All Entries in the "Soft News" Category
I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but…
There is this magic island. No cruise ships, no golf, no television, no umbrellas on the beach. Natural island life without the hoards, the yachts, without the traffic, just fresh fish for lunch and reggae at dusk. Authentic delights of the Caribbean without the plague of trampling tourism. Just rolling green hills and peaceful, winding island roads taking one from beach to beach.
It’s called Providencia or Old Providence – It’s deliriously beautiful, drifty and breezy. Coconut palms, Indian corral, mango are indigenous, and Ceiba trees flourish up on the mountain, post hurricane. Volcanic rock, unlike it’s bigger and noisier neighbor San Andres, which is coral and a drooling example of mindless tourism.
After the November, 2020 hurricane everything must be brought in except the sand. Even the coconuts are struggling to make a return. But the fish are still here. What a time to go to this chilled island and what a better time to spend a few dollars with these mellow people whose world just recently collided with near devastation. The big news: Providencia is back.
The island is increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes and climate change. Over 2000 homes were destroyed by Iota and the government response was typical. Rebuild what were once classic structures with cheap housing that all looks the same. The lodging, however, has come a long way toward reclaiming Eden.
“The hurricane only lasted a few hours and destroyed the lives of many residents,’ said Wily Robinson, a fisherman who has seen over 4 such storms in his 68 years on Providencia. “The government went through the motions of helping us but in the end dropped the ball one again.”
He added that the Colombian government would rather they weren’t here. The people are more closely linked to Jamaica, some 600 sea miles away. Jamaican Patois, is likely to be heard far more than Spanish or English.
And last night I found what I believe to be the legendary Catbird Seat of 30’s radio sportscaster Red Barber and humorist James Thurber. It was located on the falling away porch of the Sunrise Vista, a small barraca bar perched precariously seaside at Rocky Point. If this ain’t the famous Catbird Seat then it is easily the Caribbean Catbird Seat.
The Caribbean, just below the Catbird Seat
“Lean over too far and you’ll crash off yonder rocks and end up in the sea, said a fisherman and world traveller named Michael. You’d take this rickety old couch with you too! Let’s go for a ride on my boat instead. I’ll need a hand if the engine craps out…There’s Wahoo and Yellow fin tuna off in deep water just waiting for us pay them a visit.”
After countless pulls and a few quiet curses the engine starts and here we go…Michael knows what he’s doing. We take a spin to try the engine and soon it runs smoothly. Tomorrow he will head out on open water toward Jamaica in search of his catch. After a few more turns I must leave to have dinner at my friend, Idonna’s, who just could be the finest chef on the island. She might be cooking Red Snapper, Grouper or Barracuda or maybe she’s grilling Horse-eye Jack. They all live in the waters near the island.
She promised Black Crab Soup but we ran short of time and I had to settle for a bowl of the iconic Providencia delicacy elsewhere at Divino Nino at Southwest Bay. Her Rondon, a seafood and pork stew with root vegetables is known all the way to Panama. She vowed to make the dish for me when I return to the island in 2027.
In Providencia – sweet food doesn’t have anything to do with sugar it means homemade and delicious. Grilled fresh Pompano, patacones, coconut rice and ice-cold Aguila beer make the statement on the pretty wooden porch or at a table in the sand.
YES, we have no bananas
Lo siento pero no hay mangos hasta el barco llega de San Andres viernes.
Ah yes the proverbial Friday boat.
Mangos are harder to come by here, when years ago they ruled the place in abundance.
“Come back Friday in the morning,” she said in a mix of Patois, Spanish and English.
I left the little store disappointed. I climbed into my Mule and started the engine intent on purveying a fat little papaya or even a slice of pineapple. Then I heard her yell—
Wait! I found two!” She came running out of her store…
I very had secured the last 2 mangos on Providencia!
She was happy. I was happy. I offered her one of the mangos but she said she could wait unto her ship comes in from San Andres. For a moment in time we were both in mango heaven.
The last 2 mangoes till Friday. Wow! I guess I should feel guilty but I still don’t. I was so jealous of my pillaging the I went back to Rocky Point and ate one entire Mango with a few shots of rum and a can of beanie weenies that I jumped on while in town. Just because one is visiting an exotic culture does not mean he should skimp on healthy repasts.
Damn these people are big. It’s a damn good thing they are smiling most of the time. My host at Posada Ashanty, Killy was 6’4 and at least 230. Uncle Cab driver was big and skinny at the same time. Wily was big too as I recall. Even the Rastas were giants, and why shouldn’t they be.
