Strange fruit, radio bursts, exoplanets: shameless chef is home

A hefty root of malanga awaits its fate on the chopping board.

Hello, Marian,
Yes, this installment of Spirit of Wilson is being dispatched to the usual recipients, but just to be different, it is being sent as a letter to you, a friend I've known for more than 50 years. As a resident of Maui, I thought you might be interested to know how similar Maui is to Puerto Rico, the land of Hurricane Maria.

Except for the absence of molten rock that can burn you, and the strong Hispanic culture, Puerto Rico is a lot like Maui. For each island, what we call civilization has developed detente with the jungle, but it is an uneasy truce, with the jungle always testing the boundaries.

 Puerto Rico is a mere 150 miles closer to the equator than Maui. Because of their locations, both islands have important observatories. In 1992, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico announced the first planet to be discovered outside our solar system.

Malanga -- the new potato?

I made a far less momentous but nonetheless pleasing discovery of my own -- malanga, a root crop which is related to Hawaii's famous root crop, taro. Malanga is tasty, nutritious and filling, and kind of nutty, like the chef. If possible I intend to substitute it for the more pedestrian potato.  So far I haven't found malanga in Seattle, but I spent my last day in Puerto Rico experimenting with it as I packed and cleaned out the fridge.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. possession, with all the benefits of being possessed -- lots of Burger Kings and McDonald's restaurants to rely on when you are on the road and can't be sure a food server will speak English.  (Yes, yes, I know: if they can't learn English, why don't they go back to their own country, right?)

Plantain dish left; avocado, right.

The resort had a restaurant where I tried a dish of pork and other delicacies presented in small cups of fried plantains pictured at the right. The filling was great, but the plantains just seemed too starchy.  An exotic avocado, however, was enormous, very creamy and almost sweet. I purchased it from a vendor at the Pietra Escrita (petroglyphs) near a community called Jayuya in Central Puerto Rico. I was dubious, but it turned out all right.


A trip to Walmart made it possible to provision my condo with standard stuff a shameless cheapskate bachelor eats -- ham steaks,  lunchmeat, cheese, jam, bread, yogurt, pizza, beer,  ketchup, mustard, juice, etc. You know -- health food.

$4 for that hunk of malanga, and $3 for a bunch of bananas -- far, far pricier than Trader Joe's

It  was also at Walmart where I discovered malanga. Later, I purchased the specimen at the top of this article at the  roadside stand in the photo immediately above, while enroute to see what used to be the world's largest radio telescope.  I had already tried mashing malanga and garnished it with ketchup. Yum! This time I tried dicing and frying it. My recommendation is to stick with mashing it.

Malanga reportedly originated in South America and is now grown in the Caribbean, Central America, and certain parts of Africa and Asia. My research discovered that it is a natural thickener, and makes stews and soups creamy. However, when eaten raw, it can irritate the throat.

Honeyed ham: Yum!

The rest of the fridge cleanout involved dicing the ham steaks and slathering them with honey; eating the remaining yogurt and a ripe pineapple. Adding beer to the fried diced malanga in hopes that it would salvage it and contribute an interesting flavor (it didn't); and stuffing myself with that humongous avocado. This particular variety seemed green and quite hard, but ripened quickly. It was actually hollow around the seed, which almost fell out when the fruit was sliced, and which shed a thin jacket of tissue.

Peeled malanga, ready to be diced

On the left, fried malanga, didn't work. On the right, cooking it with beer didn't work either.

The Arecibo Observatory

Arecibo Observatory

Oh, I mentioned the world's largest radio telescope. Maybe you're curious about that. Here's a photo of it: This thing is 1,000 feet across. It rests in a depression in the ground carved in large part by ground water that naturally ate away at the limestone in the region, creating natural depressions that the telescope could be fitted into.

The undulating earth

There are many of these depressions in what is described at karst topography. The term is taken from a region between Yugoslavia and Italy. For Puerto Rico, it has resulted in places with a land form that looks a little bit like the undulations in ribbon candy, or like a sine wave. The photo below of a truck on the expressway shows how the land undulates, creating natural depressions into with such a telescope could be fitted. One third of the island has karstic topography.

Karst topography in the mountainous area south of Arecibo.

Exoplanets and radio bursts

Arecibo has the distinction of discovering the first exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system). It has served the National Science Foundation, and was able to help NASA troubleshoot problems with an earth satellite by determining whether it was tumbling in orbit. Literature at the observatory stated that the Arecibo telescope was the first to discover split-second "fast radio bursts" in the Northern hemisphere of the sky.

4 miles of cables, each weighing 10 tons, support the 1,000-ton platform above the dish.

Arecibo is no longer the world's largest radio telescope.It has been eclipsed by the much larger FAST radio telescope, in China. (However, the Chinese telescope doesn't have the distinction of appearing in a James Bond film. )The Arecibo telescope has a limited range of view, but was aimed in the right direction to help out Nasa with that tumbling satellite.  Unfortunately, the future funding of the observatory is somewhat in doubt.

