BIRTHDAY AT CAFE DE PARIS

MISCHEVIOUS GRAHAM AND DANIELLE

BIRTHDAY AT CAFE DE PARIS

BIRTHDAY BOY

We have been in St. Martin for about a month, still travelling with our friends, the Porters whom we have been loosely with since Maine in August. They head toward Antigua this weekend so we will catch up with them there in a few weeks time. Graham is progressing in school at an accelerated rate and will be done way ahead of schedule. As such, his father drills him on probabilities and the like while they have lunch or walk and his mean old nasty old teacher is going to make him take a sample SAT when he finishes with school to assess his capabilities. To be fair, though, she has agreed to take the test herself.

We have become quite accustomed to life here in the Caribbean. In St. Martin, Mike from Shrimp’s Laundry etc. does a morning VHF radio chat to announce the weather, give people a chance to announce their arrivals and departures, swap items, make announcements about kids activities (treasure hunt on Saturday!) and other stuff. He also does our laundry about once a week. We are anchored in the Simpson Bay Lagoon near another Baba, and our friends on Evenstar, and Cyberman ,conveniently, because my computer died completely and at least we had him around to tell us the truth. We will not be replacing it and that feels very freeing. All I need is access to email and google so Matt and I are sharing a computer. Life is simple. I spend my days painting and teaching and reading like crazy. We officially have a teenager now as Graham turned 13 on Valentine’s Day. We went out to dinner at Café de Paris with the Porters and had real French food and everyone’s meal was perfect. The Porters have addicted us to a TV series called “Eureka” which they have on DVD. As our separation is imminent we have been having many Eurekathons over on Evenstar. It’s good fun.

A really neat museum of Star Wars and other movie memorabilia put together by a former creature effects and costumes wizard was one of the more surprising finds in the town of Phillipsburg!

Phillipsburg, on the Dutch Side of St. Maarten, has a very similar feel to a lot of Caribbean towns where the primary business is catering to Cruise ships. You’ve got the sidewalk hawkers for everything from taxis and T-shirts to beach chair rentals and happy hours. It’s not a bad place and I didn’t dislike it, but it is busy and crowded and you’d do well to wear a T-Shirt saying “No Thank you I don’t need a Taxi/New Hat/Massage/Beach Chair/Jewelry” so you may walk down the board walk unmolested for a stretch.

But a favorite part of the town of Phillipsburg was “That Yoda Guy”. Nick Maley became known as “That Yoda Guy” on the set of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back because if his instrumental role in the creation of the puppetry and animation to create the character of Yoda back in the days before digital animation and CGI . Though he was also involved in the other movies in the original Star Wars trilogy as a creature effects animator as well. He’s also got a list of other movie credits as long as your arm including Highlander, Superman, Krull, and many others.

Mr. Maley retired from the movie industry some time back and moved onto a sailboat with his wife, where they cruised for a time. Eventually they settled in the Caribbean, and this small but interesting museum was opened. What is novel about it is that although it contains many things from Mr. Maley’s private collection, Mr. Maley himself brings a lot of inside scoop on how the Star Wars movies came together. He was there, and knows a lot of the details – be it technical or anecdotal, that provides some fascinating insight into how these iconic movies came together the way they did.

Throughout the museum are original art works and memorabilia, some for display and some for sale.

Passing by on the sidewalk on Front Street, I heard the Star Wars theme paying quietly – looking around I saw the signs. Having no idea what to expect, we mounted up the stairs expecting something…tacky maybe? Instead spent a very pleasant hour or so talking and exploring and learning some very, very cool stuff about some of our favorite movies.

Well worth a visit!

We attended a Mardi Gras type parade on the French side on Shrove  (Fat) Tuesday.  The costumes were pretty impressive. All ages and genders were bedecked in spectacular arrays of flowers, feathers and glitter. There were troupes of young children, teenagers and adults. One thing that impressed me was that these were all regular, real people, and everyone was out there strutting their stuff and you could tell they all felt proud and beautiful. It’s hard to picture an event like this back in the states where we have such harsh standards of beauty and judge those outside those brackets so unkindly. Some of the most charismatic people in the parade were the winners of the “Miss Plus Size” beauty pageant – this wasn’t a joke or a gag like it might be in the states, these were beautiful, vibrant women; accepted for who they are and proud of it. And you could see the happiness and humor as they saw friends and family along the way and broke ranks for hugs, pictures and fun.