Blog Before a Really Cool Blog

It gets so long between blogs now. Is that what you are thinking?

I cant believe it has been a week since my mom left. We miss her. We did a lot while she was here, but mostly hung out on the beach.

I have had two trustees here for the last week and on Friday we had our second trustee meeting. This meeting was set so that we could make some hard decisions. But it is hard to make hard decisions.

I spent Thursday and Friday morning, before the trustee meeting, at the Sustainable Tourism Conference in Provo. On Thursday there was a symposium on saving our national treasures. There are few national treasures, and they are disappearing fast here. There is such a rush to develop everything that there is little time taken to evaluate what is being lost.

Thursday I went with a trustee to meet with a potential supporter of the museum. Everyone here is an interesting character. I say that all the time, right? What a great meeting. This gentleman spends six months a year in the TCI and the rest of the year at his family's 400 year old castle where he has a successful small business making wine. Very nice.

Thursday night I went to a beach party at Beaches resort for the closing event of the Sustainable Tourism Conference. It was very cool. Like a really cool party that you see on TV. But, really every time I am in Provo it is a party. There was tons of food. I think there were eight food stations serving a dish specific to each island; steamed grouper, fried grouper, shark, conch. It was excellent, but not really sustainable. Most of these events are about meeting, greeting, and relationship building. Everything is work.

This weekend we attended Tyro Talbot's funeral. Tyro was the diver who drowned two weeks ago. He was very popular in the dive and expat community. His father is a local pastor. His sister is a charismatic pastor. He had 11 siblings. There were over 600 people at the funeral.

The funeral was four hours long. The first half was filled with remembrances, poems, and song. The second half was as church service with a very evangelical hour-long sermon. This is typical for the local community, I would imagine. For the expats and divers this was: unexpected? intolerable? unimaginable? Most walked out during the sermon.

Tyro was born here. Many locals do not swim, and many hate the water. Tyro was thought to be one of the best divers and boat captains on the island. Someone said that when he was in the water "he became part of the ecosystem." I thought this was the a cool thing to say about someone. He was buried in his wetsuit.

I had meetings with trustees Saturday evening and Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon we went sailing again. The wind was coming across the island. Martin sailed us around, but because the wind was coming from the shore it kept pushing us out away from shore. We were just going to be out for a little bit, but it was hard getting the boat turned around and moving toward shore. We were very far out, not far compared to where most people sail or boat, but it was making Martin nervous and frustrated. He was not a happy camper. He said he did not like the pressure.

We finally got turned into the wind and came slowly to shore. I made Marting go back out later and we just practiced turning and turning, trying to get the feel of sailing into the wind. He did very well. This was a long weekend.

The picture at the bottom is Martin learning how to sail. The picture at the top is our typical Sunday evening service.