Love,
Robert

Thorns, pirates and bioluminescence

The Jolly Roger reigns over Las Croabas Park in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.

When you live on the West Coast, Puerto Rico seems like a long ways away. But the fact is, it's cheaper to fly to this tropical isle  than to Hawaii. Yesterday I was treated to something that I don't think Hawaii has -- biolumiscence -- water that glimmers with light as falls from your hand.

Unfortunately, you can't take a photo of bioluminescence. It's bright enough to see, but impossible to photograph. So you'll have to take my word for it. The excursion I went on was located in a little city called Fajardo, at Las Croabas Park.

Before I went there, I spent part of the morning strolling the humongous resort where I can afford to stay by using time share credits. I got up early to examine some damage to my rental car from a brush-and-run from the night before. (More on that in a future blog.) Then I walked around the grounds a bit, taking in some of the interesting foilage, such as the tree, below.

What an amazing trunk; you are looking at a root that is probably 3.5 feet high, at least.

Another view of this amazing tree, with roots that reach down the bank.

Then as I was walking along the road, I took a closer look at a tree I previously had thought was rather ordinary looking. When you get close you realize this species of tree seems to have an anti-social personality disorder. Nothing personal about it -- it doesn't care if you lean against it -- but you certainly will.

Big, stubborn, unforgiving three-quarter-inch thorns aim in every direction.

Don't try using this limb for chin-ups.

I doubt that I will ever see
A monster meaner than this tree.

Those thorns reminded me of what was once called the Iron Maiden, the hollow shell that held prisoners and which was festooned with interior spikes. Except, of course, that the Iron Maiden was a fiction. This tree, however, is a fact.

Here are some friendlier examples of the flora at the resort.

Malanga -- replaces spuds, reduces blood pressure

Toward the end of the day I headed out for my excursion. Along the way, I stopped at Walmart to shop for malangas, pictured below. This is a remarkable root vegetable. You can mash it just like potatoes. I made some just before writing this post. It is quite good and quite filling, and it is supposed to help with high blood pressure. I'm going to be looking for this and other Puerto Rican root vegetables after I get back to Seattle.

I planned an early arrival for the bioluminesence tour, which technically was about a 40-minute drive from the resort.
Technically.
Getting around Puerto Rico by auto isn't difficult, once you get the hang of it, but using GPS can be a bit iffy because the street names are not always posted and freeway exits could be more obvious. So you have to trust the GPS, and it's not always spot on.

Dollar Rent A Car charged me $11 a day for a Nissan Sentra, and then upgraded me to a Hyundai Tucson because they didn't have the compact in stock. They also would have charged me $13 per day for a Garmin brand GPS device,  after warning me that Verizon's GPS system was unreliable. Actually, I found Verizon's GPS pretty reliable, but I used a Garmin as well. For the price of renting one, I could simply purchase one. Neither device is 100 percent correct, but if you stay cool you can get where you're going.

When I got to Las Crobas Park, I found pirates -- sort of. The folks got creative with the big toys, which were made out to be imaginary pirate ships. I hadn't seen anything so creative in big toys.

Pirates ahoy! With a little imagination, the kids become swashbucklers.

This is the business end of the port canon near the ship's bow.

At a small cafe by the park I dined on bits of pork and paella -- a rice and corn cake.

Too dark to photograph

And here's where the photos end. Even though there was a bit of cloud cover, the moon was full and that meant light pollution. That and the gentleness of the glow in the water made it impossible to photograph the bioluminiscence. However, it was just dark enough to poke your eye out if you didn't watch where you were going and drifted into a mangrove branch.

Mangroves essential for the night lights

The mangroves are part of the reason for the bioluminescence. The plankton that produce it pour from the ocean into this mangrove estuary, and the chemicals from the mangroves as well as the temperature of the water are just right to support the animals that make the glow. When I stirred the water with my hand, it became engulfed in a white smoke-like glowing cloud. When I splashed the water onto the edge of the kayak, the ocean water looked like shimmering droplets of mercury running across the surface of the boat. Puerto Rico is one of the best places in the world to see this phenomenon.

My under-powered vessel

My kayak was under powered and slow. All other kayaks had two paddlers aboard. I rode solo and it was a chore keeping up and maneuvering in the dark through the channels of the mangroves. The twisting channel eventually reached quiet open water where we tied up together and played with the planktons, before returning to shore. The excursion was a three-mile round trip, according to one guide. Toward the end I accepted his offer to give me a bit of a tow, which made catching up with the others a lot easier. No shame here; I had been doing the work of two. And unlike two couples in our group, I managed not to flip my kayak.

Rubber knees

I was surprised I didn't get blisters on my palms, and more surprised when I tried to stand up after exiting the kayak. It's not unusual for newbies to have rubbery legs when they exit the craft, and the waves of the ocean can give you a tumble. The guide had to hold me up to get me up the steps on the bank. I put my arm around him and held on. Twenty years from now, I may not need the excuse of kayak exhaustion to require that kind of help. Was this a premonition of things to come? Where did I stash that walker?

Love,
Robert

Los Angeles de Tijuana

Under the bright Tijuana sun, Greg Seiler clears the cement mixer while Rafael Villavicencio awaits the next dump.

They don't have wings, but they fly. They don't perform miracles, but they do wonderful things. And they sweat. And dance. And party. And play in the dirt. Some  have been doing the wonderful for 20 years. They are the volunteers from St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Kirkland. I think of them as The Angels of Tijuana.

They are older now, and time has made its mark. One intrepid volunteer and his wife had to back out this year so that surgeons could address his brain cancer. Another was on site, and took his daily shots to control his MS.

They embody the Spirit of Wilson -- helping others as a form of entertainment. Using their vacation time and energy to make a lasting difference in the lives of individuals living in another culture under less favorable circumstances than ours. Today this post is about them.

 Every year the angels board a jet to San Diego, take a van into Tijuana, and then they help build "dignified housing" for people who dream of having a clean, comfortable home. The program that sponsors this activity is called Esperanza (Hope), and St. Vianney has been sending teams to a compound operated by Esperanza for 20 years. I've been on two of these trips in the past, and this year I went again, flying into San Diego on May 18.

("Building Decent Homes" says the slogan)

I would have written about this sooner, but there were photos to process, a mountain to climb, a road trip to make and some other incidentals that got in the way. And right now is a good time to write this because it's probably 90 degrees outside the condo in Southeast Puerto Rico and I'm still getting adjusted to the humidity.

Good time to stay indoors and celebrate the Angles of Tijuana. There's not a lot of new stuff to say, because I've written about them twice before over the years. So I'm just going to include photos from our spring visit, with as little commentary as possible.

One of these was my bed.

During our breaks we found a cushy place to catnap.

When it rained, we took cover on the job site, enjoying the local home cookin'.

This was one of our job sites. We were extending work on a home already started.

This appeared to be the home of the next-door neighbor. There is much work to do in Tijuana.

The houses were built from cement blocks and poured concrete. A lot of the work involved creating forms to contain the concrete.

These Esperanza employees were building a plywood form for a roof pour.

On top of the roof workers laid reinforcing forms of rebar . . .

. .. and then fastened the rebar forms into place.

Everybody pitched in.

You have to pick your wardrobe carefully; clothing can take a real beating.

You might find yourself hefting a cement bucket up hill, for instance. . .

. . . or using a scrap of wood to deflect cement as it pours from the mixer into the "canoe."

The cement mixer filled the canoe, and the volunteers scooped up the cement with  paint buckets.

Bricks without mortar

Some time ago, Pharaoh forced the Childlren of Israel to make bricks without straw. The volunteers at Esperanza had it a lot easier: They lay bricks without mortar. They are called Haener blocks.

This is what they look like from the top.

You stack them on top of each other without mortar, fold in rebar, and tie it down.

You cut off the excess rebar . . .

. . . and someone like Stanley Edmond , a Hatian volunteering at Esperanza, pours in the concrete.

A wall of Haener blocks rises fast and level.

Snow White they Ain't

When you're working hard, sometimes a little music helps to make the day go more smoothly Snow White believed in whistling while you work. But the folks from St. John Vianney -- especially the women -- would rather boogie to a different tune:

Click here and you can watch her moves to "Another One Bites the Dust."

They also took time to remember two long-time volunteers who couldn't make it this year -- Jan and Mike Kline. Mike was recovering from cancer surgery. So there was a special pour just for them. Before making its way down the delivery line, the bucket was appropriately decorated:

Deana Barrow displays the bucket honoring Mike and Jan.

Stanley Edmond did the honors, after which the bucket was immoralized enroute to the refill.

The message at the border

Toward the end of the week we took an excursion -- to the border. And the wall. There's an engraved stone there that explains it is the "Initial limit point between Mexico and the United States set by the United Commission October 10 A.D. 1849 according to the Treaty concluded in the City of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2 A.D. 1848 Pedro Garcia Condea Mexican Commissioner Jose Salazar Ylarregui Mexican Surveyor."

The president has promised a big beautiful wall. As it is, the Tijuana wall has a beauty about it. A people's beauty.

There is a park on one side of the border wall.

Some flowers grow there, and someone declared the spot to be a "Binational Garden."

You can peek between the slats to get a glimpse of the sea; but what you see are the messages.

They are messages of love and defiance.

"No obstacle can prevent us from achieving our dreams. We are Mexicans; we are unstoppable."

Volunteer Tim Mitchell skipped a stone onto the surf.

There was one more thing to accomplish before we headed home -- get a glimpse of a finished home.

This is how a small starter home can look like after finishing touches such as stucco are applied.

The bathroom is small, but sufficient, and colorful.

This mother can see her son growing up with dignified housing.

So that's the story, once again, about a cross-cultural exchange that takes place every year. Our team was a small part of the Esperanza program. The graphic below displays what the program accomplished in 2018.

Love,
Robert

Some things take time . . .

The