| Excellent
artist - and Latin dance teacher - Juan Carlos Ruiz now is on the web at http://juancarlosruizsoto.artelista.com.
His studio, gallery, and seasonal coffee shop is Galeria Casadelagua, located
equidistant from Arenal and Tilaran at the extreme western end of Lake Arenal.
Often you can watch him at work in his second-floor studio just across the highway
from the lake. This young artist likes visitors and loves to talk as well as paint.
The 12 kids at Chimurria school
are experiencing a unique and enjoyable new way to learn English while at the
same time getting in some important physical education. Recently Laura Murray
brought back from Denver a collection of softball equipment she bought at Play
It Again, Sam, a couple of bats and balls and six gloves. The kids will study
English words relevant to softball and then put them to use in play. Chris and
Sonya Sullivan have donated the use of the only large flat spot in Chimurria,
the area Sonya uses for giving riding lessons with the three horses there, animals
which we hope will take to the encircling slopes while the kids put their lessons
into practice. The school has no playground facilities whatsoever except a big
dirt mound. A recent visitor to Chimurria, Melissa Fuller, a deputy sheriff from
Ft. Lauderdale, has offered to involve her sheriffs' department in supplying more
equipment. Melissa bought a tiny and now trashed house near the school two years
ago and flew down to get reconstruction started. A versatile as well as brave
person, Melissa also sings backup for country musicians such as Lorrie Morgan
and will be performing at the MGM in Las Vegas in September with her aunt, who
is none other than Connie Francis. She plans to move to Chimurria in five years
after turning in her police hardware. Speaking
of music and softball, B. B. Zuñiga, | the
local musician formerly know as Pr…uh, Bob Benjamin, remembering his early
years of playing "workup" and "over the line," likes the Chimurria
softball idea so much he is planning a similar program at the school in Sabalito.
If both schools form teams, there is already a great place to play games, as Chris
Sullivan pointed out, a disused baseball diamond above the community building
in San Luis. Several years ago some local leaders made a great effort to get Costa
Ricans playing baseball as the Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and other Latin nations
do, not only forming several teams but building a diamond with dugouts and small
covered spectator stands. It didn't last, but now a second start with tinier kids
may have legs. We learned from
Dave Warner of Toad Hall that a new meditation center on the road to Guatuso was
to provide the venue for locals to join in the worldwide Fire the Grid Meditation
at 5:11 am on July 17. The new center has been established by Fabiana de Olviera
e Cruz in a Buckminster Fuller-style dome overlooking the lake. The hour's prayer
or meditation, performed by persons hopeful of healing the planet with a "Surge
of Love" (according to the nameless spiritual leader at www.firethegrid.com)
appeared by the end of the day to have had no effect that this admittedly skeptical
observer could discern. The Democrats were forcing the Republicans into an all-night
session in an attempt the break up the Republican filibuster, and bombers of both
types, suicide and non-suicide, had succeeded in killing quite a few people in
Pakistan and Iraq. I'm sure there was more than one bar fight, too, and in some
countries, but not Costa Rica, many acts of road rage. That's not to suggest that
an hour or more at Fabiana's dome is not a pleasant and even inspiring experience |