Mi-Careme, as the cane is cut

Cut from 8 feet tall to the ground, the landscape transforms during the sugar cane harvest. Trees and houses, and undulating in the green hills are revealed after months hidden behind the cane. The broad palm leaves of coconut trees yellow. Grass is the color of straw.

Today is mi-Carême, the middle of the dry season late February-early May. The fields dry out except the few that are watered. We had 2 weeks without rain, but yesterday had a strong but brief, refreshing rain, which was then quickly forgotten. The sugar cane fields have grown sandy in color, with touches of green from leaves still vital. Where the cane has been cut, the ground is strewn with a layer of light straw. The rows where cane had grown are still pronounced. The cutting of the cane is beautiful and dramatic to see. Done in some places by hand, a few workers artfully cut the drying cane with swift swings of their long and razor sharp machetes. From what I’ve seen, in about half a day, 2 or 3 can clear an acre. Most (nearly all?) of the harvest is done by machine. The whole cane is cut to the ground, chopped and loaded, while the equipment moves briskly, at a fast walking pace. Later the cane is separated out from the lighter leaves. The cane is milled at distilleries, releasing cane juice. Cane juice is then fermented and distilled into inimitable Martinique rums. Locally produced raw sugar and fresh can juices, freshly crushed onsite at market stalls or roadside stands, are also treats to be enjoyed.

Days after the harvest, new shoots of cane leaves arise, new future brightly ready to grow, and within a couple weeks they are over a foot (30cm) tall. When cut by hand, new cane shoots emerge a bit more quickly and vigorously than where cut by machine.

The weather is slightly cooler in this season, and runs in the late afternoon are a delight. The 1000ft climb of 1^st gear switchbacks is hot, but the humidity feels noticeably lower and the breeze quite pleasant. I passed several cows, of the local Charolais creole race, stationed in the hills, where they lowed loudly, perhaps not yet milked. Heading back down, looking out to sea, low rogue cumulus clouds several miles out were lit by the lowering afternoon sun, firing a wide rainbow in the shape of a mound beneath the clouds. The colors blended slowly over a wide area. As I descended, running down the winding turns, the rainbow reached upwards in the sky, and the clouds drew nearer and seemingly higher. In the veranda of a house, a dozen people enjoyed a long lunch. In a small field of dry grass, 11 leggy sheep stood side by side in a row eating and stepping forward, as if by consensus. Down and across the road, a loosely dispersed flock of mismatched goats, beautifully colored in whites, browns, and blacks, milled about, their stomachs full.

Though dryer than usual, it’s not parched. Freshly turned earth is rich red, and milk-chocolate and dark-chocolate brown, and in the fields towards the mature green banana trees, last harvested a month ago. This makes a lush scene in the quieting evening light. The rain clouds pass without leaving a drop. At dawn the next morning, there is a brief soaking rain. We, and the animals and plants, are glad.

Love our Diesel Ford Fiesta

I adore the 2004 Fiesta that we bought used here in Martinique. BusinessWeek called the 2009 Ford Fiesta, “The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can’t Have.” It really is amazing that a car like even this 2004 model is unavailable in the US. Our 2004 version is the 5^th Generation of Fiestas. Reliable, very nice 1.4 liter Duratorq TDCi common-rail diesel engine gives good power, excellent torque, and of course low RPMs at higher speeds, which makes gas powered small cars seem simply whiny in comparison. Comfortably seats 5. In a pinch we had 9 ride by necessity during the strike, but this is fully not recommended.

 

Favorite Volcanos: Montagne Pelee Martinique, and Mt Rainier, WA USA

View from American Eagle flight 5021 in December.

2 Days later, arriving in Seattle.

These 2 active volcanoes command awareness throughout the surrounding landscape, have inspired myths for centuries, and create their own weather patterns.

Top Social Media Risks

#1 ppl, groups, companies cloak self-interest in claims to represent

#2 loudest most confident/arrogant voices heard over most wise; declarations favored over discussion

#3 limited, problematic editorial function. more access to participate not necessarily equitable

#4 subversion, exploitation, abuse of openness #swf09

#5 social media are privately owned but thought of as public. IP battles still to come

#6 social media confuses the immediate with the important; tiny facts with more complex truths

#7 social media provides inadequate ramps to offline; mistakes chatter/talk for action

#8 individualism and differences diminished by favoring popularity, peer-love, in-group authority

#9 highly contagious context for meme-transmission, yet immature ability to detect dangerous viruses

#10 false urgency created by constant updates sucks undue attention

#11 context for privacy and anonymity and behavioral fault-tolerance has changed but consequences are unclear. When you make a mistake that is published in text, it’s not easy (or possible in some cases) to redact or correct these, whereas voice conversations allow for more forgivability, more experimentation. Anonymity is constructed very differently online than in person.

#12 Rumors or exaggerations travel faster and wider than truthful facts.

 

These were written in twitterese, so please excuse (or appreciate?) brevity. This is also a test of MS Word 2007’s blog publishing feature.

 

Sunrise, a drama

Sunrise
Act 1 scene I, pale lightening, oddly, slightly yellow dark.
ii. soft gradient from horizon to overhead, pale light through lavenders
iii. broken clouds softly white
iv. first pinks in high clouds constrast with lavenders
v. pink to stunning, shimmering rose high clouds
Act II,
Sc 1. Sun lights from behind a bank of cumulus clouds
Sc 3. Sun shines up though clouds as well as below.
Act 3.
Sc 1 full sun over banks of clouds
Sc 2. Shimmering light dances across the fractal waters
Sc 3. Below the cumulus cloud banks, in place of sun beams, rays of gray as rain falls.
Sc 4. Clouds hide the sun and reveal the shifting currents in the bay. Beyond, reef swells break.
Sc 5. Broken clouds tighten overhead, yet bright blues also shine through to the southeast, softening to the souther horizon, and deepening overhead and reaching to the west.
Act 4.
Sc 1. Low tufts of cumulus approach, moving steadily past, with grace. Grays, dark and light, holding tons of water in vapor suspended, a lake in flight.
Sc 2. High above, in the stratus, whisps of cotton candy spread out from each other, sweeping the sky and shifting ever slowly in distant motion. 
Sc 3. The sun presses against and through the high broken cloud layer, a bright opaque ovoid as if stretched by gravity.
Sc 4. The low clouds thicken, hiding the sun. The rain showers are still in the distance, but approach fast on the horizon.
Sc 5. The bay shimmers in black and white.
Act 5.
Sc 1. Loose white clouds are pulled apart overhead. The blues are almost entirely hidden.
Sc 2. A ribbon of high broken clouds lets through the deep blue streching from dear earth clear to space.
Sc 3. Rain showers, en masse as a flotilla, veer to the south, passing behind the rocky point on the far side of the bay.
Sc 4. Sun bursts through clouds, forcing eyes to squint.
Sc 5. A heavy cloudbank glides overhead, its edges blurry, again the sun’s rays are subdued. The reef surf ebbs, flows, the breathing of the ocean moving towards greater calm. The sea a vast plane and plain of shimmering gray.

La foret de Montravail

Colette and 2 of her school’s CE1 classes went on a field trip to a local forest in the hills in the south. We saw many of the local rainforest trees and plants — which are somewhat different here in the south of Martinque than in the more elevated north. There are petroglyphs there from an Arawak community that lived there some 500-1400 years ago, before the Caribs swept the Arawaks off Martinique.

Beginning the forest walk

The petroglyphs are on private property. The owner has lived there since a child, but has watched the petroglyphs deteriorate and many people have touched them and worn them down. She said that once the glyphs were 1 centimeter in relief, now only barely so. She pours water over the glyphs so you can see them. Apparently there are many undocumented Arawak sites on Martinique.

Hike from Les Salines to Anse Trabaud

We spent a marvelous day hiking with friends along the beach, picnicked, swam in perfect water, and headed home. 3 Families with 7 daughters. We saw hundred of “c’est ma faute” crabs, which have a much large right pincer than left, and some amazing birds I’ll look up soon, white with very long tails, black on wingtops, red headed, large sea birds that chattered endless over the bluffs.

 

Night Swimming

I’m not going to tell anyone about this. Well, OK, but just you.

Late this afternoon, I went swimming with the girls up to Alice’s, and tried out my new flippers. We stayed in the water til after sunset. My uncle Joseph showed up, who I’d been looking forward to talking with, so we talked for an hour after Veronique had taken all the kids home, mine and hers. By now it was well after dark, but I was resolved to swim home alone down the bay, refusing offers of a ride and my Aunt’s worries about the big fish of the night. As I said goodnight, I thought about jokingly adding, in case this is the last time I see you, but thought better of it and not a moment too soon. I walked out to the end of the dock and put on my blue and black flippers. Hopping in, I saw the sea was teeming with phosphorescence. Tiny sparkling yellow points of light shining while swirling briefly in the water. A few lights from shore shined on the calm water. Stars shown brightly between the broken clouds moving slowly across the night sky. I lay on my back swimming quickly through the water.

While looking up at the sky, the backside of my shoulder glanced against something large and smooth, pushing it below me underwater. I started. Looking around I saw several large splashes, a couple seconds apart, in different directions around me. My hand bumped something below the water. I recoiled, trying to assume a strong or at least defensive position, which is a very odd thing to try to do while floating in a bay of coal black water in the night. I splashed and kicked. There was noise. One of my flippers fell off or was pulled off. I momentarily considered diving underwater to try to get to it, but nearly instantly thought that a crazy idea. I did mark my location, not too far offshore from a white buoy.

Seeing no more splashing fish, I decided to continue swimming home.  The water to my side splashed again. I had the impression it was smaller fish. With my single flipper, I swam on.

