METALLIC FAUNA HANGING AT THE MALL

DURING THE last five years

I have had the chance  to practice my speed and skills at the keyboard, taken some photos, set quite a few trends in the Caribbean with the most documented garden and shared  some social critique with readers. 
Its time to say farewell. This last post presents a few sculptures that I find attractive and unusual compared to all outdoor art, found in the Puertorican concrete, asphalted neck of the woods.

The way population growth and environmental destruction by
 individuals and the collective continues 24/7, perhaps, it would be a good idea to create a zoo with sculptures such as these ones to allow children have a glimpse of what things used to be.

FAREWELL 
and good luck with your projects. 

Dario apaga la luh. 

RAMBLINGS ON NINE ELEVEN

ALL these words woke up

with your humble one. 

Some may remember 'Slumlord Millionaire' the film about India, the new economical 'power' along China. Well, I have been thinking this brouhaha is similar to the one created by USA and their allies about the Paper Tiger, communism, during seventy years.  How many people were killed, jailed, tortured for being communists? How many are left now?

How can a country that allows poison in candy, toothpaste, milk, buildings crumbling like cookies after an earthquake, and overcrowded become such an economical power as everyone juan claim?

Countries without paved roads, water sewage, electricity, some sort of efficient school, health system and systematic maintenance of infra structure are becoming powers just like that? For how long?

I was wondering  if one book,  Puerto Rico Then and Now, by one of our architects with no buildings to his name, Jorge Rigau, Thunder Bay Preses, irritated the hell out of yours truly.

If you look at the pictures in this coffee table book and place the whole in context, the aesthetic one, Puerto Rico, became uglier and uglier, decade after decade for the last 60/70 years.

In a similar fashion as China and India. Buildings, highways left and right, without any fore thought and respect for those structures with beauty and historical meaning or any plan for maintenance of infra structures. 

Puerto Rico is a cow pie of concrete and asphalt, no economy, but more or as many economists as lawyers in Manhattan. 


On nine eleven, at 8:50 I reached the sidewalk on the Canal St. subway station on my way to 111 Centre street, where I used to be an interpreter. I saw the hole in the north tower ten blocks down,  with thousands of white typewriter papers flying, but no smoke...a few flames like in  Towering Inferno.


I arrived to the court building at nine and noticed every juan was hysterical, acting like head less chickens over the phones. Hundreds of people walking down with dust and blood on their clothing.


It took  them 90 minutes to decide to let us go home. After walking for five hours  I was home. 736 W 186th street, off Broadway. Turned on the tv, to  watch the news  and made a few calls to inform the people I was fine. Ever since, when I hear one of those 747,  often , I think of the hole in the tower and its aftermath...

that is that

REFRIED ONE: THE LAST POST OF ENDEMISMO TRASNOCHADO WITH UPDATES

 About 18 months ago, the original blog was put out of commission as explained before. 

endemismotrasnochado set quite a few trends in Puerto Rico. It is the first blog about criticism with criterion, beyond shallow orgullo patrio, traditional political parties, baile, botella i baraja. Flora/Fauna are the focus in our concrete/asphalt/noise reality. 

In my particular case is a permanent day and night nightmare from Universidad Sagrado Corazon air conditioner feeders and the illegal Fazaa cafeteria. Its daily garbage and delivery trucks, food stench in our backyard and noise pollution from the security four tracks.

 http://youtu.be/8hUBz7D6OVY

 

endemismotrasnochado continues to attract readers. I am glad to have reached a total of  114 countries from five continents since then. Thanks.

 

 

GARDENING WEEDS AND YOU

OF ALL THE CREDIT hours taken in the NY Botanical Garden for the Commercial Horticulture Landscape Management Certificate, 18, to approve the Turf Management course, were the most exasperating or enlightening. The text book:
'Turf Management Handbook,' by Charles B. Schroeder and Howard B. Sprague could not be more boring and dull. Even if the information is useful the photos and format lack imagination.

If you are the type of inquisitive gardener/person, you could not help but wonder how much stupidity regarding, lawns, grass, turf , planting and management has dominated the whole world for the last 100 years.

Think of turf or lawns, playing fields and parks, golf courses, private residences all around you. I accept that some sports require/demand turf: baseball and cricket to name two. Besides that, I can not tolerate the waste of resources, energy and money required to keep up grass, unless by goats, sheep, cows or horses. Or perhaps a push mower.

Turf management involves growth, health, diseases, insects, shade, sun, heat, cold, soil acidity and liming, fertilizers, weeds, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and irrigation. The majority of these activities require fossil fuels, gas/oil/diesel, propane or electricity. That means pollution and C02, ( Global warming comes to mind), smoke and the annoying irritating noise of trimmers, blowers and lawnmowers.

Is there something more senseless than using drinkable water to irrigate anything, grass on top of it? Imagine for one second the billions of gallons of water wasted in turf, golf courses around the world. In Nevada, USA, a desert, there are 35 golf courses! These are the people, crying wolf for lacking water for development. Now they are trying to divert/rob water from the environment and communities one, two hundred miles away to waste in residential turf, new housing projects.

