This Friday and Saturday, don't forget to attend . . .

Click on the pic for more info

Honduras: Planting tobacco near the curing barns

I made this panorama from a series of shots from next to a curing barn. It shows a mostly unplanted field that has been freshly plowed. The workers are planting young tobacco plants in the background. You can click here to see the large, detailed version, which is 3 Megs. Once the pic has downloaded, you can click on it to zoom and observe much more detail.

Honduras: Curing the Tobacco

If you're just joining us for the Honduras trip redux, read this first, then this, and then this. After the tobacco is picked from the fields, it is taken to the curing barns to cure. These barns are several stories tall, and they are completely empty inside except for the hanging posts, the heating and the humidifying equipment. Continue reading . . . If you're just joining us for the Honduras trip redux, read this first, then this, and then this. After the tobacco is picked from the fields, it is taken to the curing barns to cure. These barns are several stories tall, and they are completely empty inside except for the hanging posts, the heating and the humidifying equipment. As the curing progresses, if there is too much or not enough humidity, it can be adjusted. Same with the temperature. The tobacco is tied onto eucalpytus poles that have been cut and stripped by hand. It is carried by climbers and hung from the infrastructure all the way from the ceiling to the floor. After it is all hung, the curing begins. It is monitored daily. Here's a leaf after some curing has commenced: Here is a mostly full room where curing has been going on for a long time: Here are some more a bit closer: After the tobacco is is cured, it is transported to the fermentation facility, where it ferments for a significant period of time. I'll be posting on that process next.

Honduras: The Tobacco Plantation

If you're just joining in on the redux of my trip to Honduras, read this first, and then read this. About 40 minutes from Danli, Honduras, was the tobacco plantation we were scheduled to visit. When we arrived, the weather was clear and fairly cool, but after just a moment outside the bus, I could feel the searing heat of the tropical sun. Continue reading . . . If you're just joining in on the redux of my trip to Honduras, read this first, and then read this. About 40 minutes from Danli, Honduras, was the tobacco plantation we were scheduled to visit. When we arrived, the weather was clear and fairly cool, but after just a moment outside the bus, I could feel the searing heat of the tropical sun. We started our tour in the greenhouse area, where seedlings were sprouting. The small plants are grown in shade when they first start out. There's a cheesecloth-like fabric on the top of the greenhouse, which keeps the hot sun off the young plants. All the tobacco plants are hand planted, three in a small circle on the flat. After they have grown for a while, the best quality plants are kept, and the smaller ones are discarded. They are moved around in the flat, one plant to a pot. After they reach a certain height, they are placed in the field, where they grow several feet high. The leaves are harvested frequently as the leaves are taken off the top and the plant is permitted to grow more. The tobacco in this field is all "sun grown" which, curiously enough, means it's grown in the sun. The direct sunlight makes the leaves thicker and coarser. These leaves are generally used for cigar filler and binder, which is the stuff that goes inside the cigar. Next to this field was an enormous handmade structure of cheesecloth, where shade grown tobacco is grown. Though none had been planted yet, it was freshly plowed. I climbed up on top of the bus to take a series of pictures, of which I made a composite photo of the entire sun grown field and the shade grown field together. You can view it here (beware, the file is over 3 Megs). If you click on the picture, it will expand and zoom in, so you can see the detail. In my next Honduras post, I'll show you the curing barns, where the harvested tobacco is taken to dry out in a meticulously controlled manner, which cures it and readies it for fermentation.

Calder Dairy Tour

Yesterday, a group of parents and kids from Ypsi went on a tour of the Calder Dairy Farm. Calder has a dairy delivery service that serves the Ypsi-Ann Arbor area as well as several more regions in Southeast Michigan. Calder is a working dairy farm that does not use hormones, and they segregate any cow that needs any medical treatment so that it does not contaminate the milk. The children got to feed the calves that are still on bottles and learn all sorts of things about how young cows are raised into productive dairy cows. They also fed goats and ponies, geese and ducks, and had the unique opportunity of being freaked out by a very inquisitive emu. Perhaps best of all, they got to revel in the smells associated with keeping pigs, always a favorite with kids. There were hens, roosters, peacocks, pigs and plenty of mud to stomp through. At the end of the tour, we all had ice cream made from Calder Dairy milk. This tour was a great one for little children, and the adults all had a fine time as well. My only recommendation is that if you go, take your nose plugs. UPDATE: You can see more pics on Wendy's photo site. Wendy's blog is here.

