Shortly after returning to Faith UMC in Jacksonville, we were immersed in another Nomads project, our second as leaders. This was by far the most physically demanding, involving the refurbishing and painting of 2 roofs and the high eaves on the sanctuary building. By months' end, one roof was done, one was still being prepped and the sanctuary eaves were done.
So we headed off to Disney World.
When we learned that this period's project involved work on the gym roof, which was – well as high as a gym roof, it gave us pause. The project was billed as a painting project, but the preparation of an 10,000 sf metal roof for painting involved a lot of wire-brushing the rust that had accumulated over the decades. Then the rust would be primed. Finally, 175 gallons of a roof sealing paint would be applied in 2 coats to the entire roof with a paint sprayer.
To get all this equipment and people up on the roof, the church rented a lift that a few members of the team became adept at operating. On the few occasions where we had difficulty with it, we had to go up and down using 2 extension ladders. It took all of the 3 weeks, and lots of wearying work to brush off the rust, prime, pressure-wash and paint but we managed to get it done. Although thanks to a weather delay, the last coat was applied the day after the project officially ended.
In the process of working to seal the roof, we also tried to address some leaks which were centered around 3 roof vents. The problems seemed to be related to gaps forming under the ridgeline of the roof and the vents themselves, which lacked adequate covers. (Tarps had been used in recent years to minimize the water incursion.) To solve this problem, we (mostly Pat) sprayed foam into the gaps under the roof ridge. And then several team members designed and fabricated vent covers, which were then installed over the vents. They seemed to work, since some significant storms arrived shortly after their installation and no leaks were found.
The other big project involving the lift was the painting of the eaves that encircled the sanctuary. The lift was required to do the peaks on the front and back of the building. In the meantime, we had workers on scaffolding work their way around the sides pressure-washing, scraping, priming and finally painting. Again this took much of the 3 weeks, but we were thrilled to finish just one day early.
The other roof was on Wesley Hall, which has a flat concrete roof topped with asphalt. This roof's previous paint was peeling badly. We began the laborious process of removing the paint and getting to a solid under layer. While this project is still underway, we keep reminding ourselves that the gym and sanctuary are done!
In between these major projects, we had a myriad of smaller painting projects completed, repaired a major water valve to Wesley Hall, repaired one of the church's golf carts, continued to make progress on a new shower and building a deck by the steeple. In all, the team felt great about its accomplishments and the church was amazingly appreciative.
We were pleasantly surprised by a call from our friends Miami and Shelly who had pulled their boat Yume into a slip at Brunswick Landing. We joined them one Saturday to catch up with them and share our insights into the transition to life on the road. They were hoping to make a similar transition. To our surprise, the transition happened sooner than either of us expected. They came to visit us a couple of weeks later and we showed them an Airstream on the church property that was for sale. By Monday, it was theirs. It needed lots of cleaning, but it was basically sound and a great deal.
We also had a great visit from Cathy's sister and brother-in-law, Carolyn and Clint. They arrived in time to join us at Clara's for lunch and then a tour of the church afterward, including a trip up in the lift to see the top of the gym roof. What a rare treat to have some time with them.
Cathy had smelled it once before a few weeks before Christmas. Something was burning. This time, she was in the shower when she noticed the smell. She shut off the shower and quickly turned off the Air conditioning and looked for anything else that might be drawing power. While scrambling to get dressed, she narrowed the source of the smell to a cabinet close to where the power cord enters the RV. It was about this time that Dave arrived. We removed the panel covering the junction and found the disturbing evidence of melted wires and worse, a charred spot on the wood above it. We were disturbingly close to a fire.
With Fred's help, Dave removed the charred ends of the wires and re-seated them into wire nuts. Since we are plugged into a 50amp power source, it was apparent that our 30amp panel was not protecting us from drawing too much current. With that in mind, we are more careful about what appliances might be running in combination until we have a better solution in place.
It was a different smell that drew Cathy's attention a few days later. It was shortly after discovering the shower grey water tank had filled. The smell was a little funky in the living room. After dumping the tanks, Cathy noticed a stream of water coming from under the center of the living room onto the ground. Apparently there is a loose fitting on the tank under the living room floor. One more thing to watch for. Once the water fully drained, the smell disappeared, thankfully.
We had been hoping to connect with Dave's sister Wendy and her husband (also Dave) since our return to Florida. We finally got the chance to meet them at Disney World for a day late in January after our project ended. Just in time to celebrate both of their birthdays (well a little late for Wendy's . . .). We had a great day at the newly remodeled Disney Springs and stayed to enjoy a chilly campfire program with Chip and Dale before heading our separate ways. It was a nice break from all the project work and fun to reconnect.
We did have a birthday celebration for Dave on his birthday back at Faith, which started with him being serenaded by the other Nomads at morning devotion and ended with – what else – a dinner at church. Only Dave had to work the grill for his own birthday meal. But he still had a good time.


The Hotel La Merced de la Concordia is located in the historical center of Tarazona, beautiful and ancient city noted for its civil and religious buildings, especially Moorish style.
The Hotel is an ancient palace of 1501, as recorded in the historical archives, built by the Jewish convert to the Muslim builder Mohamed Santa Fe. This building is a sample of normal coexistence of three religions held in Tarazona for centuries. The building also housed an ancient Tahona (Bakery) well known in the area for many years.
The hotel has 7 luxurious rooms, 3 of which are spectacular suites of 35 m2.All rooms are equipped with TV, Internet, Telephone, Minibar and beautiful bathrooms that will make your accommodation in Tarazona is full of amenities.
In the restaurant, you can enjoy our traditional cuisine, based on local produce, with innovative and personal touch and a quality seal.
Tarazona is a historic city with many places to visit such as Cathedral, Palacio Episcopal, mudéjares Torres ... In addition, a few kilometers, should not miss a visit to the Natural Park of Moncayo, Veruela Monastery, and the charming villages of Somontano del Moncayo.


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How Nelson Mandela's death provides South Africa a challenge and an opportunity
December 6, 2013 Kevin Lees	3 Comments
No one could have filled the shoes of Nelson Mandela, the first president of post-apartheid South Africa — not that either of his successors in recent years tried particularly hard to do so.
Thabo Mbeki (pictured above, right, with Mandela), who served as Mandela's competent executive during Mandela's term as South African president between 1994 and 1999, became known during his own decade in office as the world leader who refused to admit the connection between HIV and AIDS long after the scientific community established that the human immunodeficiency virus is the proximate cause of AIDS.
Jacob Zuma (pictured above, left, with Mandela), who followed Mbeki into the presidency after the 2009 general election, came to power virtually synonymous with illegality after surviving criminal charges for rape and for corruption in the mid-2000s. Mbeki himself was forced to resign in September 2008 as president because of allegations that he interfered in the judicial process on behalf of Zuma.
With a general election due in spring 2014, however, Mandela's death presents both an opportunity and a challenge to South African politics. Mandela's absence means that the space is once again open for a South African leader to inspire the entire nation without facing the inevitable comparison to one of the world's most beloved figures. But it also marks the end of post-apartheid South Africa's honeymoon, and so Mandela's passing also represents a challenge to the new generation of political leadership — to dare to bring the same level of audacious change to South Africa that Mandela did. Nothing less will be required of South Africa's leaders to keep the country united and prosperous in the decades to come — to ensure that South Africa continues to be, as Mandela memorably stated in his 1994 inaugural address, 'a rainbow nation, at peace with itself and the world.'
South Africa today remains the jewel of sub-Saharan Africa, in both humanitarian and economic terms. Mandela's release from prison and the largely peaceful negotiation of the end of apartheid in Africa alongside F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's president from 1989 to 1994, rank among the most memorable events of the 20th century. The constitution that Mandela helped to enact in 1996 is one of the world's most progressive in terms of human rights — it purports to grant every South African the right to human dignity, to health care and water, to work, to a basic education, to housing. Even if the rights promulgated in the South African constitution today remain more aspirational than functional, the constitution was pathbreaking in it breadth. It's notable that in 2006, South Africa became the fifth country in the world to allow same-sex marriage.
With an economy of $579 billion (on a PPP basis, as of 2012, according to the International Monetary Fund), South Africa has the largest economy on the entire African continent, despite the fact that its population of 53 million is dwarfed by the populations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (67.5 million), Ethiopia (86.6 million) and Nigeria (a staggering 173.6 million).
Its GDP per capita of $11,281 (again on a PPP basis and as determined by the IMF as of 2012) is exceeded in sub-Saharan Africa only by oil-rich Gabon ($18,501) and tourism hotspot Botswana ($15,706), and it far outpaces the fourth-ranked Namibia ($7,500) and the fifth-ranked Angola ($6,092), another petrostrate. Even that understates South Africa's economic dominance, because both the Botswanan and Namibian economies have flourished in large part due to trade with the South African economy.
But that doesn't mean all is perfectly well. Nigeria seems likely to outpace South Africa to become the largest sub-Saharan African economy soon, if it hasn't already. Despite its status as Africa's economic powerhouse, South Africa suffered its first post-apartheid recession in 2009, and the recovery hasn't been particularly strong. South African GDP grew just 2.2% last year and growth remained sluggish this year, too. Unemployment is creeping downward, but it's still a whopping 24.7% as of the third quarter of 2013. Different studies make it difficult to know whether poverty is rising or declining, but wealth among South African whites is massively higher than wealth among South African blacks, and income inequality is rising sharply in South Africa (as in much of the rest of the world).
Clashes between miners and South African police during last summer's Marikana strike left 34 people dead, shocking both South Africa and the world with the kind of violent images that hadn't been seen in South Africa since the apartheid era.
With an estimated HIV/AIDS rate of 17.5%, South Africa has the world's fourth-highest HIV prevalence after neighboring Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana. Though we now recognize Mandela as one of the world's most prodigious activists in the campaign against HIV/AIDS, the issue wasn't at the top of his agenda as president, a failing that Mandela acknowledged after leaving office. In retirement, however, Mandela took up the cause with vigor (especially after his own son Makgatho died from AIDS complications in 2005). His forceful push at the 2000 AIDS conference in Durban muted the criticisms of the Mbeki government and paved the way for greater treatment options for all Africans, including South Africans. But the much-delayed fight against HIV/AIDS represents one of the starkest failures of post-apartheid South Africa. Continue reading How Nelson Mandela's death provides South Africa a challenge and an opportunity →
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RT @AndyKimNJ: I'm back in the Rotunda for the first time since the January 6th insurrection. It looks more beautiful than ever. https://t.… 11:29:59 PM January 12, 2021 from Twitter Web App