The opposite of turf, weeds are often seen as a hindrance rather than enhancing. Weed are defined in this context most of the time. A nuisance, unsightly and unwanted. I have embraced some in my collection for their beauty, being uncommon or rare, in the garden, aesthetics. But also for pragmatic reasons, since I keep the connection between fauna/flora when I plant.

Many, lots of creatures depend on weeds. They provide food, shelter and protection to many species, besides protecting the soil against erosion. Some weeds grow in the most unimaginable places, including cracks in concrete, rocks, asphalt.. There are seeds
and grasses for everyone. Is there anything more attractive, stimulating than watching a bird balancing on tall weeds against the wind to grasp some seeds?

WEEDS IN ME GARDEN

Commelina elegans
with elegant intense
blue indigo flowers,
a favorite of chickens
and rabbitts

Datura stramonium
Jathropha gossypifolia
Merremia quinquefolia
Clitorea ternatea
Trimezia caribea
Urena lobata

Dipterantun prostratus with one
of the most attractive pure white flowers in the Caribbean wild.
I learned the botanical name from a fellow blogger in India,
'In art lies my life'
who happens to own similar plants in his collection.
I have also a light purple variety. Discovered while
taking Diva, our pet in residence to her pet  obedience

school.

These plants have a funny habit for self seeding.
In the afternoons, when I irrigate the collection I can
hear them popping, cracking open, when the water
hit the seeds, a real trip.

Enhance your garden.
Embrace the weeds...Time to go...

LAYERS AND LEVELS

Watching some local lunatic tv personality and 'analyst' with a stern demeanor to give a little weight to his usual small talk/chit chat,  as if the bull spoken was transcendental or gospel, out of the blue, mentioned and shared twitter stats and comments.

I do not twitt at all and I am  convinced after a recent commentary on one of my biblical like post in feisbuk, that people in general prefer the meaningless, trivial sentence, phrase instead of a parragraph serious in depth conversation.

The reason is simple. There is no room for criterion, arguments, credentials, any fool can join and express their shallow selves. That is democracy in action, in essence.

Clicking quickly the remote I land in Deuthsland. A wonderful documentary on Spain nationals who have emigrated to that BMW country. These are not cheap labor,  just gambling, for better futures. 

These are engineers,  all kinds,  with more than a couple of degrees in their field and others. It seems that Spain can educate them, but offer no jobs, or if, with salaries of 800 euros, versus 3 times that in Germany.


A month ago, the documentary was about the other kind of emigrant, the illiterate, propagating like rabbits, dragging along their fifty relatives slowly but surely. The original country does not matter, but the guy was telling how he went to Spain to WORK, for 1,400 euros.


I have mentioned it before, but in my street,  plumbers, electricians, masons, construction in brief, are mostly foreigners from the west island. I will declare seven out of ten. 


One arrives in the dark of the night by boat risking his/her life with the help of local and imported coyotes for that future in question...Years afterwards. there are four or five with the original one.  And so on and so forth. It seems that everywhere in the globe is the same rule: for a better future.


However, I have never seen a documentary on television telling it like it is. How many of these really make it? How can making it could be measured?

Perhaps the white nationals from Spain will make it financially and professionally, but could they really fit among the aboriginals?

On the other hand, the illiterate hordes invading left and right would they make it the way financial and economical trends fizz and 
fizzle?

Meanwhile, back in the studio, the local media, all,   keep their lively, exciting, favorite conversation:  el orgullo boricua....never, the other possibility, the bankrupt concrete/asphalted and overcrowded with no ECONOMY to talk about enchanted Island of Paradise.

that is that

If readers may, check NU YOL a film on emigrants from La Espanhola in NY, and a 1974 masterpiece about Italians in Switzerland, Bread and Chocolate, directed by Franco Brusati for another view... 

CONTEMPORARY PRAIRIE STYLES IN SANTURCE PUERTO RICO

Dedicated to all readers

who drop/have dropped by

during the last five years.

Thanks! 

IF you practice and study gardening with some discipline, prairie is a style, at least in this side of the Atlantic, identified with USA, white picket fences and so forth.  However, when you visit the web to search under prairie there are surprises since it covers lots of ground. Many things are also prairie gardens.

Your humble servant, in the Caribbean has defined it, (in the third person), as any portion/space of land in which wild grasses, plants, bushes, trees have moved and established themselves in the urban context of Puerto Rico, where concrete/asphalt have wiped out its flora and fauna in more cases than, the jerks into species in extinction care to talk/mention when they are in the mood.

Some editing, as in pruning/trimming occasionally are part of the equation. The two presented here, Upscale Trailer Trash Prairie and British Manor Style are good examples.

The two houses belong to the same family, riffraff, if you ask me. In the first, the garden is weed whacked whenever Leo, the Michelin figured jester, gets in the mood, to my annoyance and the neighbors with one of those really cheap noisy useless curved trimmers. 

The British Manor is evidently different, as if the help of some close by creative horticultural critic had helped nature to expand it possibilities with vines and such. 

