Whale farming in America. How magnificent.

News like this really pisses me off. If we lose our newspapers, we lose democracy. Corruption on the local level skyrockets because there is no public eye on the actions of politicians, and that trend only increases the further up the political ladder you go.

As Mark Starr says in a recent New Republic article "More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems."

Here's the thing, though. You're reading this on a computer screen. I still subscribe to the NYTimes, but I read most of the articles on my BlackBerry now. It is a valid question to ask if the Internet can effectively supplant the role of the local newspaper.

Potent, investigative reporting takes resources, extreme focus and a strong defense. That's tough to pull off for a stand-alone blogger, but not necessarily impossible. Crowd-sourcing, instant notifications of news, automated aggregators, all of that is useful but we still need humans to put all the pieces together and make some sense of the chaos.

The way news is delivered has already changed. I just hope we can maintain the vital purpose of strong journalism so that we can always have an eye on the guys and gals that think they are running things.

They're not. We are. And our newspapers are our first line of defense against the insidious creep of corruption.

See I know all this cause I'm watching The Wire. We are 1/2 way through season 2. It keeps us sane between episodes of LOST.

The Beastie Boys are offering a digitally remastered reissue of Check Your Head. Looks sweet!

This music... project? art piece? ensemble? hack? by Kutiman is totally and completely amazing. It's nothing I would have ever considered doing with a bunch of YouTube videos, but really it makes perfect sense.

His site is called Thru-You. Check it out and get down.

(I found this via Waxy which is also a great site, and worth checking out now and then.)

I read a lot while I was on this trip but the great thing about it was I didn't even have to bring the books with me. Mat had a great selection and I found 2 books that fit my mood perfectly.

During our time in Boquete while the wind and rain lashed us and we got to see the high hillsides were coffee grows, I was reading a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It was absolutely wonderful. The story was rich and funny and layered and suspenseful, and more than anything it celebrated the incredible power of books and stories. It was exactly what I wanted and I'm so happy to have found this book.

After that, as I lounged on a hammock in between palm trees, I polished off Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. This was another great read, in the vein of Pillars of the Earth.

That is true relaxation for me. A beer close at hand. A gentle breeze. A hot sun beating down just outside the shadow of the palm tree. A hammock. And in my hand a big, fat, huge book where most of the pages are still all piled up in my right hand. But then again, on the other hand, there's nothing in the world like the final pages of a perfect story. I'll take both and either.

As soon as I get one I like, it's a race to the finish for me. I need to know what happens next and I cannot rest, cannot sleep, don't even like eat, if there are still pages to go. Out on that island, lazy in the tree with Lu nearby and friends all around doing the same, it is the most powerfully relaxing and rejuvenating experience I can imagine.

I look around and see beauty, I read the words and fall into the tale, and then when I come up for air and realize the only next things are lunch and maybe a swim, it's pretty much perfection for me.

Or, at least, it is as close to perfection I can get these days. And I took every second of that while I was out there adrift and I tried so hard to enjoy it even though I missed my son so much. For a while lost in the pages, it worked. For a time I was perfectly transported.

The Panama Adventures continue on Freshly Roasted.

This portion is actually a prequel and it is called The Tale of the Emerald Coffee! I warn you now, fear the bajareque. It will soak you and make you dry at the very same time, out of skies of the clearest blue!! There is no escape! You have been warned!!

Arriving at Isle of the Pelicans was glorious. Drunky tumbled over the top of the boat. I hopped out onto sharp shells and then stumbled into the surf. But we had made it! We were there but there were Others on the island waiting for us.

Apparently, they had been waiting for 30 hours. One guy should have been picked up in the early morning of the day before, but no one showed. And cellphones stopped working because of the crazy winds and fierce weather.

"Three days. Rain rain rain, all day," one of them said in a thick Australian accent. She was older and smoking Mat's cigarettes like it was her last one ever. She thought they were going to die there. They had erected flags and poles and were considering making a swim for other islands in the distance. "It was crazy," the other guy said, a slightly wild look in his eye. "We didn't know, so what were we supposed to do? Swim, I thought. I can swim and get us help!" he told me, stubbing out another bummed butt.

I just wanted them to get the fuck off my island! I walked away laughing and found the bathroom a few steps away from our perfect little hut. The bathroom was a regular old toilet seat, a currogated metal door and bamboo walls lashed tight to a square concrete foundation. A white PVC pipe extended from the back of the tiny structure over some coral and vanished into the depths of the nearby ocean.

Our hut was spacious with the same walls of tightly lashed bamboo that we saw on the other islands. A large bedframe with a slightly grungy mattress stood in the center of the hut. The roof was corrugated metal and made quite a stir when the lashing rains and winds attacked it, late in the night. They gave us nice clean sheets, though, and we brought sleeping bag inserts with us so it was all good.

I dropped our shit and then strolled back to the beach. Some guys were there fixing the solar panel, as that had stopped working, too. And the other people on their way out were finally getting gone. I grabbed a book and hit the hammock. The hammock grotto was divine.

The Others were gone, the beers were slightly cool. The rain held off until we were fast asleep hours later and all morning and afternoon it got slightly lighter and slightly brighter. There were huge conch shells all over the beach and as the sun set on our first day stranded, pelicans arrived and started dive bombing the ocean, searching for food.

By the way, I'm not sure if you know this, but there's a funny thing about a pelican. You see, its beak it can hold more than it's belly can. How about that?