Category Archives: Beach Photos

No Perfection in the Universe

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If my bedroom were to open onto the beach side of my rental, this would be my early morning scene:

(Click on first picture, then on arrows to enlarge photos and view. When you’ve viewed all four pictures, click on X on upper left of your screen to return to my posting)

The only sounds I would hear? Gulls, the wash of waves on the shore, Bobino’s mute plea to be fed. But, in fact, my bedroom window which must be kept open for circulation, faces onto the street and at 8 o’clock, my reality is this:

No Perfection in the Universe

After only four hours’ sleep,
my slumber should be sound and deep;
but very early in the day,
mufflers seem to be passé.

My window opens to the street
to try to beat the daily heat,
so the sounds of ATV’s
enter freely with the breeze.

When motorcycles rev and roar
just outside my bedroom door
and trucks come rumbling two by two––
there is nothing I can do

but grab my computer and write my blog
when I should be sleeping like a log.
It’s true I might be way less surly
if I got to bed more early,

but you see it’s not to be
for when the bars all close at three
the motorcycles are just as loud
their drivers young and motor-proud.

They shout and roar and spin their wheels.
Their music beats and thumps and peals
as they do one pass or more
right outside my bedroom door.

Outside the other side of my rental
all the sounds are elemental.
The surf’s loud roar is more relaxing,
but here the engine roars are taxing!

So when you picture my vacation,
just think of the daily ration
of engine angst that I confess
and perhaps you’ll envy less.

The parade of mufflerless motorcycles, cars and revving trucks begins at eight a.m.  Here is one minute of traffic passing in front of my house.  The blue wall with the open door and window is mine.

(Click on first picture, then on arrows to enlarge photos and view.When you’ve viewed all 11 pictures, click on X on upper left of your screen to return to my posting.)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/longing/

Add Water and Stir––Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge,2016/2/29

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Click on first photo to enlarge and on arrows to move through gallery.

I was just sitting there minding my own business when suddenly. . . .

A friend suggested I add this link for those who wonder about the story of me sitting in the surf in the chair.  Have a look at this link:  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/08/05/de-picted/

 

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/02/29/cees-fun-foto-challenge-things-that-are-wet/

Leapin’ Lizards

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Leapin’Lizards

Iguanas, lizards, gekkos, turtles, toads and frogs and snakes
are not the things that we should fear in life, for goodness sakes.
These creatures in their own domains present no awful threat.
Just leave them where they are, for none were made to be a pet.

Our tame lives seek to steal the wildness from such natural things,
but wildness is not what curtailing wildness ever  brings.
We must learn to leap ourselves––by entering our lives
and breaking free from prisons–our cages, pens or hives––

to buzz the world around us and see what we can find
to release us from our lethargy and the ties that bind.
If you do not know the way, just go and find a child
and follow him or her to places where they keep the wild.

The beach or any sandpile may serve to be your clues
of how to color your own life with more vivid hues.
A thing as simple as wet sand can take a child to
places where you had forgot you could be taken to.

Castle moats or rivers, dams, mountain tops or caves
huge mansions that are sacrifices to that evening’s waves.
Our wild imaginations are where we all should go
to find a little wildness when our lives are slow.

Go find a dog to walk with if you need a pet
then take him out to some wild beach–and both of you, get wet!
Wildness is for doing, not for sitting on a shelf.
So free the creatures pining there and find some for yourself!

(Click on first photo to enlarge and view gallery)


Those baby sea turtles are being set free, not being collected. Happy Leap Year!!!
(If you want to know more about the release of the baby turtles, go HERE.)

This poem was written partially in response to this strange strange news from my home town that was sent to me by two friends yesterday. Read about it here:  http://www.chapala.com/webboard/index.php?/topic/60430-tiger-in-la-floresta/

It was also in response to the prompt “Leap,” in honor of this being the extra day in this leap year!  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/leap/

Tower of Bobble

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It’s not that I’m addicted to bobble-heads. Really.  The truth is that I’m addicted to the two charming children who sell them.  I first met them at Pedro’s fish taco place on the beach, where they politely approached me and showed me their wares.  As her brother calmly extracted a few individual animals to show me, the little girl played with her smaller tray of animals, repositioning them and occasionally holding one out for me to examine. They were not insistent, but rather seemed absolutely fascinated by the animals themselves. I asked their names.  He was Edgar and she was Flo. He went to school in Melaque in the mornings and she went to Kinder. In the afternoons, they sold the animals and clay candleholders while their mother and older brother sold other wares. I ended up buying seven animals, which Flo counted out in English, her brother continuing the count up to 20–not because I’d bought that many, but because he knew the numbers.

I thought our relationship was probably over as they walked away up the beach, but I had underestimated Edgar’s entrepreneurship. That afternoon, they appeared again at the steps that lead up to the beachside porch of my house. Calmly, Edgar produced a monkey and a cat.  That morning, I had noted that there were no monkeys or cats or rabbits, and  he had not forgotten. It had just been an idle comment on my part, but now how could I not buy them?

My upstairs neighbors arrived and, equally charmed, bought several animals each. Did they have any more cats, Nancy asked?  No, Pat had bought the last one.  Too bad they didn’t have yellow cats, I remarked to my friends.  We completed our transactions and after our small vendor friends had finished the lemonade I’d provided, they departed.

Over the next two days, they returned with cowboys, elephants, yellow cats, a moose, armadillos and a wonderful pig with a bobble tail instead of a bobble head.  I served lemonade or orangeade as Edgar neatly lined up his animals on my steps, creating little neighborhoods and groups.  Cowboys herded cattle. Rows of cats faced off with elephants. As we called other friends from nearby to view the animals, Edgar and Flo turned over their empty trays and beat out a little rhythm, chanting words I couldn’t quite make out.  They seemed entertained by their life. Did they ever go swimming?  I asked them.  I’d wondered earlier if they ever resented the children playing in the surf as they trudged up and down the beach selling their wares.  Yes, they answered.  Sometimes they played in the water in the morning or later in the afternoon.

By now I had 15 little animals surrounding the candlestick on the round coffee table in the sala. They perpetually bobbed their heads as though in agreement with each other, motivated by the air currents set up by the overhead fan.  As though in sync with them, I, too, continued to nod agreement as Edgar came forward with new animal after new animal over the next few days. Since then, I have not seen them on the beach. Nor have they come to my house. It may be because I have been busy and not sitting on my porch as they passed, or it may be that Edgar’s earlier counting to 20 was prophetic––for that is the exact number of animals in my bobble-head zoo.

(Click on the first photo to enlarge photos and on arrows to proceed through gallery.)

This worm was the first animal chosen to come home with me.
Cowboys line up to herd bobble-heads. Tableau by Edgar.
Flo and Edgar are mesmerized by the small game I gave them that I won in a grab bag at the feria in the local plaza.
Flo is ready for her turn as Edgar shows his skill at getting the tiny ball into the right slot.
Edgar willingly surrenders the game to Flo.
This little piggy will go to market no more.

A Boy’s Story

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It isn’t often that a boy finds such a receptive audience outside of his own family, but obviously, this boy had some story to tell! (Click on first photo to view all photos in enlarged view. When you get to last picture in this series, click on the black area to the right of the pictures and it will cause the second set of pictures that tell about Aedan’s adventure to appear.)

THE END. IF YOU’D LIKE TO HEAR THE STORY I TOLD HER, PLEASE CLICK ON THE BLACK AREA NEXT TO THIS PHOTO , GO DOWN TO THE NEXT GALLERY AND CLICK ON THE FIRST PICTURE.

CLICK ON FIRST PHOTO BELOW TO SEE THE SLIDE SERIES AND READ ABOUT AEDAN’S BIG ADVENTURE.

he said, “Come on, son. Want to go out with me?
He got me up on his board and I wasn’t even scared.
He told me to sit very still and showed me how to adjust my balance a bit when the water got choppy.
Then he started paddling us out away from shore.
Way out
to where the boats were,
so far out that we could barely see mom waiting on the shore.
Then he paddled me back again.
I got over the wave myself just fine.
And Dad and his friend showed me how to get up on the board.
This time I stood up and Dad held me while I learned to balance.
I stood all the way up and balanced on my own.
When I get bigger, Dad said he’d show me how to paddle, and then some day I’ll be the one paddling and he’ll be the one sitting on the front of my board.
While I paddle him way out to where the big boats are. THE END!!!

 

 

Murder, Migraine and La Manzanilla

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Murder, Migraine and La Manzanilla

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Feet up at the Tequila Sunset Bar!

Murder, Migraine and La Manzanilla

When I was asked what my three most successful blog postings have been, I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to find out for sure. I knew it had something to do with the stats page, but I didn’t know how to go about finding out the total of views for each post over the years. I accepted the challenge, however, and found that the three topics that have created the most views over the two years plus that I’ve been blogging all start with the letter “M!”

First of all, as my title so clearly states, anything having to do with La Manzanilla, Mexico, where I spend two months of my year, garners immediate views. This is probably because most of my postings about La Manzanilla have been linked to their incredibly popular message board which has a loyal following. If you need something in La Manz from a ride to the airport three towns away to the loan of a charger for your camera to information about your computer, your house or your life—go to the La Manzanilla message board. And, for sure, if you took pictures all along the beach of different campfires and parties on New Years Eve and posted them on your blog, mention it on the La Manzanilla message board.

The third most views I garnered for any one post was a piece I wrote about the murder of two friends, and as the investigation into their murder continued, the international interest in my blog continued. I think the dearth of other information (since the murder occurred in Mexico whereas their families and lifelong friends were in Canada) contributed to people picking up on my blog from Google and Facebook. This is a sad way to earn views and of course that was far from the reason why I continued to write about this most tragic occurrence, but for some reason I wound up as a liaison between Mexican and Canadian friends of the couple, local police and higher up government officials and one local woman who relentlessly pursued the ones she knew were responsible. In the end, one of the men  was caught and sentenced, but I keep hoping that one day I’ll surpass the day’s total for views for one of the days I wrote about their deaths, as every time I see that number in my “top three,” I am reminded of the sad topic of that post.

Also high in the ratings over the past two years was a blog I wrote about migraine headaches. I remember my friend, proof-reader and fellow blog administrator Skyping me that I’d had hundreds of views from Great Britain in the last few minutes and upon investigation, I decided that this must have been due to a web crawler picking up on the work “migraine” and distributing the URL for my blog to its participants. I hope in writing this that I’m interpreting correctly how and why a web crawler works. I can only say that it is exciting to see the numbers mounting, but I don’t delude myself that it was anything but a fluke.

In summary, I guess what I’ve learned from surveying my stats is that what is most important in attracting views is to write about a timely topic you have personal knowledge of—especially if no one else is writing about it. Or, to choose a topic of particular and clearly-defined interest and to find some way to get news of your posting to the particular group that has an interest in it. This might be through your choice of tags, where else you establish a link to your blog or the luck of being picked up by some service that disseminates information to its subscribers.

Ironically, this is something I rarely do and which in all of these cases happened more or less by accident. I think if I were to make these concerns my main consideration in blogging that all of the fun would go out of it. I love the more hit-or-miss option of writing about the Daily Prompt and posting pictures on the daily or weekly prompts given by a handful of prompt sites. If you look at my blog, you will clearly see which ones they are and I furnish links to all of them at the bottom of my posts. It is wonderful to be widely-read but I’d rather have the freedom of writing about what I want to write about and in the style I want to write. In my case, I think the label of my blog could best be described as eclectic. That’s how I like my life and that’s how I like my writing and photos.

The starlings come back to La Manzanilla. (Perhaps they’ve been here all along, but a lack of a stunning sunset in the west last night brought our attention to the southeast, where a lot more was going on thanks to the clouds and the murmuration of thousands of starlings, which I took for bats until Daniel straightened out my thinking by saying they were birds. Meanwhile, he took a break from smoking his cigar to smoke his cigarette.  More about this in a later post!

(Click on first picture to see enlarged photos.)

 

A legation of legs? Daniel gives his cigar a rest as he takes a cigarette break.

A generous friend with time on his hands sent me links to my top eight most-viewed blog postings.  These are the links he sent:

#1  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/10/24/la-manzanilla-after-hurricane-patricia/
#2  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/01/01/sand-in-my-sangria-happy-new-year-2015/
#3  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/02/11/upon-the-violent-death-of-a-friend/
#4  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/10/25/two-more-videos-of-hurricane-patricia-in-la-manzanilla-mexico/
#5  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/02/13/nina-discombe-and-edward-kulars-deaths/
#6  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/11/29/internet-infraction-bogged-down-in-blog/
#7 https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/08/13/dizzy-representative/
#8 https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/03/19/post-migraine-depression/

 

The Prompt: Go to your stats page and find your three most successful posts.  What do they have in common? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-stat-connection/

Color Your World Sandy

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Color Your World Sandy

By the way, I got a broom and some plastic oars and some help and we did get this fellow back out to the water.

 

http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/02/01/color-your-world-desert-sand/

Pick of the Crop

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Pick of the Crop
I am really glad Cee has extended these “Compose Yourself” challenges to only two per month, as I’ve had a problem completing them in one week.  The photos I’ve chosen all presented varied cropping choices, which I’ll discuss as I show them.

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

 

Fast Tracks
Cropping it a bit centers our attention on a detail we might have otherwise overlooked–the child running past in the background.
A further crop brings us in a big closer to the action but doesn’t have much of an effect.
Moving the boy further to the right of the image creates more of an interest in what is ahead of him rather than arousing curiosity about what it is behind him that he might be running from.
Centering the attention on the woman and beach vendor creates more tension. Is she ordering or scolding? The man in the background seems to be listening in as well.
Cropping the photo even smaller reveals yet another story to be guessed at.

 

This close crop certainly reveals this little dog in more detail
than this less extreme crop,

 

 

JDB Photo
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Cropping closely and adding exposure reveals more of the transaction going on in the foreground.

Version 3

But bringing back the shadow in the foreground, helps to reveal more interesting action in the background.

Version 2

And although the focus isn’t great, I love this cropped shot of this active little jogger.

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/27/cees-compose-yourself-photo-challenge-week-15-cropping/

Laguna Sunset

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                                                            Laguna Sunset

This was the sunset two nights ago that greeted us as we were nearing the end of our river birding trip on the laguna and river in the bird sanctuary that runs between La Manzanilla and Boca de Iguana.  The two young men who operated the oars on our boat pointed out hornbills, egrets, herons, cormorants, crocodiles, giant iguanas and a plethora of other birds as we quietly moved through the mangroves.  At one point, we had to lean down flat in the boat to go under an extremely low bridge…but those pictures will follow.  The point of this posting is the incredible sunset which was actually even more virant than these pictures depict.  As we approached the beach again from the laguna, the sky was a vibrant scarlet. These pictures capture part of the ever changing spectacle.

IMG_2388IMG_2410IMG_2418IMG_2423Version 3IMG_2441

Beached

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Beached!  More Adventures and Misadventures of a Reforming Compulsive Blogger.

Busy day.  A few fish, a few fisherman and a few pelicans returned to a beach that has been empty of all of them for the past few days.  New neighbors moved in upstairs–Pat and Nancy, reformed English teachers from Michigan.  A bit of beach combing, then talked to Angie, local beach jewelry vendor, who is going to macrame some sample bracelet cords for me to see if they’d work better than the wire and wax-linen wrapped button bracelets I’ve been making.  Once Angie left, Candace came with sewing machine to make some cloth prototypes for bracelets.  We tinkered all afternoon and think we’ve come up with a design.  I’ll sew on buttons tonight to see how they work but for now I’m going for a beach dinner up the beach and then to either a storytelling or salsa dancing…Undecided at this point.  All those buttons so neatly sorted on the table above were mixed up in three big bins when I started out to sort them last night.  Finally finished at 4:30 in the morning.  It is called obsessive compulsive!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/yawn/