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


4. Que Es Eso? Department: Dancing Reptile or Trick Photo?
The Golden Gringo and the entire staff of GGC Publications (guess who that is) wish you and yours every blessing and good wish for the holidays.
¡Feliz Navidad y Feliz Hanukkah Amigos!
If you ask most people how they know they are in the center of San José, they usually reference or point to the Teatro Nacionál. This turn of the last century building (1897) is one of the most important cultural centers in Costa Rica. Technically it's not at the very center of the capital, being located at Avenida 2 and Calle 3, 2-3 blocks from the actual center at Avenida Central and Calle Central.
But the Teatro and the adjoining Plaza de La Cultura dominate the central part of town. The Chronicles featured this beautiful landmark in an article in February of this year entitled: Teatro Nacionál, Culture at the Center of Things. There is almost always something going on at Teatro Nacionál from plays to opera and virtually every other type of performing art.
Movement is now afoot in the legislature to designate the Teatro a national symbol and provide new funds for update and renovation. I think many Ticos and expats would be surprised to think of the Teatro already as anything but a national symbol. Accordingly, one would expect there to be little dissension on that piece of legislation.
The Teatro celebrated its 120th anniversary on October 16.
The World Robotics Olympics was held on November 10-12 in San José.
The WRO was formed in 2004 to promote worldwide entrepreneurial creativity in the use of robots. This year was the 14th annual World Robotics Olympiad. It was also the first to be held in Costa Rica and the first ever to be run by a woman. She is Alejandra Sánchez, a 36 year old Costa Rican. When Sra. Sánchez is not teaching young people about robotics she is busy being a wife, mother and professor of mechanical and electronic engineering at the University of Costa Rica.
This year over 3,000 people attended the competition from some 60+ countries around the world. All competitors in the regular group are put on an equal footing by the rules that require the use and construction of their robots to be made only from a set of controllers, motors and sensors called LEGO® MINDSTORMS® (NXT or EV3). (My oh my, how Lego has grown up over the years). The competition in 2016 was won by a team from India.
"It is not whether you win or lose, but how much you learn that counts."
Tropical paradises aren't what they used to be.
Jamaica has an Olympic bobsled team and Costa Rica has just finished its first International Ice Hockey Tournament.
The Chronicles has followed the development of hockey in Costa Rica, spurred on by Canadian and U.S. transplants of course, for some time now (see hockey). The first team in Costa Rica was formed last year and goes by the name Castillo Knights, largely because they play at the Castillo Country Club in Heredia Province (photo right).
In the current (invitational) tournament four teams participated: The Knights, a Canadian team called the Calgary Canadian Citizens (also described by one press report as the "Calgary beer league hockey team"), a team from the Falkland Islands and a U.S. team called the Los Angeles Ruination (love the name). The CCC's, ages from 30 to 50, have been described in press reports as "guys who played hockey all their lives but never really made it probably beyond high school hockey." Dude, give 'em a break, they put the skates on.
The games were played in a rink half the size of a professional league rink, with lower boards and no protective glass. Slap shots were verboten. (Does that make for a more gentile form of hockey with emphasis on skating and passing like in the good old days? - just a thought) The CCC's emerged champions and took home a nice trophy.
A modest beginning for international hockey in Costa Rica but it has to start somewhere. Keep this going amigos and some day we'll see the Bruins and Penguins here (they will come, if only to see Costa Rica).
There must be gold in them, thar hills.
A recent episode of the conflict between Costa Rican environmental advocates and a Canadian gold mining company took a different twist. Some 200 fuerza publica (national police) officers descended on the potential gold mining site and arrested over 80 amateur miners. Fifteen of them were charged with illegal mining and over sixty of them with "irregular immigration status".
This saga started almost twenty years ago when Infinito Gold Mining Ltd. proposed an open-pit mining operation for gold at Crucitas de Cutris, in San Carlos, a small town near the Nicaraguan border north of the central valley and San José.
After several years of "discussion", environmental impact statements and haggling, the company was finally granted a "concession" or right to proceed in 2005. In the next five years a wide array of lawsuits were brought by environmentalists; the company's operations were alternatively red and green lighted so that the venture found itself unable to operate as planned. Finally in May 2010 the government issued a decree banning any operation that used cyanide or mercury, both used widely in gold extraction.
The company continued for some time to litigate the government's non-compliance with the concession but was stopped on every level. They initially sued the government for $1.1 billion in lost profit, then reduced their claim to $94 million and pursued it through the World Bank. The claims were vacated by the courts and the company's appeals dismissed.
Despite a personal intervention by Canada's prime minister that tried to assure Costa Ricans that Canadian mining operations (extensive in the home country) are environmentally safe, the concession was withdrawn by the government and, in 2015 the company ceased operations in Costa Rica all together.
Evidently the rumor spread that there was some gold turned up in the early mining operations and an individual could find sufficient oro at the mining site to get rich quickly. So the Crusitas Gold Rush began. But gold mining just ain't gonna be allowed to happen amigos. So the government sent in police to stop the scavenging. It appears some of the amateur miners knew how to extract gold from ore as the police seized large quantities of shovels, picks, buckets and machetes as well as 3 kilos of mercury (6.6 lbs) plus other liquids and 136 kilos (300 lbs) of sediments, probably ore extracts.
Be gold diggers no more my amigos, with or without a concession.
On Sunday, November 12, 8:28 PM in Quepos, old GG was wondering what he could write about in this section since the rains had eased up and Nate or another tropical storm was not threatening the region. In addition, there had not been a tremor large enough to feel in months. All was quiet on the western front. But then, at precisely 8:28 PM my computer station and everything in my apartment began that too familiar dance that rudely announces an earthquake.
The force of the shaking built in intensity over a five to ten second period. Half way through the experience GG began thinking of diving for his "safe space", a wedge between a built-in armoire and my bed about 10 feet from my computer station. The hope is that my "safe space" has a chance of creating a survivor "triangle", a technique I had read about and reported on back in 2011 (see that article here: Triangle).
In Quepos, the shaker only lasted about ten seconds but some reports said it lasted as much as 40-50 seconds to the north of us. After the ten seconds, the shaking dropped off precipitously. The post-shaker stats were impressive: a. epicenter 16 km (10 miles) southeast of Jacó which put it within about 40 km (25 miles) of Quepos, b. 6.5 on the Richter scale, exceeded only in GG's nine years here by the 7.6 monster in 2012 and c. 19.8 km in depth (12 miles); relatively shallow compared to the 41 km (25 miles) depth of the 2012 hospital destroyer.
In our area, the power flickered several times and then went out, but the outage, which completely blacked out all of Quepos and Manuel Antonio, only lasted about twenty minutes and then the electric returned. About 25 miles to the north of Jacó, in the small town of Esparza, the shake, rattle and roll emptied a lot of shelves at a local supermarket (see photo right).
Later, the government reported three indirect fatalities due to the tremor, two people in their mid-fifties plus one who was only 25, all of whom suffered heart attacks and were pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Meanwhile, at the same time, the news stream was diverted to a much more serious earthquake (+400 fatalities) on the Iran/Iraq border that occurred about eight hours before the Costa Rica shaker.
I can now see why people say they never really get used to these things.
Small Town Stories - Episode 1 was an article in the September 2017, Edition 109 labeled "Quepos Qonvenience", which reported on getting things done in a typical day in Quepos. Recently GG had another interesting experience that compelled me to consider occasionally writing such stories and, et voila, here's #2. This story combines two distinct experiences in Quepos happening within an hour of each other.
It was nearing the dinner hour one day and GG was wandering around the mercado (market) area next to the Quepos bus station. I was trying to kill time, being about 45 minutes early for a dinner date. Then I remembered I needed to get a birthday card for a Tico friend and thought of a corner shop in the mercado called Wilber's. I knew Wilber would have some good cards, in Spanish, because I'd bought them there before. Wilber's is, not surprisingly, owned and operated by the famous Wilber whose been an icon at this mercado for a couple of dozen years (photo below).
Wilber's is the kind of place where you go to get the "odd thing" that is difficult to find and for which everybody seems to have a frequent need. In addition to birthday cards I've bought several pairs of reading glasses at Wilber's over the last few years, the simple magnifier type with lenses in wire or plastic trim. Wilber's has a good selection of reading glasses with magnifying powers from 1.25 up to 3.50 (I usually get along with 2.0). And they cost only about 2,500 colones or about $4.50.
A few months ago the Panasonic control for my TV went on the fritz and I remembered seeing similar controls on the wall at Wilber's. Sure enough, he had the exact replacement except that, unlike the one at home, the one he gave me worked. I had little doubt about that point because he powered up the unit at the shop and tested every button himself.
This evening and not at all out of the ordinary, Wilber was still working the store all by himself twenty minutes before the official closing time of 6 PM. I asked him, in my best Spanish ("Neccesito una tarjeta de cumpleanos para un buen amigo"), for his advice on selecting a card for a good friend. He responded in English, "Come with me" and we went across the aisle to the greeting card rack (his store is actually in two parts located across a public walkway inside a mall).
Wilber fingered several cards on the rack, reading the message on them and then presented me with a very attractive one with a picture of a fiesta and a wine bottle on the front. I remarked that it was indeed a pretty card but my friend doesn't drink anymore. The cover would be inappropriate. After that, something made me say: "I don't drink anymore either." to which Wilber responded, "Yo tampoco" (me, neither).
Wilber then told me the story of his father who had passed away some four years ago. Up until the last ten years of his life his dad had been a heavy drinker and often ended up passing out at home at night. Then one day the old man said to him: "No más, se acabó" (No more, it's over) and he never drank again and neither did Wilber, emulating his dad. At this I blurted out: "Es un milagro, amigo" (It's a miracle), to which he simply smiled.
I left Wilber at closing time, GG having developed an even stronger bond with a Costa Rican friend and fellow life traveler.
I then met my Tico friend and suggested a new and strange place for dinner, the Shashlyk place. Being Tico, my friend at first had difficulty pronouncing shashlyk (sha-sh-leek) but then so did I. I had seen placards posted around town as well as in the local buses proclaiming genuine Ukrainian shashlyk was now available in Quepos. So I thought: now that's something different to try.
Shashlyk, of course, is simply a dish of skewered and grilled cubes of meat, a food popular in: Ukraine, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey and now, of course, Quepos. Some people call it shishkabob but I found shashlyk to be much more than just shishkabob.
So we located the restaurant in a small cubicle near the bus station, across the street from the Quepos carniceria (meat store), and only about a half block from Wilber's emporium. We were greeted by a gent who I had seen about Quepos several times but had not yet had the pleasure of meeting. His name is Vladimir ("Vlad" - and he was quick to say "not Vladimir Putin") and he introduced us to his wife Ludmilla ("Milla") who was very busy in the kitchen preparing meals and organizing things.
The first thing I noticed was something odd just inside the entrance to Shashlyk, S. A. (that's also the official name of the business and restaurant). The odd item was a strange looking round thing with an elaborate design on its surface (see photo). I suspected its use as an oven because it was throwing off heat. It looked to me to be either a cooker or a left-over native-American burial jar from the first millennium. Thinking about it further I came to the conclusion it's also something that could double as a heater on those cold Ukrainian winter nights.
Vlad explained that this device is where the Shashlyk is cooked to perfection. The skewers containing meat and vegetables are hung vertically in the center of the oven. The heat, both radiant and convection, is provided by slowly burning wood inside and around the center in compartments near the outer wall. That particular method also adds a bit of delicious smoky flavor to the meat and vegetables.
I returned a few days later to ask if there was a special name for the oven. "Clay Oven" says Vlad. That works for me amigo. The clay construction allows for the elaborate external design to be permanently glazed onto the outer surface.
I was curious about one other thing. Vlad talked about something called "night meat". "Wazzat, amigo", says GG? He explained: in this process, the meat is literally massaged (yeah, that's right, massaged),several times during the day with 17 spices, including six different kinds of pepper. That night, the meat is put into the cooker and slowly roasted overnight by a dying fire. The net result is an extremely tender, slow cooked shashlyk that, according to Vlad, is best served cold with a good wine. So I tried night meat cold with some Ukrainian spiced potatoes - outstanding, rico amigos, cмачна (Ukranian for yummy)..
The Shashlyk place is too small for tables and chairs so take out is a good option, but it does have a counter where my friend and I ate while standing. Vlad said they are still waiting on stools they ordered, built to service the counter. He believed the stools will be built and delivered soon (in good Tico time, of course). Stools or no stools, in GG's opinion, the food is worth standing for. At this time, Shashlyk is being offered by Vlad and Milla only in pork based products but I've already begun lobbying for some good lamb. With those Ukrainian spices lamb cooked that way would be truly awesome.
But one of these days GG wants to talk to Vlad about the name for the place (sorry Vlad, once a business consultant, always a business consultant). Calling it the Shashlyk place gets old quickly. How about "Carne de la Noche" (Night Meat); that will cause curiosity among the natives and expats alike? Or maybe one of our readers can come up with a twist on the Ukrainian translation of "night meat" which is Ніч м'яса.
What is this little guy up to?
Is it a trick photo?
Shortly after the World Robotics Olympics concluded in San José (report above), another world meeting began in the Nicoya peninsula. This one was called the World Meeting of Blue Zones.
The map to the right shows the Nicoya's physical relationship within Costa Rica. The peninsula is partly in Guanacaste province and partly in Puntarenas province (burgundy color). Puntarenas province is also the home of a number of well-known cities and towns including, going from north to south, Puntarenas, Jacó, Parrita, Quepos, Dominical and Golfito.
The Chronicles has been following the Blue Zone story for some time as it includes the incredible designation of the Nicoya peninsula as the largest of five "Blue Zones" in the world.
A Blue Zone, as designated by the United Nations, is an area that contains an above average percentage of centenarians, i.e., people over 100 years old. The other four Blue Zones are Icaria in Greece, Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa in Japan and Loma Linda in the United States (yeah, that's right, Loma Linda in San Bernadino County, California). One thing seems obvious from the map at left: none of the Blue Zones is terribly far from the equator, none either strongly north nor strongly south.
The Nicoya is not just rich in centenarians, approximately 50 at this writing, but in other advanced age groups as well. Nonagenarians for example are much more prevalent here, there being almost 900 people over 90 years of age. The average life span currently in Costa Rica is 80 (77 for men, 82 for women), about the same as the United States, but in the Nicoya the life expectancy for men exceeds the national average by 15 years, i.e., the average is 92. For Nicoya women, their average lifespan beat the national average by 9 years at 91. A man who turns 90 in the Nicoya can be expected to live another 4.4 years, say the experts.
"What Me Worry, With My Telomeres?"
As we age from a child to an older person our chromosomes shorten due to inadequate replication of their tail endings which are called "telomeres" (OK, whatever; this talk gets a little too biological for GG). Many scientists equate the rate of shrinkage of telomeres to stress; the more stress, the faster the decline. Lack of stress slows the decline of the loss of telomeres in the average person and thereby slows the aging process.
Life in the Nicoya is considered low stress and people who have lived their entire life there have experienced a long period of low stress.
The water in the Nicoya is filtered through limestone resulting in drinking water that is higher in calcium and magnesium. Scientists believe the low rate of heart disease and the presence of stronger bones is directly related to the high content of these minerals, particularly calcium.
Nicoyans tend to eat lighter meals, particularly at dinner. They are known to eat a large breakfast, a moderate lunch and a small dinner. They also prefer simplicity in their food and thrive on fortified maize (corn) products such as tortillas, present at almost all meals, rice and beans (red or black), white rice, eggs, several kinds of squash and fresh fruit. Gallo Pinto (black beans with white rice and a smattering of chopped vegetables like sweet pepper) for breakfast is very common. One of GG's variations to the photo at the left is to replace the eggs with fried cheese and maduros (ripe, sweet plantains fried in butter). Hmmmm, I wonder what the American Heart Association thinks of this? Buck it up docs.
The Nicoyans eat more chicken, pork and fried eggs than other Blue Zoners. They also consume large quantities of fruit including mango, papaya, passion fruit, plantains (generally fried), mamones (lichee nuts), guava, marañón (the seed is a cashew), pejibaye, star fruit, zapote, coconut, pineapple, cantaloupe, blackberries, lemons and limes.
And then there's the sun. The Nicoyan peninsula enjoys long sunny, rain-free periods from November to April and only partially rainy months during the rest of the year. The heavy rain months are August thru November. The Nicoya Peninsula is a transition from the jungle like rainforest in the south to dry conditions going north where the summers are hot and arid like in Guanacaste. During the summer season the average daily high temperature, moderated by sea breezes on three sides, runs from a high of 88F +/- 4 degrees to a low of 73F +/- 2 degrees (hardly life threatening). Rainy season temperatures are, of course, a few degrees lower in both categories but very few days do not have some hours of sun.
It's well known that sun promotes the development of vitamins, particularly D and there is no shortage of good rays on the Nicoya peninsula. In addition to enhancing "D" production, scientists note that: "sunshine has a number of other health effects unrelated to vitamin D production, including enhancement of mood and energy, melatonin regulation, suppression of MS symptoms, and the treatment of skin diseases".
So this is thought to be another factor in favor of the Blue Zone aging experience.
The great majority of older Nicoyas including the centenarians report that they "...have enjoyed physical work of all their lives and that they find joy in everyday physical chores". These are basically farming communities.
And it's not hard to find physical effort and exercise in a society that is simple and agrarian. Much of the crops they consume and that were mentioned above are grown in local farms and private plots and harvested manually.
To a Nicoyan, or any Costa Rican for that matter, this term means they have a Life Plan or a good reason to live. This thinking motivates them to have a positive outlook, particularly among the elders where the attitude helps keep them active.
Also part of their positive attitude is an emphasis on family and community. These people don't discard their elders nor inventory them in old age homes. The elders are an integral part of their families and several generations often live together where the older folks are called upon to share their experiences. Take a look at the picture of a Nicoyan family to the right - I count four, maybe five generations in that photo (not counting the cat or dog). At least four of those generations are smiling.
So there's the answer on how to grow old gracefully amigos and with a smile. There's nothing too clever, no magic pill, just a bit of common sense, easy living and working hard. It's about Low Stress, Hard Water, Basic and Light Food, Sunshine, Physical Work, a Plan de Vida and enjoying Family and Community.
Do these simple things, like the Nicoyans do, and first thing you know you might be a nonagenarian or even a centenarian.
It was pointed out in the article on the Nicoya Blue Zone that the consumption of large amounts of fruits is likely one of the contributors to a longer life span in that region. And one of the more interesting fruits of Costa Rica available there and in other parts of the country is the marañón (pronounced mah-rah-ne-yohn). Some people know it simply as the cashew apple.
This fruit grows on large trees, as much as thirty feet high or even more, and consists of two parts; a smallish apple and a shell growing out of the bottom of the apple in which you can find a cashew nut (actually it's a seed of the tree). The apple is sweet when ripe, contains generous amounts of proteins, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. In can be eaten raw when ripe and it's often also made into a drink (so what fruit isn't in Costa Rica)? Cashew apples offer anti-bacterial properties and studies show that extracts of the apple juice have efficacy in treating stomach ulcers and gastritis.
The cashew pod, that ugly gray, shrinkled thing hanging below the apple, as well as the enclosed nut need to be treated with care and caution. You do not just break open the pod and eat the nut. The cashew nut and its covering contain urushiol oil, the same oil that is credited (debited?) with causing poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. The pods are processed by roasting them and then breaking open the pods to retrieve the processed nuts that are then edible.
This is probably why many cashew apples you find in the ferias and markets already have the pod removed. The fact that cashews come only one to a fruit and in light of the processing that needs to go on, it now begins to make sense why cashews are so expensive.
There you go, another consumable wonder from Ticoland.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, as you exit the plane, please make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses."
The formal name for that reptile is a Basilisk Lizard but it is more commonly known as a Jesus Christ or Jesus lizard because of its ability to walk on water. Check out the video to the left. The Basilisk is a fairly common species native to Costa Rica.
"♫Prove to me that you're no fool, walk across my swimming pool!♪").
GG was reading a news report recently about a fire in a room at the Delrey Hotel in San Jose, a landmark hotel which is a couple or three blocks from the Teatro Nacionál. It is a well known as a place off ill repute (if you don't know what that means millennials, ask your grandpa). The report said 10 "extinguishing machines" were sent to quell the blaze. Maybe that's the new politically correct word for fire truck?
Location: Next bus stop after the Mono Azul heading to the beach.
Hours: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner Sunday through Saturday (it's a hotel after all).
Parking: Some parking at the lower gate, more available across the main MA road from the gate.
Contact: Tel.: 2777-9797; Website: http://www.gaiahr.com/; Email: Contact through website.
Reviewing ROMEOS: Anita M., Bob N., Glenn N., Julia S.
The Gaia is located at the peak of Manuel Antonio hill and offers one of the most spectacular views of the tops of the rainforest, of the Pacific and of the coast running north.
To get to the restaurant one leaves their car at the bottom of the hill, or exits a bus or taxi there, and is scooted up the hill in a covered golf cart that can accommodate about six people. At the top there is an elevator at the first floor spa level of a three story building where the restaurant occupies the second floor.
Tip: If you're arriving in the daylight, first take the elevator up to the third floor where you'll find an observation deck with a 360 degree panorama of the nature preserve surrounding the hotel with the central mountain range of Costa Rica (cordillera central) as a backdrop and the Pacific coast running up north to the horizon. Breathtaking. It's just one floor down by elevator or a quick flight of stairs to the restaurant from which you can get at least half the same view as the observation deck.
The restaurant and bar area are open to the atmosphere on the west side where the view and the sunset are truly incredible. The dining area is what might be described as sleek, modern elegance. The chairs are dark wood (padded - yes!) and the room is lighted with indirect lighting giving it a gentle ambiance. The table decorations are simple and functional. The ROMEO group was unanimous in giving Gaia a 5.0 out of 5.0 sloth rating for ambiance.
We started with tapas (hor d'oeuvres) in the bar area and moved over to the dining room later. GG started with some slightly seared and peppered fresh tuna slices with a mild wasabi sauce. Another ROMEO had the chicken sateh and reported it delicious (I've had that one there before and it is indeed good).
The menu is quite extensive and offers an array of seafood and meat selections in both traditional and some creative ways. GG had a seafood bisque accompanied by a side dish of fettuccine, both of which were fresh and cooked just right ("au point" the French would say). GG had one minor complaint: both the bisque and the fettuccine were spiced more than I like and I don't remember being warned of that on the menu.
Other ROMEOs had 1) baby ribs with a tamarind sauce accompanied by Gorgonzola croquettes, 2) mahi-mahi baked in a banana leaf, and 3) a mango, avocado and plantain vegetarian dish. GG knocked off a point or so for the unexpected spice but the other ROMEOs gave their food the top rating.
The desserts were irresistible to a couple of us.
GG had a piece of the Gaia Lime Pie (top photo left). A fluffy stuffing of lime flavored cream on chocolate crust with chocolate shavings. Yes.
Another ROMEO had a concoction consisting of very thinly sliced pineapple stuffed with a creamy cheese and enhanced with several accompanying fruits, hazelnuts and cream. Nuff said.
The composite ROMEO score for food overall for the evening came in at 4.63 sloths.
Service was provided by a young fellow named Aldo who was friendly, courteous and attentive. The kitchen seemed a bit slow at times but more creative meals take a little longer. Our composite score for service came in at 4.75.
Adding the scores for ambiance, food quality and service yielded a composite score of 4.79.
For the tapas (tuna), bisque and lime pie, as well as two soft drinks, my bill came in a little over 17,000 colones (or just about $30). In my opinion that is quite reasonable for that quality of food and for Manuel Antonio. The composite score from the ROMEOs for cost was a unanimous 4.0 which yielded a Value Index of 4.79/4.0x100=120 which puts the Gaia in the top 10 list of restaurants we have reviewed in this area for value.
The ROMEO group can heartily recommend Hotel Gaia for an excellent meal at a reasonable price.


