“Seats for the single engagement of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Thursday evening, go on sale today [Jan. 29, 1918] at the Academy downtown box office at Barnett-Schenk’s.”
The Roanoke Times File 1918 

 

 

 

Organized in 1871 by the music director of Fisk University this a cappella group continues to tour on a very limited basis. The group has been inducted into the Gospel Music Hall Of fame. They have also been honored by the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. 

Read all about them here.

 

 

 

                                         Nice "black joke" by Kevon Nealon

                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mptT4YDAsZg

 

 

 

 Footbol or Soccer

  Two of the semi-pro teams in Costa Rica 

Saprissa and Liga

In this country THE sport is footbol. Or as it is called in the US, soccer. The masses here are as crazy about it as the US masses are about football. Although the popularity of football is waning in view of the 'kneeling' debacle. Some say the interest was already on the decline prior to Kaepernick and his lame excuse protest. I agree that he along with any of his peers have a right to protest. BUT ON COMPANY TIME? AND AGAINST THEIR COUNTRY'S FLAG!! Alas, I digress.

 

Footbol (which I'll call soccer going forward) is the most interestingly boring game, IMHO. It's as exciting as watching a dog show or grass grow. But don't say that to a soccer fan. If you do you may start a riot such as the ones that have occurred in the past. Article here. There are those that may say 'what about the mayhem in the states after a game'. It's true that after an important game, ie; clinching a division title or championship the crowds go wild, but the crowds at soccer games get mean and take out their hostilities on each other and the stadium during the game in some cases of soccer mania. 

 

I have attended some games here and fortunately, there has not been a melee during or after the event. They have them but maybe they wanted to keep it clean since there was a gringo in the stands. Or possibly because they can no longer sell alcohol prior to, during or after the game. However, walking around empty beer cans and the occasional spent bottle of some type of liquor littering the streets leading up to the stadium is commonplace. 

 

There are two halves, not four quarters. The first is the Primer Tiempo and the second is the Secundo Tiempo. I refer to them as boring one and bored stiff two. I would be remiss if I did not mention the award-winning theatrics displayed throughout the soccer match. Allow me to give you the most repeated and repeated scenario. 

 

A player is driving down(up?) the field. An opponent charges in an attempt to steal the ball away. There is minimum contact, as in he touched me, ref, he touched me! The player who had the ball that was just taken away falls to the ground grabbing his leg/ankle and rolling in pain. He has a look plastered on his face of someone that just crawled out of a two-car collision. The ref does not blow the whistle to call a foul. Play continues. The player with the aching pain jumps up and runs down the field. The ref did not buy his acting. Within minutes this scene will repeat itself again and again. 

 

If there is a foul that is deemed intentional or avoidable then the offending player is issued a yellow card and the ball is put back into play in the vicinity of the foul. If a player gets two yellow cards and then commits the third foul he is ejected from the game. In soccer when that happens then the team continues the game minus one player. They are not allowed to replace him unlike in football. When replacement is needed for either strategy or a tired player it is handled much like replacements in basketball. There are no timeouts in soccer. So instead they have extra time tacked onto the end of the Tiempo. So instead of a 45-minute tiempo, it runs whatever time the timekeeper tacks onto the period. Normally anywhere from one to five minutes extra.

 

So the moral of this is if you find yourself in a latin country and want to immerse yourself in the national pastime then do your drinking before arriving at the stadium and for God's sake..........take along a good book.                      

To keep it interesting I pull for Saprissa (San Jose) and my wife is a Liga (Alajuela) fanatic.

I just spent twelve days in this hospital in Alajuela, Costa Rica. I had an endarterectomy. The problem was discovered 2 years ago. After tests after tests after tests, the decision was finally made to give me the procedure. The biggest symptom I had was dizziness due to the restricted flow of blood to my brain. I had reached a point where I had to resign from my job and was relegated to the use of a cain to get around. 

 

The surgery was 2 1/2 hours long and according to the surgeon was time well spent. There were two different places that had to be cleaned where the blood flow was 80% blocked. In other words, I was a walking stroke waiting to happen. Now I am at home beginning a 3-5 week recovery period. 

 

I want to talk about the stark differences between my hospital stay here verses the one(s) I had in the states. The last one there was when I had open heart surgery in 2001. I was admitted on a Tuesday and released on the following Sunday. Five days for that and twelve days for this last event. The reason for the big difference is because here they have no, or at best very little, a concept of time. An hour, a day. The difference just does not register to a Costa Rican as it does to a North American. For that reason, I had to confidently assert myself otherwise I would still be laying there while the doctors continued to waffle and waver on what and when to actually do something. 

 

There are no private rooms. You are assigned a bed in a ward with 5 other men. No TV and in my case another inconvenience, no one speaks English. I read three books and blew up my cell phone watching Youtube videos. The beds are the old crank versions.           

                          

If you have had hospital food before you know how inferior it is. However, the food in a third world country hospital wishes to be elevated to the inferior level. My saving grace was that my wife was able to smuggle in some eatable snacks and juice boxes. The nurses were kind enough to look the other way as I sneaked the consumption of them. I got the sense that they were willing to give me some leeway since I was the token Gringo.    

There are private hospitals here but I was in one in the 90's and they really aren't much better than the social ones. The interesting thing is that many from the states come here for certain procedures because the cost is so much lower. I guess that some people will tolerate certain conditions in order to save a few bucks. Then there are those of us that have no choice. We live here and have no interest in leaving. 

         

                                                        Hippocratic Oath