Getting Ready to Go

Good Morning, Vietnam--I'm aging myself!--from Glenwood Springs (CO)and bienvenidos to the sites who've already hit my CenterDoug blog so far. The blog's still only tentatively formatted, but I'm an intuitive wizard, so it'll soon become more flashy, more representative of my sparkling, Senior-Citizen-as-Youth personhood, a much more graphic squeeze from me to you. I'll be writing and sharing a for-publication daily journal from Teotecacinte, Nicaragua, sometimes morning and bedtime editions.

I am known in these parts as one of the stalwart founders of the continuing Friendship City Exchange between Glenwood Springs, at the entrance to the fabled Roaring Fork Valley, and Teotecacinte, Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, site of some of the most abusive guerrilla warfare in the 80's Contra War, chief beneficiary of Oliver North's mortars and AK-47's and random psychological terrors on the gentle--but fiercely defiant and truly Sandinista--populace of Nicaragua's Jalapa Valley. For almost 20 years, FCE Glenwood/Teote Sister Cities have shared mutual visits of many townspeople, deep massaging thru volunteer service-learning projects, exchanges, educational collaboration, and a heaven of joyful, angel-protected mutuality.

I go to Teote this trip, of 14 so far since 1993, to develop some properties I have acquired--I'm building a retreat and workshop center; to buy some land for a tilapia fish farm; to plant more coffee and bananas on some shady land on my townplot; and to once again connect with my beloved and bonded extended family of campesinos, the Betancos, whose joy knows no bounds that I'm once more returning. I'll be writing these entries before bed, from the heart, from my writing desk there, at Marta and Cesar's Casa de Palomas in Teote Abajo, deep in the northern heart of Nicaragua, right next to the Honduran border. I hope to increase my web presence and do some good at the same time. Ciao from Glenwood Springs (CO); Center (CO); Aurora (CO); Denver (CO), and all the other Colorado spots where I hang my hat, seemingly all at the same time, strange as that may be.

Gracias, CenterDoug