Last week Bubbles and I made a trip to Sam's Club to stock up on a few things for our Father's Day party. While we were there we saw the International Delights Mocha Iced Coffee being demoed. I recently noticed these for sale at our local grocery store, but wasn't sure if I would like it, or not. Now I could sample it and know for sure!
The sweet demo lady gave us the 411 on the Iced Coffee and when I asked her where we could find it, not only did she give us great directions, she then offered to go grab a pack for me! She had a number of other customers waiting to try the iced coffee, so I politely declined, but I thought it was very nice of her to offer like that.
We found the Iced Coffee 2-packs with no problem. Right next to them they also had the International Delights Coffee Creamers 2-packs (Vanilla Latte and Caramel Macchiato). We usually serve coffee to our guests after dinner so I thought it might be nice to have some on hand for our party on Sunday. I also thought we could create our own special coffeehouse drinks using them along with the iced coffee, so I picked up a pack of those, as well.
When we returned home from shopping, I couldn't help but pour myself a glass of the iced coffee right away. It was a sweltering day and I needed some refreshment! Shopping makes a girl tired, after all. I could honestly drink this stuff all day! The iced coffee will stay fresh in your fridge for weeks, but I'll be surprised if we have any left by this weekend!
Later that night hubby was obviously reading my mind. He asked me if I thought the iced coffee could be used to make a milkshake. I was game to try! While I was making it, I was reminded of the hot summer nights growing up that my father would make us homemade milkshakes. Happy Father's Day, Dad! The shakes turned out quite tasty and were easy to make. I'll share the recipe with you at the bottom of the post.
The next morning, buoyed by the success of the milkshake, I decided to try my hand at making a replica of the frappuccinos that I occasionally treat myself to while out shopping. It was going to be another scorcher (it's supposed to be in the low- to mid-90s for the next week and a half!) and a slushy, icy coffee drink sounded like a great way to cool off.
You can see my full shopping trip in my Google+ album and you can find out more information about International Delights by following them on Twitter and liking their Facebook page.
Add the ice cream to the bottom of the blender. Pour the milk, iced coffee, and creamer over the ice cream. Cover and blend until smooth, about 90-120 seconds. Pour into a glass and garnish with whipped topping (shaved chocolate curls would also be a nice touch!).
Add the ice to the bottom of the blender. Pour in enough iced coffee to just about cover the ice. Add in a splash (a couple of tablespoons) of the creamer and cover. Blend until slushy. Pour into a tall glass and garnish with whipped topping and chocolate syrup. Serve and dream of a tropical island!
I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and International Delight #CBias #SocialFabric All opinions, as always, are 100% that of myself and my family.
So many cool recipes! Awesome!
I could go for the milkshake now.
We love international delight iced coffee- but the mocha is REALLY sweet!
My mouth is watering now. I think tonight we must try this. It is about 100 here and would make a great night after swimming.
i would be all over this if i still drank coffee!
Love your two creations, and love that you got a little nostalgic about you Dad and the milkshakes! It's the little things, isn't it?
Both of these drink recipes sound fantastic. I have found that the International Delight's is a bit too thick and sweet for my liking by itself, but I've mixed it with a simple 50/50 combo of plain milk, and that worked rather well for me. Thanks for posting your recipes. Perfect for hot FL summer afternoons.
I saw a coupon for these coffees in my paper and bought a carton. I LOVED it and will definitely be trying your recipes. Milkshakes are a favorite of mine.
Love the idea of a iced coffee drink and a good book/magazine(I'm a zine junkie) or a good TV/movie-watching session. Uninterrupted would be nice but with a 7 yr-old and hubby around(his signature remark, "how about putting on something we can watch together"), that's not likely.


Written and directed by John Dower, Live Forever revisits that collective moment of euphoria which culminated in the Blur-Oasis wars, Jarvis Cocker's unlikely rise to fame and the election of Tony Blair. Featuring interviews with journalists, record company insiders and band members, it charts the '90s British indie-pop scene from Stone Roses-mania onwards.
Live Forever is deeply flawed. It caricatures '90s Britain as beset by deep-seated anti-Americanism. It neglects to accredit the economic boom in Britain, which fed the leery self-confidence of the Loaded/Evans/Gallagher years. It features S Club Juniors and Menswear but not Radiohead, The Manics or the Spice Girls, or indeed any black people, except, strangely, Ozwald Boateng.
It is, however, very funny. Jarvis is on top form, Damon Albarn is inadvertently amusing, but it's Noel and Liam who're at their most priceless and prickly, the latter especially when it's put to him that he's "androgynous". Fortunately, the film-makers, with the adeptness of a Broomfield or Spheeris, solemnly milk these moments for their full comic worth.


