#culebra cut valley

[postcard-from-the-past]

Culebra Cut Valley in Panama

American vintage postcard

#panama #postal #old #photo #culebra cut valley #photography #briefkaart #sepia #postkaart #cut #carte postale #postkarte #historic #culebra #vintage #postcard #tarjeta #american #valley #ephemera #ansichtskarte

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“After the US military occupied the Isthmus of Panamá and the HayBunau-Varilla Treaty was signed, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a series of executive orders to establish US law in the Canal Zone. The 1904 treaty provided the US government with “all rights, power, and authority which it would possess and exercise if it was the sovereign of the territory,” and Roosevelt’s orders created an outline for the criminal legal system. He gave the governor and the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) sweeping exclusion and deportation power, and initially chose not to extend the right to jury trial. The Thirteenth Amendment’s “convict clause” was central among the constitutional guarantees that were selectively extended: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist except as punishment for crime,” the order proclaimed. As Canal Zone District Attorney William Jackson described it, the sources of law included a mix of executive orders, congressional acts, Columbian civil law, local ordinances, criminal codes of procedure, and military doctrine, all of which were designed to ensure labor productivity.

....

The ICC convened a “Special Committee on the Employment of Prisoners” in the Panamá Canal Zone in 1908. Proposing that convicts be forced to build roads, their stated aims were threefold: to reimburse the Government for the expense of maintaining its penal system, to open the fertile valleys of the Canal Zone to development, and to improve the condition of the prisoner. The convict road-building program began in March of 1908, when Governor Joseph Blackburn authorized the transport and housing of prisoners outside the Culebra penitentiary. As a Kentucky plantation owner and former Confederate officer in charge of an independent command in Mississippi, he was familiar with regimes of forced labor as well as military-style work camps. On his order, Canal Zone police established a portable camp at Brazos Brook and moved half of the penitentiary population there to be near the work at all times.

Clearing, cutting, grading, leveling, draining, filling—each stage of the road-building process presented its own arduous challenges. Work must have been especially grueling that first summer, as those who were imprisoned were forced to grade a sixty-foot slope leading to a bridge they would have to build over the Miraflores dump. But perhaps even that gang, averaging one hundred prisoners daily, did not envy their fellow prisoners who were sent to fill swamps at West Culebra in May, or those who spent over twenty-five thousand total hours filling the Lirio swamp in August and September. By fall, work had begun on the Empire-Paraíso section of road and seventy prisoners were transferred to a new convict labor camp on the side of Gold Hill. They had already put in over 140,000 total hours on the highway between the towns of Empire and Bas Obispo. When Chief Engineer George Goethals announced the opening of the highway to Empire in his “Notes on Progress” in September of 1910, it had taken over a year for prisoners to build the 18,392-foot long, 18-foot wide stretch of roadway. They excavated some 17,457 cubic yards of material for the subgrade, laid 2,563 cubic yards of gravel, and another 2,860 cubic yards of stone in the process.

Reimbursing the government for the expense of maintaining the penal system was one of the three central aims of the ICC Special Committee on the Employment of Prisoners. Monthly police reports made the financial record of prisoners’ labor publicly available. The system of accounting for the value of prison labor used a fixed hourly wage rate and then subtracted the cost of their subsistence, clothing, and guarding. At the program’s inception, the chief of police reported that the division of municipal engineering credited the department of civil engineering eighty cents per day for each convict employed on the roads. He was proud to report that the experiment was proving profitable: “The Department of Civil Administration finds that the revenue from its prisoners is greater than the expense of keeping them.”

Yet that was not the total cost of maintaining the penal system; the payroll for 150 members of the police force was still listed at ten times the value of road work performed by about the same number of prisoners. One year later, the monthly value of prisoner roadwork was reported as $1,821.55, while the cost of subsistence was $857.75, clothing was another $378.80, and guard payroll was an additional $1,473.76.31 By 1914, the value of work surpassed the cost of “prisoner maintenance.” The costs involved in road building, meanwhile, were reported in local newspapers in a such a way as to reinforce the idea that their work was already a naturally unpaid, and presumably unobjectionable, part of the equation. It was estimated, for example, that the Empire-Gamboa Road would cost $17,952.98, “exclusive of convict labor.”

