Rehearsals for Hootenanny

We have been rehearsing 4 times a week for 3 to 5 hours.

Too much!

My fingers are sore. That's what happens when you haven't played guitar for a while. It takes a few weeks to get your calluses back then it takes a few MONTHS to strengthen the tissue beneath the calluses.

So I am screwed from that stand point...not enough time to prepare the fingers. I even soaked my finger tips in ice water last night. It may have helped.

For some strange reason, I have been enjoyed playing this simple, sing-song music at rehearsal. There is a zen like quality to it. And, there has been plenty of opportunity to crack jokes and have fun.

All that came crashing down yesterday.

We had a full run through rehearsal at the venue with a sound tech.

A couple of notes about live performing.

Every time something changes, the music falls apart. That's because we are all amateurs. The pros are so familiar with the different performing environments that they take it in stride and the show goes on.

Not with amateurs.

Every new change leaves us disoriented and baffled. As soon as concentration is lost or misdirected, you lose your place and start hitting bad chords and notes.

Needless to say, at the venue, we can't hear much. All the sound is out front with the sound system. This is typical. I have rarely been able to hear at a gig. This is just the way it is.

With this group, it created havoc and so many things went wrong.

By the end of the rehearsal, I was hungry and exhausted.

All the laid back, zen, easy going attitude that I had been maintaining was gone.

The key word was maintaining. My concerns were always there but I was squashing them.

Thank God, this is a sing along. The audience will love it, no matter what happens. I'm sure it will go over well. No worries about pleasing the crowd.

But, I like to do a good job. I am an achievement junky. It pains me to screw things up.

I just need to scratch around and find my "Bad Attitude Suppressor" and turn it on...full blast!

The show must go on...

Returnable Coke Bottles

I ordered a coke with my pizza this afternoon and noticed that it was in a returnable bottle.

It's been a while since I've seen that!

In many ways, it is 1950's retro here.

The kids wear uniforms to school. Dogs run free...no leash laws. People walk around at any time of night without fear. And everyone stops to talk to friends...this can cause a few accidents with drivers suddenly pulling over to talk to someone.

Panama is building a new 4 lane road from David to Boquete. This is about 30 miles of road, now dangerous because of all the inconsistent traffic on the road.

They have a REAL road building contractor. New equipment and everything. I actually saw a street sweeper cleaning the road after it was trashed with mud and debris while they were working.

How about that!

As I was walking downtown, I looked into a pickup truck and saw a nuclear density gage! This is the testing equipment we used in the states. I had no idea they even knew what proper road building technique is.

Will wonders never cease!

Today and yesterday we had almost no rain! A little wind out of the north...summer!

Summer happens December through March. But it also is a term that means the wind is from the north which prevents the rain from oozing up from the south which causes the rainy season.

We had "summer" the first 10 days of October which is unusual because this is the rainiest month of the year. And now we have had 2 days of summer.

I think the rainy season is almost over. I'm ready!

Here is a link that isa very funny video, especially for those of us that are sober.

http://www.theonion.com/video/aa-destroying-the-social-lives-of-thousands-of-onc,18349/

I encourage you to watch it. I know, you already get too much crap from your friends.

But, I don't normally send you anything so watch it, OK?

Doggie Amor

I haven't been around a dog in heat for about...huh...well...40 years.

I forgot what a pain in the ass (excuse the pun) it is!

Our little dog is getting laid more than a whore in Las Vegas. The males are lined up outside the fence 3 and 4 deep.

I drove up to the house with our contractor Friday and Sophie (Our dog) was locked with a male in the road. There was no getting them out of the road for a while.

Stuck is stuck!

So we parked in the road and walked to the house.

One little black male in particular knows how to defeat the fence time after time. Really, this is a good thing because we get to debug the fence.