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LITE starts as the Finalist Program, a 4-month idea incubator for African-American and Latinx high school students. Each week, the students learn 21st-century skills to apply to their business plans. Pitch Night is the culmination of the high school program as students pitch their ideas to a crowd of 400 people. Audience members help in selecting thousands of dollars in additional funds for student ideas.
LITE continues as the Innovation Fellows Program, an 8-year timeline that helps students transition from college into creating wealth in their communities with entrepreneurship. Innovation Fellows have access to internship matching, mentor matching, business coaching, and community networks.
Press inquiries? Contact Alexandra Thompson at alexandra@litememphis.com or (731) 326-3748.


ArticlesMarijuana Legalization: Opening Our Minds to New Opportunities?
Marijuana Legalization: Opening Our Minds to New Opportunities?
No matter where you live, the United States' issues regarding the legalization of marijuana have most likely entered into your consciousness. It's inescapable! The struggles people are facing in their attempt to get their hands on what nature so abundantly provides, has been in the news for months.
However, while "will they or won't they" situations are cute in sitcoms, it's far more stressful when it comes to "will they or won't they" legalize a legitimate healing property to the masses.
The history of marijuana, like all of history, is long and complex. Both ordinary citizens and those in positions of power have flip-flopped on their stances throughout the years. Up until the early 1900's, cannabis was overwhelmingly seen as good — almost magical. But, once the government got involved in 1906 (requiring marijuana to be labeled as a "drug"), things started to get tricky; and confusion and apprehension started to take hold.
In 1936 the movie Reefer Madness came out, warning parents to steer their children away from the cannabis plant. It was paranoia propaganda at its finest, but its message — no matter how outlandishly presented — seeped into our consciousness. Marijuana was suddenly "bad." No one wanted anything to do with it.
That is, until the 1960s. In the 60's we put flowers in the end of the guns when they were pointed at us. We saw the greater community as having peace-filled potential. The Baby Boomers decided to give marijuana another chance — and we liked what we found. It wasn't just about "getting high," it was about awakening a deeper consciousness, using the gifts given to us by the earth itself.
Then, the "Children of the 60's" became yuppies and many forgot these gifts. And thus began other "flop" in the flip-flopping of opinion.
However, as science continually improves, the benefits of marijuana can no longer be denied. And, as our methods of communication continue to improve along the same lines, these benefits can no longer be ignored. As a global community, we're now more aware of marijuana's effects than we've ever been in the past.
Several people who were formerly, and quite vocally, opposed to marijuana have now changed their minds upon being confronted with scientific evidence. One of the most notable opposed-turned-advocate is Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and CNN's chief medical correspondent.
"This scientific journey is about a growing number of patients who want the cannabis plant as a genuine medicine, not to get high.
Pain relief. From Arthritis pain to Lupus to Multiple Sclerosis (MS), people have reported feeling less pain and pain-like symptoms.
Improved mental health. Anxiety, depression, PTSD, and Alzheimer's patients have consistently reported improved mental facilities when treated with marijuana.
Fewer seizures and less trembling. Those with epilepsy and Dravet Syndrome have shown a significant decrease in seizures. Similarly, those with Parkinson's have reported fewer trembles.
It prevents blindness. Marijuana has been shown to slow the progression of glaucoma and, in some cases, prevents or reverses the symptoms entirely.
It helps other treatments to work better. The treatments for Hepatitis C and Cancer patients are incredibly harsh. Side-effects such as fatigue and nausea often become so intense that those who need help often give up on getting it because it becomes "not worth it." However, marijuana can be used to essentially null those side-effects to nearly zero.
And these are just the benefits that we know "for sure!" New research and new facts continue to emerge all the time. For example, a recent study has come forth with significant evidence that cannabis can be used to slow the progression of Cancer — and possibly cure it entirely!
When we know that there's an all-natural, highly-beneficial, abundantly-available healing property available to us… It can be all the more discouraging to be faced with such adamant, socially-powerful, opposition. For every story of a Dr. Sanjay Gupta or a former supreme court justice(!) John Paul Stevens coming out in favor of legalization, there are a slew of stories on those against it.
Myths of "marijuana tourism" have been tossed around, as well as rumors of links with Colombian drug cartels. The Department of Justice's federal law enforcers have raided over a dozen marijuana dispensaries in the last week alone, shutting down four.
But, in this time of continued opposition, a new opportunity for spiritual awakening has arisen.
As we, as an interconnected consciousness, become more focused and more aware of what's going on we open ourselves up to new ways of thinking. We've begun, as a unit, to recognize that there is more bounty on the planet than we have ever been allowed to fully enjoy.
We are awakening to the way we've been controlled. Through these recent discoveries — both those of a scientific nature and that of the government's true intentions — the gift of personal awakening has opened for those who chose to see it.
Beloved Ones, whether you choose to indulge in the healing properties of cannabis or not, we encourage you to be aware of what is around you; and to invite others to discover the deeper gifts brought forth during these times of perceived insanity.
Want More? Listen to the show from May 4, 2014!


Jada is a young Canadian artist well-along the path to fame. Along with her sultry voice, she plays the piano and guitar.
Jada is continuously writing and recording original material in preparation for the release of her next project. She is passionate about sharing her music and enjoys performing for audiences of all sizes.
She's worked with the likes of Producer Troy Samson/Madlucky Music as evident in her first single - "Puzzle Piece". Jada has been fortunate to train and write with award winning song writer, Shane Adams.
Jada most recently, had the opportunity to work with award-winning producer, Ryan Worsley (Dear Rouge, Said the Whale) of Echoplant Recording Studios. Her new single "My Head" released on 01.15.19 and is available worldwide on all streamable platforms.
"Music is my greatest passion and, as I evolve as an artist, I look forward to sharing the journey with my listeners."
Jada Klein is a young Canadian singer/songwriter whose passionate writing, love for performing and velvet voice - quickly captures her listeners. This R&B-rooted singer delivers music to her fans with influences of pop, jazz and soul elements. Despite her age, Jada brings vulnerability and delivers a personable performance each time she sings.
Jada was recently nominated for a 2018 Fraser Valley Music Award in the "For and by Youth" category. Nominated in three categories, she won the 2017 Fraser Valley Music Award for "Excellence in Performance by a Youth Artist". After winning the Valley Voices Vocal Competition in 2014, Jada released her first single, Puzzle Piece, co-written and produced by Troy Samson. Since then, she has released two music videos, both produced by Element 8 Studios.
Jada most recently had the opportunity to work with award-winning producer, Ryan Worsley (Dear Rouge, Said the Whale) of Echoplant Studios. The result of this collaboration was the 01.15.19 release of her new single "My Head". Jada continues to write and plans to return to the recording studio in late spring 2019.
Jada has been vocal training (SLS) with former Prism frontman, Darcy Deutsch since 2013. She has had the privilege of attending the comprehensive VocalizeU Artist Intensive program in Los Angeles on two occasions, allowing her to train with some of the best in the music business. Jada trained and developed her songwriting skills with Nashville's Shane Adams, advisor for Taylor Swift Education Centre and Berklee College songwriting coach.
Jada Klein is inspired by her listeners and is passionate about her music and performing for audiences of all sizes. Please contact us with enquiries.
Where Jada will be performing!


