Author: Charlie

Retired American nature-lover, living in Costa Rica, photographing birds and other jewels of nature. This site simply reports on my joys of being RETIRED IN COSTA RICA!
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I Pray for America Today

And more specifically I pray that a huge majority of you will vote in opposition to the lying, hateful, racism that is destroying what used to be a great country. Your future as a country and your place in the world is at stake tomorrow.

When you lie down among the sheepfolds, You are like the wings of a dove covered with silver, And its pinions with glistening gold.      ~Psalm 68:13

WWJD

 

Photo is of a Homing Pigeon in Alajuela this week. Beautiful and with a better map memory than humans. It’s the closest bird photo I have to a dove with glistening silver and gold!   🙂

POST SCRIPT:     Based on the response to this post by my friend Leo (below) I am going to try to leave politics out of this blog in the future and just talk about my retirement in Costa Rica, the purpose of the blog. I apologize to anyone I offended and will try to keep this blog about my retirement here in Costa Rica. I’ll save politics for Facebook, though I don’t use it as much now.

 

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New Kindle Today & Two Book Reports

That’s my new Kindle Fire HD 8 above beside a real book I’m also reading. It is my second Kindle ever and 1 inch taller which does make the print a little larger and easier to read, but there are some things I don’t like as well as on my old 5-year-old Kindle. First, the cover is simply not as good and does not stand up on my dining table as well as the old one. Inside it is more complicated and confusing to use electronically for this old man – beginning to show my age? But I will get used to it and love it eventually.  🙂

The Strange Juxtaposition of Two Books I’m Reading

DIGITAL ON KINDLE: The Seven Storey Mountain  

Written in 1948, this is the autobiography of a spiritual mentor whose writings I like and who is of the same generation of my parents, Thomas Merton. He describes his “coming of age” as an adult and discovering who he really is from first the adventures of life and then the spiritual dimension of life and at 68% through the book (Kindle tells you that)  he is still struggling with what his vocation will be but even more so with his relationship with God. Been there, done that!  🙂

REAL PAPER BOOK FROM FRIEND: The Gringos Hawk   (not available digitally)

I’m only about a fourth of the way through this hardback book which is also an adult coming of age autobiography of a young man of my generation this time, published in 2001. Not as spiritual as Merton’s, yet more adventurous as American Jon Marañon ends up in southern Costa Rica on the Pacific Coast (where I love traveling) and as a 23 year old buys a tract of land on the coast at a bargain price. Then the problems and adventures begin dealing with government regulations, local farmers, and even a “witch” along with illnesses, injuries, etc. And that is as far as I am in the story now. But it is the kind of thing I too might have done in the 1960’s if I had not been, like Thomas Merton, highly motivated by what I considered a “calling” from God. Young men struggling with who they are!

I will report back when I have finished both bios and how I am relating to them then. It is funny how I identify with both guys of two different generations and two different worlds and somehow ended up reading both stories at the same time.    🙂

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Tres Amigos

I took my camera out for a later breakfast today and though earlier is better, I did get shots of these three familiar friends. I include two of the dove because front view and back view is always different! Click image to see larger.

Tres amigos

 

Hope is the thing with feathers

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

~Emily Dickinson

¡Pura Vida!

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State of the World’s Birds (& My Bird Galleries)

See this fascinating report from BirdLife.org titled State of the World’s Birds.

 

If you love birds, I hope you will also visit my BIRDS Photo Gallery     🙂

And as I very slowly move smaller and older photos from my old PBase galleries I am currently working on all of my Africa travel photos in a different location  (Pre-Costa Rica TRAVELS) within my big SmugMug Gallery and today  I’m working on my Gambia Birds  Sub Gallery, which is interesting for the large variety of birds found there, though most of the photos are of poor quality. I Photographed then on a cheap old film camera without a long lense and later scanned 4×6 prints at too low a resolution affecting the quality more. Though I got half a dozen good bird shots on the 2009 revisit of The Gambia with my better digital camera.  Just another part of my Birds Collection from the past. Later I will try to add what few birds I photographed in the states.

Also with the Africa Travel galleries are these with East African birds:

Eventually I will put copies of all of these birds in my BIRDS Gallery, but everything is done manually and slowly.

 

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Whose Eating My Bananas?

The other day I grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on my counter to cut up on a morning bowl of cereal and there was a chunk missing. I did not think Geckos ate fruit nor any insect was big enough to do that – so it is still a mystery or I was wrong about Geckos! For now my bananas are in the frig!  🙂

Tropical Living!

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Costa Rica Halloween Costume Idea

Go as a Giant Costa Rica Avocado!

Image copied from Peter Parson’s Post on Atenas Costa Rica Info.    Who says a costume has to be scary?  (Though some health nuts might say this is.)  But we have fun in Costa Rica!    🙂

¡Pura Vida!

 

10 Tips on How to Thrive as an Expat in Costa Rica    (In case you are thinking about it? From the Yeatman’s at “Retire for Less in Costa Rica” website/blog)

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Finally! A Toucan in My Tree!

I planted this Cecropia Tree (guarumo tree to Ticos) nearly 3 years ago having heard they attract toucans and in fact my photos of toucans in other locations are frequently in Cecropia Trees. Well, it grew fast but only one other time have I seen a toucan in it and before I could get my camera, he was gone! This morning at breakfast I had my camera with me when this Keel-billed Toucan AND a Montezuma Oropendola flew together into my tree. I got a few shots before they flew. So I’m happy with my Cecropia Tree now!   ¡Pura Vida!

 

Keel-billed Toucan on my Terrace, Atenas, Costa Rica
Montezuma Oropendola on my terrace, Atenas, Costa Rica
WHERE THEY LANDED:  The Cecropia Tree by my terrace, Atenas, Costa Rica      While I ate breakfast on that table.

 

Hear how the birds, on every blooming spray, With joyous music wake the dawning day.

~Alexander Pope

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Remembering Eugene Peterson

Christianity Today has 3 good articles about one of the few great Christians of my generation, Eugene Peterson, who recently died:

Ministry Lessons

Eugene Peterson Competed His Long Obedience

Eugene Peterson: A Monk Out of Habit

I guess his translation of the Bible called The Message is the biggest influence he had on me and my life, by far my favorite version of the Bible, but his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction ranks pretty high up there also. My spiritual focus for many years now has been on the spirit of God working inside me and in the lives of all followers of Jesus. It is where we find hope for this pathetically sinful world. Thus the title of my “spiritual page” on this site  “His Spirit.”

This Presbyterian minister reminds me in some ways of my favorite Catholic Monk, Thomas Merton, whose autobiography I am currently reading, The Seven Storey Mountain. They are real people allowing “His Spirit” to control their lives as they relate to virtually everyone as Christ would. In some ways it reminds me of my youth ministry days and the simple WWJD phenomenon (What Would Jesus Do?), only much deeper and almost mystical as we are led by His Spirit!

I worked my entire adult working life for Southern Baptists, the largest of the Evangelicals talked about so much today and experienced the spiritual decline of a church, denomination and the broader “Evangelicals” as they became political with a focus on power, money, and the control of other people rather than allowing “His Spirit” to work through them as the voices of Jesus. They seemed to have chosen a self-seeking Republican Party instead and their self-centered leaders. It saddens me because in earlier days I experienced His Spirit working through Southern Baptists. Now they give us Donald Trump and racist Republican leaders. It is one of the reasons I moved my retirement to Costa Rica to avoid such poison that now seems to affect a whole nation if not the whole world. Scary! We need more Eugene Peterson’s!