A fast as we fix a hole...normally at the bottom of the fence which is cemented to the concrete blocks at the base of the fence...the little black dog digs through the cement patch before it gets hard. Every time! We are on fix 4 and counting because he got through just a few minutes ago--again!

We have yet to keep this little bastard out.

You would think he would be exhausted by now! Got to admire him.

Yesterday, Yella had been in the bedroom. She came out into the living room to discover the dogs locked together and at it again.

Can't really separate them. Just got to wait it out.

Fortunately, Sophie is about out of heat. Maybe we can get some sleep now.

She undergoes the knife next Sunday so this won't happen again, with her anyway.

Onto another topic...

The contractor has yet to finish the fence.

I picked him up in town this morning at 7 am. I had to go to town 3 times for supplies and to pick up additional workers that NEVER showed up.

Grrrr!!!!!

Then, went it started to rain, I took him back into town. If you are counting, that is 5 trips into town in one day.

When workers are here, we end up working for them.

It is a major pain in the ass to get anything done.

Don't laugh now, but I think we will get the fence finished this week.

I know, funny huh?

The Ying & Yang of 3rd World Living

I am struggling with Spanish.

The last couple of classes, our instructor has looked at me kind of incredulously when I don't understand something she is saying. At one point, she said "really!?" To my lack of understanding. Like, how can you be so obtuse?

I can't hear Spanish when spoken. This is Yella's strong point. She hears it very well. She has "good ears." Probably from her musical talent.

We have done a flip flop.

At the start of classes, the teacher was somewhat amazed at the words and grammar I knew, being a beginner.

I had been cheating. I listened to Spanish tapes for over 2 years and did learn somethings, not listening but words and conjugations of verbs.

Now I am the slow poke. And the dense one.

I also feel cheated.

The most important skill in language is being able to hear. If you can hear, then you can speak any old jumble of nouns and verbs and you will be understood. Walla...communication.

So I got the shit end of the stick. I know the grammar and I can speak it fairly well.

But I can't hear a damn thing spoken to me.

I am very frustrated.

That is the ying.

Today, I realized that my car license plates were 3 months over due.

I forgot!

My friend and I went to David and waded through a maze of crap to get my plates. It took less than 20 minutes and less than $50 bucks (including the penalty) to complete the transaction.

Not bad!

That doesn't happen every day down here.

Then I rehearsed for 3 hours for the hootenanny. Sitting around playing guitar, doing a little singing, is not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

When I got home, Yella had badgered our fence contractor to plug the holes in the fence so we can actually contain our dogs with the fence now.

Oh, the joy!

Being able to throw the dogs outside, without chaining them up, is like a huge relief. All the male neighborhood dogs come around trying to get to our in heat female...and they can't get in!

Ahhhhhh..... Now that's is satisfying.

That is the Yang.

The Never-Ending Fence Project

We are now in week 6 of building the fence. The same one that our contractor said would take 1 to 2 weeks to complete.

And the end is in sight but the finish is still a week or 2 out.

The little female dog we are adopting is now ours full time. And she just went into heat!

Shit!

I swore I would never go through a dog in heat again. With any luck, the fence will be finished to a degree sufficient to contain the dogs at the end of today.

If not, let the doggy sex begin!

We have an amazing spay and neuter clinic in town. It is a non-profit, free service. The awful starving, stray dog problem has been solved through the incredible efforts of this non-profit.

Our new little female will under go the knife in 2 weeks.

In the mean time, we will have to endure the powerful yearning of nature's way.

You may be asking yourself, "How in the hell can a project get delayed this long?"

I'm glad you asked.

Mainly, a lack of supervision and underestimating the amount of work.

The contractor left 2 men on the fence for 4 weeks without supervision. They sandbagged him in a big way, mainly hanging out in our garage playing video games on their phones. And the afternoon rain would send them scurrying home when a 15 minute wait would of yielded a perfectly good afternoon to work...if they only waited.

Now, after today when they will finish most of the fence, we will wait another week or 2 for the electrician to hook up the electric gate motor.

Not a big problem because we can use the gate until it is hooked up to electricity.

You are now shaking your head and wondering why we are putting an electric motor on the gate, huh?

Well, the road is steep at the gate. To get out of the truck or car and open the gate requires shutting the motor off and setting the brake. Sooner or later, the temptation to leave the motor running and use the emergency brake would be too great and an accident will surely happen.

So we will get the electric opener.

Once again I learn the lesson that nothing, and I mean nothing, happens here in a reasonable amount of time.

On another note, life is busy now. I have 3 rehearsal a week for the hootenanny and 3 Spanish lessons a week plus homework. Busy, busy.

I like it!

Life is good...in spite of the Never-Ending Fence Project.

Money is Not the Same In Panama

On my way to Olga's for breakfast, I saw a friend at Dorado Park. I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks, so I stopped to have a cup of coffee. We then moved on to Olga's for breakfast and had a fun hour of conversation.

Then I went to the gym to work out and on to rehearsal for the hootenanny.

Only the rehearsal was for this afternoon, not 11 am when I got there.

No problem. We started talking and soon we were discussing an unusual relationship to money in Panama.

He was having trouble with his PA board for his sound system. We had talked about where electronics could be repaired. The only tech we knew of was at the Chino electronic shop in David.

Scary!

He took his PA board to them. They ran it for 6 hours and couldn't get it to act up.

The shop owner offered him a cheap PA board as a replacement even though his was working in the shop. He commented that he wanted to try it before buying it.

This is where the difference in money shows up.

They said take the PA board and come back and pay us if you like it.

That happens here a lot.

I got a haircut a few weeks ago. When I went to pay, I didn't have the correct change and they didn't have change either. I told them I would be back to pay.

No problem.

I went back 30 minutes later and paid.

My friend was in a pharmacy to buy drugs. When he went to pay, his credit card was refused. He tried another and it was refused. This happens a lot. Sometimes on store will accept the card and another won't.

That's the way it goes.

He pushed the drugs back across the counter and said he would return. They said take them and pay us later (it was $40). He said he would return in the PM. They said he could return manana.

In the dictionary, manana means tomorrow but in reality it means some time in the future.

A very loose relationship to money!

Or maybe a relationship of trust. Even though this is a thieving culture, there seems to be a high degree of trust around paying what is purchased.

The in's and out's of a culture are interesting!

John Lennon

John Lennon would have been 70 today.

But some rotten bastard shot him.

There are a four people from this time that were my heros. For me, he is in the company of Gandhi, John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

I am left wondering what the world would be like today, if they all lived. How can any nation or world make it with our best and greatest leaders assassinated?

Who is left to be the voice of greatness? The voice of peace. The voice of kindness. The voice of kindred spirits.

I miss them. And yearn for them.

The Beatles, with Lennon in the lead, shatter what was possible in the music world. Then, turned their attention to the world, and social change.

The sentiments in his song "Imagine" sum up his life well.

For some of us, this song has become sacred.

May you rest in peace, John.

Spanish, Round 2

A few blogs ago, I was lamenting about how hard it is to learn Spanish. We had 2 lessons that were ass kickers.

Yesterday, we had a conversation in class that was spirited and facile. It flowed and went at a good clip. At one point, our instructor took off and forgot she was in class with a rapid stream of Spanish.

I felt like maybe we can do this.

Now, it was a highly focused conversation about our families...you know, aunts and uncle, nieces and nephews, etc. Many "at-a-boys" to our professora and the school for their skill in structuring a conversation that was attainable to us neophytes.

I observed how all this worked as it was going on.

I let the conversation flow over me like water over a rock, being content to get a few of the words spoken, enough to get the gist of the communication. Then the magic started. It was hard to get a word in edgewise with 3 people talking.

It's been a long time since I was in school. I forgot how to learn. I forgot what it takes.

And, to be honest, I didn't like it back then either, even though I was good at it.

I know that the process of learning Spanish will come and go, easy and hard. It was nice to have a magical experience at this point.

The Power of Water

I was taken to a trail a few weeks ago that I thought was a new trail, previously unknown to me.

As we started the trail, I didn't recognize it. For the next hour, walking the entire length of the trail, I didn't recognize it.

We got to the end in a magnificent box canyon with a 200 foot high waterfall. Stunning! I didn't recognized it.

On the way down, it dawned on me that I had been on this trail at least 10 times before. It had been so altered by the floods in the last 2 years that I didn't recognize it.

Previously, below the waterfall, there was a huge log jam about 100 yards wide and 300 yards long.

It was GONE. Now, just stream bed. Wow! Where did all that debris go?

Last week I tried to walk the same trail. No deal. The recent heavy rains had washed out the first log bridge and I couldn't get across.

Today, I walked the trail and someone had restored the log bridge. Who? Whoever, thanks!

After the hike, I drove up a road high in the rain forest to look for a trailhead I hadn't been on in 3 years.

The road was devastated. Landslides, washes across the road, ditches full of mud and debris.

Amazing to watch the power of water in action.

The US doesn't have this much rain...anywhere in the lower 48 states. I haven't scene this in the past.

Plus, this is extremely young geologically speaking. Geologic time starts in the 10's of thousands of years.

Here, the volcano erupted 500 years ago. The slopes are still steep and relatively unweathered by the forces of nature.

This is still a wild place.

I love being in the middle of these massive, earth forming forces.

Micky and Squirt

What is a Micky and Squirt?

They are a musical couple who have been retired in Boquete for 5 years ago.

He, Micky, played in bars for 40 years across the US, mainly in the resort areas of Colorado, Nevada and eventually Nashville. He went on to write songs later in his career.

She, Squirt, is a song writer who lived in Nashville most of her career.

They both had hit songs in the country market. Hers was number 1 and his was in the Top 10 on the Country Charts. Most of their stuff is very good and funny. They also wrote a musical play that has been performed here to rave reviews.

The problem is that Micky is on psychotropic drugs for mental issues. He has a nasty reputation for being a king sized jerk when off his meds.

We were at a play a few weeks ago and Micky was off his meds. He created a scene in the lobby before the show, throwing a fit and demanding to be let into the play before the doors opened. He threw a few coats around while yelling and kicky shit.

Not a pleasant experience. His reputation proceeds him around here.

They are playing 5 songs in the hootenanny.

We were rehearsing today when Micky and Squirt showed up for the first time. I was full of trepidation. And I was intimidated by their amazing careers. After all, I am an amateur hack and he is volatile. Not a good mix in the best of times.

They are folk singing artists, from a time before mine, in the early 60's. A perfect fit for the hootenanny.

They look the part.

She has white, long hair loosely pulled into pig tails. Pigtails...can you believe it. He is WASHED out. With thin hair going out in all directions, looking like a old, old man at the end of his life.

As he was playing along with us, he was missing notes and chords. Clearly he has seen better days.

The director asked them to play their stuff.

He started playing and singing "Puff the Magic Dragon." This was a bad, limp, insipid song when it came out and it is now even more tired and worn out.

His finger picking was spotty and his voice was croaky. But...this is his music...authentic, coming from his being, who he is. And it is an innocent song about children. Micky is regressing to the point that he is child like too.

I was moved. The sincerity and authenticity coupled with the innocence and childlike quality were mesmerizing. So beautiful. So haunting. So much integrity. So personal.

If I heard this in a bar or restaurant, with all the noise from the silverware and dishes and conversation, I would have walked out, disgusted. I would have missed it.

This was a rare opportunity to be in the presence of something great. Sitting in a garage, high up in the jungle rainforest, rain coming down a few feet from where I was sitting, listening to a thin, haunting, authentic song of child-like innocence.