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text:
a Mac Crary Editorial
Dali wrote, "the reason the fire in Rembrandt's paintings burns dim is because its flame is eternal." It is a sentiment belonging to the spirit of Czech intellectuals like Ivan Svitak and the Italian anti-fascist Ignazio Silone. By what do we measure the wormlike confederacy that was brokered by Pentagon-Disney using such experienced writers as Martha Gellhorn for the AIDS holocaust? Does the dim fire finally falter?
Faith is always, however misplaced, if genuine and built on love, a little bit touching; group solidarity's appetite to see it subordinated to considerations is a grindstone for poetic lament. What however do you say when a terrible touchstone reveals a nauseating truth?
I know that some people spend breezy summer Saturdays gazing at kites flying over parks. This fact makes a perilous choice out of where to begin. The soft fall of distant landings, sway and hovering depends so much on a turn of the wind. Where in fact does it begin? With incidents? In parallels that may exist between Olga Havel and Jeannie Tamburro? One somewhat known, the other unrivaled obscure; both profound women who changed history.
Parallels and simultaneity play in the past are in this field of memory driven by trends of different message content, some forging signals by the same symbol. Here's an incident to really paint this madness by. Olga Havel provided such support and romantic recovery to the beleaguered writer Vaclav Havel that I poured my heart out into a eulogy when learning of her death that so moved Milena Czerna of Committee of Goodwill that he answered with an encomium. The love was surely a deep friendship between Olga and Vaclav, just as you can see the poem I wrote about my own friend and salvation deaf Jeannie in this link to a homeless newspaper from Seattle: http://realchangenews.org/2010/06/23/poem-my-girlfriend While I wrote, Havel's mission house and partners in ferocious libel from Hollywood set upon my loved one Jeannie Tamburro and brutally raped her as an acid test of significant separate reality from the loyalists of King Crimson. In time this was to darken my view of Martha Gellhorn.
How bout dat voice again? To deal with the iffy is how it gotta go. The bus, car or sidewalk exists, we all agree, we take it for granted. The CIA does not exist, we take that for granted, too. You can say it does, point to their headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but everyone knows that's just Mad Magazine shit, not to be entered, not for a moment, no way, into discussion except maybe if some lame soldier of fortune hippy has heard about paraquat in a sidebar of Bud Magazine, then he can use an asterisk and say *CIA (hahaha).
Where did we learn in the 1980's about such things as the Liquid Crystals Institute? Tavistock? MK-Ultra Experiments? Laurel Canyon? Society for Human Ecology? All campus teams from the Central Intelligence Agency experimenting on students with poisonous substances, illicit liaisons and various so-called friendships of a dirty war direction. One such source was on campus speaking tours. His name is John Stockwell and he confessed to many actions, including torture, and operations in Africa that he said killed millions of people. Making himself a dark horse from the new left, he had a lot of influence in Hollywood, Geffen Corporation and Buckingham Palace. He came to Allentown, PA on my birthday, after the 1987 Wall Street Crash, when the Palace admitted that they were unconcerned and unaffected by AIDS.
Stockwell has a lot of twists and turns. He is an anecdote man. He describes a special society who study the most horrific suffering that can imaginably be inflicted on a human being, in terms of pain. Since there are many grueling methods of torture, some of them infamous from the days of Gestapo practitioners in German concentration camps, you can be sure the rivalry and arguments about which torture is the best are arcane with imperial wizardry, magical and mysterious to the authors.
Tami Simon, not to be confused with T. Simon Farasani, has a studio called Sounds True in Boulder. I visited Boulder once because it was in the Almanac as the largest city in America one year not to have had a murder. In the bathroom of a friend of Glenn MacKenzie of Pittsburgh was a Tweetie Bird doll hanging from the ceiling over a disturbingly spray painted toilet, with hooks through it, half melted, and defaced innumerable ways of a sort that Wm. Blaaty might have described in a spree by a spirit needing exorcism. Tami Simon wrote in her notebook, "I, the dreamer, clinging yet to the dream, as the patient clings to the last, thin, unbearable instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain's surcease." If you just change that around just a little bit, you get closer to the storyline in weapon: "You the dreamer, clinging yet to the dream, as a patient clinging to the last, thin, unbearable instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain's surcease." Stockwell proclaimed that the worst thing in watching a woman being tortured was in how she reached out to her tormentors, reasoned with them, just exactly as though they were human.
The drivers of buses in India say that it is safer for a woman being raped on a bus to cooperate, but when it comes to the thrill kill cult of John Stockwell in the dungeons of Warhol Museum serving Yoko Ono, as Gellhorn said of Dachau, "it did no man ever any good whatsoever to cry out from this place." I have described kidnapping, mutilation and the thrall of cyberstalkers for years to a government that feeds the perpetrators and slips them gold. They threaten our children, my eyes, with impunity from our school, and to no avail either tears or crying terror.
Prestige is authority and sometimes is just all stored up to throw away. Trying to understand why means being forbidden, and this construct against everything we feel and believe to be right in freedom of expression is not in the least where you would think to find Martha Gellhorn. The strange way she wrote to me, a man she betrayed, is a motherlode of revulsion. Someone is obviously right or wrong. Is it those who have the powerful broadcast systems or a poet, cheated by poison of sound, refused the right to be heard? The question suggests one of two possible answers, the one that must never be allowed voice, for the other isn't arguing, simply announcing its righteousness. There, we gloat, or you do gloat, it ends, like a dead brother, like a pawn.
When entering the world of theory, we find contenders for the status of principle theory, back up theories and counter-theories, or the truth being so named. The extreme violence and secrecy with groups like Blackwater are defended is done in the name of the flag. If you oppose them you are unpatriotic and intellectuals are often the first to recognize and reject empty jingoism and bullydom. This leads to speaking out against actions in a way that weakens the dissident ideologically. The AIDS attack was done in the name of the flag. They conceptualized me as the final humanist. They played a shell game in Hollywood against the people's right to know and timely warning. How it worked we know a little.
James Dean once said the only greatness available to man is immortality. They considered the script they wrote a sale of derision about a hate object. They swore that any other approach would lead to an undeserving white being put into a glamorous condition of recognition. Making this intelligible has been squelched by fancy academic footwork by those who shortchanged America's Right to Know Laws in favor of announcing the supremacy of sacred witchcraft. The role in grandiosity, about which I was kept in the dark, was played against rumors started about me by WQED and its immediate circle. There was Miles Kirshner over on Clyde Street. The Convent of Central Catholic, Christian Scientist, the Friends Meeting, WQED, an Aztec sacrifice organization called Ark/Artek, Rodef Shalom, all of this circle could be called keepers of the sacred Unifaun from Dealey Plaza and the covenant of abortion stigma, last but never least the tiled floor of a housing office, adorned with the Haukenkreuze. Hollywood didn't want to tell, they wanted to show.
Sigmund Freud to me is about the baby pacifier, thumb-sucking, adolescent obsessively mastrubating way that Oliver Stone joneses to be Adolf Hitler. A psychological fact of the doorway to Hollywood's subconscious that genuine is not in the least irrelevant to the plague pact frenzy he unleashed in Pittsburgh. This cryptic situation comes to a still life moment in time at Pitt when Bayer shook hands with Primo Levi over a new pact in the name of Zylon B. Oliver Stone was in the sound booth to assure the world, "we can do it better," kinder and gentler.
Mother deliverance lambasted the world about me, "Jim is very anti-drug," but told me privately, "don't complain, because marijuana is legal now." A bud for the buddies. How generous the halo of the Hitler Nuns in the painting I grew up under. They called me chosen but what hideous personality do we find behind the mask of such choosers?
They had me in the dark but driven by faith in them. I surrendered to them sibilant cognition, severely traumatized, conflicted dispatches from the scrambled situation that engulfed me, scribbling in my notebooks, "someone give them flutes," and "their epistemology is contempt for the Beatles," and yet notice that my having listened to the British progrock music of my era is cited as proof of my guilt. So if they were receiving these dispatches as they are detonating musical ideas to affirm the living identity of the afflicted from this to have been planned, which it was as the incriminating total structure of the foundation of the cleansing (clean up time) they were saying in their dark, old Germanic tongue, "Ve vill withhold what ve know about the mortal struggle for acceptance until the "education" is underway." This thread is conspicuous in the calamatarian leadership Robert Fripp provided in the lead up to the sale. The militarianism was then provided as accompaniment of soothsay, death of innocents as elixir for tranquility. The serum of disturbing chicanery called logo-therapy by Primo Levi's partner Victor Frankl and his plastic reality fans. Supporting Israeli extremists, with the bluster of chivalry in tow, made even Martha Gellhorn unbearably shameful.
Much of this came masked as simple corruption in Pittsburgh, the sort of place that does in fact have an undercurrent that Trump was elected to protect. Many of them are black and have been around for ages. They responded to this situation with what they knew best, provincial mob crimes. It spoke for America whose subcultures were eager to jump aboard Obama's ship with the street fashion sensuousness of a victim swag. The beauty of it is that some things things do just happen, so the British conceived a style of Yojimbo warfare, last man standing, one hidden agency hitting two larger sides so they fight and weaken each other, equalizing the power between those who still have some morality and those in acoomplice of the AIDS attack by stagey hocus pocus feudalism directed by the killers. An unsolved mystery they announce must be solved by a counter unsolved mystery, hitting both sides from the same source. Over the hurdle the public went into plastic reality, where Walt Disney opened his second fantasy kingdom on the day JFK was gunned down, to the voice of Jimmy Carter's words against sin of the heart. Imagine was suddenly real, and only morality phony.
Obama stepped onto the stage as a mighty big pimp behind his boy George. Barack's neo-Machiavellian contempt came wild with enthusiasm for hatred against a white liberal child, selected and confused, that is shared contempt by the Ku Klux Klan that Peter Gabriel declared in the mood, whilst trampling on a flower, a séance from Elizabeth Taylor and Elton John for nothing less than a race-less, multicultural Neo-Social Darwinism. The secret society that Ralph Proctor dreamed of from ancient African glory, the Elders Project of high wizards of all-knowingness, had no less a fugitive from Devo in charge than Brian Eno impinging like a sacred popper pill on the effervescent needs of his suburb aspiring Queer Seattle flock. The role of forensic assertive psychiatry in the AIDS attack was loud and clear. They stalled with the word pushy about the HIV negative slave in bondage, in a slovenly turn-the-tables game. Seattle practiced conscription of the mind into the most effete social taboos, gutterals circulated, aping Oliver Stone, calling me a "deeply flawed man," mindless not only of the horrible nerve agent poured under my face by those who hated the Queers until the time came to bribe them, as they were mindless of the Marilyn Monroe slurs behind their attacks on a question of character evoked to bring stigma and blame upon JFK after they drove him down a marked lane in a food fight of meager rations. Liberalism was the only archetype they refused to acknowledge. The idea of Queer pedophiles slapping five over a brutal Nazi trick of that magnitude is the totality of Sir McCartney's contribution to 21st century social history. You call it secret? It's a goddamn gargantuanism.
Foreign England cannot control their rock stars. They should have found it in their hearts to understand what really happened.
The first shot in Dealey Plaza hit Kennedy in the throat because it was aimed at the voice of America, and soundtrack uploaded from Reagan's the killers, where he said, "I'll do all the talking." He did all the talking, by not telling, by the way. There is a book in Japan now called: The Strange Child. Japan is an ideal environment in some ways for children, although to be sure a new element of true fear has been added by Fukushima, but the plot line of HitlerReagan's semiotics reveals that not all is true around the children and they are sincere and misled. The CIA is about lying. The strange child may confront the idea that internalizing deception is necessary to adult approval. This would create a yin and yang tensity hollow in the darkness of thought, due to the superb conditions for honesty around them. To teach our own children malicious gloating in the road rage manner of Queer Seattle isn't even a divided self, it is the destruction of what we mean by civilization.
Martin Luther King was dogged by black people howling at him with derision, "Dah Lawd!" The same types set up Dah Lawd Today Clinics for Clean Up Time.
Jimmy Crary wasn't even in puberty when Tive and Ono launched their horrible blindside slaughtering attack. He had no words to describe this call of the void. The hostage takers poured horrible mindsets into his deafening ears, for later extrusion by Jaime Carbonell's so-called Natural Language research extrusion plan, a deeply impacted comatonic soundtrack from Neva Corporation that gave Carnegie what they needed for Clinton to form an alliance between relay operators in human trafficking with Adrian Belew. The situation was reduced to an inflated game of kill the shock jock that Black Panthers, working with the Postal Workers Union, called a barbeque. 911 was also unleashed in the name of the flag. "When in doubt," Rick Apple used to say, "eat a pawn."
When people have money and a slovenly disposition towards the very honest among us, or the poor, but beautiful, in communities that often raise children to love the one you are with, these manipulative types realize that many of us are up for grabs if trusting, and this erodes the fabric of our commonwealth into what it has become. You don't mess with Texas because they have entirely fallen into a prisoner-guard culture symbiosis that the British want to nail down all over the country using Yoko Ono's enthusiasm for prison gangs and their war games. Obama is a knight in many Disney conjurings, defeating illusions provided by company control, never scathed. Notice how everything was in place for Muhammed Ali to come bellowing to the defense of Yoko Ono's honor, while George Takei was uploaded for the planet's future with the grimace of Steve Hawking and the key to Ultrahigh: Nancy Reagan, a reminder of the old salon days of Tony Curtis and the future of E.T. Obama said the blindside attack on a child could be safely derided with victim swag. It was insightful crowd manipulation, but then what is Harvard united with the Oxford Crimson?
There was an episode of Maude in which she put down John Wayne until then end when he walked on set and she melted into his arms. John Stockwell told a story in Africa of an ugly white mercenary who boasted that women didn't want a prince, they wanted an ugly little troll like him, and Stockwell grinned, "to my eternal amazement, he was right." Thos. Gordon used to hum that contempt for the sickly son of the Czarina had united the Russian peasants and that the worst fate for Adolf Hitler was to see his beloved Germany in the arms of those who defeated him. Stockwell, the master of horrific torture crimes, had Martha Gellhorn falling into the arms of Gen. Franco with the words all a whistle, "Oh, Mr. Wayne!" by evoking the tragedy of little Jimmy. Together they burned the invisible in the name of fake news, lies and slogans. This was the role of forensic assertive in the AIDS attack, to tie the tongue of warning with the stall of Leni Reifenstahl in Duzzledorf, a grander spectacle Neva never vowed. Gellhorn took to the catcall of schaedenfreude over a letter to Leslie Katz saying the opposite of what they claimed, as the research on Gail Burstyn turned up the strange fact that if Orson Welles really met Hitler in Vienna it was at the burial of Geli Raubal.
The most shocking thing of all was what Nelson Harrison called Black Psychology. If the queerbait didn't have anything to hide, why would it be afraid? They didn't allow answer, they never do. The queerbait didn't know what they were hiding, that they were hiding a neuroplasm, he only knew the horrible torture and suffering and the surrounding plastic impingements on his reality which without trial the military announced by which they could find anything make believe to be actionable. That is the terribly deviant crime they burned my notebooks by and stole my letter from Martha Gellhorn, drawing a sadistic curve from seduction by Sisters of Mercy and the rape of deaf Jeannie to the slashing of Shannon Harps and an Unidentified Registered Nurse who belongs on the dock in Nuremberg.


