A National Heroine
Judy
Dixon was a long-time close friend of mine and Nora's best friend. When
I first came to Panama she helped me enormously with getting my papers
in order. Judy passed away 4 months ago.
Judy
had been personal secretary to several powerful Panama government
ministers, and finished her career in Jorge Ritter's office helping to
write the new Canal operating rules. She was one of the movers and
shakers in forming CONEN (Consejo Nacional de la Etnia Negra, Panama's
equivalent of the NAACP). Her funeral services were held in a school
gymnasium, because no church which could accommodate the expected crowd
was available.
May 30 was her birthday and CONEN had scheduled
their founding celebration on that day. She ws honored in the opening
ceremonies in a large hall of the ATLAPA Convention Center in Panama
City. Hundreds of people, including the Mayor of Panama City, several
cabinet members, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court were there,
and of course, Nora and I, who were honored with reserved seats on the
second row. The President of the Republic was scheduled to attend, but
the crash of the 35 year old helicopter which had been used by the late
General Omar Torrijos, into a store on Central Avenue had occupied all
his attention.
I was scheduled to give a talk at another, unrelated
function at 7:30 and told my friend Charley, (Judy's husband) that I
would have to leave at 7:00. At 6:45, the first speaker was introduced,
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In a triumph of hope over
experience, I naively thought he would speak for no more than 15~20
minutes, so I could stay for his speech and still get to the next
function on time, and even if he spoke longer, I could "answer" my cell
phone and pretend to have an emergency, and everyone would understand
my walking out on the Chief Justice's talk. As he began to speak about
the African Slave Trade and how Europe profited by it, I looked around
at the sea of brown and black faces, and realized that there was no way
on Earth that this blue-eyed white boy was going to walk out until he
was finished.
By the way, he is an excellent speaker and held
my interest for the full 45 minutes. At no point did he say anything
that could be taken as an attack on white people; instead he focused on
how people of color around the world, including Panama, had lifted
themselves up by hard work and faith in God. I left feeling uplifted,
myself.
Fort San Lorenzo
Fort
San Lorenzo sits atop a cliff, almost 100 feet above the sea, at the
mouth of the Chagres River. To an invader, it must have been a
near-impassible obstacle, with it's cannon, a moat, and formidable
stone walls. Though the remains we see today are not of the fort
destroyed by Henry Morgan, the preceding wooden fort must have been
difficult to vanquish. Go to
http://panamaliving.com/FortSanLorenzo.html
for a better story on San Lorenzo's history.
Our
Kiwi friends, Julie and Paul, wanted to see Fort San Lorenzo, so Nora
and I assembled a picnic lunch, picked them up and drove to the "other
side". We got lucky and had only a few minutes wait at the swing bridge
at Gatun Locks and arrived at Fort Sherman before 11:00 am. The road to
San Lorenzo has been paved since Nora and I last visited there and at
about the half-way mark, we arrived at an ANAM station, where a
friendly park ranger collected a $10.00 entry fee. Nora and I got in
free, as resident Jubilados, but the tourist fee is $5.00 per person.
We found not much change since our last visit in the 80s. The giant
tree which guards the entrance is only larger, but still festooned with
weaver bird nests. There is now a house there for the
groundskeeper, and several gaunt but peaceful dogs greeted us,
apparently looking for a handout.
I was happy to see that much
of the "restoration" done during the Noriega years has been undone, and
a lot of concrete has transformed what had been a hazardous walking
experience into relative safety. Unfortunately, it appears that the
basic tasks necessary to keep the jungle from reclaiming this site are
not being done, with several areas where seeds planted by birds have
sprouted and are reducing the old walls to soil. There is a lot of
history here, and a fantastic view of the mouth of the Chagres River
and the Atlantic Ocean. There are many old cannon barrels, most
curiously aimed inland instead of at the ocean, from where ships would
come. We spent about an hour there, taking pictures which will be
posted on the website in the near future.
Then we drove to
Devil's Beach for lunch. The beach is located just outside the park,
and requires no fee payment. While the US still occupied Fort Sherman,
the beach was kept clean and used by soldiers stationed there, but now,
the lack of care is painfully apparent. The shoreline is littered with
drift, but thankfully there is very little of the plastic garbage which
is so abundant on many Pacific beaches. There is plenty of garbage
scattered around the area above the shoreline, much of it within feet
of one of the near-empty garbage cans, and plenty of empty and broken
liquor bottles. It's painful to see such a pretty place trashed by
people who just don't care.
After lunch, we drove into Colon and
had coffee at the Hotel Washington. I do not recommend a walking tour
of Colon, but a drive-through can be interesting.
Crow Recipe?
In
the last Newsletter, I ranted about Cable and Wireless' decision to
block port 25, rendering my email sending agent useless. I was taken to
task on some Yahoo Panama News Groups where members pointed out that
blocking port 25 is common practice around the world where ISPs are
attempting to control SPAM. To give credit where credit is due, my
C&W email account, which was averaging 50 SPAM messages a day
is
now receiving about 2 per day. Good show, guys! Anybody got a good Crow
recipe?
Now, it seems obvious to me that either A) C&W's own
customers were responsible for over 90% of the SPAM in my email box, or
B) C&W took some other anti-SPAM measures as well. Based on
available evidence, such as streaming video no longer working smoothly,
and lots of observable latency in my formerly snappy 1200 Kbit
connection, I'm betting C&W has made some major changes in how
they
handle network traffic. I understand that most bandwidth throttling is
aimed at music and movie downloaders, and a bit of latency doesn't
really interfere with my normal use of the internet, but it is annoying
to have to download a Youtube video to hard drive to see it without
pauses. On the other hand, it may just be a line problem, but I've
learned from long experience not to waste my time complaining about
sub-standard service. It COULD be worse.