Once incarcerated and designated for road work, Canal Zone prisoners were made to clear the ground, build portable camps, haul water, prepare food, and clean. The force “does its own cooking and takes care of the sanitation of the camp,” claimed one monthly police report. By making them responsible  for their own social reproduction, such as it was, colonial officials and prison guards sought to turn prisoners into pure surplus. In 1913, a photographer from the Keystone View Company captured one of these “convict corrals” in the background of a photograph of a “Thatched Roof Native Home.” Of course, the caption read, “this corral is a temporary structure because these convicts are transported from point to point, according to where their labor is needed.” Intrigued, the photographer captured the camp itself. “We have a closer view of the corral partially seen in view 21740,” they wrote. “The corral is the temporary quarters for the prison convicts, who are here employed in building a macadam road.” The image [SHOWN BELOW] depicts the barbed-wire enclosure and an officer “brandishing a revolver,” described as “necessary assistants in such camps,” as well as the prisoners’ mess table shown in the foreground.

The stereograph’s caption explained how “the roads are being built by the United States Government and the convicts here located are prisoners sentenced for misdemeanors done in the Canal Zone.” Perhaps in an attempt to portray the prison system as racially unbiased, the Keystone View Company’s writer added, “Naturally these prisoners are of all races and colors.” But in fact, the prison population and road gangs they were looking at were disproportionately black. “In the Canal Zone is to be found, doubtless, the only place where the National Government uses convicts for road construction,” they noted, while in some southern states “convict labor is the usual one employed in building roads,” the practice had not yet been taken up in the nation’s federal penitentiaries. Stereographs like these, together with photographs in news reports and exhibitions like the 1915 World’s Fair, were instrumental in constructing the visual representation of the Canal Zone’s prison labor program to the US public in ways that obscured the racial violence of Uncle Sam’s chain gangs.

Another goal of the Special Committee on the Employment of Prisoners was to open the fertile valleys to cultivation and development, by which they meant to white settlement. When Governor Blackburn first authorized the prison road gangs, ICC officials explained it this way: “the intention is to locate these roads away from the railroad so as to develop the agricultural recourses of the country to as great an extent as possible.” The roads were designed to facilitate settlement and plantation-style agriculture both within the Zone and in the neighboring Republic of Panamá. Zone administrators pressured their government counterparts in Panamá, urging them also to employ convicts to build connector roads outside the Zone. As civil engineer J.G. Holcombe told The Daily Star and Herald, he intended to get to work at building roads throughout Panamá and would use prison laborers wherever possible so they would cost a minimum outlay. The Star and Herald reported that a highway would be built from the town of Empire in the Canal Zone through to Chorrera, in the Republic of Panamá: 

“From Empire to Arraijan the trail traverses one of the best agricultural sections of the Zone and a large amount of fruit and produce is brought over it by pack horse and marketed in Empire.” 

It was nine more miles, however, from the edge of the Zone boundary to the “native village” of Chorrera, a town of about thirty-five hundred people with “many farms of considerable extent” growing corn and other produce and raising cattle. The Government of Panamá has given assurance, a reporter assured readers, that it will continue the highway built to the Zone line into Chorrera, “thereby making the entire section of country accessible to Empire.”

The Canal Zone prison road-building scheme was situated squarely in an ongoing debate over settlement versus depopulation. Those who favored settler colonialism in the Zone, advocated roads be built in order to connect agricultural plantations to markets. As the Canal Zone Governor George Goethals told it a few years later, the group in favor of establishing a white settler colony “asserted that Americans should be permitted to take up land, provision being made for homesteading it as an inducement … the assumption being that they would have farms or plantations worked by West Indian negroes; the general idea amounted to opening up the land to ‘gentlemen farmers.’” 

Goethals himself, however, opposed settlement in favor of depopulation after work on the canal was complete in 1914. “I did not care to see a population of Panamanian or West Indian negroes occupying the land, for these are nonproductive, thriftless, and indolent,” he wrote.  According to his racial nightmare, they would not only act as unproductive squatters, but drain government resources by congregating in small settlements and costing the government money for sanitation and police. As his theory about the increased cost of policing suggests, he speculatively criminalized those he lumped into the category “negro” and deemed as an unwanted surplus population once their labor was no longer needed on the canal. The irony was that throughout the canal construction period, only black Silver Roll employees paid income tax, which supported such public services, while white Gold Roll employees paid no income tax and received a range of free and subsidized government benefits.

Through these type of discussions over depopulation, criminality, and prison labor, Canal officials actively inverted the meaning of who was generating value and who was supposedly a burden on the government. In a declassified record from the ICC’s executive office at the end of canal construction, officials noted that in addition to those they had deported and those “removed in the course of depopulation,” the ICC planned to begin transporting people who were now out of work “as a police measure.” Their justification for mass deportations revealed the logic at work in speculatively criminalizing unemployment and poverty: 

“[A]ny increase in crime always occurs where conditions cause a large number of men to be without employment,” 

wrote Police Chief Mitchell, expressing what seemed like a timeless, race-neutral, truism.

Yet he and Mr. Copeland knew exactly what group they were targeting: “Nearly all police cases in Panama for wounding, sneak thieving, robbery and fraud,” he speculated, “are those of Jamaicans who are out of work on account of termination of canal work.” They were also clearly ambivalent about those they deemed as surplus, whose lives they evidently did not consider very valuable. While Mitchell proposed removing all “unemployed aliens” from the Isthmus if the US government “had to take care of them,” for example, he added that they actually might need all available labor for defense measures, adding that “such labor could be forced.”

- Benjamin D. Weber, “The Strange Career of the Convict Clause: US Prison Imperialism in the Panamá Canal Zone,” International Labor and Working-Class History No. 96, Fall 2019, p. 83-88.

Image at top is: “CONVICTS BUILDING A COMMISSION ROAD: The excellence of these roads should be an object lesson to Central America.” from Willis J. Abott, PANAMA And the Canal IN PICTURE AND PROSE. New York: Syndicate Publishing Company, 1913. p. 348.

#panama canal #canal zone #thirteenth amendment #convict clause #convict labour #american prison system #u.s. imperialism #american empire #penal labour #forced labour #slavery by another name #settler colonialism #road building #road work #prison camp #academic research #research quote #academic quote #isthmian canal commission #history of crime and punishment #united states history

[mostly-history]

The Culebra Cut (Panama, 1885).

In 1885, the French were midway through their failed attempt at constructing a canal through Panama.  The Culebra Cut is an artificial valley, one of the greatest engineering feats of its time. It was completed after the US bought out the project in 1904.

#history #construction #labour #panama #france #panama canal #culebra cut

[evieoh]

yet another ridiculously long list of fic recs from me, mostly so I can keep all my favorites organized. There are so many amazing and heartbreaking and hot and funny and awesome fics in this fandom though.

smoke signals by duchamp  (Teen, one-shot)

This isn’t some film reel. There’s no soundtrack or script to dictate blocking. No action or cut. This is real life and Seth’s flesh and blood and bone and the closest thing she has to a friend. She doesn’t want to ruin that. Not that she could.

Rules of the Mexican Honeymoon by TashanaAmbrosia  (Mature/Explicit, multi-chapter)

There are two phrases that seem to chase their conversations like a snake swallowing its own tail: Please and This is as far as we go.

Seth and Kate deal with the aftermath of Season 1 and the loss of their families.

Tequila Sunrises by oxymoronassoc  (Mature, one-shot)

They stop at a motel. They get one room. For some reason, she thinks this means they'll have two beds. But this isn't your mom's grocery store romance novel. There is one bed with an oily cover that he flings back with disdain before throwing himself down on the sheets, his suit still on. She falls asleep clutching the edge of the bed. She's not sure why, but she does.

The next night, she barely holds the edge of the mattress. He still wears the suit.

Boy, I'm a hurricane headed for you by ronsparkyspeirs  (Mature, multichapter)

Kate is a sinner but Seth is a bad man.

he told me i was holy by liketogetlost (Mature, one-shot)

Seth is almost like a wild animal himself when he fights. When it’s all over he’s panting, sweaty and covered in the vibrant red blood that seems to follow them wherever they go.

But when Kate looks at him she still sees a wounded bird, wings broken and left on the side of the road.

a fresh poison each week by devil divine (jaegerjagues)  (Teen, one-shot)

Seth has visions, but they're nothing like Richie's.