Two four movement piano quintets separated in time by a century.
The Schumann is smilingly done with the Graffe Quartet capitalising on the work's lucid and sauntering insouciance as much as on its graveness. The lively acoustic warms the notes and lends the music a certain baritonal emphasis.
The Martinů is classic stuff from the ferment of his early American years. This is music that yearns and lilts at speed. It is bound to prompt memories of the Fourth Symphony in the first and third movements. The Adagio is almost Mozartian in its classical poise. There is heartfelt lamentation in the finale which recalls Josef Suk at his most soulful (St Wenceslas Meditation) although this later gives way to pages of Martinů at his most quirky. Finally we hear the return of Martinů the hunted, Martinů the frenetic.
This version of the Martinů quintet can be compared with an alternative recording in which the Martinů Quartet and Karel Kosarek recorded both Piano Quintets alongside the Sonata for two violin and piano (Naxos 8.557861). The Naxos version gives a lower profile to the piano and is faster in the quick movements. The present disc accords the music a noticeably more virile, immediate and forthright edge although the all-Martinů coupling of the Naxos disc gives it an edge with that composer's growing number of adherents.
A very fine reading of the Martinů and a mainstream romantic version of the Schumann.


The University of Massachusetts created UMassOnline in 2001 to meet the needs of non-traditional students who do not have time to participate in campus classroom studies because of commitments to family and work. Students from around the world can take advantage of UMassOnline's distance learning programs.
Those who earn degrees though UMassOnline receive diplomas from the University of Massachusetts. They also receive the same benefits as those who attend classes on campus.
UMassOnline has a student population from a wide range of backgrounds. Many working professionals earn degrees online to improve their job skills and increase career options.
One of the advantages of taking classes online is that students get to interact with others from around the world. The university offers instruction locally, nationally and internationally. Without this opportunity, geographical limitations would make it impossible for many students to share ideas and learn from top instructors at the University of Massachusetts.
The New England Association of Schools and Colleges accredits UMassOnline. Many programs at UMassOnline are also accredited by additional regulatory organizations, such as the National League for Nursing, National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, Computing Sciences Accreditation Boards and National Association of Schools of Art and Design.
What Are Some Requirements for UMassOnline?
Students applying to UMassOnline must have a high school diploma or its equivalent. Prospective students applying to graduate programs must have a bachelor's degree. Since UMassOnline offers classes from many of its campuses, some programs have stricter academic requirements than others. It is important to contact the program you are interested in before submitting an application.
Since UMassOnline classes take place online, students will need a computer with Internet access and a Java capable browser. Students should have basic computer literacy skills so that they can successfully complete their online degrees.
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Getting financial aid from UMassOnline largely depends on the program you want to join. You should contact UMassOnline to discuss financial aid options. The university not only accepts federally funded financial aid, but also tuition assistance from third-party organizations, such as employers and the military.
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text:
Q: Jenkins Master-Slave: Key exchange was not finished, connection is closed I want to connect a slave to Master-Jenkins, but when trying to connect i'm getting following Error:
[05/02/18 15:26:59] [SSH] Opening SSH connection to <IP>
Key exchange was not finished, connection is closed.
java.io.IOException: There was a problem while connecting to <IP>:22
    at com.trilead.ssh2.Connection.connect(Connection.java:818)
    at hudson.plugins.sshslaves.SSHLauncher.openConnection(SSHLauncher.java:1324)
    at hudson.plugins.sshslaves.SSHLauncher$2.call(SSHLauncher.java:831)
    at hudson.plugins.sshslaves.SSHLauncher$2.call(SSHLauncher.java:820)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Key exchange was not finished, connection is closed.
    at com.trilead.ssh2.transport.KexManager.getOrWaitForConnectionInfo(KexManager.java:93)
    at com.trilead.ssh2.transport.TransportManager.getConnectionInfo(TransportManager.java:230)
    at com.trilead.ssh2.Connection.connect(Connection.java:770)
    ... 7 more
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Cannot negotiate, proposals do not match.
    at com.trilead.ssh2.transport.KexManager.handleMessage(KexManager.java:405)
    at com.trilead.ssh2.transport.TransportManager.receiveLoop(TransportManager.java:777)
    at com.trilead.ssh2.transport.TransportManager$1.run(TransportManager.java:489)
    ... 1 more
[05/02/18 15:26:59] Launch failed - cleaning up connection
[05/02/18 15:26:59] [SSH] Connection closed.

Configuration for Node:
- Start-Method: Start Slave over SSH
- Hostname: is the IP
- Access Data: user i created for SSH Access - > public key is in authorized keys on Slave Node
If i am on my Master as user "jenkins" and do a ssh jenkins@<IP> i can login wihtout problems (public key is on slave).
Why it doesn't work for "UI-Jenkins".
Jenkins-Version: 1.658
Node: Ubuntu 14.04
SSH-Slave Plugin: 1.26

A: That "solved" the issue:
"Workaround is by commenting out MACs and KexAlgorithm line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config of Jenkins Slave and restarting the sshd (service ssh restart on Ubuntu)
UPDATE: the issue has been resolved as of 2017-04-29 "
Jenkins master fails to connect to the slave over SSH

A: Thought I'd throw my experience in this thread:  my environment had a Windows master and mixed Windows and Linux agents.  One Windows agent refused to connect to master, even after Master pushed 'jenkins-agent' and the other supporting files to the agent.
This agent had 6 different versions of the JDK and JRE installed.  I uninstalled all of them, reinstalled only the latest JDK we needed, and set JAVA_HOME.  This fixed the connectivity issue.

A: Execute this command on destination node.
sudo -i su -c 'sed -i -e "s/MACs /MACs hmac-sha1,/g" /etc/ssh/sshd_config; service sshd restart'

A: Just recently run into this issue with docker
Find the Java Path
/home/jenkins # which java
/opt/java/openjdk/bin/java

Export the Java Path. In this case I am using the docker-compose
...
  exp_agent:
    image: jenkins/ssh-agent:alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      JENKINS_AGENT_SSH_PUBKEY: $ENV_JENKINS_AGENT_SSH_PUBKEY
      JAVA_HOME: $ENV_JAVA_HOME
    container_name: jenkins-ssh-agent
    ports:
      - 22:22
    networks:
      - jenkins
...

The master still complains about the path of Java as /opt/java/openjdk/bin/java is not among the expected paths
...
[12/04/21 11:44:07] [SSH] Checking java version of /usr/bin/java
...