Upcoming solar power presentations

My neighbor, Dave Strenski, will be giving some presentations on solar power over the next few weeks. If you can come to one of them, please do. Dave works for famous supercomputer maker Cray. He's a great guy, a wonderful neighbor, and his presentations are interesting and informative. He's also a published author, and you can read his latest by clicking here. Following is the info for the events: Ann Arbor's Optical Society of America (OSA) Wed. November 29th, 6:30 for beer with the talk starting at 7:00 Location: Ypsilanti Corner Brewery Off Forest Avenue at 720 Norris Street Ypsilanti, MI 49198 Ann Arbor Computer Society (AACS) Wed. Dec 6th, 6:00 pm to generally 8:30 pm. Location: Spark Central (The Ann Arbor IT Zone Launch Pad) 330 E. Liberty Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Info at: http://www.computersociety.org You can download his flyer in pdf here. Help spread the word, and share it with your friends. As an aside, longtime readers might recall that last year, Dave's original plans for an LED flashlight garnered so much attention that the number of downloads overloaded my bandwidth and crashed my site, prompting my move to a new host and my current domain.

Wednesday Mail Bag

Every once in a while I get a piece of mail that goes that extra mile in trying to charm and persuade me. Yesterday, I received one of these pieces of mail. Some of you may recall that I recently gave Tom Watkins, former State Superintendent, some crap for opposing Proposal 5 (as if it mattered - it lost by a landslide). I wrote a letter to the Ann Arbor News briefly responding to what I thought was a lousy and cynical editorial. Yesterday, I received this in the mail, handwritten in all capitals on a sheet of lined, yellow legal paper. Continue reading . . . Every once in a while I get a piece of mail that goes that extra mile in trying to charm and persuade me. Yesterday, I received one of these pieces of mail. Some of you may recall that I recently gave Tom Watkins, former State Superintendent, some crap for opposing Proposal 5 (as if it mattered - it lost by a landslide). I wrote a letter to the Ann Arbor News briefly responding to what I thought was a lousy and cynical editorial. Yesterday, I received this in the mail, handwritten in all capitals on a sheet of lined, yellow legal paper. Dear Cam: I had the dubious honor of reading your maniacal drivel in the A2 News on 11/1, which prompts a couple of questions. In view of the fact that both candidates for governor recommend a "no" vote on Proposal 5, would you say your letter makes you look A) selfish? B) stupid? C) a member of the MEA? of D) all of the above? What really brings shame to the A2 News in particular and society in general is that narrow minded, self-serving, greedy assholes like you are allowed to voice their opinions. So, next time you have the urge to try to sound intelligent by expressing yourself, what say you do it with your mouth shut. To conclude, Cam, we would be much better served, and you would be considerably more productive, if, when you have another urge to put pen on paper, you take said pen and jam it in your ass. Have a nice day. Tom Walterhouse Thinking back to my SAT and LSAT days, I can eliminate C) since BOE members can't become members of the MEA (Michigan Education Association). We get to be members of the MASB (Michigan Association of School Boards). There's an inherent conflict between the two organizations (kind of a management vs. labor thing), although the MASB and MEA did work together on supporting Proposal 5. If C) goes, it obviously takes D) with it, at least I hope it's as obvious to you as it is to me. That leaves me with a final choice between selfishness and stupidity. Now that I've successfully narrowed this down to a 50/50 shot at getting the right answer, if I use Vizzini's reasoning from The Princess Bride, then I'm less likely to be stupid (i.e. choosing the cup closest to me), which leaves me with A) selfish. Now, that wasn't so bad, now, was it? I'm guessing Tom felt an awful lot better after writing his letter. And I'm glad he did. But, as I've said many times before, sometimes after the letter is written, and after one feels better about getting all that anger and vitriol out (even if it is an irrational over-reaction), one might think about throwing the letter away instead of sending it, even if it's for no other reason than to prevent one from looking like a jackass. But hey, how was he to know it would end up on the Internet? No doubt his family is very, very proud.

