in all, it was a good day. We flew in an out of he kitchen in teams and shifts and singly putting together the meal, checking the water system, enjoying each other's company. The kids enjoyed the fact that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which in Oregon airs at 7 in the morning and they never see the beginning, any of it, aired at 11 p.m. here because of the time zones, so they enjoyed the whole thing. Had a delightful dinner and enjoyed each other's company very much.

Then Tori and I took our after T-day dinner walk. We've been doing that since we were first married. Sometimes with the kids, sometimes alone. This year we went alone, because instead of walking through the neighborhood in Oregon with the temp hovering in the low 40s, we were walking along a starlit Caribbean beach with the temp in the low to mid 70s. Who wants kids with you in those circumstances? Even when it rained a little (and with one empty cistern, we certainly didn't object to that) it was warm, and just enough to make skin glisten in the star light.

I can unequivocally state that it was the BEST post Thanksgiving dinner walk I've ever taken. I think the girl by my side agreed with me.

So Thanksgiving. What were we thankful for?

Running water. Health and the fact that Alex seems to be on the mend. Thankful for food and family, and for the friends who are far away but who we thought of a lot during the day we associate with them.

jb

Timing is Everything

2008-11-25T13:26:00.001-04:00

Except when camping, I've never used bottled propane as my cooking fuel. But when we moved into our home here, well, that's how you do it on St, Croix. So we contacted Antilles Gas Co. and ordered our first bottle - 100 pounds of gas. The big blue and silver tank sits out back where it's hooked up to the house. During the hurricane we made sure it was tied down securely, but other than that we haven't done anything to it except use it.

There's no gauge on it, so there's really no way of knowing when it's empty except sort of hefting it and guessing. When the guy delivered the first tank, he said it would last three months. That was in August. It's now been almost four months and there was no sign of it giving out, nothing you could tell. The flame didn't flicker any more than it had when we first got it.

But with Thanksgiving coming, we decided not to wait for trouble. The last think you want is for the flame to go out in the oven half way through cooking your turkey. (Yes, we've decided to go with turkey this year. More on that another time.) So I called the gas company and the guy came out.

Tori was here when he arrived. He unsecured the tank from where we'd tied it down, disconnected, and lifted it. And his eyes got big.

"This tank is empty!" he said with surprise. By that, he meant completely empty. As in, not one more meal could have been cooked by it. He rarely sees a tank that empty except when the resident makes a mistake - as we almost did - and runs out of fuel.

So we were lucky there. I had cooked dinner Sunday night and there was no sign that I was running on empty.

I cooked breakfast this morning an there was no difference in the blue flame from the stovetop.

Just lucky I guess. In life, as in comedy, timing is everything.

I Find That Very Odd

2008-11-14T12:56:00.002-04:00

I've got CNN on while I work this morning, and they ran that ad again – the ad extolling the joys, the adventure, the sheer DELIGHT of taking your family on a vacation to beautiful Nebraska.

Nebraska??? I live in the freakin' Virgin Islands!! Nebraska??!? Let's see – Virgin Islands? Warm, beautiful beaches, balmy temperatures, deep, deep blue waters, friendly smiling people, tropical rain forest. Nebraska? Prairie. Rolling fields of wheat. Tornadoes. Raging blizzards. Have I missed anything?

I'm just not sure why the Nebraska tourism people even bother running the ad here. Sure, maybe if you lived in some rusting old industrial city with a winter composed of three months of howling bleak frozen nothingness, maybe Nebraska would look good. But in the Virgin Islands? The worst thing I can say about this place is a lot of people here seem to think Coors Lite is beer.

I think my family drove across a corner of Nebraska 40 years ago on our way home from Yellowstone. That's about right, a dozen or so miles of Nebraska every half century or so.

As I recall, the Nebraska rest areas were very clean. That counts for something.

jb