Antonio Paoli, a  bright, well known tenor on his day, used to visit the original owners  during his lifetime, in this vine adorned abandoned house. The information was provided by Maria de Hostos, historian and widow of Adolfo de Hostos, son of one of our great men Eugenio Maria de Hostos.


In brief, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, as long as the beholder in question owns criterion, credentials to defend his position. I do not say/write these two houses are attractive or ugly, but they are different, useful for flora and fauna. Both provide food and shelter.


At any rate, I prefer to see green, vegetation rather than concrete/asphalt at every turn.  Same goes for gardening. The Versailles/Zen high maintenance garden may be fine/great for  constipated minds, not for your humble servant or those aware of pollution and noise. 

that is that

Dario apaga la luh.

SEPTEMBER IS ANTIGONUM CAJAN WORLD WIDE MONTH

 FIVE years ago, yours truly wrote the first post about Parque Donha Ines a historical/environmental rip off/scam by two foreigners and the intellectual authors, Luis Munhoz Marin Foundation in Trujillo Alto. Check their web sites, they are a trip.

 

I was less humble then, and often wondered who the hell me readers would be, until 5 or 6 months later, some obscure bohemian, bachata lover from Savarona, in Caguas Coutry, Amilcar Garcia Tirado, made some educated comments about Santurce, where I live, after one significant post.

 

Months later, realizing I should not continue taking jack asses to drink water  to the river, refusing it, I decided to write in English, with great results in terms, not of comments, followers, friends and such, but of geographical hits.

 

I do not care now, as I did then, if the people surrounding me in the concrete/asphalt/noisy/dirty/crowded Enchanted Paradise, read this or not.

 

Time has shown that I live amidst deaf, blind, mute, useless, deaf hogs. Nevertheless, knowing that someone out there including Reunion Island, may be checking the blog out, is stimulating enough.  

 

Being certain that not everyone reading this is into serious horticulture is another plus to continue the writing, video clips and photographic activities kept during fifty six months of criticism, discoveries, enthusiasm and one conviction: the future is now, is fucked up and there is no hope.

Philosophically speaking/writing, I will continue planting, watching our flora and fauna, mocking the most fun of all, and sharing with those interested.

Finally, below my first post ever....

 

 

El Parque mas caro..

Por los ultimos tiempos se viene construyendo un parque llamado Dona Ines, en la carretera 877 que va a Trujillo Alto. Al observar con cuidado, fotos aereas tomadas previo a la destruccion de las quince cuerdas de terreno con un tractor gigantesco, puede observarse el tamano y frondosidad de la vegetacion presente cuyo pecado, razon de muerte era ser exotica. Todo lo que erea verde paso a mejor vida bajo el descomunal peso del tractor, excepto algunas palmas y algarrobos.

En ningun momento se llevo a cabo un inventario de flora y fauna previo a la destruccion como requiere el protocolo de reforestacion. Tampoco se hicieron los analisis de suelo que requiere la agronomia en cuanto a textura, drenaje y composicion para determinar si el proposito de hacer un parque al endemismo trasnochado es compatible con lo anterior.. Desafortunadamente no habiendo agronomo a bordo con las credenciales que requiere el colegio, el terreno, perdio con los frecuentes e intensos aguaceros la capa fertil corriente abajo.

Esto se 'resolvio' con cerca de cuatrocientos camiones de 80,000 toneladas de relleno que fue vertido sobre la superficie del terreno del parque mama Ines. Desafortunadamente, la lluvia volvio a cargar con una gran cantidad de relleno que no fue analizado para saber si era compatible con el suelo de las quince cuerdas o para determinar si tenia contaminantes. Tenemos algunas fotos que muestran las quedbradas de agua y lodo amarillento bajando hacia la plantacion LMM , la carretera 877 y la quebrada que colinda con Bosque Real.

Para dejar esto aqui. El Departamento de Recursos Naturales, el Municipio de Turjillo Alto son socios participantes de la destruccion de estos terrenos y la colaboracion de la junta de la Fundacion LMM que por omision, permitieron
este trasnochado proyecto. Para meditar: Cada valioso arbolito endemico o en extincion costara cerca de $5,000.00? Por suerte el dinero recaudado ha sido donado por entidades e individuos que tienen dinero para tirar.

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AUSTRALIAS SAYS NO A SECOND TIME

'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented.  It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.'

'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'

'This is OUR  COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take  advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE  RIGHT TO LEAVE'.

'If you  aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to  come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.'

Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves in Canada & USA &

Great Britain we will find the courage to start speaking and voicing the same truths. 

Everyone knows by know my position on religion, state, church and family. In addition my opinion on the 'better future" and the forty relatives immigrants drag along with time.


In Puerto Rico, an invasion of over 200, 000, mostly black, of peasant stock,  has filled  my patience to the brim, this is not Brazil or Venezuela, with lots of room to spare.


On the other hand, thank good for Australia. Immigrants should not attempt to impose ANY of their values to those who have accepted with good will their presence.


Countries which have kept colonies throughout their history are in a different predicament, since that past exploitation of people and natural resources...requires some eternal compensation in the eyes of those who were exploited without mercy, jailed and killed in their useless wars of independence.


Useless, writes I, since what besides 'freedom'  have they acquired?