Burn My Bridges by openhearts (Teen/Mature, series)

Kate thinks about asking “then what?” and she opens her mouth around the words before closing it again. She leans her head back against the headrest and lets her eyes slip closed. Seth is quiet now, for once, and she isn’t sure whether she’s glad of it or not. Isn’t sure she really wants to feel alone in her head.

Come From Way Above by liketogetlost  (Explicit, series)

Kate feels like she’s tapped into his center, like she knows how to pull and tug at his strings. It feels wrong, like no one should have that much power over another person but Kate wants it, wants to be selfish and just fucking pull until he unravels.

there in the dark with our two hands by artemidos  (teen, one-shot)

they share things that they can't talk about when it's light out. it's not easy to bare themselves, but sometimes just before sleep, it happens.

flintlocked by waterfront  (teen, one-shot)

‘au where seth doesn’t leave her and instead they both go to uncle eddie’s for help and end up having a sit down dinner with richie and kisa.’ (season 2)

Eddie was family and family was the only thing that could set them on the right course.

affection. by djcotrona  (Mature, one-shot)

Two months after they left the Twister, they found themselves holed up in a motel, this one was a little nicer than the others. There was promise of a pool, but when they arrived they found it lacked water. The weather was hot, had been all day, and the air conditioner was broken.

and I am telling you / I'm not going by ameliajessica  (Teen, one-shot)

"Be my guest," he spat at her, reaching across to push the door open.

or: an alternate take on the few days after Seth and Kate were meant to go their separate ways in season 2.

somewhere i have never travelled by quiet_rebel  (Explicit, one-shot)

This isn't a love story. | Set after the events of season 1.

come on mess me up by artemidos  (Teen, One-shot)

“When was your rebellious phase, exactly?”

“You could say it was already in full swing when I met you.” And then she laughed and all that Seth could do was look at her.

from our own separate sides by kendrasaunders/Overdressedtokill (SkyeStan)  (Mature, one-shot)

there is only one bed in the motel room. this is nothing new.

down the road a ways by jdphoenix  (Teen, one-shot)

She’s got one of those faces, you know? Could be sixteen, could be twenty-one, could be anywhere in between. So he’s not really sure just how screwed he is.

opia by liketogetlost  (Mature, one-shot)

Opia - n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

WIPs

the good left undone by imaginedfables  (Mature, multi-chapter)

There's a story where she stays.

Carry The Ghost by imaginedfables  (Mature, multi-chapter)

This is what her beautiful life had come to. Dirty bathrooms in broken backroads and trembling hands with dried blood caked underneath her fingernails. A bag full of stolen money that she’d trade without missing a beat if she could only have at least one member of her family there with her for her to take comfort in. A baby growing inside of her from a man she didn’t know where to find and wasn’t sure she really wanted to, anyways. She is three weeks shy of turning eighteen, her whole family is dead or out causing death, and the father of her child is a heroin-addicted criminal: a wanted fugitive. Her mother was probably rolling over in her grave.

Valley of Decision by Pervymonk  (Teen, multichapter)

So things went fubar at Matanzas, and a mysterious woman sends Seth Gecko back to keep Kate from becoming possessed by Amaru. But can they stay together, or are they destined to be driven apart?

the pale morning sings by seren_ccd  (Teen, multichapter)

Santanico Pandemonium breathes in the smell of a thousand souls worth of blood, but it’s Kisa that breathes out, gives the site one last look, and starts to turn the bike around. It’s the flutter of a white sheet trapped on the branches of a bush that has her pause before she turns back to look more closely. Kate Fuller stares back at her.

aka 'Kisa and Kate go on a road trip.'

blood money, blood money by kendrasaunders/Overdressedtokill (SkyeStan)  (Teen, one-shot)

seth and kate have a confrontation of sorts. how much does "i love you" cost?

until we hit the ground by Noducksinpond  (Mature, multichapter)

She remembered the blood flowing through her, the overwhelming need for revenge. Seth, Richie, Scott, you loved them so much and they used you until there was nothing left! Make them pay! Make them pay!

Worship like a Dog by xXBeckyFoo  (Teen, one-shot)

The four times Seth hears Kate after she's gone.

Transformation by OnlyInAutumn  (Mature, two-shot)

Richie turned Kate into a culebra at the blood well, and as a result of a guilty conscience, Seth offers himself up to her as Kate's personal blood source. As it turns out, Seth doesn't mind so much. Sexual tension and pining ensues.

WIPs

Find the Girl by quiet_rebel  (Explicit, multichapter)

Set after the events of the season 2 finale | It's a new empire, but who will rise up and who will fall?

Timeline by xXBeckyFoo  (Teen, one-shot (long))

That look was in Seth's eyes again, the one that made Kate feel like everything in life had led them to this moment. To each other.

you can dance to lady gaga by waterfront  (Gen, oneshot)

it's Kate's 21st and the whole gang comes out to celebrate. but there's one thing Seth can't quite get over: Kate Fuller kinda said she loved him. Did she mean it? If he asks her to dance, could everything literally implode? (plus sequel where do we stand/here or on that sink?)

only proof (that i need) by caramelle  (Teen, one-shot)

The thing is, as long as they're working a job, he has to spend a good three-quarters of his day calling Kate Fuller his wife.

… Not that it's a chore, or anything.

But, ultimately, it's fucking terrible, because he's officially stopped thinking twice before opening his mouth to say the damned words.

dead ringers by duchamp  (Mature, one-shot)

Preacher’s daughter, he thinks. Thinks of songs about a girl that can’t be reached, some angelic idol not to be sullied; where in others she crashes down to earth, is revealed to be a reviled mortal like all other common folk.

make you feel like you've been blessed by arsonistlullaby  (Explicit, one-shot)

There is still a lot of shit they have to deal with, even after they’ve stopped the apocalypse. Or maybe because they stopped it, depending on which way you decide to look at it.

Home by xXBeckyFoo  (Teen, one-shot)

They say it takes seven years to grow a new body, so Kate counts the days until she doesn't feel like ripping off her own skin.

Pop Goes the Question by madjm  (Teen, one-shot)

Five times Seth asks Kate to marry him, and one time he doesn't.

we are fated to grow old by waterfront  (Teen, one-shot)

Scott is angry with the world until the day he isn't.

Seth and Kate's relationship through the eyes of her younger, vengeful brother. Based on a prompt: Scott's journey to realizing and accepting that Seth and Kate are in love

Wake Your Ghost by quiet_rebel  (Gen, Drabble)

If Seth could do things differently, would he? | spoilers for 3x07

WIPs

journeys end in lovers meeting by notahotlibrarian  (Teen, multichapter)

It's been a long road from Bethel to wherever Kate Fuller is now, but her journey is not yet over.

After Matanzas, Kate decides to take a road trip to figure some things out. But no matter what turns she makes, all roads lead back to the Geckos. But is it destiny or is it her choice?

Good Grief by waterfront  (Teen, multichapter)

“But okay, fine, let’s say the answer to your problem isn’t with the girl you abandoned five years ago. The woman, or whatever, who can fix your brother lives in Bear Claw, Alaska.” Richie’s been bitten by something even culebras dare not mention. He’s dying. Unless Seth can repair his relationship with Kate, Richie’s a goner. Seems like enough motivation to seek out the girl you left naked in a motel room five years ago. But he left with questions unanswered, and with a new life built around her, Kate has secrets of her own. Seth should have remembered something he learned years ago: never underestimate Kate Fuller.

Catch Me Again by quiet_rebel  (Gen, multichapter, AU from early season 2)

“You caught me once; Maybe on the flipside, you could catch me again.”

bartered with bone by alamorn  (Teen, series of one-shots)

There's a thousand different ways Kate could have met the Geckos. They all start the same: preacher's daughter, criminal brothers. They all end the same: together and bloody.

When destiny catches up with Kate, she sees them all

let me go by writerlily  (Gen, one-shot)

Kate didn't think she would simply "hang around" after her death. She believed in Heaven and Hell and those were the only two choices for her.

She was wrong.

Born To Die by ArkStationsLibrary  (Explicit, one-shot)

Seth Gecko is an immortal who decides to make Kate Fuller part of his world whether she likes it or not.

Further Away by omqueenkay  (Mature, one-shot)

The one where Seth keeps calling Sonja by Kate's name.

The Road of Excess by KaelsMiscellany  (Teen, two part series)  (Richie/Kate /Seth)

In 1815 a stranger came to Bethel, Texas; and a few months later married the preacher’s daughter.

In 1816 he faced the firing squad for killing a murderer; and in that long winter his brother comes to town.

WIPs

like clockwork by writerlily  (Gen, multi-chapter)

she was not expecting something like this.

(soulmate tattoo AU)

These Eyes are Natural Disasters by kategecko  (Mature, multichapter)

She wasn't sure what they had done to her when they let the serpent bite her as she laid strapped to yet another altar but she could feel the snake’s poison flowing through her veins like molten lava.

profane words scrawled black across the sun by artemidos  (Explicit, series of one-shots)  (Seth/Kate/Richie)

live life for the moment by Roksed  (Mature, one-shot series)

No matter the distance, Kate and Seth always find each other again and again.

Alternate retellings of the TV series.

alone / with you by artemidos  (Mature, multichapter)

suddenly there's someone in her room and a new voice in her head. she never wanted this. he never wanted it either. they're both screwed.

the heartland by silenceisnotmyfriend  (Teen, one-shot)

If her momma could see her now, she would say "God is many things." (Soulmate AU)

Cigarette Daydreams by imaginedfables  (Mature, multichapter)

They’ve been showing up at the bar on random nights for the past three weeks.

It’s pretty hard to miss them, and even if she wanted to turn a blind eye to the American brothers, their loud mouths (Seth) and the fist fights they (again, Seth) tend to start would give their presence away in a heartbeat.

(And, no, Richie, she doesn’t have any horchata.)

put me through hell again by liketogetlost  (Explicit, one-shot)  (Seth/Kate/Richie)

Two boys in black came to her town, wearing the skin of Preachers, like her daddy. They got real close to her father and the people of her church, conning their way into their hearts and wallets.

(Kate runs away with conmen Gecko Preachers.)

he said to 'be cool', but i don't know how yet by artemidos  (Explicit, one-shot)

Bare feet glued to the tiled floors that led into the room, she’d stood and stared for a good minute. His arms bulged with muscle and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. In fact she couldn’t see beyond the table to know if he was wearing anything at all. Was this the type of guy her mother always brought home? Men with tattoos curling up their arms who sat in her kitchen wearing next to nothing?

girl, i'm just trying to kiss your neck without a word by longhairandbarefeet  (Explicit, Two-shot)

Kate always thought it was boring, going to races and sitting in the box with her dad while he blabbered on and on about the business, but her interest soon began to peak at the sight of Seth Gecko on their team. a.k.a. au where Seth is a race car driver.

daisies and diamonds by theredhoodie  (Teen, one-shot)

The year is 1946. The war has just finished, crime in Southern U.S. is on the rise, and a young woman named Kate Fuller is stuck in a life of repetitive boring days. That is, until the night when she happens to meet a real-life bank robber.

To the Store, To the Store by caramelle  (Teen, one-shot)

the one where Kate somehow always manages to find herself at the same grocery checkout line as a handsome, surly stranger in black.

delusional by artemidos  (Teen, one-shot)

kate and seth work at the dew drop resort. although 'work' is a little generous a word to use for what seth does. kate accidentally becomes the only way to get him to come do his damn job.

This Could Be Easy by caramelle  (Teen, one-shot)

It's not that Kate was trying to get partnered up with Seth Gecko. Honestly, she wasn't.

She just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and sorely under-informed on extenuating circumstances.

Or, the one where Kate is a newly minted detective, and Seth is the grouchy old-timer she gets stuck with.

String of Blinking Lights by madjm  (Teen, one-shot)

"I knew when I married you I was getting Richie, too, but I didn’t know I was getting my beautiful home turned into ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.’”

Don't Need Saving by the_stargazing_dreamer  (Mature, one-shot)

Strait-laced businessman Seth is spending the week in Houston and meets free spirited call girl Kate when Richie leaves him at a club. He doesn't need or want anyone in his life but his damn knight in shining armor complex is getting in the way of things. Kate is only in it for the money and definitely doesn't need or want some Prince Charming to come sweep her off her feet.

Sin by shadowglove  (Teen, multichapter)

When Kate meets her new neighbors, Seth and Vanessa Gecko, she immediately develops a crush on the handsome man. She does her best to fight her growing crush, but as she and Seth become friends, and she realizes that there is a LOT of trouble in Seth and Vanessa's marriage, Kate begins to fear that she will stop caring that her feelings for him are pure sin.

make you better by longhairandbarefeet  (Mature, one-shot)

“You heard me.” She replies leaning into him, close enough so he could smell the liquor on her breath, the same that lingers on his own. She swipes her tongue across her bottom lip, and loops her arms around his neck to pull him in to press an urgent kiss to his mouth. He doesn’t respond immediately, shocked at the simple and soft feel of her. His head is swimming, and he doesn’t know if it’s her mouth, hot against his own or the copious amounts of alcohol they’ve shared over the last few hours. It could be a little bit of both. a.k.a. the five times seth and kate have sex, and the one time they don't

WIPs

gun it coming off the line by artemidos  (Teen, multichapter)

seth and richie work for carlos finding and bringing in the people who owe him. they don't care about why and they never fail to bring someone in.

until kate, of course.

You Wanna Go To Heaven (but you're human tonight) by only_halfway_there  (Teen, multichapter)

If Persephone was a good little preacher's daughter, Hades was a Gecko, and the Underworld was somewhere in Texas, it might look a little something like this ...

From Hell With Love by corinnemaree  (Mature, multichapter)

She's an angel. He's a demon. She's supposed to save the world from the likes of him. Now she's on the run with him? Kate doesn't know how she ended up with Seth Gecko, but there are times where she doesn't complain about it.

this war of hearts by jynscassian  (Teen, multichapter)

Fate had a funny way of showing itself. Just when Kate decides that soulmates and destiny doesn’t matter to her, she happens to meet the very man whose initials are tattooed on her wrist.

blue and silver: the detective and her criminal by sarahandrelouise & waterfront  (Teen, multichapter)

It's an early morning line up and everybody is a little sleepy. Coffee is required. Flirting with criminals is optional.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace. by hasitsclaws  (Explicit, multichapter)

Seth Gecko is doing your usual, run-of-the-mill drug smuggling gig when he finds out he's going to be deported. His brother's solution to the problem? Get married, of course. All Seth has to do is find a nice woman willing to be his "wife" until he gets his green card, and Richie has an idea as to who's the perfect girl for the job.

Only problem is, Kate Fuller is a lot more than either of the Gecko brothers bargained for.

(Fake!Married AU)

#sethkate fic rec #sethkate #fic rec list #seth x kate #fdtd

[panamagreg]

This is the post that we couldn’t wait to deliver. Please be patient with the content, as it was difficult to make it all come together. There were 35 pieces of video and a bunch of pictures. We will build the story putting a few of the pictures and about 20 pieces of video throughout to let you all see why this was the pinnacle of our trip. Feel free to visit our u-tube site to see the video that we chose to leave out.

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The tour started at Panama City on the Pacific Port of Balboa on the Gulf of Panama. The Panama Canal is 48 miles long and the passage averages 8-10 hours. The average wait time for a ship to enter the canal is 28-30 hours. Our pictures in previous posts, that were shot from our resort, shows the ships lining up to wait their turn. We will be entering the Mira Flores Locks with the ship pictured above. The canal runs north to south from 4 am to 12 pm, south to north from 12 pm to 8 pm, and smaller ships pass in both directions during the night. We were one of the last boats going north. Panama Canal Tour 1 The videos are short and have a bit of narration. When any boat enters the canal it will be boarded and piloted by a boat pilot from the canal authority. According to our guide, these pilots have an average salary of $500,000 per year. Once the pilot enters a vessel a red and white flag will fly indicating that it is being piloted by the canal authority.  Panama Canal Tour 2.  After our pilot entered the boat we waited for a large container ship to pass. Panama Canal Tour 3. Off to the west we can see Panama City. Panama has about 4 million residents with 2 million of them residing in Panama City. The city ranks 3rd in the Americas for skyscrapers per square mile. New York and Chicago have more. We are going to let a dry goods carrier pass next. In the video you can see the bridge over the Pan American Highway. This highway extends about 40 km further to the south where it ends in dense jungle. The jungle is too dense for the highway to continue. Going north it ends at mile marker 1 in Anchorage Alaska. If you were to drive north from Panama City to Los Angeles it would take 9 days going 40 miles per hour with no stops. Panama Canal Tour 4  Panama Canal Tour 6 . The US Coastguard protects the south end of the Panama Canal to control drugs from South America Panama Canal Tour 7 . We are waiting to enter the first lock of the canal. Notice in the video that there is a cruise ship in the first lock just ahead. Panama Canal Tour 8 . We will enter the Mira Flores Lock with the ship in front of us. The Mira Flores lock is the first of 2 locks that will take us up. Mira Flores has 2 chambers that will each take us up about 27 feet each. Panama Canal Tour 9 . Once inside the lock the door will close and water will be fed into the chamber raising us about 3 feet per minute. The lock doors were made by US Steel in Pittsburgh. Each door weighs 60 tons and is assembled with rivets, not welded. Panama Canal Tour 10 . Panama Canal Tour 11 . The ship that we will share the lock with is in the next video. It was led into the lock by tug and tied down. You will see the mules that guide the ship during the time in the lock. There is less than 2 feet on each side of the ship. The mules keep it from floating against the chamber walls. This ship requires 4 mules; 2 in front and 2 in the back. Panama Canal Tour 12 . The Mira Flores locks took us up to the level of Mira Flores Lake. Mira Flores Lake provides about 30 percent of the water supply for Panama City. We have crossed the lake and we are about to enter the Pedro Miguel Locks. Pedro Miguel has one chamber that will take us up about 31 more feet to the level of Gatun Lake. Panama Canal Tour 13 . Panama Canal Tour 14 . Just past the Juan Miguel Locks we are passing the 2nd bridge which crosses the canal. The Centennial bridge is one of only 2 that cross the canal. We will see a 3rd bridge later that is under construction. Just past the Centennial Bridge we began the 7-3/4 mile trip through the Culebra Cut. This is the part of the canal that caused the French to abandon the project. They were unable to excavate through the mountains and jungle due to problems controlling the dynamite and disease. Malaria, Yellow Fever, and blasting killed around 5600 workers before the completion of the canal. The United States took over the project in 1904 and completed it in 1914. The pictures below are the best we got of the Culebra Cut. This is the narrow portion of the canal. The narrow pass commands constant maintenance due to erosion.

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Panama Canal Tour 15 . Last year the Panama Canal opened an expansion to accommodate the Panamax ships. On the south end of the canal the new locks are called the Cocoli Locks and on the north end of the canal they are the Agua Clara Locks. We did not get pictures of the new locks, however we saw some Panamax ships along the way. Panama Canal Tour 16  . Following the exit of the Juan Miguel Locks we traveled for more than 3 hours across Gatun Lake. The lake is about 15 miles of the canal passage, and covers about 180 square miles. It is the passing zone for the larger ships. We got a lot of pictures of the big ships, but the trip across was rather boring. The enclosed ship pictured is carrying 15000 automobiles. These ships pay in the neighborhood of $200,000 for passage through  the canal.

    Gatun Lake was formed by creating a dam across the Chagres River and flooding the valley. The lake took 7 years to fill. The Dam provides hydro electric power, which is the energy source for the canal. It is positioned near the Gatun locks, which is the last set of locks as we exit out to the Atlantic Ocean. Panama Canal Tour 17 . As we moved toward the Gatun Locks, we learned that we would be going in to the lock ahead of the big ship that we had passed through the locks with earlier. The next video shows us slipping in ahead of it. The Gatun Locks are the locks that will take us back down to sea level so that we can continue out to the Atlantic. Panama Canal Tour 18  . Once we entered the lock the big ship slipped safely in behind us. Panama Canal Tour 19 . The final video provides an interesting perspective looking out at the last lock chamber and the Atlantic. If you look carefully you can see the construction of the Atlantic Bridge. Panama Canal Tour 20 .

The tour was packed with interesting facts about the canal. Every passage of the canal requires a toll. The lowest toll ever paid was 36 cents. It was paid by Richard Halliburton who paid it to swim the canal in 1928. He had to be escorted by snipers to kill the alligators that were a danger to him. Today swimming is not allowed in the canal. The dense rain forest surrounding the canal protects it and provides an accessible habitat where native Central American plants and animals can be observed. It took more than 30,000,000 pounds of explosives to clear the way for the canal.

We hope you have found the Panama Canal Tour interesting. Please continue to follow our blog as we prepare to spend this winter in Panama. There will be no shortage of great information to share. As always, comments, likes, and shares are greatly appreciated.

                      The Panama Canal Tour This is the post that we couldn't wait to deliver. Please be patient with the content, as it was difficult to make it all come together.