David van Harn

I also just hear the news from a Panamanian friend and neighbor who knows Ralph's landlady - who lived next door to him. Marta told me on Tuesday that Ralph had been in an auto accident while driving home from the airport in David, and was in serious condition at Chiriqui Hospital. It is not easy to recover from serious injuries when you are in your 80's. I was saddened when Marta called me a few minutes ago to tell me that Ralph had died during the night. Ralph had invited me over for a traditional afternoon tea a couple of times, and we had long discussions about our lives and respective interests in nature- in particular, his love of birds, especially hummingbirds. Ralph lived not far from me in Volcancito - near the entrance to Santa Lucia in a very, very modest little rental house. He told me that he was of Danish descent - raised in a wealthy family with servants, and an engineer in the U.S. during his working days. He also said that he was spending a lot to provide care for his wife, who was in a full-care facility for people with Alzheimer's Disease in the U.S. I admired and respected Ralph, and will miss his presence here. If anyone wants something to remember him and his contributions to bird lore during his days in Boquete, I believe that Piggy Press Books has some of his books available at the Tuesday Morning Market.

From the above link: " It does recognize that transgenic resistance to certain herbicides is causing ‘a major agricultural problem’, as other plants and insects are developing immunity to the herbicides used in the GMOs fields." I am not really concerned about the direct health effects of eating GMO foods, but rather other issues such as the brutal, small farmer destroying tactics of Monsanto and others and their legions of attorneys, and known and potential environmental issues. Selling things like "Roundup-resistant" GMO's do indeed benefit corporate requirements for maximizing short-term return on investments, but may have lingering negative effects on the environment. Remember that in addition to changing the character of the crop or increasing yields, many GMO crops are engineered to be resistant to herbicides and designed to kill pests or harm them in a way to reduce or minimize the damage they do to crops. Roundup kills the most vulnerable weeds, but resistant individual weeds then survive, and natural selection leads to "super-weeds" developing. Then, even more Roundup is needed to kill the super-weeds. Rather then suffer losses due to super-weeds, farmers, in their desperation, use ever-increasing amounts of Roundup until the cost/benefit ratio kills the economic viabiliby of growing a particular crop. It's a vicious cycle. (LINK) From an additional link: First of all, it is important to understand what a GMO is precisely. The World Heath Organization (WHO) defines them as organisms whose DNA has been altered in a non-natural way. GM plants are usually changed to be insect resistant, virus resistant, or herbicide tolerant. With these changes come some potentially problematic environmental challenges. Firstly, toxicity is a huge issue surrounding chemical pesticides and herbicides, used commonly with GMOs, in addition to the toxicity inherent to these plants. GMOs may be toxic to non-target organisms, bees and butterflies being the most talked-about examples currently. Bees are hugely important in the pollination of many food crops, but are unfortunately extremely endangered by modern agricultural techniques, such as GM crops. Monarch butterflies are specifically at risk from GMO maize plants. In addition to bees and butterflies, birds are also at risk from pesticides, and work as biological control agents and pollinators, again, like bees. Furthermore, the long term effects of GMOs are not certain. Pests that are targeted by these agricultural methods can adapt to pesticides and herbicides, in addition to the DNA changes in GM plants to make them ¨resistant.¨ This means that they will not always be effective, but their toxic legacies will remain. Cumulative effects of products such as GMOs are important to take into consideration. Evidence also suggests that small genetic changes in plants may produce even larger ecological shifts, meaning that there is potential for GMO´s to become persistent and weedy in agricultural conditions, since they are modified to be resistant to some modern agricultural techniques. This can also mean being invasive in natural settings, where GMOs, of course, do not occur naturally. It is not impossible for new, human modified, plants to become invasive species in delicate, natural ecosystems. Finally, biodiversity, while it is critical in all ecosystems and to the sustainability of all species, is put at risk by GMOs. When GM crops are planted, generally in a mono-crop fashion, many heritage seeds are no longer used. The nature of GMOs means fewer weed flowers and, therefore, less nectar for pollinators. Toxins released into the soil through the plants´ routes mean fewer soil bacteria, which are integral to healthy soil for plants to grow without the use of chemical fertilizers. Toxic residues are left in the soil of GM crops. Nutrients are not returned to the soil in mono crops and from GMO foods, meaning that soil is becoming dry and void of all nutrients, generally integral to the growing process. A cycle of dependence on GMO seeds and chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides is then created in order to grow a single crop. In addition to soil issues, the irrigation used to grow GM foods naturally carries all of these problems into water sources and into the air. This exposes different bacteria, insects, and animals to the same problems.

At least they are changing most of the traffic lights to LEDs - much brighter with very saturated colors - easy to see even in bright sunlight.

