Why Guatemala?

In our last blog I said we have a lot going on both down here and back in Kansas. I have said in a lot of our blogs down here in Guatemala the food is bad, the music is worse and it’s hot. As for getting hot it’s over a hundred as I set here writing this and it’s getting dark. As for food it seems there is no cheater cheese coming this way any time soon. We have been able to buy it in big chunks sometimes. We buy it and find someone to half it with. I’m now having withdrawal for my favorite vegetable dish. “Mac and cheese.” Some people ask me why we love it so much down here and it’s hard to explain. It’s so different at times I guess is why we are still here. We can’t live well on social security so we do a little sail work and I said last week we were try to break into the art market. Some time doing hand work on a sail is like doing art work and I was setting here under a palapa, quietly working on a sail when two iguanas ran across the floor here. Bright green. Green means. “Girl iguana” A few years back we were here I looked up and there was a monkey looking down at me. Sometimes it sounds better than it is when people hear some one talking about the Caribbean. This is one time no talking can match what that feels like seeing our old home built boat we dreamed so long about, setting near by and a wild monkey checking us both out. One thing for sure you never know what your going to see next.

 

Train worms

This is a picture of what they call train worms traveling across my Bimini top I was painting. They hold on to each other and move like a train. They say they can bit you so I just sweep them off and went on. Let what hasn’t hurt me alone and maybe they want. As I said in our last blog we have been ask to do a presentation at the library in Hoisington Kansas when we go back there for Christmas. The librarian said the kids there have know clue there is anything but the world they see here and maybe there is a lot of the world that is that way. What do we show them? We have a nice sexton. Do we show them what was used in old times up to even when we stared traveling to find where you are at. A sexton was and is a precious instrument to do angles of the heavenly bodies and figure out where you are from that. Sun, planets, moon. I can do a noon shot where the sun is directly over head and with the time it happens I can get some where near where I’m at. Let’s say with in twenty miles or so. I hear people say how good they are with a sexton but I don’t want to have to prove I can get any where near five miles. With GPS now you can see your boat setting in the river here. Will the kids ever understand how great GPS really is with it always being there in their lives? What if I show then a sundial watch? We have one that is a replica of the real thing. From what I have read there is no real sundial watch ever found complete that still works they have found just pieces of them. Mostly what is missing is the compass in the watch. How close is time measured by the sun? Can we explain when the first Europeans came to the Americas there was no watches of any kind any where in the world and when the first spring watch was invented it was a very big thing for with it people that had one could navigate with a sexton and time and know close where they were out there in the vast ocean. There were wooden works clocks they built way back then that ran with weights but how did you set a clock so long ago? A clock set when the sun is directly over head at noon if you are few miles away your clock won’t be the same as their clock. Maybe I will show them how to make what we called a zusa-phone when I was little by placing a piece of wax paper over a comb, put your lips to it and hum. Maybe a wax string between two ten cans to make a phone. The old people in my young life showing me what they had to play with. We have collected a lot of junk in our life traveling and living off the grid. Will any of it impress kids and people out there on the prairie of Kansas. Maybe I have lived before because I was impressed with those green girl lizard running across my floor. Maybe I have been a boy lizard at some time and that explains why I love living so near the jungle down here.

Sundial

New Career?

How do we create change or stop change in our lives. We have a friend that is very sick and this in our life is change no one can stop. Pam and I have been through a lot of changes in our life being married for 55 years now. From being too young for what we were doing to now we are too old to do what we do, “ at least some say”. Looking back it seems we were always doing what was said we couldn’t do or maybe we shouldn’t do. Our life is changing now and we can’t stop it with us getting old. When you’re old can you have another career? What is there to look forward to really. As I have said, sometimes change is there if you see it and you want to just go with it. We have said a lot in our blogs we now have a house out on the Prairie in Kansas. It came along and we took it. Along with the house and us getting old we have decided to try and make another change in our life now maybe before it’s too late. For all of you that love our old home built boat we design and built as we do and our boat life don’t worry the adventure goes on it’s not for sale and still is our home but there may come a time. For now Pam and I have decided to try our hand at art and maybe even getting a book published. As for the art, at the little house I have an art studio now to work in. As for a book we have written three books and have two ready to be looked at. This all sounds so simple. You can and I hope you do always remember this. We have never had anything in “our life” that turned out to be simple. What to paint and where do you sale art? How to understand why some art is so valuable when I don’t see why anyone would buy it and what I see as really good not worth much. Through out my whole life I have questioned this. With writing a book it seems to get even more complicated. Some of the most celebrated writers people talk about I just can’t read. They just can’t hold my interest where some of the writers of old westerns I feed let down when I finish their book because I want it to just keep going. I have a cousin that can sing and has had some success. When she sings you can see people change with surprise that she can do that. Now where to start and how to be successful in such and undertaking as selling art and a book? Along with how to do this when your getting old. With the books we wrote we let ten people read one of the books to get their impression and nine said it was really good to very good but one said the grammar is so bad you need to have an educated person re-wright it. Is nine out of ten “remember I said selected people” mean it’s good enough to get published? As for getting and educated person to re-write it. Would you buy a book about southern people down on the farm where they spoke as if they were educated at Harvard? The first book we want to published is titled “I’m Not Eccentric.” This makes some of my friends laugh just hearing this. I don’t know why? It’s based on living a little or a lot off the grid. Maybe a little of the beaten path. It is based on how to survive and more on how to live cheap with out being noticed. How much do you really want to be noticed really. It’s a problem. Maybe this will explain it better this way. We were at a marina and a party was going on. Some of the people there were into the whole world is going to fall apart soon. We were ask what we would do if something changed so bad we were left with no stores and had to make out the best we could. There was the usual from some of the people there about taking to the woods to survive. There is always that crowd that has trouble building a camp fire that say they can always live in the wild. I said I would kill the marina dog, dress and can her in glass jars before every one got hungry and realized she was the only meat around. From that you may get the zest of the book. We are going back to Kansas in November for the holidays and have been ask to do an art presentation in the library in Hoisington. Maybe present my art at the brick walk in Hays, Kansas again. Can old people have a new career? I think it’s going to be hard. As for what happen at the party where I gave my advice, there were cheers, one women said I was disgusting and the owner of the dog was mad. Pam told them all to not ask Tim a question unless your ready for the answer. Here is a little of my art and living life on your on terms does not make you eccentric.

