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I made a hummingbird feeder this past week.

I took a half liter (16.9 oz) plastic bottle, melted a hole in the cap, and used candle wax to seal in a straw. It’s hanging on my front porch in a little crocheted sling. I’ve seen one bird at it so far, and about fifteen curious neighbors.

I’ve got a beautiful tree in my yard that flowers intermittently all year round and attracts hummingbirds like nobody’s business, but it’s in a seldom-viewed corner of my yard. My new feeder is probably the avian equivalent to living on a diet of only fast food, and it’s leaving a sticky, ant-ridden patch on my porch, but it has the virtue of being where I can see it.

Provided, of course, that I’m not making a trans-equatorial migration of my own at the time.

The Guaraní word of the day is mainumby, meaning hummingbird.  There are a few dozen different species in South America, ranging from the mundane oh-I-saw-one-of-those-in-my-azalea-bush-last-week sorts to spectacular sometimes-the-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction freaks.

OK, I’m going to break from my usual web policy and for once announce where I’m going before I get there.

I’m going home for Christmas! Call me! E-mail me! See me in person! Kick my ass in video games! Feed me foods that are not mandioca! I promise I’m not carrying any tropical diseases. Well, OK, at least not any contagious ones.

Airline schedule permitting, I should be available in Knoxville from January 1, and leaving midday on the 5th. I’ll have access to my e-mail. Write for phone numbers - I’ll be mooching off my mother’s cell and landline while I’m in town.

The Guaraní word of the day is mo’o meaning where. Mo’o am I going? To visit people I love! To the land of eight-lane asphalted highways, 24-hour Super Target, hot water on tap, microwave ovens, and ubiquitous broadband. To Colorado, to the Grand Canyon, to the Arizona border country, and to Knoxville! Life is good.

While at Thanksgiving this year (which was an exceptionally good party), I had the chance to go to a place in southern Paraguay called Trinidad, where the meticulously maintained ruins of an old Jesuit mission can be found.

In the early 18th century, slavers were decimating the indigenous populations of Paraguay and many other places. They justified this by saying that while they were wreaking horrible damage on the lives of the people they captured, they were really doing them a favor in the long run, insofar as their enslavement also presented an opportunity to baptise them and give them better afterlives.

The Jesuit missions were an attempt to undermine this argument by preemptively converting the indigenous people to Christianity. They were progressive, even by modern standards. The mission had an educational system, subsidized care to the poor and infirm, and cooperated with the preexisting chiefs. The angels carved onto the cathedral had indigenous features - a strange and sad sight, considering that modern Paraguayans would just about riot if the local cathedral tried the same thing.

The Jesuits got away with it all for a good while, but eventually their political enemies caught up with them and their permission to operate in the territory of Paraguay was revoked. And today the people are Catholic, bilingual, and clamoring at the gates of the foreign embassies in Asunción to get work visas for back-breaking agricultural labor and hotel maid jobs. So in the end, it’s hard to say who won.

The Guaraní word of the day is petei, meaning one. It can also be used to mean “a” or “an”, although Guaraní speakers don’t use that form anywhere nearly as often as English speakers do.