A friend and I stopped at the office at the El Frances development several months ago when the building was near completion. A nicely dressed Panamanian businessman - I forget his name - who claimed to represent the developer came out and talked to us. He said that the houses would start at about $120K, that they would preserve most of the trees and build a divided boulevard into the development just north of the office and model home. I liked his attitude and ideas, but recently have been curious about why the place has appeared to be deserted for several months.

Roger, that seems to be very true with restaurants in Boquete. Many fail to thrive and eventually close after being sold - especially to people who are not foodies - and/or have no restaurant experience. They often have no idea how to keep it fresh and appealing, and don't know how to do the regular advertising that is often needed.

As of 2:15 pm, the ning system is back up. Marc Andreesen (LINK), multi-millionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist was a co-creator of the early internet browsers Mosaic and Netscape, and was a co-founder of the of ning social websites company in 2004. Over two million ning sites have been created since then. Boquete.ning is just one of many ning sites, and the entire system was down today.

I am confident in Dr. Anguizola and his equipment, but I truly appreciate your concern and suggestion, Judy. Dr. Anguizola's echo-cardiogram instrument in his office at Mae Lewis Hospital is modern, and he was there handling the probe and doing most of the imaging himself. While in the hospital, a fellow patient in my room had an echo-cardiogram done, and I could watch the procedure from my bed. It was set up by a medical technician and then the cardiologist stepped in to do the exam. It was an amazing instrument that looked to be brand new and state-of-the art. The combination of heart pumping sounds sound and image quality was truly remarkable. (In my younger days, I was a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman for four years. Later, I worked as a lead technician in the development of dual-lumen cardiac catheters for one the world's first direct-reading blood oximeters. Later still, I worked in sales and tech support for Jandel Scientific's scientific graphing, statistics and video measurement software, and communicated with research doctors around the world. I am comfortable with my assessment of the equipment and the doctor's.)

Someone asked about Dr. Anguizola at Ning, but I decided to cross-post my response here. Hopefully, this will be useful to those who do not have medical insurance here in Panama. Dr. Anguizola's office is at Mae Lewis Hospital. He became my cardiologist when I was admitted to Regional Hospital in David on February 23 of this year. He is now my regular cardiologist. I have great respect for Dr. Anguizola - I think he is an excellent cardiologist. His office phone number is 774-2453 - but his staff speaks only Spanish. --------- For those who are interested in my experience related to my mild heart attack in February of this year, here is my story... I am a 74 y/o expat who moved here from Sonoma County in Northern California in early 2012. I am a permanent legal resident of Panama, and have an E-Cedula (Panama's national ID card for non-citizen foreigners). I have have no medical insurance in Panama. My Medicare Supplement plan includes a $2,500 deductible, and I would have to go to Florida or elsewhere in the U.S. to use it. I suffered a mild heart attack on February while carrying my stuff in to the BCP Center for the Tuesday Morning Market. I became weak and dizzy, so I took everything back out to my car, and drove to Dr. Chen's office. Dr. Gomez quickly had me lie down on the patient bed, ran an EKG, determined that I was having a cardiac "ischemic event" - reduced blood flow to the heart muscles. That visit cost $120. Dr.Gomez called the 911 ambulance (my choice - minimal equipment, but a free ride). They arrived soon, took me to the Regional Hospital in David. (A better-equipped private ambulance would cost $250.) After another EKG in the "coronaria" (coronary emergency unit), it was determined that my condition was not that serious, so I was on a bed in the very crowded coronary emergency area for about 12 hours. (A new, bigger hospital is being built on the property, which will be a big help with the capacity problem.) Although the coronary emergency doctor at first thought I might go home the next day, it was later decided to admit me. I was moved upstairs to a six-bed coronary care room and confined to bed with not even bathroom privileges. I was hooked up to a modern, high-tech heart monitoring machine. After three days, I was disconnected from the heart monitor, and moved to a regular room on the cardio floor, still confined to bed. On the 5th day, I was allowed to get out of bed and discharged after my sixth day. Hospital cost for six days - just under $900. Dr. Anguizola's discharge orders for me included 30 days of not driving, resting at home, and not doing any kind of exercise of work. My 30-day supply of 7 different cardiac medications cost $44 at the regional hospital pharmacy. My first follow-up appointment with Dr. Anguizola at his Mae Lewis Hospital office including an EKG and 1/2 hour consultation cost $75. Future appointments at 3-month intervals for now will be $50 or $60, and getting prescription renewals without seeing him costs $10. My next appointment was for an echocardiogram (ultrasound), which cost $175, and no issues were found. A week later, my last follow-up appointment included a stress test (EKG while walking on a treadmill) and some irregularities were found. Dr. Anguizola recommended that I have an angiogram done. I was quoted approximately $4,000 for an angiogram here in David, and $15,000 for an angioplasty if necessary. He also said that I could probably get by with longer-tern medications, which I am doing for now. I am pretty much back to normal, and very impressed with the medical system and the medical professionals here in Chiriqui. I am currently taking cardio aspirin ($7 for 30 tabs at Farmicia Revilla, $8 for 1,000 tabs via Amazon, which is $7 per month vs about $5 per year.) My very low dose statin (Vastatina) is available at the public clinic pharmacy for $1.20 per month, and I had to show my cedula to get it. (I don't know if having a cedula is a requirement.) However, they don't carry my angina med, which is $15 per month at Farmacia Revilla. My drug costs will be about $18 per month after I get the cardio-aspirin from Amazon. I am the first I know of in my family to have a heart attack, but the care and medical services here in Chiriqui are excellent, and I appreciate what they offer for such a reasonable cost.