Boat yard in the 1940 with every thing still built in wood. Frame in recovered wood out of old barns we found out there with hangers out of telegraph wire. The telegraph is long gone in Kansas.

Old farm life painted on “used” burlap bags. Old barn wood frame and telegraph wire hanger.

Pencil drawing on paper. Old used frame from yard sale.

Hurt Arm

Were back on our boat and the green is about gone after our boat was shut up for 4 months. If you stand in one place too long in the Caribbean you will turn green with mold and start to mildew. Even on the go you my mildew a little under your arm pits. The boat is open every day now and it’s still hot here. 85F at midnight. There is always something to do on a boat so we have been busy. Power here is 65 cents a kilowatt and every one is afraid you are going to steel some. We are working in the little palapa near our boat and I have a power cord plugged in to our power meter running down the dock to where we are working. There is power at the palapa but we can’t use it for anything. Pam stepped on the cord and did a dive off the ramp on the rocks in the water. A friend on the dock came a running telling me Pam needed help. It took some time to get her out off the water and you could tell something was very wrong with her arm. We called the Bomberos, that’s the fire department here. They are great. They took us to the hospital, Thirty miles away for ex-rays. On the way there was no way to stop Pam from screaming and crying. She would want me to hold her arm and not touch it. You get the picture. There they ex-rayed her shoulder her arm bone was under her arm pit and no where near the socket. In comes a nurse with a needle and she was asleep. I was ask to leave the room. A short time latter I was let back in the room and she was coming too telling me she had not been to sleep. Now with a pain shot she was a bit easier to live with. We had to go to another room and wait 20 minutes and then we could go. Now for the bill. $220 US dollars total but we needed to go to an ATM machine. The administrator went with us so we would not just leave. Walking with us up the street from the hospital. Now to get back to our boat thirty miles away. No need now for an ambulance. We needed to take a bus they call here a clatevo. We stop on the street and made a sign with our hand like a wave on water and the bus stopped with the conductor saying Rio Rio Dulce. It’s easy to get on a bus here using that water wave sign with your hand and if they’re going somewhere else they won’t stop. Now the problem was how many people were on the bus. This is one of the larger van bus with 4 bench seats including the driver. It was full but the conductor was saying make room for Pam and they did with her now having her arm in a sling. She now was on the back seat where no one could bump in to her but this left me vulnerable. They pulled out a little seat and I was in with 4 people in my seat and I counted 20 people on this 4 seat bus with kids setting in the laps of other people and people standing. Now we moved maybe a little more out of town we stopped again two more got on. Then we stopped again and now I had another full grown women trying to set in the seat I was in and this made 24 people in this van with the last women getting on setting partly on me and partly on the women next to me. With Pam laughing so hard every one could hear her. They looked at me and I said very loud we love Guatemala in Spanish. Every one now was smiling or laughing with us. The ride back is some what tiring try to hold on with the driver driving like a maniac stopping and starting with the volume of people rising and falling in the bus. She is feeling better now but this leaves us with the what-ifs. What-if this had happen out to sea. What-if we had been in the Good old USA? Would the bill have been 220 dollars for a trip to a hospital in an ambulance. Ex-rays and having her put to sleep to set her arm. What-ifs are very troublesome so for now we’re fine and maybe for now I won’t be ask to hold her and not touch her at the same time. Some how with our life style I have got to learn that trick to hold but not touch.