About Me

My name is Pat and I’m a U.S. citizen with family in Panama. I’m in my 50’s but not retired from anything. My wife and I just got up and went to Panama to take care of her mom. I was free-lancing in construction so I could go as I please.

In my youth I married and moved out of the city (early 1973) and lived in the woods of southern Oregon, near Takilma. We fit in because the area was overrun by “back to the landers” who built communes and lived outside of mainstream culture. There were the famous “logger vs hippie” wars at that time. We shared 200 acres in a box canyon with two other families. There were no utilities available. We lasted almost four years before both my family (3, with a 2 yr. old) and the group split up.

Then I wandered for a decade as an itinerant teacher of meditation (Transcendental) before I finally settled back in my home town of San Diego and got married again-to the Panamanian with son. My brother had a roofing company and I fell in with him off and on for 20 years. The great lesson here was how to earn without paying taxes, legally.

I earned some degrees (BA, MBA) but I never used them. I was curious about the business world but never fit in. Also, I am a credentialed teacher but could only endure public school for so long before I became discouraged. I have had a life-long interest in justice, so I studied the dark side of law (the awful reality) and am an activist for its purification; especially income tax enforcement. This will come out on the page. The flip side is my love of silence and withdrawal, as reflected in my life-long vocation as a meditation teacher and student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. So there will be some ideas on that theme as well.

I’ll complain (and offer solutions) about the problems and praise the glories of the real Panama, or as close to the reality as I could get by just living with the poor and the struggling working class people themselves. I lasted less than a year and a half before I ran out of money and had to return to the U.S. This is my journal.