Actually, the streetlight that is not working is down the short dead-end lane on the way to some small houses of my Panamanian neighbors. If they want it replaced, I assume that they know how to notify the utility company. The light in front of my casa is working properly.

Although I don't have the ASUS problem, I did have problems with "upgrade to Windows 10" spamming and Microsoft updates running spyware on my Toshiba laptop during a very long boot time - up to ten minutes before all the background tasks were completed and my applications would load and run normally. I was atone time a "Microsoft Certified Professional" for Windows desktop and server software, but now my skills are old, rusty and way outdated. However, I don't like the heavy-handed Windows 10 update spamming and Microsoft's spying tricks (which they call "telemetry)." Every time I booted my Toshiba laptop, Microsoft's spyware would spend up to 5 minutes or more looking through my hard drive and sending information back to their servers. I could see the high processor utilization with the Windows "Performance Monitor" and also see that MS telemetry was the process hogging the processor and making it nearly impossible to run any applications for up to 10 minutes. A bit of internet searching turned up a simple solution. It is a command utility that has to be run "as supervisor." Those who can download, unzip, and right-click on a ".cmd" file and run it "as supervisor" can run this cleanup utility. The upgrade cleanup utility is from VOAT Technology [LINK] and is called "Aegis for Windows 7/8.x - Block all known Microsoft spying and Windows 10 upgrade elements." The utility is well documented for those who are interested, and it uninstalls all necessary Microsoft updates and marks them to not be reinstalled. My laptop now completely finishes booting and running background applications in 3 minutes.

The street light on the lane next to my house has been burned out for over 2 years. The one in front of the house only took a year to be replaced.

The two quakes did not occur at the same time. Scientists - including seismologists - rely on very accurate timekeeping. The 5.1 magnitude quake 200 miles away on the other side of the Galapagos islands is way to distant to be felt here. Also, it occurred at 7:17 (12:22:55 UTC/GMT), not 7:23. The earthquake waves from the 5.1 quake would have reached us in about 30 seconds, but would have been far too week to feel at that distance. The local Palo Alto 3.6 quake was at 7:23. I was sleeping in, and my alarm was set for 7:35. I woke up when I felt the quake, and looked at my alarm clock. The time was 7:23.

Alto al Crimen does not sell pet products, and this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with that organization. I have a wide range of interests, and this discussion triggered a bit of curiosity about the world of dog-deodorants. We retired folks often have time to examine such trivia. So, I simply pointed out a possible area of confusion related to two different dog products with the same name. When I tried to look up more information about the dog-deodorant, I didn't find any info about the Boquete Pup-Fresh product. Instead, I found something altogether different. Pup-Fresh turned out to be an established pet-care product in the U.S., and the manufacturer had trademarked the name there. With a globalized world economy, product confusion can now more easily cross national borders. As long as people are aware of what the product is and what it does - and they want to try it - fine by me. Knowing Bob as an ethical person, his Pup-Fresh is probably a good product. My interest was simply based on curiosity.

The article starts out with b.s and myths, although their points on oil quality may have merit. Cold-pressed coconut oil is a big fad these days, and there is not much peer-reviewed research available on it's affect on health in specific diet/lifestyle combinations. There is some indication that fresh coconut and oil not subjected to high temps (cooking and baking) is better for your health than processed versions. The lower incidence of heart disease in some South Pacific cultures is likely due to overall lifestyle and diet, not just a single factor such as coconut oil use. It is not logical to pick one factor out of a complex cultural lifestyle and claim that it controls everything, including heart disease. Scientists are very much aware that the incidence of heart disease increases significantly when populations move from farms, villages and the countryside to cities, and maintain the same diets. So it is quite obvious that diet is not the only factor. In the mean time, I still enjoy an occasional coconut macaroon from Morton's Bakehouse, which is usually also available at the Tuesday Morning BCP Market. And one of my very favorite Boquete treats is an occasional dark chocolate-covered coconut bar from Chox - our local Artisan Chocolateria. I am acutely aware that it is going to take more than coconut to restore my heart health and maintain it - even here in our tropical mountain paradise.

