| Love'm to death
For a year, the blast from my neighbors' stable of caged gladiators heralded the dawn. I hated the damn things until I began to recognize their voices. Following some kids into the yard one day, I learned as my new friend taught his children to love those birds to death. His kids knew the birds would fight and die and so worked hard to make better fighters of them so death would be honorable and the victors celebrated Like the quincea�era parade of virgins, the fiestas patronales of the church or the little corner botanica where sage advice and prayers are uttered as potions are mixed to cure all ills, la gallera is an institution of Hispanic culture that isn't going to disappear because some Anglos don't like it. They imagine only a blood and feathers death pit. But for those who go, it's about wearing your good shoes, dancing to live music, lots of kids, abundant good cheap food, no cops and a place mama knows where the old man is. So cockfighting is illegal and only outlaws are there and the underground version of la gallera becomes a bloody spot at a gravel pit exactly as imagined by those who banned it. Because some folks don't like it, others lose a piece of heritage. My friend in Puerto Rico does not golf or bowl or jet-ski. He comes from work and together with his brother and the kids, They love his beautiful birds to death. Phoenix New Times - 27 Apr 2000 |
| To the Editor: |
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| Rip out the Mangroves?
Almost every time I visit the Old City I run into someone I've met or seen in my adopted home of Boqueron. Some tell of parents bringing them here, and in turn they've brought their own children. Kids grow up and remember being kids down at Boqueron. Mom and Pop don't much come here without the kids- it ain't Hacienda Gripi�as. Lately big money's been sniffing around and saying they want 'the best' for the area. Should we believe them? Just where might their priorities lie? The bay is just a small bight compared to the size of the island. There's little tidal action. Prevailing wind and negligible current are inadequate to flush the bay of what we incessantly dump into it. That's why we have a problem today. It's obvious what's 'the best' for the bay is that we get after those agencies licensed to pollute and put a stop to it. Are we willing to accept tearing out the mangroves that nourish so much life in order to maintain an artificial harbor with an open channel to the bay that will be off limits to the public, effectively cutting off the beach to the advantage only of wealthy condo owners? I want to believe the generations who have so enjoyed this tiny corner are not ready to sit still and watch while a huge area adjacent to the main street and the beach access gets drained, filled, tamped down, and concreted over. An asphalt plant or an amusement park might be great for the economy, but I bet the kids would rather chase live crabs across the tideline than point to dead ones pinned to a formica wall. I want to believe the people who live here and people who come here year round care enough about this little bay to run these developers back to the Florida swamps where they belong. Ask the fishermen about the waters- they know. Or ask the old-timers who rode the rails down from San Juan on the weekends. If the starfish living here could understand what's going on, they'd be up on all fives making for El Combate. And as soon as the silt begins to cover their habitat that's surely where they'll be headed. Everybody loves Boqueron. It seems they all came here when they were kids. Did you? Once it's gone it wont be coming back. Let's be smart and not let them have at it. San Juan Star- 16 Nov 1992 |
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| Greenpeace Follies
We were all curious to know what was going on as we watched the converted salmon tender- the LCM Benificent Bivalve run right up through the setnets and drop her bow ramp on the mudflats at Clam Gulch. There was a rumble and roar as the seven ATV three-wheelers splashed through the open gate dragging waxseal freezer boxes full of leaflets proclaiming: LET THE CLAMS LIVE IN PEACE! They raced toward a bonfire tended by a vacationing family from Passaic who had already dug their limit and were cleaning them up while watching the USFL championship game on the side porch of their camper van. The news spread fast and within an hour the postmaster (the tiny community's only government official), embarrased as she was for having allowed the ship to penetrate the coastal defence perimeter- had called up the Clam Gulch Militia, a volunteer organization entrusted with the protection of resident women, local marijuana gardens as as well the overseers of the destruction of roadsigns with shotgun pellets. The militiamen quickly surrounded the marauders except for one who had been photographing a particularly ripe pile of discarded clam shells and had managed to mount his Japanese steed in an attempt to reach the 24 hour film drop at a Soldotna farmacy. The escapee's flight was brought up short however by his underestimation of the height of a setnetter's running line, initiating a secondary flight ending in a rough slide through the beaches' famous mollusk laden mud. Soon all seven were under guard at the Chevron station in the propane shed. At first the invaders would only mumble inane slogans concerning the rights of the clam population, but after six hours in the windowless shed, and having been fed only cold Fletcher's clam chowder without crackers, they admitted to their interrogators that the whole caper was just to gain publicity for the Miss Alaska Redhed Contest. The waters of our world are navigated daily by brave and thoughtful men and women of all maritime nations working in navies, coast guards, in marine sciences and exploration, in coastal and offshore fisheries, and in international merchant marine services. Dangerous, provocative, and assinine exploits like this inane Siberian Seven fiasco give the whole ocean a bad name. For shame- What a bunch of jerks. Anchorage Daily News- 30 July 1983 |
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