WARNING: Please Don’t Read if Politics Offend You!
The header photo above is Bribri Watsi Waterfalls, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Costa Rica where I was two weeks ago. Warmer there than Atenas.
El Mejor Clima del Mundo = The Best Weather in the World
That is the Chamber of Commerce slogan for the small farming town of Atenas, Costa Rica because some writer said that years ago in an article he wrote in National Geographic. Of course a claim like that will always be debatable, but it is basically true for me and I cannot say it better than a fellow expat retiree in Atenas wrote yesterday in one of our local Facebook groups:
Weather and our green season = another perfect day in Atenas. Nice hot, clear skies in the morning (82F inside our home) and now rain with brilliant colors of blue, grey and white in our clouds. Perfect!!!! Feeling = happy. ~Mary Cook
Note that we locals call “Rainy Season” (May-Nov) “Green Season” here. And it is definitely my favorite time of year! Sunny mornings & rain in late afternoon or evening. More comfortable, greener, more beautiful and fewer northern tourists! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.
~Katherine Mansfield
My Left-wing Take on the U.S. November 6 Election
For years I have watched the dangerous fascist rightward movement of my beloved country of birth. I watched a John Birch Society take over and nearly destroy a church I served in South Florida in the 1960’s. As a lifetime servant of the Southern Baptist Convention I watched immoral shenanigans of power-hungry despots increasingly gain control of the then largest non-Catholic denomination at annual meetings. During this time I watched fellow-Christians being seduced by the obviously non-Christian “Tea Party” politics. Then as a 22-year employee of the Baptist Sunday School Board (LifeWay Christian Resources) I suffered the “takeover” by right-wing fascists who brought in bankers and businessmen who saw only a bottom line profit and created the collapse of one of the greatest publishing houses and ministries ever created for Christianity, while “downsizing” out experienced servants like myself. At times I thought my total world was collapsing with the added trauma of an unfriendly divorce, single-parenting, death of a child and both my parents right before losing my job only 3 years before retirement age.
God’s provision for those 3 years was miraculous and wonderful, but the following 12 years of retirement in Tennessee continued to expose the dangerous political changes coming to America and my church and was one of my major, though unstated, reasons for moving my retirement to Costa Rica in 2014. And that was even before I knew anything about Trump. Other reasons for moving here were listed in this 2014 post when I still feared alienating my conservative friends and blamed it mostly on high costs in the states. I think too much is at stake in America today to worry about alienating people now.
The dangerous fascism of many of my own Christian friends and many other factors led to the disastrous election of 2016, while I was enjoying retirement in my new home country of Costa Rica. Anyone who is not shocked by the immoral Donald Trump and his spineless Republican Congress has probably not continued reading this far. But I sincerely believe that NOW IS THE TIME TO BEGIN CHANGE! And I have yet to see it stated any better than an editorial in today’s Washington Post:
A reminder: America’s future is at stake in the 2018 midterms, an opinion article by Brian Klaas.
I hope you will be able to open and read it without being a subscriber. I’m not sure how that works. And I hope you will vote Democrat at every level this election! I already have in my absentee ballot. A blue wave is needed!
And now I hope to avoid politics for a long time in this blog. It is really about my retirement in wonderful Costa Rica! (But part of my heart is still in the states.) One week from tomorrow I will be reporting from a rainforest lodge near Golfito, Costa Rica: Esquinas Lodge Only positive stuff then!
¡Pura Vida!
Right On!!!!!!!!!!!!