Someone say "beer"?

Mark Maynard is doing everything he can to ruin the stereotypes and generalizations associated with bloggers. First that dang Shadow Art Fair, then that darn YpsiVotes thing, and now this: Beer with Bloggers this Thursday at Frenchie's including $2 pints. Sheesh, if he continues to innovate and motivate like this, the picture people have in their minds of bloggers like me sitting in front of my computer in my underwear, not having bathed or shaved for days, meticulously crafting witty and self-important posts while scheming against my political foes, will be shattered once and for all. We might start looking normal, and if that happens, then all the readers will wander away. And I'm not so sure it's a good idea to share the true power of the Internet with just anybody. What's worse, he's really setting the bar high for the rest of us. But, alas, with $2 pints, I couldn't possibly pass this up. I will be there, assuming I can get a sitter for my girls.

Despite some appearances to the contrary, Honduras is a poor country

When I disembarked in Honduras' capital city, Tegucigalpa, the city certainly bore the appearance of prosperity. You could see subdivisions and sprawl, much like here, and ubiquitous commerce. Just within walking distance of the airport was a Church's Chicken, Dunkin' Donuts, Domino's Pizza, Burger King and more. SUVs are in style, mostly made by Mitsubishi and Toyota, as are smaller pickup trucks and compact cars, ranging from Ford Rangers and ancient Datsuns to Toyota Corollas. (There's even a Harley Davidson dealership in Tegucigalpa, and one of the group who rides a Harley got himself a Harley t-shirt referencing Honduras.) By all appearances, there seems to be a large, strong middle class in the city, with consumerism and commercialism rampant throughout. But this illusion of the big city ends at its borders. Since we were traveling to a rural part of the country, we left the city almost immediately and were confronted with poverty as ubiquitous throughout the countryside as the fascination with American goods was in the city (everywhere we went in the city there was American coffee, American this, American that). Continue reading . . . When I disembarked in Honduras' capital city, Tegucigalpa, the city certainly bore the appearance of prosperity. You could see subdivisions and sprawl, much like here, and ubiquitous commerce. Just within walking distance of the airport was a Church's Chicken, Dunkin' Donuts, Domino's Pizza, Burger King and more. SUVs are in style, mostly made by Mitsubishi and Toyota, as are smaller pickup trucks and compact cars, ranging from Ford Rangers and ancient Datsuns to Toyota Corollas. (There's even a Harley Davidson dealership in Tegucigalpa, and one of the group who rides a Harley got himself a Harley t-shirt referencing Honduras.) By all appearances, there seems to be a large, strong middle class in the city, with consumerism and commercialism rampant throughout. But this illusion of the big city ends at its borders. Since we were traveling to a rural part of the country, we left the city almost immediately and were confronted with poverty as ubiquitous throughout the countryside as the fascination with American goods was in the city (everywhere we went in the city there was American coffee, American this, American that). Wikipedia states that the unemployment rate is almost 30%, and my experience was that most of the people in rural Honduras live in shanties, shacks or worse. Many are illiterate. The average wage is equivalent to about $2,000 bucks here. People live in shanties all throughout the countryside. Most don't even have actual windows, but just holes in the walls to let light and air in. The majority are made of concrete block with roofs made of corrugated tin, but other materials were around, too, like wood and stone. I saw one shack made of wood planks with stones wedged between them to make walls. Many of these shanty towns don't have road access. They can only be accessed by foot. Out in the sticks, there didn't seem to be indoor plumbing in many of the dwellings. In Danli, our destination city, though there appeared to be a great deal of cash commerce and a lot of what we would call "small business" activity, once outside the town, indoor plumbing was the exception, not the rule. In the town of Danli, where we were based, there were plenty of family businesses. Danli is quite prosperous because of all the tobacco growing and cigar making that goes on there. CAO, General Cigar, and Placencia all have major facilities there, and Rocky Patel makes most of his cigars there. In the town center was a bazaar that had t-shirts, Barbie knock-offs, cheap jewelry and Rolex knock-offs, pirated CDs and DVDs, and pretty much everything was made in China and had a label in English, which was particularly interesting since the target market was fellow Hondurans and not Americans. Almost everyone spends a lot of time outside in the sun, and many in town seemed quite happy and friendly. Many asked to have their picture taken, such as the family in this picture, who I shot a second, closer picture of. They waved and hollered at me and laughed until I took their pic. Many people get around on foot, some by bike, and a few by donkey, burro or horse. This guy was pushing his cart down the streets of Danli after a long day of selling fruit. Everywhere we went, we were a major curiosity. Honduras is not a huge tourist destination, and in the mountainous countryside, Americans are few and far between. Outside our group, we didn't encounter anyone from the states the entire time we were there. Safety and security are big issues. Worried about kidnappings, we were not permitted to leave our compound except in a group and always with an escort. Our guesthouse was guarded by a professional security person carrying a gun. Everywhere we traveled, particularly to the cigar-making facilities, the grounds were surrounded by large walls with barbed wire at the top. A gate was controlled from within, and there was always an armed guard. When Nestor Placencia and his son, Nestor, Jr. (fourth and fifth generation cigar makers) came to visit us one evening, they traveled with a lead car in front and a chase car behind, both with professional security personnel with large guns. As intimidating as it all seemed, even the people with guns were friendly. This soldier walking down the street (though he looks tough in the picture), practically begged me to take his picture, smiled and laughed. Since he had the gun, I enthusiastically complied and took his pic: At the grocery store, the entrance was guarded by a man with a large gun, and once inside, there were two separate catwalks above the merchandise on each end of the store. On the catwalks were security guards with large automatic rifles. I'm guessing shoplifting doesn't happen very often in that particular store. Public transportation consists mainly of old school buses from the U.S. Many of them still had their old school district's names on the side. It was pretty bizarre seeing Hondurans crowd onto the Forest Hills School District bus. Here are a few that I saw parked in a lot: People bathed, washed their clothes, and got drinking water from the river. Though I was not quick enough on the draw, on the other side of the bridge from the following shot, there was livestock wading through the water. Though hard to see, these women are washing their family's clothes in the river: Water was also available at the side of the road, mainly where the road cut into rock. Whenever there would be a little spring or percolation of water from a rock face next to the road, a man would set up a tent and a chair, catch the water running out of the rock and sell it. I did not have an opportunity to sample the local water, however, so I cannot comment. More to come later in the week on the subject of cigars, including a tour of a tobacco farm (with curing barns), tobacco sorting and fermenting facilities, a cigar box factory, and the actual rolling facility.

