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A little rain on the parade...

We're moving into what's traditionally the height of the rainy season, and also the parade season. Most tourists wait until the dry season months to come to Panama, but we always get crowds for the major parades and in any case we are seeing ever more visitors in the off-season.

The first wave of parade tourists comes for the October 21 Festival of the Black Christ, or Fiesta del Nazareno for those who want to put it into Spanish without the racial connotations. People of all colors take part in the procession but planeloads of black people who trace roots through Panama come from the United States for the occasion.

A couple of weeks later much larger crowds of tourists flock to the November 3 and 4 Independence Day and Flag Day festivities, and some stay on, or come in later, for some of November's other patriotic holidays.

My favorite rainy season parade? It's the bomberos' torchlight parade on the weekend closest to the November 28 anniversary of both the 1885 founding of the firefighter corps and Panama's 1821 independence from Spain. (On November 3 and 4 the party is about independence from Colombia in 1903.)

The particular parade shown above did get a few drops from the sky, hence the umbrella. It was the Campesino Parade in El Valle, a time for kids from that part of the Interior to show mostly each other and their families who they are. Fortunately the rain was just a brief light drizzle, a little bajareque coming down from the hills.

The following day I caught another bunch of kids, this time in the city, showing off their polleras and montunos and folk traditions at Mi Pueblito. That was at the tail end of a picture-taking walk up and down Ancon Hill.

The previous night at the Hotel El Panama, I had my camera on hand for the celebration of an American cultural tradition, the blues. I get into a variation on that theme in my opinion column this time, too.

We also get into Rastafarian vegan lunch, an upcoming photo show about Panama's West Indian community, Milton Roldan's photos of furry animals you can find within city limits and many other beautiful things cultural or natural.

Ah, but there was rain on the parade, and not just a few refreshing drops.

In the Ngobe - Bugle Comarca illness cut through the remote Ñurum district like a scythe and left a bunch of kids dead, and the things that the government is saying about this particular situation and has been saying about the state of the nation's economy just don't add up. That didn't stop the political photo op, however.

The legislature is acting as obnoxiously as ever and is being treated to the most obsequious displays, US ratification of the bilateral free trade pact is still in doubt, the guts of our urban infrastructures are still being scrapped and sold to China.

We got through the semi-annual fundraising month of September, not raising a whole lot of funds but recruiting some valuable volunteers and adding to our email list. (If you want to get email updates, just let me know.) It had seemed that we missed the usual wave of attacks, when the Miami Herald published something I wrote and rather immediately thereafter I got the usual bundles of email spam, threats of baseless but debilitating legal action from well known creeps, one of whom says he's backed by a powerful business cabal (see the letters), and taunting from a guy who's already brought bogus charges against me and his new-found friend and publisher. In the latter case, it's kind of fun seeing a guy who has been taunting me about being crazy for so long go off into shrieking fits of paranoiac mania.

My advice to people who don't like my politics, or disagree with the ways I sort that which is newsworthy from that which isn't? You're welcome. You really are. I don't hold a monopoly on truth, my ideas are sometimes wrong and sometimes I make mistakes. When mistakes are pointed out I try to be honest and humble enough to run corrections, and I do leave room on this website for views opposed to my own.

However, if you choose to express yourself by way of an endorsement of or support for someone who visits his business rivals carrying a stun gun and publishes the bizarre gospel of a guy who worships at the Embassy of Heaven, it will affect your reputation in the community.

Will angry people come screaming at you if you support these guys? It will be nothing so entertaining for those who align themselves with the man who came up with this gem and with his local publisher. If you let them hide behind your logo then people will be laughing at you. The result will be that a substantial segment of public opinion will consider you, your business, your views about nearly every subject and your involvement in the community in a less than serious light.

And me? I try to follow the late Margot Fonteyn's advice and not take myself too seriously, while taking my work very seriously indeed.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor