Waiting to Be Known

Living Will, Mark 2

Posted on 31 August 2010 by Sika

My dad’s mom had surgery the same day as the memorial service for my mom’s mom, and she had a hard time (as a matter of fact is still in the hospital now, 3 weeks later). That’s why I haven’t been around much; it was pretty hairy there for a while, and when it looked like I was going to lose both my grandmothers in about a month and a half, I flew down to LA to see her.

There are a few things I’m going to talk about related to seeing my grandma in the hospital, but I’m going to start with advanced directives because, well, that was the last entry I wrote.

Grandma Barbara has a Do Not Resuscitate order (no CPR, no intubation, no nothing). This makes sense because she lives in an assisted living facility, and it’s quite likely she could have an event and not be found for hours, and she doesn’t want people to try to resuscitate her after hours of brain damage have already occurred. She also has a no antibiotics order on her DNR, which sort of makes sense, because assuming the picture Grandma had in her head of how she is going to die, antibiotics would only be used to prolong her life, not to make her better.

Well, then Grandma needed surgery. It’s common, at least at the UWMC (which is not where my grandmother is, and if it were, she would be getting much better care, I think), for doctors to suspend DNR during surgery.* But that suspension normally ends when the patient is 24 hours(ish) out of surgery. Well, my grandma wasn’t recovering all that well, so she and my aunt, who is her durable power of attorney for health, agreed to continue to suspend the DNR. Also, I’m not sure why, but it took the docs 2 full days to start treating her post-surgical pneumonia and urinary tract infections with antibiotics. I think, though, that the delay might have been because her DNR said no antibiotics, and there was a period of time when although the family thought the DNR was still suspended, the doctors might have thought it was reinstated.

So, there are two problems with this whole scenario. One is writing advanced directives that only account for the most likely way you’re going to die. Don’t assume you’re going to fall over from a massive heart attack. What if you get hit by a car? What if you get pneumonia, or sepsis from a massive infection that’s potentially deadly, but equally potentially treatable? The other problem is not having a living will in place as well.

In my opinion, the place for requests like “no antibiotics” is the living will. The DNR needs to be a black and white document so people immediately know whether to start CPR, intubation, and ventilation or not. The living will is the place for gray areas and if . . . thens. It’s there that you can say under which circumstances you do and do not want antibiotics, or any other care. Also, having a DNR does not negate the need for a living will: there are many circumstances under which you may be unable to make your own decisions, but you don’t need resuscitation. And, if you’re going into surgery, you should review all of your advanced directive and make sure they are relevant to the most likely things to go wrong during the surgery.

Also, remember that your living will and DNR are meant to take care of you. If you are even halfway with it, you can revoke either or both at any time. You can also insist they be followed. You just want to make sure they tell the medical staff to do what you think they tell the medical staff to do.

I don’t mean to blame confusing advanced directives for shoddy care, though. Any medical staff worth their salt would check that the decisions they make based on the advanced directives with the patient and/or family to make sure that’s what the desired outcome was. Advanced directives don’t allow the medical staff to abdicate responsibility.

*This is not doctorly arrogance. There are many ways a person can try really hard to die in surgery, and very few of them have anything to do with how ready their body is to fail outside of surgery.

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Posted in Philosophy | Tagged advanced directives, DNR, Do Not Rescusitate, durable power of attorney, Grandma Barbara, health care, living will | Leave a comment

You Need a Living Will! Yes, I Do Mean You!

Posted on 19 August 2010 by Sika

Let’s start with a definition of Living Will. This has nothing to do with who gets what when you die. A living will has to do with how decisions are made about your health when you can’t make them. There are three parts to preparing your living will.

The first part is figuring out what you want. If your heart stops, do you want someone to attempt CPR? To shock you, and give you drugs to get your heart going again? If you are in a coma, do you want to be on a ventilator? Do you want to receive tube feedings? Hydration? Is there any point at which you’d like the life support to be stopped? Is there no point at which the you’d like life support to stop?

The second part is filling out the paperwork and getting it notarized. This makes it all official. For Washington state, the standard paperwork, which can be modified, is here. You can register your documents so doctors can retrieve them online here.

The third part is to talk to your relatives. They need to know what you want, they need to be able to ask questions and to get comfortable with the idea. The codicil to this is, if you have any relatives for whom you may be responsible later, this is a good time to ask them what they want.

These three steps are all equally important. For obvious reasons, you need to know what you want. The second part is important because it gives medical staff a jumping off point. But more importantly, it gives your family something to fall back on. I talked to a patient once who had two family members die. Both of them needed to have life support stopped. Both of them had talked with their families about what they wanted. For both of them, having the life support pulled was the sort of thing they said they wanted. But only one of them had a living will. My patient said even though they knew it was the right and wanted thing to do, not having those desires in writing meant they felt tormented and guilty about making the decision to end life support. When they did have it in writing, it changed everything.

I know for my family, with my grandma, having everything in writing helped a lot. Without the living will, I think we would have had an incredibly difficult time following her wishes, even as it became more and more obvious that she was never coming back. The living will gave us comfort that we were doing what she wanted, however hard it was to withdraw life support. Putting it in writing respects and supports the people who will need to carry out your wishes.

Talking to your family is just as important because if your family doesn’t agree, chances are quite good that your wishes will not be honored. This is true even if you have it in writing. Hospitals have been sued for trying to follow a living will against a family’s wishes, and generally the hospitals have lost—so they usually defer to the families.

Talking to your family also gives them a chance to decide if these are the sorts of decisions for which they are comfortable taking responsibility. If they agree with your living will, but think they’ll chicken out following it, or if they disagree with your living will and refuse to honor it, it’s time for a durable power of attorney for health care, which allows someone else to make these decisions. Again, it also opens up the conversation with the people you care about, without having a subtext of, “You’re old and are going to die soon.”

Ok, so are you convinced yet? Remember, you could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and neither be fine nor die. So get hopping, and sort out your living will.

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Posted in Philosophy | Tagged durable power of attorney, Grandma Nancy, health care, living will, power of attorney | Leave a comment

Grandma’s Memorial Welcoming Speech

Posted on 18 August 2010 by Sika

Hello, and welcome on behalf of myself and my family, to this memorial and celebration of my grandmother’s life. Family, extended and immediate, official and unofficial, and community meant a lot to her. If she were here, she’d act embarrassed and probably tell us we shouldn’t make such a fuss, but secretly she’d be pleased to see you all here.

I’d like to say something about my grandma. I’d like to dispel the notion that Nancy was a superhero, with superhero powers to match. Judging by all the incredible and true things you will hear today, it would be easy to make that mistake.

Nancy had flaws. If you knew her well, I’m sure you can think of some. But the way Nancy always stepped up to do what needed to be done and to love who needed to be loved wasn’t the result of superpowers. These were choices she made and skills she cultivated. She also didn’t do any of it alone.

Nancy worked in community. Sometimes she failed. Sometimes she succeeded. Just like all of us, sometimes she thought later she should have gotten involved, or she should have done more. Just like all of us, sometimes she would overextend. Sometimes she made mistakes. Just like all of us. But she kept going.

To me, one of the lessons here, besides laughing hard and the beauty of a sharp wit, is that to be an amazing person like my grandmother does not take a superhero. It takes all of us, doing our best, not shutting our eyes, our hearts, or our minds, and working in community, together, to do what’s right. We owe that to ourselves, and to Nancy’s memory.

Oh, wait. I was wrong when I said my grandma didn’t have superpowers. She did have one, and that was being our grandmother. She will always be unsurpassable at that.

Thank you.

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Nancy Ann Tobin Putney Faller Obituary

Posted on 17 August 2010 by Sika

I posted the link to the obituary on my facebook, but eventually it will go away, so I want to post the actual obituary here.

Nancy YAKIMA – Nancy Ann Tobin Putney Faller, 83, died July 17, 2010, at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital. Nancy was born on September 22, 1926, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Carrie Farmer and Tom Tobin, a Notre Dame graduate and Irish road construction contractor. Her father died when Nancy was seven. Two years later, her mother married Ellsworth Putney, whose daughter Virginia “GeeGee” Putney became the “sister of love” Nancy had longed for.

The Putneys settled in Seattle. When Nancy’s Japanese classmates at Broadway High School were sent to internment camps, she did not protest. This was a defining moment in Nancy’s life: she made a conscious decision that she would never again stand by and do nothing in the face of injustice, and neither would her children.

In college at WSC, Nancy joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, where she made lifelong friendships with her Kappa sisters, with whom she reunited annually until recently. As a drama major, Nancy starred in Penny Wise and other plays and was known to stretch out on a piano, belting steamy torch songs on request. She never lost her love of theater or music, delighting in taking others to shows whenever she could. During the summers, she worked as the proverbial riveter.

After a determined pursuit, she married Bill “Butch” Faller on September 3, 1949. They headed out for a “year-long honeymoon” while Bill finished his Masters degree and Nancy worked as a librarian at the University of Illinois.

The couple moved to Seattle and had their first daughter, Virginia “Gini.” Their second daughter, Elizabeth “Liz” was born in Prosser. Matthew, Janet, and William “Will,” were all born while the family lived in Wapato.

Nancy In 1961, Bill became the football and baseball coach at YVJC and the Fallers moved to the house on Barge Street which remains the family base. While Nancy had always worked to keep the promise she had made in World War II, it was in Yakima that her community activism became a way of life for her.

Recognizing the noxious effect of segregation in Yakima, Nancy was active in the beginning years of Southeast Yakima Community Center. She most enjoyed working with children: she created a swimming program and headed the literacy program. Nancy brought her children to volunteer and made sure they had diverse groups of friends and diverse life experiences. She took them to Black Awareness classes and to meet her friends amongst immigrant workers, making sure that her kids cared enough about different people that they would never let anyone be taken away in the name of fear.

Using her trademark stubbornness, sense of humor, sharp wit, and willingness to tell it like it is, Nancy, Pat Haas, and their friends caused enough a ruckus that Mayor Bert Broad created the Mayor’s Committee on Human Rights, where they worked on equalizing opportunity in Yakima.

Nancy made her house a haven with open doors for all of her childrens’ friends, some of whom are still family today. She encouraged everyone to be the best person they could be.

The protection of human rights was important in Nancy’s life. She demonstrated against the Vietnam and both Iraq wars. She and Bill were active members of the Washington State Rainbow Coalition. Nancy wrote articles for progressive magazines, taking up the causes of Indian rights, the rights of rape survivors, universal health care, farm workers rights, gay rights, and the rights of those she felt needed love and compassion. Nancy worked on antinuclear issues with Jackrabbit News. She partnered with Dick Lord to produce and present local radio and television commentaries. Nancy belonged to the League of Women Voters, and with Bill belonged to the NAACP and the ACLU, where she would take on leadership roles when asked.

Nancy was not all about business. While she taught her children love and responsibility, she also had fun. Nancy taught her family to sing, to laugh and joke when faced with difficult times, and to swing dance in the kitchen. Sometimes she started food fights at the dinner table, not worrying about getting mashed potatoes on the walls.

After the children were out of the house, Nancy didn’t slow down. She kept all her political activities, and she gardened, read more, worked on her novel, joined a writing group, and went to writing workshops. She and Bill traveled to Mexico, most especially Santiago, Manzanillo, where they could enjoy swimming in the ocean and participating in Mexican village life, free of tourists. Even though Nancy never got her Spanish quite where she wanted it, she had no trouble communicating and making friends. At home, she loved to walk or bike down Barge, although she always had to stop and chat with someone.

Nancy is survived by her husband of 60 years, Bill Faller, her children Gini, Liz, Janet, and Will Faller; her daughter-in-law Diane Faller; her grandchildren, Jessica Holman, Robert Gonzalez, Will and Joseph Faller; two great-grandchildren, several nieces and nephews and their children, and many friends. She was preceded in death by her parents, Tom Tobin, Carrie Farmer Tobin Putney, and Ellsworth Putney; her son Matt Faller, and her sister Virginia Putney Neil.

Nancy will be buried in a small family service in Milltown, Washington. A memorial celebration of her life will be held at the Yakima Valley Museum on Saturday, August 14 at 3pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Yakima Valley Human Rights Scholarship Fund or Yakima Food Bank in care of Keith & Keith Funeral Home, or to the charity of your choice.

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Musings on Ritual

Posted on 30 July 2010 by Sika

I haven’t been around much lately. On top of the busyness I was expecting: finding an apartment, moving, preparing for David’s visit, my grandma was sick, and then she died. And now we’re in the aftermath.

I should clarify. My grandma wasn’t really sick. She had surgery two and a half years ago, and since then had become old. She choked, though, a couple weeks ago. Choked and my mom was there and she called 911 and my grandpa did the Heimlich, and then CPR, and then let the paramedics put a tube down my grandma’s throat.

For all intents and purposes, Grandma died that day, but we still had a week in the hospital–a week where sometimes she seemed to get better but mostly she didn’t improve and then got worse. This culminated in a visit with a neurologist and a test that looked so uncomfortable that we all cried. Except my grandma. We cried because she did not respond, her head lolled, she still did not resist the tube down her throat. I continued to watch what seemed to be nearly torture because it seemed only fair. If it was remotely possible any of her was aware of the indignities of what was happening, well, I could at least watch. That seemed the least I could do.

I don’t want to make it seem like the doctor was a torturer. He talked to her like she was there, carefully at first, a little more rotely as he became convinced she wasn’t. He explained things. “I’m sorry, Nancy,” he said, “This is going to hurt.”

In the middle of all of this, certain things happened that I knew would happen, even though I’ve never been in this position before–night long shifts at the hospital, day long shifts, watching, waiting, my entire body torn in half: should I hope, should I accept the outcome I expect from 83 years old, ventilated. These things, these rituals, were anchors to real life, a marking of our family’s place in the community, to hold our place and remind us where it is until we can occupy it again.

It starts with the visits, and the visits are accompanied by food. Sometimes we feed some visitors with the food from other visitors. You can tell who the adopted family is: they come too often and so only bring food the first time. They don’t need excuses for their presence, and their value to us is not only in helping us get through one more day.

The cards come, and the flowers, although since Grandma was in the ICU, that part was a little questionable; the absence of that part of the ritual seemed to derail some people–without sending flowers it was unclear what the next ritual should be.

The calls started with us. Mom and Grandpa and I called college friends, old friends, neighbors, cousins of cousins. I cried. They thanked me for calling, told me they were honored to be on Grandpa’s list of mandatory calls. It was a welcome distraction. Ritual binding us, giving us direction again.

The calls continued. One of my grandmother’s oldest friends called every morning until the day after she died, telling stories. There was a lot of telling stories. Some of the stories we told back to my grandmother, when we talked to her. Another thing that became ritual, especially as it became more and more clear she’d never answer us back.

We created our own rituals for her death: blessing her, telling her it was okay for her to leave us, tears streaming down our faces, telling her we’d be okay, we’d take care of each other. It was okay. She could leave.

We did the burial, rituals guiding us so we don’t have to think too much about what needs to be done. We sprinkled those with rituals from our family, from other good-byes.

Now we’re waiting for the memorial, more ritualized leave-taking, more stories, more everything.

And then the rituals that tell us how to thank people for their support. Thank you notes and dishes returned with cookies.

When the ritual ends, we are left, untethered in our grieving. But we hope the ritual will have brought us in to a place where we can navigate ourselves home.

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Posted in Philosophy | Tagged death, Grandma Nancy, ritual | 1 Comment

Blog Redesign

Posted on 29 July 2010 by Sika

is done and done and done. The tabs lead to Shannon, pearl, and my recipe blog (designed already and coming soon), and the archive of my Peace Corps blog. Have fun looking around!

(P.S. Here’s an old photo just for kicks.)

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Hospital thoughts

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

The food has started coming. Gifts of food from friends. Who have all done this before. Too often, too recently.

I’m not hungry

I hate stoves like this, all flat taking forever to warm up and even longer to cool down. It’s too hot for this shit

I don’t want to be gone from the hospital for too long. What if something happens?

I don’t want to go to the hospital. What if nothing happens? What if the wrong things happen?

Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe if I said the right thing, did the right thing, maybe then she’d get better

Maybe I’m failing

If we got the marimba band from next door to come over and play in the ICU, would that help?

I walk to the hospital and back. It feels nice to be in the air. People all along the road have planted these nice gardens and I want to thank them because tigerlilies make the world a better place.

When I leave the hospital for the day, I pick a lavender sprig from one of the bushes on the hospital grounds. I think briefly about how ragged the bushes would get if everyone did that. I do it anyway. I sniff the lavender all the way home.

I may hate the smell of lavender after this.

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Grandma in the Hospital

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

It’s so weird, listening to a person you love being reduced to sentences and words. She likes . . . She did . . . . Justifying her life to a stranger. To one who is not judging and yet it feels as if we remember every single thing about her, maybe we can conjure her back into her body. If we remember the perfect detail or the right part of history, maybe it will nullify the results we can see coming from a mile away.

Wait, we say, you misunderstand. We know we told you the story, but we forgot a detail. Please let that change your mind. It’s important, we swear.

It’s all important. It’s important that her favorite color is green. It’s important that she was writing a book. It’s important how many people, 40 years after her kids moved out, still view her as their second mom, because of the power of her love. It’s important that she believed in standing up to power. It’s important that her greatest fear for me was that I might not learn to love enough, that I might not learn to love people I don’t know. It’s important that her favorite thing about baseball was the cute players’ butts.

It’s important that she isn’t perfect. It’s important that she taught us a tone of voice that can be nasty and that we all, including her, including me, have fought to not use it. It’s important that she was often overwhelmed, and it’s important that, until her surgery and illness a couple years ago, she worried too much. It’s important that she can give a mean guilt trip (and it’s also important that she usually spares her grandchildren from that). It’s important that she is amazingly stubborn and that has been one of her best gifts and one of her problems. It’s important that sometimes she acts like a child and just to get a cookie lights up her eyes.

And yet, this is all words. Words and not soul, and not spirit, and not heart. I want them all to remain true. I want every little bit of her to be true and present in her own body. I do not want this 2D representation of a 5D person.

We try to impress on the doctors: this history is true, everything we’ve told you is true, but this is the truth that tells a lie. This is the truth that makes you believe wrong things about a person who is more amazing than you can fathom.

And so we wait. And we hope. We try to hope just the right amount, whatever that is. We see the bad news coming. We try to stave it off and recognize that we may not be able to, all at the same time. We hope. We tell her to open her eyes, to squeeze our hands. We plead for her to open her eyes, to squeeze our hands. We beg. We tell her we love her. That she’s the toughest woman we know. That we know she tricked the doctors with her heart, and now it’s time to trick the doctors with her brain.

We wait for tomorrow, and hope it brings a better day.

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1 Julio: My favorite day in Parismina

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

My last full day in Parismina, I was starting to worry about not seeing any turtles. We had protected a nest, and examined a recently hatched nest, but there were oddly few turtles to be seen. So, Kara, Dugan, the Bellinghamanians, and I took a couple boats out to the ocean to see green turtles mating. It felt a bit lascivious for a field trip.

The best part about the boat trip itself was that we started on Rio Pacuare, and had to head out through the breaking waves where the river met the ocean. The first wave we took sideways, and apparently we weren’t frightened enough by it, because the second wave we took head on. The driver had told Kara and me to hold onto steel rails on the gunwales, and so we each had a hand on one of those. Looking at the waves, Kara thought maybe we should link arms. So, when we crested over the wave, Kara and I each had one hand on the boat, and were linked to each other, and otherwise were not touching the boat at all. We were several feet off the seat of the boat until it came down thump at the bottom of the wave and our butts caught up with the seat all at once.

We wanted to do it all again, but someone said something about some sea turtles or something . . .

We did end up seeing a bunch of mating pairs, usually just the smaller male with a shadow of the female* below them. A few times the female said, screw your voyeuristic tendencies, and disappeared, but once the male noticed the audience and totally abandoned the female to her fate, which seemed a little rude under the circumstances. A couple of the female turtles flipped us off before they swam under the water, which seemed extra entertaining to me.

That night, I thought maybe I should just bail on the walk. After all, even though I had the early shift, I was still only going to have a couple hours of sleep before starting my trip back to Heredia. But I went, at least partially because Kara had seen a nest about to head out to the sea the night before, and I wanted to be in her group.

Dinoflagellates lit our steps, arcing out flashes of light as we stepped on and near them. I tried to make patterns, but they were to clever at avoiding that kind of silly behaviour.

When we got to the clutch that night, the tracks of the baby turtles ran right underneath the butts of the high school group that had taken over part of our sector. Joshua pulled out six sleepy baby leatherbacks. He said these were the weak ones who were meant to act as decoys for the strong ones when the crabs and fish start to eat the mess of swimming babies.

One woke up right away and was sent on his way. We woke the others my stroking them, avoiding the open belly button through which we could accidentally transmit infection to them. When three woke up and started heading to the light, we dug a pit and put the two sleepy ones in the bottom, letting the awake ones wake them up by stepping on them and otherwise starting shit. They skittered and scampered over each other, all turtle wobbly and fit-in-your-hand adorable

When they were all awake, we gave the highschoolers 2 and took three, getting them away from the fish we assumed had gathered for the all-you-can-eat baby leatherback buffet earlier.

Mine kept trying to head for the light, but his fins moved pretty ineffectively against the palm of my hand, and he stayed there, even as his little flippers kept going and going—scritchy scratchy against my palms.

Finally we found a good spot and started the turtles on their way. One got all turned around and was going the wrong way. I’m pretty sure that one was mine. To be fair, Kara’s white cap may have been a distraction, though.

Hirvin made sure they all got to the water and we stood stock still, afraid of stepping on a rogue baby.

We walked back to our starting point, high on the babies, verbing like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Kara and I occasionally grabbing each other to say, how cool was that!

And then we found the sector one group. A leatherback (baula in Spanish), 1.75m long just measuring her shell, was laying eggs.

Leatherbacks are really interesting. They’re the biggest sea turtles, and because the adults subsist on jellyfish, their meat is toxic to eat. Because of that, they don’t have a lot of predators when they’re grown. Also, because they don’t have a proper shell, but rather a flexible one, they can dive down further than all the other turtles and a bunch of other sea life.

I don’t know how to describe the leatherback. She was ancient, prehistoric, primordial. She was a glance at the distant past—a past so distant it barely echoes in the salt of our veins. She was a meditation on focus. She was . . . .

Her shell was smooth, but durable, like fingernails. Her flippers didn’t feel fleshy, but like the tools they are. Her stripes made it seem as though she should race back to the ocean. Her eyes secreted mucosy tears to protect themselves from the air and the sand, and it was hard not to anthropomorphize a meaning to it all.

Joshua ran to get the others, as turtle sightings were rare that week. When he came back, he reminded us that, in order to be respectful, we should probably back up.

The baula finished covering up eggs that were no longer there—removed by the other volunteers and moved to a different spot, as a turtle nest is anything but subtle.

She eventually finished to her satisfaction, starting to turn. The baula lumbered down what was left of the embankment, pausing every three steps or so. She was clumsy and ungainly. I wished I could see her swim. Her tracks looked like they belonged to a tractor.

She padded into the surf; the moon had finally come out to help us see. She was silhouetted by the ocean, the moon, and occasional flashes of lightning in the distance. She bobbed on a wave, and then she disappeared into the ocean.

Kara and I made up a happy turtle dance. It’s adorable. Even Dugan got in on some turtle dance action, when he was done pretending he was too cool.

*I like that in Spanish there are specific words for male and female animals: macho and embra. I especially like the way embra sounds.

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Posted in Costa Rica, Travel | Tagged Costa Rica, greens, La Tortuga Feliz, leatherbacks, mating, Parismina, turtle babies, turtles | Leave a comment

What Else I Learned about Turtles

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

Parismina is wicked humid; bright and shiny humid, and over 90º after midday. As a plus, all that sun helps my Chaco tan lines make a reappearance, which makes me happy.

It cools down a bit at night, but it doesn’t really get tolerable until after midnight, which is the one blessing of the midnight to 4am shift. The other thing nice about that shift is that Joshua gets chatty.

He told us a story. To understand this story, you have to understand that turtles follow light, sound, and vibration, in that order. So one time in Parismina, on a night the bar was particularly hopping, Some baby turtles decided they’d rather go dancing than head out to sea.

Everybody had to stop what they were doing and take the babies out to the beach, where they had to sit with them until the babies regained their night vision and lost their confusion. This takes about an hour.

The night Joshua told us this story, we found a nest that had hatched earlier. When a clutch hatches out, often all that’s left are eggs with dead turtles and eggs that never had anything inside. These empty eggs, when backlit by with red torchlight, glow like some odd and polished rose quartz.

One of the jobs of the volunteers is to see, when a clutch hatches, if there are any turtles needing help. There maybe some still in the clutch hole, but also, crabs like to trap the baby turtles and then snack on them later.

Joshua went and picked up some crabs to check they weren’t munching on our babies. They weren’t. It seemed all the turtles that survived the whole process of becoming turtles made it to the ocean. Where the tarpons probably got many of them. That’s why Joshua said eating tarpons was a good idea, though.

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Footprints

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

Every night we go out to the beach, trying to make our presence as discreet as possible. We carry no cameras, no phones, no ipods; nothing electronic except red-lighted torches we don’t use and maybe a watch.

And yet, we are betrayed by our footsteps: they fill with foam from breaking waves and glow when the rest of the water has receded—lighting up the telltale signs of where we’ve been.

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What I’ve Learned About Turtles So Far

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

A sea turtle lays 90-100 eggs in each clutch and comes up on the beach to lay a clutch 6-10 times per season. Out of all these eggs laid in a season, one of the baby turtles will make it to breeding age (about 30 years old).

Also, genetic diversity is reduced because the increased temperatures in the beaches lead to more females than males being born, rather than the 50/50 split there used to be. This means younger turtles mostly have father and older turtles to mate with. Already they scientists watching the turtles have noticed some narrow gene pool birth defects, like one fin being smaller than the other, and other deformities normally only found in narrow royal bloodlines.

If we find a clutch of eggs that was laid that day, we move them so the poachers can’t find them. But if a clutch is a few days old and the dogs have found it but haven’t gotten everything, we put sticks over it to protect the clutch from more dogs. It’s ok to mark them out this way because poachers aren’t interested in eggs with baby turtles inside.

Digging a hole for a clutch is a bit of an art form. The holes have to be deep and slanted, and then widen at the bottom. The way the turtles lay their eggs, the complete eggs are at the bottom, and the unfertilized eggs, which will never become turtles, are on top. This means that when a dog gets to a clutch, they might fill up without getting all the potential turtle babies.

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Posted in Costa Rica, Travel | Tagged Costa Rica, global warming, La Tortuga Feliz, Parismina, turtles, volunteer | Leave a comment

29 June: Parismina Beach Clean-up

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

After spending the morning learning how to did turtle egg holes, and relaxing in the hammocks for a while, we did a bit of a beach clean-up. Dugan and I spent a good 15 minutes trying to get this thing that looked like a fender made of really thin metal and then crinkled up, lots of bottles and plastic bags, including one filled with something liquidy and/or squishy that we decided should not be dug up. Victoria found what looked to be a smooth white rock and called us over. It was the head of a green turtle.

The turtle hadn’t been dead long, so as Dugan said, it smelled bad but not that bad. The eyes hadn’t yet sunken in, and it didn’t look like anything had nibbled on it much. There appeared to be a clean cut at the base of the skull, but the neck skin looked torn, and there are sharks around, so we weren’t sure what happened to it.

We took the surprisingly heavy head back to the kiosk, and Vicki asked us to bury the head and to tell Joshua where it was so he could dig up the skull later. The first hole we dug was too close to two protected nests we hadn’t noticed. Kara was worried about dogs coming around, attracted to the rotting things smell of the head, and then transferring their attention to the even nummier snack bar that is a turtle nest. So, we dug another hole and buried the head there.

I thought about running back to the house to grab my camera and take a picture. But that seemed somehow wrong. I guess in the right hands a picture like that would be an indictment of poaching or sharks or dying turtles, but it felt it would just become an oddity, a hey look at this!, and it seemed the turtle deserved more.

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Posted in Costa Rica, Travel | Tagged Costa Rica, greens, Parismina. La Tortuga Feliz, poachers, turtles | Leave a comment

Costa Rican Spanish

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

I noticed that Joshua was speaking to other volunteers with tú, the familiar you form in Spanish. I thought the other volunteers were starting to tutear Joshua because they didn’t realize that Costa Ricans speak in usted, the formal you form. Ticos even get in trouble in other countries sometimes because the usted form is seen as standoffish and snobby.
But then Joshua used tú with me. So I asked why, and he reminded me that Costa Ricans also use an archaic form called vos. The vos form is not related to the Spain Spanish form of vosotros, but is rather a familiar yet respectful singular form.

What’s interesting to me is that my friends in Heredia who are the same age as Joshua say they don’t use vos anymore, except sometimes with their parents. But on the Caribbean side they use it a lot.

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Posted in Costa Rica, Travel | Tagged Costa Rica, language geekery, Spanish, tu, usted, vos | Leave a comment

Costa Rican Politics

Posted on 15 July 2010 by Sika

One thing I really like about Costa Rica is that they actually hold their elected officials accountable. There have been two ex-presidents who were investigated, caught, and convicted of corruption, and they’ve both actually served time. Can you imagine that happening in the US?

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Posted in Costa Rica, Travel | Tagged Costa Rica, Politics | Leave a comment

Waiting to Be Known

Living Will, Mark 2

You Need a Living Will! Yes, I Do Mean You!

Grandma’s Memorial Welcoming Speech

Nancy Ann Tobin Putney Faller Obituary

Musings on Ritual

Blog Redesign

Hospital thoughts

Grandma in the Hospital

1 Julio: My favorite day in Parismina

What Else I Learned about Turtles

Footprints

What I’ve Learned About Turtles So Far

29 June: Parismina Beach Clean-up

Costa Rican Spanish

Costa Rican Politics

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