Honduras changes everything

So, I get up at 4:30 A.M. on Wednesday morning, and my father and I fly to Honduras on a much-anticipated visit to the guesthouse of cigar maker, Rocky Patel. We, along with 10 other guys had a coveted invitation to stay at his place and receive a tour of a local cigar factory, tobacco processing facility and plantation. The morning I leave, the Dems have the House, and I'm celebrating. While I'm in Honduras, there's no TV, no newspapers (in English), no Internet, and I left my cell phone and Blackberry at home. Late Saturday night, while dining in Miami on my way back, I notice the monitor over the bar. On it, CNN reveals that the Dems took both the House and the Senate, that Rusmfeld had resigned, and that Rutgers won. I thought I was on Candid Camera. I don't know about you all, but next time we need to pull out a huge win, I'm going to Honduras. I took over 200 pics and will be blogging about the trip for what may turn out to be the next several weeks. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I can't wait to share it with you all. :)

The never-ending march backwards

I'm talking about my receding hairline, which is featured prominently on page 1-B of yesterday's Ypsilanti Courier. Dan DuChene did a nice piece on the local blogger community in the paper, in which many of the finest blogs in Ypsi (all of which are far finer than mine) were featured. Brett, Brian, Eric, Laura, Mark, Murph, Sam and Steve (now in Hamtramck) are all there. I can't link to it, because it's not up on their site. You may have to buy the paper to read it. It is worth a read, even if everything I seem to have to say is somewhat south of spellbinding. But if you're reading this, then you must already know that. And you keep coming back notwithstanding, much to my surprise and delight.

Olbermann spanks Bush again

Long, but worth 10 minutes of your time: