Category: Culture

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Local Art Gallery is About to Happen!

The registered name & logo.

Lots of meetings, government regulations, fees, expenses, rental space, requirements and limitations, plus how a cooperative will work together as one, all seem to make it complicated, but it is slowly coming together! 🙂 Thanks especially to Elisa & Margaret, the leaders of the group! We communicate with each other on a private WhatsApp page and now have a gallery FaceBook page (public) with not a whole lot for the public yet. 🙂 And we will be the location for this year’s JIT – Just in Time for Christmas Art Fair which uses the same FaceBook page as last year and is now set for December 8, 9 & 10, 2023. In Calle 2 Plaza Atenas!

TENTATIVE OPENINGS are a “soft” opening on October 4 and a “Grand Opening” on November 9 with the Christmas Art Show a month later, December 8-10. BUT, note that there are many things that could delay the first two dates, though Christmas Show is pretty solid! 🙂

The registered name & logo.
The registered name and logo.
7 of the 10 to 12 participants we can never get all together! 🙂 By one of the flower murals outside our gallery space in the new Calle 2 Plaza, next to Linea Vital Clinic.
A shelf set up by some of the ladies as an example of how pottery may be displayed in the gallery.

Please Remember that Everything is Flexible now . . .

Meaning that the opening dates and the participants could change in the next month or two as we struggle to put everything together. But a very fine art gallery is coming to Atenas soon! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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A Call from My Friends at Maquenque

Today I received a phone call from the wonderful family that runs Maquenque Eco Lodge just checking on me and how my health is doing. They are so nice to me in every way and I count them among my best friends in Costa Rica. Then they sent me this photo of the table in their lodge lobby covered with my photo books that they continually thank me for and tell me how much their other guests enjoy them! 🙂 Just one more reason that I enjoy my retirement life photographing nature! 🙂

Charlie Doggett Nature Photo Books in lobby of Maquenque Eco Lodge, Boca Tapada, San Carlos, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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New Photo Book in Spanish

And if you don’t read Spanish – no problem! It’s a photo book! With only the title and introduction in words! 🙂 Preview every page by clicking the cover image below or going to: https://www.blurb.com/b/11661183-el-encanto-de-las-hojas

¡Pura Vida!

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Art Gallery Coming Behind Calle 2 Boat!

Calle 2 Plaza is under construction and could open within the next month or so! One of the 5 shops will now be a new Atenas Art Gallery, the name of which can’t be published until it is registered. So keep reading this blog for more information and see photos of the under construction Calle 2 Plaza and its flower murals below these first two shots . . .

Old land-locked boat on Calle 2, Atenas between Linea Vital & Calle 2.
7 of the 10 local artists opening a new art gallery in Calle 2 Plaza. Meeting here at the gallery location.
Continue reading “Art Gallery Coming Behind Calle 2 Boat!”
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Today is World Elephant Day!

August 12 is World Elephant Day, a really very important day! Elephants will be disappointed if you don’t remember this one, because they always do. (“An elephant never forgets”!) Seriously, this day is for learning more about Asian and African elephants, smart creatures that are being threatened with extinction because of hunting and habitat loss. Learn how you can help at worldelephantday.org.

My photo of African Elephant in the Masai Mara Game Reserve, Kenya, 2005.

See my other elephant photos from the 2005 Safari in Masai Mara, Kenya.   And there are older, not as good, photos from a 1998 Kenya Safari.

Also I experienced the total extinction of elephants during my 3 years of living in The Gambia, West Africa where both poachers and habitat destruction eliminated all  of the elephants that used to live there. It is very sad. This is a serious World Day that needs lots of attention or there will be no elephants left world-wide. Consider joining one of the efforts to save elephants.

¡Pura Vida!

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Rainy Season Green!

A ground-level shot of the cow pasture across the street from my house where the grass stays taller and VERY GREEN during our rainy season, May to November.

Cow Pasture adjacent to Residencial Roca Verde, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica. In front of my house! 🙂

See my photo gallery Cow Pasture Across the Street.

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And read in yesterday’s Tico Times English Language Paper the cool article on: Eco-Friendly Lifeguard Stations Coming to Costa Rica’s Beaches. In brief they are picking up the millions of plastic bottles left by idiots on our beaches, converting them into a wood substitute and forming substitute lumber with which they will build these cool Lifeguard stations for beaches all over Costa Rica! This is a great solution for both increased pollution and decreased forests! 🙂

Tico Times photo of recycled plastic Lifeguard Station

Or check out this COSTA RICA CAMERA TRAP OCELOT:

¡Pura Vida!

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Thank you! – ¡Muchas gracias!

My WordPress host, DreamHost, and a service company, Jetpack, just released the July stats for my blog “Retired in Costa Rica” and its related website, charliedoggett.net. And I say “THANK YOU” to the 501 subscribers of the blog, 650 FaceBook Friends who receive a link and hopefully follow it, 🙂 the 2 thousand views of my website/blog in July, the 95 comments on blog posts and the 158 “Likes” in July, which can only be made by other WP Bloggers, making those likes special! 🙂 I am fulfilling my dream of retirement with nature in Costa Rica that began with the adventurous move here in 2014 and the start of this blog. Thanks for coming along! 🙂

My site header pix of the valley town where I live, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
The feature photo at top is of Arenal Volcano.

I’m an old man of 83 years, retired from a publishing business in the U.S. who left the states in 2014 to live out retirement with the beautiful natural worlds of Costa Rica and its loving people, reporting in this blog. Even after a year-long battle with cancer, I’m having the best times of my life, my final years immersed in nature! I hope you will continue following my stories and photos! Your presence delights me! 🙂

That’s me planting an Almond Tree for the Great Green Macaws in the Maquenque Reserve, Boca Tapada, San Carlos in 2023.

¡Pura Vida!

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Gracefulness in Nature

This Heliconia Leaf seems to me to be gracefully bowing its head as the first signs of deterioration begin it’s final days with only a little touch of brown now and the folding of the once tall and straight green leaf. Nature as Art continues to inspire me as I find my own life slowing down and less capable than before. May I conclude my life as gracefully as this Heliconia Leaf! 🙂

Nature as Art

¡Pura Vida!

See another Heliconia Leaf in a further stage of death that I used on the cover of a recent photo book titled Designed by Nature which you can preview for free online. Nature is truly graceful!

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New Children’s Playground

The new Central Park Playground has been finished and open for maybe two months and I’m just slow reporting on it. At first I reacted negatively to all the bright colors and what looks like cheap Chinese Plastic, but I think I mis interpreted! It is designed for younger Elementary School and Preschool kids and now I think it is perfect for them! And the artificial turf too! The other day I stopped by one afternoon after many kids would be out of school and it wasn’t raining and there was a lot of activity! It was fun for me to see the creativity of some kids using the space under the tree house or slide and climbing wall to gather as in their “clubhouse.” The hyper little boys had plenty to keep them busy and I noticed for older elementary kids maybe, there was a tic-tac-toe wall with changeable X’s and O’s. Clever! And as expected, the swings were the busiest. I tried not to get any closeup photos of children and their faces for their privacy, staying on the periphery for all photos. Here’s four . . .

New Children’s Playground, Central Park Atenas
Continue reading “New Children’s Playground”
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A Different Kind of Photo Book

I’ve been in one of those creative moods and just churned out a 28 page photo book that is both biographical and a nature photo book! In brief paragraphs I share how nature provided healing at each of several traumas or losses in my life. Not a book for the larger public maybe, but a good cathartic expression of the ups and downs of a life full of both adventure and tragedies, plus the healing of nature at every turn. I use quotations throughout to highlight the healing. You can preview the book electronically at Life Tranquility by Charlie Doggett | Blurb Books or just click this image of the front cover:

¡Pura Vida!