Create a symbolic link between the java path and one of the expected paths in the docker container (This could be automated in a Dockerfile)
ln -s /opt/java/openjdk/bin/java /usr/bin/java

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Lt.-Gen. Sir Edward Altham Altham1
M, #679991, b. 13 April 1856, d. 1943
Lt.-Gen. Sir Edward Altham Altham was born on 13 April 1856 at Witton, Somerset, England.1 He was the son of Major William Surtees Altham and Henrietta Moulton Barrett.1 He married Georgina Emily Nichol on 5 November 1880 at St. Paul's Cathedral, Calcutta, India.1 He died in 1943 at 7 Kingsgate Street, Winchester, Hampshire, England.1
He was appointed Knight Commander, Order of the Bath (K.C.B.)1 He was appointed Companion, Order of St. Michael and St. George (C.M.G.)1 He was appointed Knight Commander, Order of the Indian Empire (K.C.I.E.)2
Child of Lt.-Gen. Sir Edward Altham Altham and Georgina Emily Nichol
Harry Surtees Altham+1 b. 30 Nov 1888, d. 11 Mar 1965
[S7529] WikiTree, online http://www.wikitree.com/. Hereinafter cited as WikiTree.
[S35] BLG1965 volume 1, page 438. See link for full details for this source. Hereinafter cited as. [S35]
Georgina Emily Nichol1
Last Edited=3 Apr 2016
Georgina Emily Nichol was born in 1855 at St. Vincent.1 She married Lt.-Gen. Sir Edward Altham Altham, son of Major William Surtees Altham and Henrietta Moulton Barrett, on 5 November 1880 at St. Paul's Cathedral, Calcutta, India.1 She died in 1945 at Wincehster, Hampshire, England.1
From 5 November 1880, her married name became Altham.1
Child of Georgina Emily Nichol and Lt.-Gen. Sir Edward Altham Altham
Elizabeth Stephenson1
Elizabeth Stephenson was the daughter of John Stephenson and Elizabeth Bell.1,2 She married Aubone Surtees, son of Edward Surtees and Frances Aubone, on 22 August 1748.2 She died in 1802.3
From 22 August 1748, her married name became Surtees.2
Children of Elizabeth Stephenson and Aubone Surtees
Elizabeth Surtees+1 d. 28 Jun 1831
Frances Surtees+ d. Jun 1830
Matthew Surtees3
John Surtees3
William Surtees+2 b. 6 Sep 1750, d. 1 Jan 1832
Aubone Surtees+2 b. 13 Nov 1752
[S5792] Robin Dening, "re: Rochfort Family," e-mail message to Darryl Roger LUNDY (101053), 2 January 2012. Hereinafter cited as "re: Rochfort Family."
John Bartlett1
John Bartlett lived at Cresselly, Pembrokeshire, Wales.1
Child of John Bartlett
Joan Bartlett+1
Aubone Surtees1
Aubone Surtees was born on 13 November 1752.1 He was the son of Aubone Surtees and Elizabeth Stephenson.1 He married Mary Altham, daughter of Roger Altham, on 4 December 1781.1
Child of Aubone Surtees and Mary Altham
Elizabeth Surtees+1 b. 18 Jul 1783, d. 1 Sep 1862
Mary Altham1
Mary Altham is the daughter of Roger Altham.1 She married Aubone Surtees, son of Aubone Surtees and Elizabeth Stephenson, on 4 December 1781.1
From 4 December 1781, her married name became Surtees.1
Child of Mary Altham and Aubone Surtees
Captain James Joseph Weld1
Last Edited=5 Mar 2018
Captain James Joseph Weld was born in 1899.1 He was the son of Joseph Edward Weld. He married Kathleen Mary Davison-Bland, daughter of Colonel Frederick Milbanke Davison-Bland.1 He died in 1957.1
He was appointed Member, Royal Victorian Order (M.V.O.)1 He gained the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy.1
Children of Captain James Joseph Weld and Kathleen Mary Davison-Bland
Anthony Weld2
Lt.-Cdr. Michael James Frederick Weld2 b. 20 Jul 1927, d. 9 May 2017
Jennifer Mary Weld1 b. 1936
Alfred Wright Surtees1
M, #679998, b. 12 July 1820, d. 11 November 1906
Alfred Wright Surtees was born on 12 July 1820.1 He was the son of Reverend John Surtees and Mary Anne Hawkins.1 He married Henrietta Charlotte Robinson, daughter of Colonel William Henry Robinson. He died on 11 November 1906 at age 86.1
Children of Alfred Wright Surtees and Henrietta Charlotte Robinson
Aubone Alfred Surtees+1 b. 2 Oct 1865, d. 22 Nov 1923
Henry Patrick Surtees+2 b. 24 Aug 1868, d. 20 Jan 1939
[S35] BLG1965. [S35]
Conyers Alfred Surtees1
Conyers Alfred Surtees was born on 13 June 1907.1 He is the son of Henry Patrick Surtees.1
Child of Conyers Alfred Surtees
Christopher Conyers Surtees+1 b. 2 Sep 1935
Henry Patrick Surtees1
M, #680000, b. 24 August 1868, d. 20 January 1939
Henry Patrick Surtees was born on 24 August 1868.1 He was the son of Alfred Wright Surtees and Henrietta Charlotte Robinson.1 He died on 20 January 1939 at age 70.1
Child of Henry Patrick Surtees
Conyers Alfred Surtees+1 b. 13 Jun 1907


text:
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen attends the commissioning ceremony for two Navy frigates, Ming Chuan and Feng Chia, on November 8, 2018. Image: Office of the President/Taiwan News
Home/Asia Pacific/Taiwan inaugurates 2 Perry-class guided missile frigates bought from US
Asia PacificSea
Taiwan inaugurates 2 Perry-class guided missile frigates bought from US
Staff Writer November 8, 2018
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen vowed Thursday, November 8 that the island would not "concede one step" in defending itself as she inaugurated two frigates bought from the United States aimed at boosting Taipei's naval capabilities against China.
Rival China has upped military drills including a live fire exercise in the Taiwan Strait in April, declaring its willingness to confront the island's "independence forces."
Beijing still claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, even though the two sides have been ruled separately since 1949 after a civil war.
China has also been incensed by recent warming ties between Washington and Taipei, including the U.S. State Department's approval of a preliminary license to sell submarine technology to the island.
The two Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates were officially commissioned in a ceremony at Zuoying base in southern Kaohsiung city.
Built in the 1980s, the two frigates were originally named USS Taylor and USS Gary and were part of a $1.8 billion U.S. arms deal to Taiwan announced in 2015 under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
They have been renamed Ming Chuan and Feng Chia.
According to Taiwan's navy, the warships have "high mobility, high sea resistance and low noise" and are fitted with the SQR-19 sonar system currently used by U.S. Navy.
"We want to send a clear and firm message from Taiwanese people to the international community that we will not concede one step in defending … Taiwan and protecting our free and democratic way of life," Tsai said after inspecting the ships.
China's "military actions in the region not only attempt to weaken Taiwan's sovereignty but will also damage regional peace and stability," Tsai warned.
She vowed to continue enhancing the navy's capabilities as part of the military's goal to maintain what it calls "solid defence and multi-layered deterrence" to guard the island.
Republic of China Navy chief of staff Vice Admiral Lee Chung-hsiao had said previously the warships' anti-submarine capabilities are more advanced than the island's existing eight Cheng Kung-class frigates and could have "deterrent effects" against China's submarines.
According to the Navy Command, the acquisition cost approximately NT$5.5 billion (US$177 million), Taiwan News reported.
The U.S. de facto embassy in Taipei, the American Institute in Taiwan, said the sale would "improve Taiwan's capability in current and future defensive efforts" as well as stability in the region.
The ships will be deployed to patrol the Taiwan Strait, the narrow waterway that separates the island and China, according to the navy.
In May, Taiwan received permission from the Dutch shipbuilder RH Marine to upgrade its 30-year-old Hai Lung-class submarines.
Taiwan has had difficulty buying weapons or upgrading its existing arsenals and has developed an indigenous defense industry.
Beijing has stepped up diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan since Tsai took office two years ago, as her government refuses to acknowledge that Taiwan is part of "one China," unlike the government of her Beijing-friendly predecessor.
In September, Washington irked Beijing when it announced plans to sell Taiwan $330 million in spare parts for several aircraft.
Washington remains Taipei's most powerful unofficial ally and its main arms supplier despite switching diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979.
Taiwan allocates 21% of 2019 defense budget to indigenous weapons
Republic of China Navy (Taiwan Navy) Taiwan
US approves $2.2 billion sale to Taiwan of Abrams tanks and Stinger missiles
Taiwan confirms request to purchase US Abrams tanks, Javelin and TOW missiles
Taiwan puts second Apache helicopter squadron into service
BAE to produce 36 Assault Amphibious Vehicles for Taiwan
Taiwan air force F-16 crashes during training exercises
Taiwan to upgrade pair of 30-year old submarines
Taiwan to stage live-fire exercise simulating Chinese invasion
Chinese combat helicopters hold live-fire drills off southeast coast
Taiwan fighter jet goes missing during drill
Why America's limited conflicts become 'forever wars'


Agon Pacific Co. Ltd is a Finnish majority owned company, and one of the founders and acting CEO is Finn, Tommi Ijäs. Agon Pacific is the leading boiler service provider in Southeast Asia. The company provides equipment and services to power plants and boilers throughout the value chain. With this agreement, the company now widens its products and services portfolio to forestry related KESLA products: grapples, chippers, tractor loaders and trailers and especially harvester heads.
- Synergy benefits with the power plant and boiler business can be easily achieved as many potential and existing wood harvesting clients are already familiar with our company, and this is part of the value chain we already serve, states Tommi Ijäs, CEO and founder of Agon Pacific.
- Agon Pacific has a very strong hold also in the after sales side of the business, which is essential when selling forestry machines, adds Janne Häyrynen, Sales Manager for APAC at Kesla.
- We have been working in Thailand now for a few years and during that time we have had successful cooperation with many of the big players in the field. Now, with the help of Agon Pacific, we are able to serve more companies and from the local field, states Mika Tahvanainen, the Marketing Director of Kesla.
Mechanization in the forests of Thailand has barely started. Kesla's new cooperation partner Agon Pacific completes Kesla's strong presence, support and after sales in mechanizing forestry.