Lovely Caribbean people——Musicians, pescaderos, exceptional diving and snorkeling, semi-guided fishing trips, ridiculous sunrises and sunsets, excellent food and music. Another paradise to see, feel and remember forever. The notorious English pirate Henry Morgan, would agree. He claimed sister island, Santa Catalina, as his redoubt for more than 20 years. It is said there is buried treasure there but no one has found anything. Maybe he took it with him when he passed.
Closer to the Corn Islands of Nicaragua than to the Colombian mainland, fishermen used to pass Las Islas de Maize from Providencia frequently but today there is no traffic due to disputes of island ownership and chaotic pettiness on the part of both sovereign nations …It’s basically the same Patois, bound by the salty centuries and by the horrific legacy of slavery.
Sadly one of the the last vestiges of traditional life on a Caribbean island – a culture at risk – is threatened. Residents here are keen to preserve it and juggle eco-tourism with daily family life on this rock. Go there and spend your money. The human value is phenomenal while your tarrying footprint is still washed out to sea.
– Kevin Haley
Fear of Frying
“Artificial Intelligence has no heart, no soul, no sense of humor…the very things that separate humans from lower mammals. We are quite willing to give up our freedoms and happy to take the easier path to the demise of our species as we now know it. It will creep into your bedroom and GET YOU while you sleep!”
Maginot Line Will Tour Colorado in July
from You’re Only Ancient History Forever
(Crested Butte) The legendary Maginot Line, completed in 1936 and thought to be impregnable by the French, will visit this former coal-mining giant as part of a 250-year celebratory summer spectacular journey through the Rockies.
Joining the Maginot Line will be the upstart Siegfried Line, or West Wall as well as the stumblebum Hindenburg Line, a German forward defensive position built in 1916-1917 near Soissons on the Aisne.
What the three lines have in common is that none actually kept anyone out. The Maginot was flanked in 1940, the Siegfried slowly deserted in the face of bloody Allied victories from 1944 to 1945, and the Hindenburg, despite spotty fighting, was lost to the Armistice signed in way back in 1919.
Perhaps what continues to delight war historians is the failure of the Maginot Line, which proved worthless when the Germans simply took a shortcut through Belgium, going around the lavish defenses and marching on to Vichy Paradise. Two wars in a row saw German troops soaking their feet in the Meuse
Despite its link to the nation’s most devastating defeat in history the line still evokes a certain pride, a subtle patriotism. Discovered in a Paris garbage heap in 1942, the failed logistical landmark was cleaned up and put back together from pre-World War II maps and graphs. Its accompanying military fortifications Siegfried and Hindenburg have always been maintained and had only to be collected and shipped (pillboxes and all) to New York where the coming summer tour of the United States originates.
“The real draw here remains the Maginot,” said Entraylea Maginot, great-granddaughter of Andre Maginot the namesake of the inglorious ditch. “That’s what the people come out to see. It cost 3 billion francs just for the carpeting!”
The older Maginot, who, fortunately for his Noblesse oblige, passed on some eight years before the line’s ineffectiveness was brought to light by German generals in 1940, did not know either of the other lines. It is expected that they will all get along during the travels.
The Colorado Division of Enforcement and Tourism hopes that the inclusion of the tours and the legal sale of legal marijuana will increase tourism by 30% this summer.
– Bambi Bumble
Antifa Cells Under Reflecting Pool
Seeking global solidarity, a radical wing of Antifacista is allegedly acquiring an unsettling number of war elephants to use to attack Orange Donald before the midterm elections in November. ICE Agents searching for the elephants, that reportedly number 4000, say that countless Antifa fighters are hiding them under the waters of Washington’s Reflecting Pool . Political analysts continue to determine how this is connected to the poorly received Chung King and LaChoy jokes spewed by Chump during his recent summit with Xi Jinping In Beijing
The anti-facists, honored by trump as the first homegrown American terrorist group in 250 years. Earlier trump has designated sativa as a terrorist organization only to discover it is a strain of cannabis (aka cannabis sativa).
“We’re digging like madmen,” said one excavationist. “We’ll find them and when we do there’ll be hell to pay.”
Administration sources, detecting yet another opportunity to misguide the American people, told reporters today that the massive $13 million remodel of the Reflecting Pool was being conducted simply to improve the ambience of the place.
And if that’s not enough to ruin their morning coffee, many of the union ballroom builders on the East Wing are registered as Antifa operatives, even though there is no visible infrastructure or indication of a central power base.
When we finish the excavation we’ll know more,” said a sweating White House architect.
“An alarming number of subversive workers on the legacy White House Ballroom are currently sabotaging the basement of Congressional chambers,” gasped the source. “One aging double-agent sous chef allegedly voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1956 while the pastry chef’s ghost uncle served with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. (1936-1939) . These commies hate America. We’re watching them closely. We hope to neutralize them.”
It is clear that Antifa is after Trump. One kidnapping was thwarted by FBI, foiled because no one wanted to baby sit the Orange Whale. Antifa scuttlebutt? Maybe not.
“I never really ever saw one of these Antifas but I am sure they are everywhere,” said a trump supporter.
“This is a sophisticated cell hates America”. These bloodthirsty mega-terrorists are hell bent on fighting the same fascism that the Allies fought in 1942-45. Doesn’t anyone connect the dots? It’s all quite laughable,” said a spokesman for the Democrats.
In other stumblings, Elon Musk admitted that showcase Nazi, Stephen Miller was an AI foul up from the beginning – The empty net affect did not mix well with bone spurs, bibles or bullies. Our little experiment has gone way wrong, and like AI (and Covid) is very difficult to harness once it gets loose in the lab.
-Small Mouth Bess
Wow. The things you miss while you’re out on a bender – editor
Ropas Sucias (Leftovers)
MATH 611:
How many kids that go hungry in these US would it take to build trump’s arch? How many of the Trump minions would fit into his bomb-proof bunker. How many times did Trump’s father say I love you to Donald?
Terrorists call terrorists terrorists
Pointing the finger has never been more popular in world circles as was painfully clear today.
Congratulations Antifa: Anti-Fascist group recently awarded domestic terror designation by the American shadow gov’ment.
Tips to be worldly # 611: Never eat borscht in Russian when the dictators’ last name ends in an n.
New video games doing well . “Ballistic Dart” game sales up 45% with “Hit Vladimir’s Houses”and “Hit Bibi’s Bathroom” holding on as bullseyes, shredding all previous records for political action videos.
Is trump, the reincarnation of Paraguayan leader Francisco Solano López? Solano’s diary (illegally confiscated from library) was diwcovered by Kurdish carpenters in an unfinished White House bunker next to the only book in the place, Mein Kamph. He won’t need a GPS to find the gates of hell.
Apology: Gray whales not gay whales are visiting San Francisco Bay in great numbers this spring.
Looks like former U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondo wasn’t really the glue that held the trump card together. When she uttered “You should apologize to President Trump – was she speaking rhetorically? Did she actually say “What was not to like, under the bus”?
Win three rounds in the ring with White House
Deputy Chief of staff Steven Miller
Just answer a few simple questions
on our Enough is Enough Survey
1. Correctly guess the most likely source of Tom Homan’s next bribe. Location? Amount?
2. Where do former ICE agents go for fun?
3. Who is the next Administration official to be fired by the Orange Donald?
4. Why do the majority of MAGA lovers not know the definition of dystopia?
Boner Question: Who will pay for the bad blood created by Donald Trump? Will other countries ever forgive us?
Correction: We wrote that a Texas university will no longer teach Plano when it was supposed to read Texas university will no longer teach Plato. Sorry for the oversight.
– compiled by Susie Compost
Wild Horses Get Life on the Range
(Maybell) Herds of wild horses roaming the open spaces here have been given a reprieve and stay of execution due to budgetary limits imposed by the Bureau of Land Management. The agency, which often destroys wild horses to control the flourishing herds and protect domestic stock, cannot afford to kill the beasts due to operational cutbacks and severe layoffs amid the shadow war against domestic adversaries and a plethora of sovereign countries.
“We have instead rescinded the sentences imposed to a life sentence on the open range,” boasted an advisory board within the Department of the Interior.
No new roundup of the wild horses is slated until at least October.
Although no one actually expects the animals to comply with the judgment, the horses will be confined to an area of not more than 4000 square miles extending from northwest Colorado to southern Wyoming and eastern Utah. All previous transgressions on the part of the herds will be forgiven based on good behavior and compliance with the newly imposed code of ethics.
A one-toed, hoofed spokesman within the herd did not return our phone calls Thursday.
– Earl MacAdoo