Wow! I will remember this for a long time.

Feeling Oh So Stupid

I don't do well with feeling stupid.

After all, my life has been about achievement and accomplishment. I made sure that my time was spent doing things that I was good at, for God's sake. And I was damn sure successful!

I had a meltdown on Saturday, in public. Not a good thing.

I was at rehearsal for this hootenanny. They are asking me to sing 3 songs with harmonies as well as learn the guitar for 20 more songs all by October 30th. Learning the guitar parts is confronting enough.

I don't like to sing for a reason.

With singing, I am a very slow learner. And a tedious learner. A laborious learner. And I get fried easily once confronted with my stupidity around learning a singing part.

I am the village idiot around singing.

Very few people are willing to believe that I have this much trouble learning a melody, much less a harmony. They think that because I sing well once I know a song that surely it comes fairly easy for me.

Not so...

So I had a meltdown and became an asshole and started attacking my fellow musicians for telling me this was easy and how could I have this much trouble blah blah blah.

So the asshole in me came out in flaming colors.

It really pisses me off went people tell me something is easy when it is NOT!

I owe a round of apologies to these poor guys. They were just trying to help. Even though it was misguided, it was heartfelt.

Now on to the next "I feel stupid" thing.

Learning Spanish.

The first 2 classes were amazing. Fun, reinforcing and confidence building.

The next 2 classes were a real bitch. This is tough stuff.

I have discovered that as soon as a word is spoken that I don't know, I stop hearing the rest of what is said. I am stuck trying to figure out the unknown word.

And that old familiar feeling of stupidity takes over. Again, I feel like striking out and getting pissed at someone.

In Spanish, the gender and singular/plural all have to match. As well as the congegation of the verb. You would think this is simple stuff, and it is.

But NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

You try it. Time after time after time we screw it up. So simple. How can it be this F$#@$# difficult? It is mind boggling. Something this simple is so impossible to get right.

The teacher drilled us for a hour on this simple thing with possessive pronouns. You know: mine, yours etc. It is not that difficult. Why oh why do we keep screwing it up?

It is probably easier to learn nuclear physics.

I don't like to feel stupid so someone has to pay, damn it!

So far, I have refrained from acting out in Spanish class. These good teachers don't need that kind of abuse.

I am convinced at this point with Spanish that it will be impossible for me to learn it. I simply can't conceive of understanding something so unintelligible. It is all Greek to me...or...Spanish.

So I sit this evening, pissed at the world because I can't learn Spanish...and I have to learn these stupid songs that I don't even like...I want to kick the dog...and my wife...and anyone else that comes around.

I don't like to feel stupid.

Working for the Contractor

There was very little progress on the fence last week so they were supposed to show up with 6 guys on Sunday (today) to make up for the loss of time. Good idea, you say?

I jumped out of bed at 6:30 to open up the garage in anticipation of the crew showing up. I want to be ahead of them so they have no reason to delay.

Waiting....waiting...waiting...waiting...

At 8:30 they finally get here. They usually arrive before 7. With only 4 guys. Saturday night took it's tole and 2 didn't show up.

Damn. F$#@$!!!

It is always something here. An early start is most important because it is the rainy season and and the probability of rain is 100% and it normally starts at about noon.

Now that they are here, I have to help them. Do you have a screw driver? Do you have a file? Do you have welding rod?

What? Welding rod. So I have to go get some.

And it goes like that.

My friend says, "I have my gardner (or any worker) at the house today so I am working for him today."

When people are going to work at your house, you have to pick them up, get them tools because they never come with much, stop at a store so they can buy snacks for breakfast and lunch, run to the store all day long to buy supplies and materials.

Oh to have a US contractor where they do it all!

It is now 2 pm and they are still working. We had only a short rain at about noon. But it is foggy and the air is pregnant with moisture so the flood gates will open shortly.

And it goes on and on...