No relief in site
This is the daily grind of traffic home at the end of a work day. Every day is a bad traffic day, with some being unbelievable, many-hour long trials. We’ve been consistently told that this will not improve anytime soon. Human Resources at STRI has even had to consider strategies for workers whose traffic-tortured commutes […]
Endless
In Minnesota, we like to joke that there are only two seasons: Winter and Road construction. Here there really ARE two seasons: Wet season and Dry season….but road construction seems constant. It must be impossible to build roads that will last here…due to the rains and the geologic layers on the isthmus of Panama. Gaping […]
Protest unheeded
This is a look from Casco at the construction of a new highway that will be built over the Pacific shore just out from Casco. People protested it’s construction, saying it was unnecessary and would be an eyesore and blot out one of the city’s beautiful vista’s, but Martinelli’s crew started construction anyway. Behind is […]
Teatro Naçional
This small theater in Casco Viejo is like a beautiful little jewel box. First a convent, and then an army barracks, the building was remodeled in 1907 by italian architect Genaro Ruggieri into this magnificent theater.
Roberto Lewis mural
Mural painted in 1907 by Panamanian artist Roberto Lewis. Impressive and in need of restoration.
Tiny dancers
I was invited to attend a recital of belly dance at a dance school in Balboa on a Saturday evening. These girls are starting young and confident. The applause for this group was the largest of the evening.
Agua mucho agua
The view from my pad. The rainy season is really ramping up. It makes the traffic even worse here in Panama. The abundant water, the warmth of the sun, the constancy of the climate make the perfect setting for biodiversity. This tree is a species of green mango that grows around building 183.
Not welcome
I followed German bat researcher Mirjam Knornschild (Universitat Ulm) as she photographed a small group of bats under the eaves. She has been researching this particular species and explained that the bat with the blue and yellow markers in “A” is an outsider, introduced to a local colony of her species on the island. They […]
Science and commerce
The view of the Panama Canal from the new Visitor’s Center deck on Barro Colorado Island.
Mechanical necessity
These muchachos were off-loading the final cooler for the first party in the new Visitor’s Center on BCI. This mechanism has been working here on BCI for decades. Especially for carrying visitor’s bags up the hill and supplies up to the dining hall when it was at the top of the hill. It’s a heart-thumping […]
First Artist Internship at STRI
Meet Irene Kopleman who came to Panama from Holland (Argentinian national). She received the first ever STRI internship for an artist. She is interested in the tension between sameness and difference as an overriding theme in her work. Check her out here: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n2/kopelman1.html She is checking one of her leaf traps here in the […]
Schedule of visual contemplations
Kopleman lived for several weeks in the field station where I also live here in Gamboa – building 183. Each morning she would go out and collect the leaf and seed debris in her leaf traps close by. She had a makeshift drawing set-up and spent up to 6 hours a day drawing the day’s […]
Compositions of a leaf trap
Kopleman’s pencil drawings have a quality of grace that causes contemplation of what grows and dies around us. What beauty can be found in simple things.