Looking ahead when I breathed I could see the stars of phosphorescence glow in my exhale across the water. Under water, my moving arms made ghostly shapes where they moved, like angel wings. When I neared the shore, past our neighbor’s dock, I noticed very little of the phosphor in the water. I stepped out of the water, and headed up for dinner, where my kids asked me what took me so long as they finished eating ribs in their pajamas.

Mapping Openness to Cultures

I’ve been thinking about how differently people orient themselves in relation to other cultures. Here’s a range of orientations to one’s own and other cultures. What are the pros and cons of each? What determines a person’s orientation and openness? It’s hard and it’s strange to get to know other cultures. Is it worth it?

Monoculturalist	Cultural Supremacist, Cultural Elitist	Multiculturalist, cultural pluralist	Polyculturalist
Limits perspective and allows input only from within one’s native culture. Other cultures aren’t really considered to exist	Recognize existence of other cultures, but view one’s own culture as superior. My culture, right or wrong.	Multiple cultures exist and are honored as all having some value.	Individuals are fluent in more than one root culture.
Isolationist. Other cultures are inherently and unfathomably foreign.	Interchange is possible only on resource extraction, exploitation or economic terms.	Interchange possible on economic terms, and also on social terms, such as cultural and educational exchanges	Interchange is the normative state.
Intercultural space is unknown	Intercultural space is a struggle for dominance	Intercultural space is a domain and market for learning, negotiation, exploration, shared reality generation.	Intercultural space is normal, comfortable, cultural boundaries are recognized as highly permeable.
Marry someone from your own church	Marry within your village	Marrying across culture and race is ok.	Marrying across cultures is normal.

 

The columns above aren’t mutually exculsive. I’d say I married within my culture, but also feel rooted within multiple cultures and see the world as a polyverse (a space of multiple cultural universes).

I know many who deeply inhabit one home culture, and who don’t venture forth from there, and often I admire them for their steadfast loyalty to their familiar world, and to the clarity with which they see things. I, on the other hand feel like I live in a honeycomb of multiple cultures, moving between them on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. In a day i might be working with Americans online and by phone, discussing with my daughters a creole expression they heard at school, helping them with French homework or talking with a local neighbor or family member. It takes effort and energy to move between cultures and there pros and cons to doing so. At times I envy friends who are deep within a single culture and have a mastery of that domain. 

Yet, as someone who values learning a bit more than certainty, I think I’m preferring and actively seeking out the awkward discomfort of being a novice in a new culture for how that might enrich me over the certainty that I know how things are. I want a wide range of experiences to contribute to my identity. Surely, though, I also limit the risks of being too much a stranger in a strange land, of being lost or vulnerable to an unsafe extent, or on the point of non-comprehension. This is the brink of chaos; of exile, of an impossibility of participation. I think when we learn or when we’re given the tools of adapting to and learning new cultural contexts; of learning other languages and being at home with the unfamiliar rather than afraid of difference, the fearful aspects of these other worlds are far less and we’re more free to find our way in a wider world.

In a life, we make choices to invest more deeply in a handful of cultures, and those choices are limited by many factors. We’re born into a culture, but we may choose (or be forced) to live in different cultural spaces. Raising a family, we choose what culture to give our children and place limits on that as well. Each family in a sense forms or creates it’s own culture.

This Morning, Montagne du Vauclin

I noticed the night sounds of insects begin to wane and so knew it was early morning. I woke up, favoring the crepuscular hours at sunrise and sunset. The sun will rise in a half hour or so behind a bank of cumulus clouds on the horizon. Above them the pale sky lightens, yellow and faintly rose, and further above are slight traces of pink in some very high altitude clouds against the blue of parting night. Offshore, the reef waves roll in slowly, breaking silence on the calm sea. Nearby, insomnolent doves call to each other. A first rooster crows in the distance. Songbirds chirp in ssss’s and the insect sounds fade further.

While on my run yesterday to the ridges of Montagne du Vauclin, an ancient volcano, I chose to add on a climb to the peak. There is a stages of the cross climb that goes over the top. The way was marked well, but the path was slippery and muddy enough to merit wearing hiking shoes or boots. The view is spectacular of the entire island, though with clouds to the north I wasn’t able to see the pitons or the larger volcano, Montagne Pelee.

Near the peak, mist still lightly hung in the air, and the sunlight streamed through the trees in the mist making rays of light to the root rich ground, and the 14 white crosses along the way were in perfect harmony with the light and the air and the earth. Walking down the far side, though walking slow and carefully, I slipped and fell in the mud. The earth here is soft and a beautiful rust-red. Bright red-rust colored butterflies flit past. Mostly the trail is lined with lush tropical trees and brush. In a few places, large clumps of 50-foot tall bamboo stretch upwards.

Hundreds of dark tadpoles flittered in the deep ditches full of yesterday’s rain. A herd of 30 goats had made a wrong turn and the shepherd asked me to help bring them back, I ran past them and turned them around without thinking. Leggy sheep grazed eagerly.