San Pancho Vida

What's for Dinner?

I've just arrived home from a quick shopping trip to Bucerias, where I not only bought groceries, but also was able to score a new internet modem, now hooked up. Telmex gives you a brand new one for free when your other one goes wonky, which mine did.

My friend Bobby, who only shows up now and then these days and leaves again tomorrow, is coming for dinner. I made Sicilian meatballs, which are simmering in the tomato sauce right now. I, too, am simmering--in a sauce made of San Pancho humidity.

Seems like food and what to eat was even a bigger topic around here this week than usual. For example, my young Mexican black iguana stopped by several times to munch in my herb garden.

I was actually able to feed him a few lettuce leaves, which he nearly took right from my hand. I think he's a him. We'll find out when he gets a little older as the adult males look quite a bit different than the females. Here he is eating the spinach leaves I gave him, which he also liked.

Good pictures, huh? Actually, they're terrible pictures compared to the three following, taken by Trevor Evans, a houseguest of Richard and Linda Prince who housesat for me while I was in the States last month.

Trevor managed to catch my voracious pet devouring hibiscus leaves in the roof garden. I don't have to wonder any more what's been happening to those leaves and flowers.

Quite the dinner guest, isn't he? I mean the iguana, not Trevor.

Now I'll tell you about another unexpected "dinner" guest who stopped by a few days ago.

I was out on the terrace after sunset and spotted a frog sitting on the wall near the herb garden. I hurried inside and got my camera. By the time I returned, he'd hopped up onto the drape.

When I took a flash photo, he hopped to the mirror. So I turned off the flash.

I kept watching and snapping photos. Turns out I wasn't the only one interested in this green fellow, who, according to Richard Prince, is a Mexican tree frog, one of the largest of tree frogs. This guy measures around 3 1/2 inches from nose to tail.

From the ceiling and down the wall crept one of my house geckos, who I depend upon to harvest insects all night long. This one was the curious sort. He stood about a foot from the frog and craned his neck to try to figure out what the heck he was looking at.

Suddenly (and I mean in a fraction of a second), the frog bounded off the mirror sideways and landed perfectly on top of the gecko, which he then proceeded to stuff tail-first down his throat.

I was flabbergasted...as are all the people here I've told about it, who had no idea that tree frogs ate chorros (which is what the locals call the lizards we gringos call geckos). I mean, really -- who knew??

The frog, not much enjoying being photographed in the act, leapt back to the mirror and, hanging upside down, finished his surprised meal, who was still moving around in the frog's belly until the frog ate the head end. (Okay, I probably should've warned those of you with weak stomachs. Sorry...but not very...)

So anyway, Bobby and I are having meatballs.

☺

Special Delivery

When one lives out in the middle of nowhere in the Arizona desert, without traffic noises, banda concerts, or mattress vendors hawking their wares, one hears sweet sounds that delight the ear: coyotes calling across the valleys, the swirling wind, birds and animals busy at the feeders. Papa Quail burbling away as he monitors and guards his busy brood below.

But maybe the best sound of all is the distant bump and crunch of tires on an unpaved road that announces the imminent arrival of the Schwan's man.

I was immediately captivated from the very first time Richard told me on the phone about his "Schwan's order".

"What?" I said, eyes wide. "You get what? He comes to your house?"

Back then, of course, I had only the vaguest idea of the remoteness of Richard's current location. Knowing more now, I am even more impressed. Like a little kid, I was tickled to discover that the Schwan's man was scheduled for a trip to Stanton during my visit. We perused the print catalog, chose a few must-have items, and Richard called in an order. 

A few days later, Ken Harper pulled his marvelous truck into the driveway and handed over the goodies, which were whisked into the freezer before they had a chance to thaw.

I had coffee and a notepad waiting. We sat in the shade for a chat.

Ken has worked for Schwan's for sixteen years. He took a turn in management for a few of those years, but decided to return to route driving, as he enjoys it more and the pay is better. His route includes all of southern Yavapai county, much of which is as remote or more so than Stanton and Congress. His customers are restaurants, stores, schools, and ordinary people with a craving for ice cream, fish filets, prepared chicken dinners, pizza or something else on their extensive product list.

The company he works for and admires is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year. Its home delivery business started in 1952, when 23-year-old Marvin Schwan had an idea: he packed up his 1946 Dodge panel truck with fourteen gallons of ice cream from his family's dairy and headed out to offer the treat to families in rural Minnesota. He sold out, and the rest is history. Today, Schwan's is a multi-billion dollar private company whose mainstay is still the delivery of product to avid customers across the USA.

Nowadays, they have a fancy website. You can order online and post product reviews. Things are slicker. One of their plants -- in Stillwell, Oklahoma -- uses 100 million pie shells a year, 13 million of which are turned into the company's most popular pie, apple. It also produces 3 million pounds of breaded okra annually.

But Ken insists his job is still all about personal service. He was and is responsible for developing his own customer base. He's a sincere and affable guy who cares about his work and his customers. It's no wonder he has a successful route.

Back in May, when the Gladiator fire burned over 16,000 acres in west central Arizona, residents of the tiny town of Crown King were evacuated to the almost-ghost-town of Cleator (which was called Turkey until 1905). Many of them took refuge at the Cleator Bar, whose management fed them along with firefighters from around the state. Ken, who normally delivers to remote Crown King, approached his boss and told him what was up. A few days later, Ken drove to Cleator with a truck full of pizzas and gave the overworked staff a break, baking and serving free pizzas all day long.

Richard and I decided a pizza sounded real good, so Ken went back to his truck and got us one.

It was good, too. As were the little chocolate covered ice cream bites, the thick-sliced pepper bacon, the fat fluffy Southern style biscuits and the popsicles in three flavors: orange, grape, and cherry.

We said goodbye to Ken, who headed out to make more deliveries to his grateful rural customers. He'll be back.

Next time I see him, I'm going to try to talk him in to delivering to San Pancho, Nayarit.

Wish me luck.

Crab Stew

A couple of nights ago, the event occurred that marks the customary start of summer in San Pancho. Sufficient rain fell in the mountains behind us to begin filling our formerly dry river, which flowed into the estuary with enough force that the estuary opened to the sea.

San Pancho's estuary, landlocked during much of the year, is a haven for birds of all kinds. You wouldn't want swim in it, and not only because rumor has it a crocodile lurks there: it also drains much of the local effluvia, which makes it conducive to fish, which in turn attract long-legged wading birds, myriad species of ducks, sandpipers and migrating visitors.

This is what it looks like normally, save that the plant life in the foreground is normally underwater, so the estuary is a lot bigger.

When it breaks through, the river chooses a path through the sand, different every year. The water tears up plants from the bottom of the pond and carries all sorts of jungle flotsam to the sea, whose waves then deposit it all right back on the beach.

The action of the river combined with the force of storm-tossed waves carves sand cliffs into our winter-flat beach.

You can pull up a chair and watch, if you want to.

Jeremy called yesterday morning to report the opening of the estuary and to tell me that he'd spotted some crabs he'd not seen before, three inches across, bright red with one giant white claw waving in the air. Dutifully, I went down this morning with my camera in hopes of photographing these odd crustaceans.

I saw little fish swimming in the still-murky estuary waters.

I saw some that weren't swimming any more. I don't know why.

I spotted wading birds out catching breakfast...

...and a beautiful blossom among the newly-exposed pond plants.

People were about on the town side of the estuary, walking, swimming in today's calm waves, and generally lounging about.

I saw Carlos out raking up the debris blown about by our hefty windstorm last evening, preparing with Daniel to open La Perla restaurant whose big palapa is covered with plastic against the rains.

The bad news is: I saw not a single red crab with a big white claw.

On my way back through town, I stopped in front of San Pancho Aire, Jeremy's kite shop.

"No crabs," I reported.

"Yes!" he insisted. "They were all over the place this morning."

"They're not there now," I said, somewhat skeptically.

Are they a figment of his imagination? Is he telling a tall tale, which he has surely been known to do? Was I simply too late to see them, being an hour behind him, the heat already building to its daytime intensity?

I will post a photo this week if there's one to be had. Right now, I'm going down to my studio to play for a few hours, visions of cartoon crabs dancing in my head. 

The good news is: I have a real good excuse to head to the beach first thing tomorrow morning.

Stay tuned.

Collision Course

I'm back in San Pancho, where I was greeted the first night by a fine thunderstorm, lightning lifting the sky and a tropical rain, which is very unlike a Pacific Northwest rain in every way except that it's made of water.

I still have lots to tell you about my five week adventure and road trip. But something happened this week that I found so fascinating I decided to tell you about it, instead.

So tell me, what do you know about the Large Hadron Collider?

Do you know, for example, that it is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator? Do you know that it lies partly in Switzerland and partly in France, and that it is circular, measuring nearly 17 miles in circumference?

And do you know what happened there a few days ago?

Scientists believe they discovered an elusive subatomic particle, only postulated previously, that explains how we (and armadillos and electrons and galaxies and hamburger buns) exist in the universe. Its name is the Higgs boson. You probably read or heard something about it in the past week. You may not have expected to read more about it here...but I love this stuff.

Here's Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln with a good (very short) illustrative video explaining what the Higgs boson might be. This was filmed before the recent discovery at LHC, by the way.

Watch this! It's fun!

Here's a picture I cribbed from National Geographic, an artist's conception of a Higgs boson produced in a collision of protons. It may not be accurate, who knows? But it's a cool picture:

And here's the article from National Geographic in which this photo appears. Do read it if you want to know more about the discovery and its announcement. It's one of the better articles I found this week and includes this excellent paragraph:

Although preliminary, the results show a so-called five-sigma significance, which means that there is only a one in a million chance that the Higgs-like signal the teams observed is a statistical fluke.

Actually, it's more like one in a bazillion, but how about that "five-sigma" part? I'm going to start using that in conversation right away.

A Somewhat non-Geeky Report from National Geographic

I found a lot that were way geekier. Check out physicsworld.com if you want some really good stuff, including excellent tidbits such as the fact that neutrinos come in three flavors (chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry? Neapolitan Neutrinos?) and the statement that scientists really have no idea what they've actually found, which made me feel better about my own lack of comprehension.

I think I'm excited about all this because it just goes to show. There's always more to come. A new particle, a new mystery, new ideas of the make-up of our universe. A new day, a new adventure, new possibilities. Personally, I think every discovery like the one announced this week will lead us to a realization that everything's connected in ways we can barely imagine.

Also I like that they made the announcement on the Fourth of July.

Now that's what I call fireworks.

From the website of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), builder and operator of the Large Hadron Collider.

Added Friday, July 6, 3:57pm CDT:

What's next? This is from the CERN press release regarding the discovery, with my addition of color:

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.

96%. Excellent!