There's Culebra and then, There's the Rest of the World

Culebra is full of contradictions and most of them are good ones. We're part of America, yet so much not a part that we could be another country. I include the big island of Puerto Rico as one of those other places. Here, we have no chain stores and no chain restaurants. We have no homeless, no hungry, no threats of boycotts if someone expresses their religious beliefs out loud. No one will complain of a Nativity scene on the plaza with no Hanukkah menorah or Diwali clay lamps of oil or Kwanzaa cornucopias nearby (though they could be there too and that would be fine).

 So today, on Black Friday, if you want to shop 'til you drop, you won't find any sales here, except maybe a shopkeepers items on the sale rack that is in its appointed spot year 'round. Today, when and if WalMart workers are striking on the big island, with hopefully some pubic support, we won't hear about it until the ferry gets back this afternoon or tonight. If at all. Hearing about it I mean, not the ferry not coming back at all, that's better now. Really!

Pat says she is following the healthy advice of one glass of wine a day

Here, less really is more, and that works on a lot of levels. Yesterday, talking with a friend in my yard, we walked to the water's edge. Our talk meandered about the good and not so good of life here, the things we have and don't have, the frustrations we live with because the alternative is much worse. Sometimes.

But then we sat on rocks at the water's edge, watching the boats sway, looking at the roots of mangroves inching out of the water. Black mangroves, I learned. White mangroves were there as well, identified with two white dots at the base of the leaf. There were red mangroves too. All looking so much alike and all so very different. While the leaf of the black mangrove is more pointy than the other two, the real difference is how it absorbs the salt from the water. There's a whole big explanation about this, but the fun part was the taste test. My Thanksgiving appetizer was licking the back of the black mangrove leaf, then a white one. One extremely salty, one not.

Molly (and her guests) kindly shared space and time for our Thanksgiving dinner at her guesthouse. Thanks, Molly and guests!

At the water's edge, I could lose care about much of anything at all 'out there'. Back up the yard, hummingbirds were madly darting while iguanas crept overhead and down below; that was about the biggest activity going on. I can live easily without Black Friday - I can live without a lot of things that are just things. I find though, the idea of living without hummingbirds, without the sound of water lapping nearby? I don't want to live without that, no matter how easy it might be somewhere else. At least, that's what I think as this year draws near to closing.

 Friends were scattered around the island at various dinners here and there. 

But these guys were here.

John brought a turkey and finished it off in Molly's oven, meaning we all got that wafting aroma

 I didn't get photos of the two young women guests, but I did have a good chat with this charming, funny, sweet family from Prague. How cool is it to be from the historical capital of Bohemia?

(I did remember!)

I love this photograph.

Diversity, contradictions, life on Culebra. A microcosm of so much out there in the larger world and thankfully, so much itself. Here, I won't say hey! it's Buy Nothing Day, buy nothing! because here, you are buying about as local as it gets. So carry on! Buy local, where ever you are, if you must buy today. Just remember the moments of life that no amount of money can buy and do your best to stock up!

Have a frequently fabulous Friday! Do something freeing.