Definitely not a cockroach. However, big or small, if not controlled, cockroaches can take over your kitchen...

But then there is the roach brooch...

I am writing this because their might be some confusion between two different dog odor control products - one toxic and one not - that are sold under the same product name. "Pup-FreshTM" is a trademark registered by Pupgear Corporation in the U.S. Pup-FreshTM is a granular absorbent product for dog-urine odor-control. Pup-Fresh non-toxic granules prevent the formation of ammonia which is a primary cause of pet urine odor. It appears that a Panamanian company decided to use the same name for a dog-spray product that is formulated to "kill" odors originating on the skin of dogs, and also act as a germicide (matador de germen?) and a flea repellent. While PupGear's Pup-Fresh product is non-toxic to plants and animals, apparently El Matador's "Pup Fresh" dog-spray is harmful to cats.

Point taken, Dottie. I live in Boquete, and I am at the Tuesday Market every week - so I have good access to local coconut oil. However, after a recent mild heart attack and a need to lower my cholesterol and blood pressure to reduce plaque and hardening of my arteries, I minimize the use of it in my diet, even though I love the taste of coconut. Contrary to a lot of popular contemporary health food folklore based on non-comprehensive Polynesian population health studies, virgin cold pressed coconut oil is about 92% saturated fat and therefore not very good for cooking. I did lots of online research while planning changes in my diet this year, and found out that coconut oil is one of the worst choices for heart-healthy diet. It turns out that Asian countries with the highest per capita consumption of coconut oil also have very high rates of obesity and related health issues. I'm getting ready to switch to lots of baking and roasting and will use a bit of coconut oil occasionally for its flavor. (And of course, coconut oil has many non-food uses.)

Grandma must have been a fan of General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, who famously kept the pseudo-Latin version of the saying on his desk during WWII.

No Tums or Rolaids, but Farmacia Any carries Bayer's "Baytalcid" which is a great substitute.

But, but - wouldn't making the rich pay their fair share of taxes - especially when such efforts are made by governments that provide welfare and aid to the poor and destitute - be considered a "redistribution of wealth?" Such obviously communist schemes make American Tea Party members quiver in their skivvies! The horror of it all - it must be an American Democratic Party plot! Please remember that only hard working middle class people should pay taxes. /snark

$8 per pint (16oz) for local coconut oil comes to 50 cents per ounce. That's $27 for 54oz. Although I like PriceSmart - and many of their items are much, much less expensive than elsewhere in the region - I usually prefer to support local vendors, especially when the price is that close.

I sent a message to their old e-mail address and it didn't bounce - I'll wait to hear from them. Their old "www.fincatierrapuraboquete" website is gone.

Pat and Susan Farrell once offered such goodies and more from their finca and organic greenhouse in Volcancito Arriba, but apparently could not find a sufficient market for heirloom tomatoes. They said that Panamanians like their tomatoes plain and red. I noticed that their "Finca Tierra Pura" with it's absolutely beautiful brand new house, two casitas, greenhouses, etc., was listed for sale by Casa Solution in January. The excellent YouTube video showing the property is still up, [LINK] but the listing is gone from the Casa Solution website. The video is on of the best real estate videos I have seen, and it is great for showing the beauty of the Boquete highlands. Does anyone know if Pat and Susan are still in Boquete?

I cannot speak for other regions of Panama, but my interest in climate and weather makes me an avid observer of local conditions. There have been thunderstorms close by recently, but no rain up here in Volcancito yet. I drove through a downpour in Dolega Monday afternoon on the way back from David, and there was water running in the streets in the town, but not north or south of the town itself. From my house over the past couple of weeks, I've seen more "convection" (the tight, rapidly rising dense cottony clouds that form thunderstorms) to the south, and over the southern flanks of Volcan Baru. These dynamics are what should eventually intensify and become the source of our rainy season here in the Boquete area. The Bajareque wind and mist have certainly tapered off, and I'm not seeing the ragged look of the higher clouds being "blown-back" southward over Volcan Baru or the Jaramillo mountains. So it looks like a slow transition to the rainy season may be beginning here. Climate-wise, the 2016 El Nino event is rapidly weakening, and we are in the midst of a transition to a likely moderate La Nina developing over the summer and early fall. Following the last strong El-Nino in 1997-1998, Hurricane Mitch formed off the coast of Panama. By the time Mitch dissipated, nearly 20,000 people were dead, including three in Panama. There is a possibility of an active Caribbean hurricane season again this year, but Panama is south of the hurricane belt, and only a very large storm like Mitch would affect Panama - and even then only with heavy rain - but not wind and storm surge. Considering the damage around Boquete from the 2008 floods (pics at Lloyd Cripe's BoqueteWeather.com website), we should be aware of the possibilities next fall. From Wikipedia: