The Beginnings of my Writing Journey

“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.” 

Jane Yolen

The first writing I recall other than school assignments was entering a slogan contest for M&Ms when I was nine or ten. The details remain fuzzy to me but my mother always insisted I came up with “melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” Hah! Either she misremembered, many others came up with the same suggestion, or I got shafted out of millions in residuals. 

I never really cared but lately I got curious.  According to various web sites, Forrest Mars, son of the founder of the Mars Company, went to Europe during the Spanish Civil War and saw soldiers eating British candies called Smarties. Those chocolates surrounded by hard colored candy pellets allowed soldiers to carry chocolate without having it melt. Inspired by the idea, he produced his own version in 1941 called M&Ms and the product took off during WWII when M&Ms were sold exclusively for soldiers. The original slogan, “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth--not in your hand," was purportedly shortened to, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand,” by Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates advertising firm in 1954. I still wonder why Mars had a slogan contest when they already had an obvious plus point and hired Reeves to fine-tune it.

Around that same age, I entered a photo contest and I think the title I wrote for it helped me clinch the prize. It was a picture of my redheaded, freckle-faced little brother and I called it “Map of Ireland”—another creative writing attempt as a kid.

Ireland was still stirring my creative juices in high school; I won a national essay contest writing about the Irish Potato Famine of the 1800s. On a personal level, it explained somewhat why my grandma, who grew up in a thatched-roof peasant cottage on a landowner’s estate, immigrated to New York alone when she was sixteen years of age; she left because there was nothing for her to eat. It wasn’t that other foods weren’t available when the potato crops failed; the Irish just couldn't afford to buy any of them due to extortionist rents, high taxation, and the suppression of goods.

In high school, I had my first job. It was as a library page and it remains one of my favorites because it gave me access to so many books with varied styles of writing.

In college, I wrote a lot of term papers but I also wrote poems about my inner emotional life and scribbled down memories of personal traumatic events, like a family beach vacation that included a scary bout of croup for my youngest brother and the brake failure of my car.

 I also kept my first diary during my college years when I used my meager savings to take my first trip to Europe. I had visions of A Moveable Feast ala Hemingway, but I didn’t have the good fortune to befriend a scintillating group of expat artists and writers in Paris. Still, the trip was eye-opening for a twenty something and my diary is filled with impressions of new experiences, places that amazed me, and people and things that perplexed me. 

I've always loved hearing stories and reading and I think love of writing comes from that. My earliest memories of stories are nursery rhymes. I don't remember having a book of them in the house but I do remember hearing them from my Mom and my Nana over and over again in singsong fashion. We often recited them together and I loved memorizing them at a young age. I've always loved words too and I thank my dad and his wonderful vocabulary for that.

Growing up with five siblings and having lots of playtime with cousins and neighbors exposed me to all kinds of temperaments, interests and abilities. Those experiences help when I'm trying to create believable and varied characters for the stories I write today.

I also think it was an advantage that my developmental years were pretty much technology-free. A lot of my activities were fueled by imagination, something a writer needs a lot of. 

Finally, I credit the discipline of my early schooling with giving me the tools to write complete sentences, having decent grammar and punctuation and the persistence to work hard at improving my craft every day.

Physically Moving Through Life

“The bodies we have are not made for extended use. We must cope with accumulated DNA damage, cell damage, muscle atrophy, bone loss, decreased muscle mass, and joints worn out from overuse during a lifetime of bipedal locomotion. It might have worked great for prehistoric humans, but it wreaks havoc on our knees and hips.”

S. Jay Olshanski, Ph.D. 

 My legs have always been strong, so maybe that’s why I’ve often pushed their limits and ended up creating weak points.

In childhood the damage was always superficial—a scraped knee from tripping while running on a cement sidewalk and a deeper cut from jumping off a swing and landing on a sharp stone in my backyard. (I still have a faint scar on my left knee from the latter.)

I was also aware, from an early age, that my sturdy limbs had other limitations. They weren’t flexible enough for ballet, though I struggled through lessons. And they weren’t capable of acquiring the tap-dancing skill of my mother, whose shapely, talented legs were enviable. I was told my legs resembled my dad’s. On his athletic body, they looked good; on me, not so much.

After those early years, my legs stayed intact through my teens but my ankle was put to the test one day in my twenties. I loved to play tennis and that time I overreached during a tournament. I went for a ball coming fast and just inside the righthand singles line. I connected with the ball but the slippery line marking the clay court was the problem. I skidded and the ankle went over resulting in a severe sprain. Needless to say, I had to cede the match. I also had to show up for a date that night with a ballooning ankle and on crutches.

In my thirties, I took up running. After an initial, very slow, one-mile outing left me winded, I figured my major challenges were increasing my aerobic capacity, endurance, distance and speed. I plodded along, but as I progressed to regular workouts five times a week, it got easier to breathe and keep going,. My distance increased to three miles and my speed got faster too—thirty minutes instead of forty-five.  Soon I was running a few 10K (6.2 mile) races and even finished a ten-miler. The one challenge I hadn’t thought about was fighting the arthritic wear and tear on my knee joints. They soon rebelled, not by outright breaking, but by letting me know they hurt with every stride.

In my forties, the constant impact of running, combined with wearing shoes without good support and a lack of adequate stretching, led to shin splints, a bone spur on my heel and plantar fasciitis along the soles of my feet. All were painful but easily fixable by a sports medicine specialist. They were warnings of decline.

Through the years since my twenties, I’ve also enjoyed downhill skiing, another sport that puts stress on the knees. They held up pretty well as I progressed from easy blue runs to steeper black trails and moguls. The actual carving, traversing and schussing were fun and pain-free but, as I neared my fifties, the wear and tear was continuing its perverse work in silence. All it took was to catch an edge during a snowstorm in the Alps. It wrenched my left knee outward and I had to descend the mountain with cautious moves and in pain. I figured it was a sprain.

By the time I got back to the States, the knee was still swollen and it hurt to walk. An MRI revealed a torn medial meniscus and laparoscopic surgery was done by my orthopedic surgeon. It healed quickly with physical therapy and I went back to my usual activities.

My right knee held up for another seven years until long treks over several days, up and down the staircases of Roma, made it balloon up and hurt like the devil. Ice was hard to come by at the hotel but I used cold compresses and tread carefully for the remainder of the visit. Back home, I returned to the same surgeon. He diagnosed it as the same kind of tear I had on the other knee–medial meniscus and recommended the same type of surgery.  I was surprised because I hadn’t done anything to twist that knee. He said it was just the daily grind of age and impact, and suggested I give up running and downhill skiing. I told him I could give up running (and I pretty much have) but I enjoyed skiing too much to stop. He said fine, just stop when it hurts. It hasn’t. So, so far, so good.

My knees give me silent warnings now and then and I baby them with stretching, avoiding too-high heels and using a pillow underneath them when I sleep. I’ve also learned that sitting too long makes them stiffen, so I give them gentle exercise by walking. When I’m in Florida, I swim laps with the breast stroke most days. It’s a low-impact sport my legs love. Even so, I’ve had to modify the frog kick. My knees don’t like the side thrust it requires. I can live with that. 

A few years ago, a massage therapist in Thailand made a worrying comment about my knees. She worked the tissue around them and said, “Bad business, bad business.” Despite that, they still function. My legs are strong enough for walking and hiking, sometimes for many miles, but I’ll never move like Jagger. (His heart valve gave out but not his dancing legs.) 

At this stage, I’m just thankful I don’t have spikes in arthritic pain when the atmosphere changes like my Nana’s knees did. She claimed they could always forecast a storm. It might be handy in hurricane country but I’d rather leave it to the Weather Channel.

Travel moments That Made Me Laugh

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed”

Kahlil Gibran.

The Color Lady

While in Germany, three friends and I were persuaded to have our colors done by a Scottish lady who was recommended as an expert. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, our skin and hair tones were to be analyzed so the most compatible colors could be suggested for clothing purchases. We gathered at one friend’s apartment and waited for this person with high hopes for an upgrade to our looks. 

Not that my friends needed much of an upgrade. One was French, and like many of her countrywomen, she gave much attention to detail and took her off-the-rack purchases to a tailor for a perfect fit. She always looked impeccable. Another was a woman who always purchased quality pieces, stuck with styles that were classic and dressed to the nines. The third was a woman who had her own more casual, but distinctive style. I was the least elegant of the quartet but I wore what I liked and could afford. The one thing we all admitted was not giving much thought to a color palette. We were open to learning.

When our expert arrived, we practically had to shield our eyes, her outfit was so ablaze. She wore a sweeping full-skirted sun-yellow shirtwaist dress, pumpkin-orange heels, orange jewelry, orange purse and orange lipstick. I could sense a group virtual eyeroll and stifled giggles and one friend whispered, “She’s going to tell us what colors to wear? Give me a break.” 

However, we were nothing if not polite to her, and we smiled our way through the session. It turned out she gave us pretty good advice. She just hadn’t done so well for herself! 

The Bus Station  

Driving around the city of Quito, Ecuador was actually pretty easy but one day we missed a turn and ended up in a lane we couldn’t get out of. It led us into the central bus station. We felt like stupid gringos and it was scary. However, the crowd on the platform above us was waving and laughing. Though the three of us in the car wanted to cringe with shame, we made apologetic smiles and waved back. Still, we were never so happy to exit a place in one piece. Our relief made us silly and we laughed for a long time as we drove away.

Lights Out

We drove to Firenze, excited to meet up with American friends arriving by train from the north. We checked into our pensione in the afternoon and warned the signora our friends would be arriving too late to do a proper check-in until morning.  In the meantime, we would pick them up at the station and let them stay in our room for a few hours. “Senza Problema,” she said.

By the time we all got back to the pensione, it was in the wee hours of the morning and we were all dead tired. One friend pulled an electric coffee pot out of her luggage. The coffee would help us stay awake. The machine was American-made but she had brought a converter. Problem solved, or so it seemed. 

When the coffee began to perk, the lights went out. Since it was an old building, we figured it might be a usual occurrence that the signora would know how to deal with. We sat in the dark for several minutes and, sure enough, the lights came back on.

We started up the coffee maker again and the lights went out once more. We looked at one another knowing it probably wasn’t a coincidence. When the lights came on again, we hoped the cause of the disruptions would not be traced to us.

A knock on the door and a weary-looking signora ruined that hope. She firmly instructed us to unplug so she could get some sleep. When the sun was up, she would provide the morning caffe without causing a power outage.

We apologized profusely and said “Buona notte.”  Sleep-deprived and slap-happy, we teased our friend with the lethal coffee pot, alternately dozing and laughing among ourselves and awaiting the sunlight and a most welcome hot cup of caffe latte.

Crossing the Border

My friend had recently lost her husband and I agreed to accompany her on a southern California timeshare stay they had planned. It would be a girls’ week instead of a couple’s getaway and we were determined to have fun, despite the sad circumstances leading up to it. The condo association where we were staying offered a bus trip to Ensenada, Mexico and we thought, Why not?

Early one morning we boarded a bus with a driver determined to entertain us and get us in the mood for our visit. His radio was at full blast on a Mexican music station.

As we neared the border crossing, my cell rang. My mother was calling to inform me that one of my uncles had died and the background music on my end was the lively “Mexican Hat Song.” So inappropriate for a sad moment.

“Where ARE you?” She sounded incredulous.

I explained and gave my condolences which were heartfelt; he had been a sweet guy.

 She gave me details for the funeral being held on the East Coast and I apologized about not returning in time. I was on that trip to console the living.

Though it was a sad occasion, I still giggle when I think of the incongruity between the sad loss of my uncle and that happy, frenetic song, Da,da, da, da, DAH! Da, da, da da, DAH!.

Mercedes Taxi

Four of us wanted to travel from a town in the western hills of central Morocco to the coastal resort of Essaouira but we had no car. Our friends, who were stationed there with the Peace Corps, told us we had two options, a bus or a taxi, and we decided to opt for the first one to come along the road. We ended up in an old Mercedes taxi that already had five other passengers. The driver insisted there was still room. Our friends shrugged and said it was normal. 

My female friend was squeezed into the passenger side of the front seat, forcing the two male passengers over toward the driver. One of the guys actually ended up riding behind the wheel with the driver. I was packed like a sardine in the back seat with four men, my husband, our male friend and two locals. The cell phone of the stranger to my left started ringing but he was wearing a djellaba (a man’s outer robe) and it was in the pocket facing me. He kept giving me apologetic looks and trying to wriggle enough to get it out but we were wedged too tight. Some relief came when he and another guy were dropped off at a town a few miles down the road. We were down to seven. 

When we hit the highway toward the coast and there was a police checkpoint ahead, the driver muttered it was a good thing the others were gone because that many passengers had been illegal. Ya think?

When we got out at Essaouira, our friends said we were lucky none of the passengers had chickens! 

Beaucoup!

Finally, the silly thing that still makes my whole family giggle is my husband’s answer to a toll taker on the French Autopiste. 

She said, “Merci!”

Without thinking, he said, “Beaucoup!”

It had been a long drive:)

Seeing Sights Through Children's Eyes

“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.”

Walt Streightiff

Adult travelers often focus on the “must-sees” according to travel guides, and by concentrating on checking them off, they often miss finding a true sense of the place. Traveling with my young children not only gave them experiences and memories, it opened my eyes to new ways of looking at places and taught me to savor flexibility. They forced me to slow down and be more open to whimsy. 

My children resisted behaving like tourists; they simply slipped into the rhythm of places we traveled and enjoyed the adventure of discoveries beyond the obvious. Their adventures are some of my most indelible memories.

Restaurants can be tricky with kids but would I have noticed the chocolate ice cream in a certain French restaurant was pink? Probably not. I seldom order dessert myself but the delight they exhibited at the surprise color brings sweet memories and I learned something unexpected.

 I’ve never been invited into a restaurant kitchen while dining but they have, and I remember peals of laughter when an Italian chef did tricks for them using raw eggs and pretended to be a chicken. Then he came out of the kitchen with them and demonstrated for mamma and papa to have a laugh too.

Restaurants also encouraged them to learn bits of new languages. They quickly picked up the words for favorite foods and drinks like pommes frites and aranciata. Often finding it hard to sit still for long, they would learn how to ask where the bathroom was in the local language and query the waitstaff. The answers to “Dov’e toiletta?”and the like gave them an excuse to explore.

 Archaeological sites were places to romp and pretend. I still remember their “fort” among the rocks at the back of the Trevi Fountain and how a living kitten eating strawberries and cream was more important to them than the dusty legend of the Minotaur in the labyrinth at Knossos. 

They sought out and exulted in nature. Whether it was finding and nursing abandoned baby rabbits in Maine, catching and releasing frogs in a pond in Massachusetts or riding a tractor, shooing chickens and trying to milk a cow in Poland, they found adventure everywhere. Like most kids, if mud was involved, all the better!

They even enjoyed an outdoor presentation of an opera because it was Aida and many large, live animals were involved. When we were allowed to go backstage and pet the elephants before the performance, they were excited and the variety of animals in the Triumphal Parade at the end of Act I was a highlight for them. 

One outdoor adventure was unforgettable for another reason, however—it could have been deadly! Used to garter snakes in New England, they were excited to find a snake in our Italian garden and asked to take it for show ‘n tell. I agreed and swept it into a cardboard box until our neighbor came along, shouted “una vipera!” and killed it with a machete. I couldn’t believe I almost sent a viper to school. Another learning experience via my children.

I learned from and enjoyed the children’s books we found abroad and read together. The graphic Asterix and Obelisk series made the adventures of Gauls and Romans funny and their Swiss adventure still makes me laugh about fondue. When someone drops their bread into the cheese, I’m tempted to yell, “Into the moat with you!” 

When my husband was transferred and we adults couldn’t wait to move out of the hotel and into a house, they were content swimming in the hotel pool and climbing trees nearby to pick fruit. And when they fell in love with the runt of the litter born to a dog we met at our hotel, she became our seventeen-year companion. 

Sometimes we sought out things specifically for the children’s enjoyment and ended up feeling like kids ourselves. One memorable example was a visit to Schloss Hellbrunn near Salzburg noted for its unique trick fountains. Getting squirted with water was never so much fun!

My children often moved strangers in any language to make friendly overtures (a ride in a fishing boat, anyone?) and that helped my own cultural integration and language learning.

 They also had no fear of joining activities conducted in other languages, whether it was an Italian swim or soccer club or an Austrian tennis camp or ski school. Waiting with other parents for them to finish lessons gave me more chances to practice speaking a new language too.

Children adapt well to travel but that’s not to say it’s always a seam-free lark. Mine had occasional meltdowns and knee scrapes. The exotic was occasionally as overwhelming as it was fascinating. They got bouts of homesickness for their friends and sometimes wished for familiar foods, but these were all temporary bumps in the road. On the plus side, they absorbed a lot of geography and history because they could relate to places on a personal level and the desire to communicate with new friends helped them to appreciate the benefits of multilingualism. Overall, I think travel made them more curious and adaptable, less judgmental and more open to friends from all backgrounds. I hope they consider the journeys of their childhood as worthwhile and fun as I do.

An Oft-Traveled Maine Route

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”

Beverly Sills

A little over a hundred miles of Route 4 in Maine is a route I’ve traveled often for more than thirty years to and from the Rangeley vacation home we built ourselves. At the southeastern end it begins in Auburn, a bustling city replete with strip malls, gas stations, supermarkets, chain stores, fast food restaurants and car dealers. It’s a place for filling bellies and gas tanks.

 Heading north from the city, the route gives way to one perennial tent sale then small towns with small markets, small gas stations, dairy treat stands and variety stores selling everything from pizza and groceries to bait, tackle and ammo.  These places are the soul of this road.

As the road winds north and west, it narrows to a single lane in each direction, sometimes passing ponds and lakes and crossing bridges over streams and rivers. Occasional signs advertise camp firewood for sale, deer and moose crossing warnings, public boat accesses and acreage for sale.

Rural mailboxes become a common sight in front of old farmhouses, many of them white and some with rusting metal roofs. There are occasional crumbling barns and yards dotted with old cars settling into earth. Things aren’t thrown away or torn down; they remain as testaments to the past.

You’re reminded you’re heading into logging country by the acrid scent of working paper mills in towns like Jay and Livermore, the rumbling of logging trucks and small businesses like Mike’s Stump Grinding and Marble’s Wood Mill.

It’s farm country too as evidenced by a Farmers’ Union office, orchard stores, nurseries, alpaca-raising ventures, and venerable old structures like Farnsworth Farm in Farmington (1784). The building for Maine Sugaring Equipment and Supplies reminds you many Maine farmers produce maple syrup in the fall. 

There are still lots of green fields and woods along the way but new building has brought in related businesses— Rocky Hill Landscaping, TSC Tractor Supplies, Peter Tyler Excavating and the tiny Maine School of Masonry.

Many of the small enterprises have names that reflect an old-time country feel, like On the Way Home Cooking, Carriage House Café and The Pleasant Past antique store. 

But the road also passes some edgy places that hint of a wilder undercurrent, like Berserker Tattoo. The sign looks like a Manson family scribble and the name doesn’t exactly instill confidence you’ll be inked with steady hands. The nondescript Making Hour Place Your Place looks like a dance hall with few windows and gives no indication as to the nature of its business. Perhaps the word “Hour” gives a clue?

And then there are a few quirky places like Wilton’s Dutch Treat Ice Cream housed on a hill in an old-fashioned wooden windmill. Sit-n-Bull Trading Post in Livermore isn’t selling Native American goods but windows and doors, many of which are displayed on its lawn. Why they chose to evoke the storied Lakota chieftain is perplexing. Farmington’s Sizzle Tanning Salon seems to defy skin cancer warnings. The name makes me want to reach for the afterburn gel.

Shopping for clothing in this part of the world has a flavor all its own, catering to practical, sturdy wear for outdoor life and work. Fashionistas beware! Two iconic department store chains, Reny’s (“a Maine Adventure”) and Labonville, Inc. have stores along the route in Farmington. Reny’s also carries seasonal and household items for your camp. Labonville, Inc. also sells boots, helmets and forest safety equipment. 

I’ve driven this route in all seasons and have memories of some hairy drives in raging snowstorms, frustrating slow drives behind locals not in a hurry, and drives learning where the speed traps are the hard way.

Some places evoke memories. I remember seeing the entrance to the New Life Pentecostal Church in Wilton swathed in crime scene tape when the pastor was murdered there. Crime happens even in peaceful places.

 I remember our car breaking down in the pouring rain on the Crash Road bypass of Livermore and having no cell service. My husband ran to the nearest house to ask to use their phone to call AAA but came back, out of luck but laughing. No one answered the doorbell but he’d glimpsed someone streaking through the living room. To this day, we refer to it as “the naked guy’s house.” No matter. A phone was found at a nearby day care center and help arrived in due time.

I remember how, in our early days, we’d order building supplies in Strong (once known as the “Toothpick Capital”) on our way up and they’d put it on our tab, send the stuff to our site and bill us later. That kind of trust in strangers amazed us.

I remember buying our first woodstove for Rangeley at Northern Lights Hearth and Sports in Farmington. That baby has been a workhorse though many below-zero days and nights in the dead of winter and takes the chill off on cool mornings in other seasons.

I remember a few nerve-wracking hour-long ambulance rides from Rangeley to Farmington. Rural mountain and lake communities rely on the EMTs at North Star and they’re lifesavers.

The road remains familiar but the changes over the years have been slow but steady. It used to curve at Turner and go over a bridge by the white-steepled church. Today it’s a straight bypass. A restaurant in Jay where we stopped for a meal after our son’s prep school graduation is now the Jay Town Offices and Police Station and new wind turbines can be seen dotting the ridges between Jay and Farmington. The old Autobahn Hi-Performance garage in Jay has been renamed Bohemian Performance, making me wonder if a German owner sold to a Czech or if they’re just going for a more unconventional vibe. The G.H.Bass shoe factory was a Wilton fixture for 122 years and we used to stop at the outlet store nearby. However, at the end of the 1990s, it closed when the company opted for cheaper labor in the Caribbean. Though there are still a few Bass outlets in places like Freeport and Portland, the one on Route 4 is long gone. The old hospital north of downtown Farmington where they treated a ski injury to my knee when I was a young woman has become the Foothills Heights Apartment Community building and the new hospital is a modern and sprawling complex on the southern outskirts where the town has expanded. A brown wood building in Farmington seems denuded because it no longer has The White Buffalo Machinist sign hanging from it. I often wondered why this rare animal considered sacred to some Native Americans and featured on the state flag of Wyoming, was chosen for this local advertisement. One of the latest additions on this country road is an outlet in Turner for one of Maine’s newest businesses—Vacationland Cannabis Company.

Farmington is the last of the larger towns before the road heads into the mountains and it boasts a U. Maine campus and a festival celebrating hometown guy Chester Greenwood, inventor of earmuffs.

The road after that climbs, has some corkscrew curves, great mountain views and an Inland Fisheries and Wildlife office. After you pass through the tiny, ramshackle town ofMadrid (they pronounce it MAH-drid) and the roaring Smalls Falls, you enter what I call “the pass”and the beginning of the Rangeley Lakes National Scenic Byway.

The road climbs higher and edges the Sandy River, sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left. After you cross the Appalachian Trail and come to the highest point, there are several ponds and a small lake before seven-mile-long Rangeley Lake comes into view. 

The town of Rangeley on the lake’s eastern cove sits at over 1,600 feet elevation. It has a main street with an almost western cowboy vibe and a sign stating it’s halfway between the North Pole and the Equator. 

 The last town you pass through on the lake, Oquossoc, has several restaurants, a general store and an Outdoor Heritage Museum. 

Route 4 ends about a mile from Oquossoc at the rustic camps of Haines Landing on the shore of expansive Mooselookmeguntic Lake where you feel you’re glimpsing the untouched beauty of the early days of our continent.

I’ve spent a good chunk of my life traveling this route and agree with a billboard along the turnpike that states, “Maine. Worth a visit. Worth a lifetime.”

Kayaking to Kekova

“As one goes through life, one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.”

Katherine Hepburn

Our hotel on the Cukerbag Peninsula in Kas, Turkey was perched on a southern slope overlooking the turquoise Mediterranean Sea and the small Greek island of Meis (also called Kastellorizo). On a bright, sunny morning during our stay, my husband and I woke up early, ready for an adventure we had booked in town the day before. 

After a quick breakfast, we hiked up the hill to the road where a Xanthos Tours safari-type truck picked us up at 8:15. It stopped at several other hotels picking up 11 other passengers then we drove about 45 minutes up hills and down through valleys filled with greenhouses until we came to the coastal fishing village of Ücegiz. 

We each bought a liter of bottled water, changed into our water shoes, then listened to a sea kayak orientation - first in Turkish, and then in English.  The English was for us, a couple from the north of France, a German guy who was an industrial engineer living in Oberstdorf but originally from Stuttgart and a German woman from Berlin who was a social worker. The rest were Turkish speakers. The average age of our co-adventurers was mid-twenties, with us being the outliers by a few decades. We didn’t care and the others didn’t seem to mind either.    

When given a choice, most people chose to go in double kayaks, but we asked for singles, as did the Germans. 

Before we launched, we put our backpacks into a small boat that would follow the group. Our kayaks had 2 nice features: 1) a neoprene hatch that could hold our water bottles and camera and 2) leashes on the paddles that you could hook onto the lines on the kayak.    

A young kid, who was the assistant to our guide, took the lead. The guide took up the rear so he could keep an eye on stragglers.  At about 10 am we took off from Ücegiz and headed across the bay to the island of Kekova. The paddle took about an hour. The water was warm and the sun' s heat was eased by a warm sea breeze.  We passed many boats on the way.   Kekova is popular with glass-bottomed boat tours because of a "sunken city" near its coastline.  

When we reached a small bay on the island, we landed and our guide gave us a short history lesson on the Lycian ruins nearby. (In ancient times, Lycia was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces  of Antalya  and Mugla on the southern coast  of Turkey.) We had about half an hour to explore and take a swim. 

From there, we paddled along the island coast close to the remains of the partially sunken ancient Lycian settlement, Dolchiste. Its ruins were partly overtaken by the sea due to an earthquake that occurred during the 2nd century.

After that, we crossed the bay to the town of Kale (also known as Kaleköy or, in ancient times, Semina). It’s the only Medierranean town in Turkey that is inaccessible by road. The shore is lined with fishermen’s restaurants and “meyhanes” (Turkish tavernas). We left our kayaks in the harbor and were served lunch at one of the open-air restaurants. It included a bufe of mezes (appetizers) and an entree of chicken shish and rice.  We finished with a glass of tea.  

After lunch, we had about an hour and a half to explore the town. The two of us walked up through the cobblestone streets of the village between white stone houses and then continued on a steep path to the remains of a "kale" (castle) that crowned the hill. It was built by the Knights of St. John from Rhodes. We wandered around a Lycian necropolis with many interesting sarcophagi. 

Our guide told us that many Russian Orthodox pilgrims come to visit this region, especially the Church/Museum of St. Nicholas (the legendary Santa Claus), a little further along the coast in Demre. The saint was the Bishop of nearby Myra and his remains were buried in Demre during the 1st century AD. Though some of his bones were later stolen and reportedly taken to Bari, Italy, that whole affair remains controversial.     

When it was time to leave, the wind was up, and our guide handed out skirts for the kayaks.  We had an energetic paddle back to Ücegiz, where we arrived at about 3:45. The town had many booths where elderly women in kerchiefs were selling hand-made summer dresses.  They were triangular in shape and most were of a sheer fabric (swimsuit coverups I would guess). We had half an hour to relax in Ücegiz and we bought a couple of biras to bring back to the hotel for “5 o’clock,” then we all boarded the truck for the drive back. After it dropped us back at the hotel, we skipped dinner and crashed for the night. We were tired but it was worth it.

 The Kekova region of the Turkish Mediterranean was declared a Specially Protected Area in 1990 to protect the natural, cultural and geographic richness of Kekova Island and surrounding coast. Paddling there was not only a fun and scenic outdoor adventure, we learned something about the ancient world.  

Mexican Road Trip

“… the road is life.”

Jack Kerouac

We thought, Why not drive from Massachusetts to Mexico? After all, Paul Theroux travelled from Massachusetts through Mexico to Patagonia. Though his journey was by train, not by car, I liked the adventurous ways he got to know new places, people and cultures.

 We bought the Berkeley Guide to Mexico because the subtitle, “On the Loose, On the Cheap, Off the Beaten Path,” seemed just our style. We like the freedom of road trips that allow spontaneous exploration. Depending on who we meet, what we learn and where we end up, we can stay longer, leave earlier or change direction as we please.

 So, with adventure in mind, we left the house in Massachusetts in the care of our kids home from college for the summer and traded the keys to our newer cars for their shared older red vehicle, affectionately nicknamed Cherry. (Given the warnings we read about banditos, we figured it was less likely to get stolen.) Then we drove south to New Orleans and west to San Antonio where we purchased Mexican insurance for Cherry.

We crossed the border from Laredo, Texas into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and drove south on Route 850. This was the Nineties and it was a pleasant ride. (These days, the U.S. Department of State recommends using extreme caution due to violent activity.)  Our first stop was at a roadside restaurante for lunch. It was a simple place and much better than fast food, not that any was available on this stretch of road. 

We continued on to the city of Monterrey about 140 miles south of the Texas border. In the center, we found the Zona Rosa.. It’s a large pedestrian area for shopping popular with the locals. Shops sold lots of leather items, including cowboy boots. Straw cowboy hats were ubiquitous and inexpensive. We stretched our legs and browsed before heading south again.

For our first overnight, we headed for the UNESCO World Heritage city of Guanajuato. Built on the steep slopes of a natural ravine, you enter the city upwards via exits on the highway that tunnels beneath it. Narrow cobblestone streets wind between colorful houses and old colonial buildings, some dating from the 16th century. Clutching the Berkeley guide, we searched for a B&B it recommended and found a parking spot in a plaza nearby. A walk to the B&B and some basic Spanish revealed it was full, but the congenial woman who owned it suggested an alternative nearby. Then she walked us over there and helped us get a room! She also recommended a place to go for an evening meal and drink. Both places were good and we appreciated the hospitable welcome. 

After exploring Guanajuato, our next goal was the city of San Miguel de Allende. Its old town of 17th and 18th century buildings is another UNESCO World Heritage site, but in the early part of the 20th century, it was on the verge of becoming a ghost town due to an influenza epidemic. After its Baroque/ Neoclassical colonial structures were "discovered" by foreign artists, many moved in and began art and cultural institutes such as the Instituto Allende and the Escuela de Bellas Artes. In the 1960s, it was again discovered by counterculture figures like the writer Ken Kesey and beat poet, Neal Cassaday who fell down drunk and died there. It remains an artists’ and writers’ colony today. We visited a museum in the city center that was the artist Diego Rivera’s childhood home. Some of his work hangs there, including a sketch of his wife, folk artist Frida Kahlo. It was in San Miguel that Kahlo hosted her famous salons.

Driving into the oldest capital city in the Americas, Mexico City, was exciting. Its wide boulevards, modern skyscrapers and historic center are located on a high plateau at 7,200 feet above sea level, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over 17,000 feet. The highest, most active and most well-known volcano, Popocatépetl (called El Popo by the locals) is visible to the southeast of the city. 

Our Berkeley guide directed us to a high-rise hotel not far from the historic center and a room was available. It was a lovely facility and we were pleased to see a note on the bathroom faucet assuring guests the water was potable.  We left Cherry in its parking garage for several days so we could explore the city on foot. It has a lot of diverse offerings and we enjoyed our urban treks through neighborhoods that ran from modern to colonial. 

The highlight of the historic center is the Plaza de la Constitución known as Zócalo. It has been a gathering place for Mexicans since Aztec times and the site is just one block southwest of the Templo Mayor which, according to Aztec legend and mythology, was considered the center of the universe. One evening, we gravitated to a high-floor, open-air restaurant overlooking Zócalo with views of the Municipal Cathedral and the National Palace.

We were warned not to take the trains in Mexico City and not to visit the canals of nearby Lake Xochimilco, but we risked both because the pictures we’d seen of the flower-bedecked canal boats looked lovely and a train was the easiest way to get there. We expected a tourist trap but Xochimilco was a disappointment for other reasons; the boats looked bedraggled, like an amusement park past its prime. The trains were good though, like riding the Blue Line in Boston. They were fast and we did not get groped, mugged, kidnapped, etc. In the end, an adventurous train ride trumped a tired tourist trap. 

Overall, Mexico City was great. The only negative was the result of a poor choice of ice cream. I bought a pre-packaged pop and my husband bought a locally-made cone. I was fine but he got a mild case of turista.

Next stop was Taxco, an old, mountainous mining city southwest of Mexico City known for its silverwork. One of the decisions we had to make while there was how to proceed to the west coast safely. The main highway toward Acapulco was infamous for its banditos so we opted to head for Zihuatanejo, a town further north along the coast. That meant a trip on a smaller road though the mountains.

It was a pretty drive and we were enjoying the mountain air, the rugged landscape and the views when we came to a roadblock and all of a sudden, military guys jumped onto the road and surrounded our car. It was heart-stopping. When they told us to open the back for an inspection, we were even more worried. We didn’t take drugs but we did have a month’s supply of white Vitamin E pills for my husband’s medical volunteer study. They might be hard to explain with our basic Spanish. To our relief, they did only a cursory check and we learned they were all young kids doing their obligatory one year of military service. They sent us on our way with friendly waves. 

Zihuatanejo was a great choice. We found a small hotel terraced into the hillside overlooking the Pacific and the room had a wide deck with several hanging hammocks. Paradise! We asked the owner for a restaurant suggestion and it was a small gem of a marisquería. The red snapper cooked in parchment is still the best I’ve had. After a few days enjoying the quiet, palm-fringed ambience of the town, we pointed the car north and traveled up the coast.

Puerto Vallarta was our next stop and the Berkeley guided us to another excellent hotel. The price was reasonable and it had a magnificent open-air lobby leading right onto the sand. Puerto Vallarta was not another quiet paradise but it was a vibrant and fun place to spend some beach time. After a few days there, our next goal was to cross the Sea of Cortez to get to the Baja peninsula. The ferries left from Mazatlan, further north.

The ferry terminal in Mazatlan was jammed with people and cars, but in time, we managed to make our way to the ticket counter, only to find out there would be no available tickets until the next day. We found a hotel for the overnight and returned in the morning to more long lines for tickets and a lot of traffic congestion around the ferry entrance. We secured the tickets after a long wait and (on the advice of a local) a small bribe. Then we went back to the car, drove to a spot at the end of the ferry line and bit by bit snaked our way forward. When we finally reached the front of the line, I was ordered to get out of the car and wait in the terminal. Only the driver could enter the ferry hold. What? 

I did as I was told but I worried more as the departure time drew closer. My husband was on the upper deck waving to me, shouting that, if I didn’t make it onboard, he’d be waiting on the other side. I said I’d be okay. The terminal was filled with others but I was the only English-speaking tourist. I screwed up my Spanish language courage and asked a few if they were waiting to board. They were, so I took some comfort from that. The large ship’s warning bells for departure sounded and we were all told to line up. The military came in with drug-sniffing dogs, went down the line and we pedestrians were allowed to board at the last minute. Whew! 

It was an overnight trip across the Sea of Cortez (called the Gulf of California in the U.S.) and we slept in reclining chairs. Early in the morning, we landed in La Paz on the eastern side of the Baja peninsula. I walked off the ship and met my husband and the car as they exited the hold. We proceeded toward the gate surrounding the ferry complex, only to be stopped by the military once more while more drug-sniffing dogs checked out the car. After we passed muster, we went through the gate and drove west to Cabo San Lucas.

The position of Cabo at the tip of the peninsula  gives it a dramatic beauty highlighted by the jutting rocky sea arch, El Arco de Cabo San Lucas. The beaches and sporting opportunities are awesome but there were too many large-scale tourist developments and too many touts pushing timeshares for our liking. We enjoyed our beach time for a couple of days before beginning our ride north through the diverse inland geography of the peninsula. 

We drove through fertile agricultural valleys, rugged, forested mountain ranges that form the peninsula’s spine and a vast desert dotted with cacti and Dr. Seuss-like boojum trees. When we needed gas in the desert area, the only “station” we encountered was a house with a sign saying “gasolina.” We knocked, a man answered, nodded and filled a 5-gallon, military-style gas can from a tank not far from the house. He carried the can to our car and poured in the gas. Next stop was lunch at a food truck in a small dusty town and we had some of the best fish tacos we’ve ever tasted.

The drive up the peninsula took a couple of days and our stops were in coastal towns—drab-looking Santa Rosalía on the Gulf-facing east coast about midway up and Ensenada, a west coast Pacific port city less than two hours from the U.S. border between Tijuana and San Diego. It’s popular with expats from Canada and the U.S.

We were dreading the chaos of Tijuana but the drive became interesting before we got there. At one point, the road took a sharp right. As we came around the bend, we were stopped for “speeding” by the Federales. We were confused because we hadn’t been going fast but we pulled over. They took our papers then a strange thing happened; they didn’t issue a ticket, just a strong suggestion we buy a raffle ticket for a car. We were smart enough to realize a refusal wouldn’t be taken well so we handed over the money. As we drove away, I read the raffle ticket. It was for a car about ten years old! Nice scam.  

We didn’t dally in Tijuana and crossing the border was easy. We were back home… almost. We still had over 3,000 miles to go and many adventures to pursue along the way. After stops in places like San Diego, Las Vegas, Grand Junction and South Bend, we rolled into Massachusetts, having been on the road for close to six weeks. As expected, the kids took good care of the house and the cars and we still cherish the memories of every minute of our adventure, even the sorta scary parts.

Exploring the Writing Life in the Sunshine State

Exploring the Writing Life in the Sunshine State

“I work everywhere, but I work best here.”

—Tennessee Williams (about South Beach, Key West, Florida)

For me, Florida was never the first place to come to mind when thinking about literature. And apparently, I’m not the only one who thought that way. Comedian George Carlin summed up the general consensus: “l like Florida. Everything is in the 80's. The temperatures, the ages and the IQ's.” However, taking the advice of Ernest Hemingway ("As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.") I began to probe deeper. I’ve now learned that my new resident state has been and remains home to some iconic authors. Some were born in the Sunshine State and others were drawn to live and work here. Here are a few of them.

African-American author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston moved to Eatonville, Florida, a rural town north of Orlando, in 1894 at the age of three. She later used it as the setting for many of her stories about racial struggles. Her most notable book was Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). In 2005, Time magazine included it on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. That same year, Oprah Winfrey served as executive producer of the made-for-TV adaptation of the book. In 2011, the novel was adapted as a radio play for BBC World Drama.

Pulitzer Prize winner Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings bought an orange grove in Cross Creek near rural Hawthorne, Florida in 1928. She wrote about life among “Crackers” in the remote wilderness that was North Central Florida. Her best-known work is the Young Adult novel, The Yearling (1938). It was made into a film in 1946 and is commonly included on teen reading lists.

Lois Lenski,a Newbery medal-winning author and illustrator of picture books and children’s literature began to spend winters in Florida for the sake of her health in the early 1940s. Her book, Strawberry Girl (1945), told the story of a family from North Carolina who migrated to Florida at the turn of the twentieth century and their interactions with the region's “Cracker" culture. In 1951, she and her husband built a house at Tarpon Springs, Florida, where they spent half of each year. After his death in 1960, Lois moved permanently to Florida, continuing to write, publishing her last picture book Debbie and her Pets (1971) and her autobiography (1972).

Carl Hiassen, longtime columnist of the Miami Herald, has had at least nineteen of his novels on the New York Times bestseller lists. Like his first, Tourist Season, his books are humorous crime fiction and often feature themes of environmentalism and political corruption in his native state. He was born and raised in Plantation, Florida then a rural suburb of Fort Lauderdale.  He graduated from the University of Florida in 1974 with a degree in journalism. Among his numerous awards is a 2003 Newbery Honor for Hoot. 

Dave Barry, a nationally-syndicated Miami Herald columnist (1983-2005), won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary (1988) for "his consistently effective use of humor as a device for presenting fresh insights into serious concerns.” He has also written dozens of books, both fiction (e.g. Big Trouble which was adapted into a film in 2002), and non-fiction (e.g. Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland).

Elmore Leonard, an Edgar award-winning crime novelist, lived part-time in Palm Beach County, Florida from the 1990s till 2009. He set many of his stories there (e.g. Rum Punch)—everywhere from the glitz of Palm Beach to the backstreets grit of West Palm and the Glades. Many of his novels were made into films (e.g. Get Shorty) or were adapted for television (e.g.Justified).

The name Marjory Stoneman Douglas made the news in 2018 because of a tragic school shooting spree. But the woman the school is named after was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Florida Everglades and against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Marjory moved to Miami, Florida in 1915 and began working for the Miami Herald.  Her most influential work was the 1947 classic The Everglades: River of Grass, which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring. 

Kate DiCamillo, an author who writes for children as well as adults, was raised in Clermont, Florida which is west of Orlando. She is another University of Florida graduate. She said her book Because of Winn-Dixie was written in Minnesota during the worst winter on record while she was cold and lonely and homesick for Florida. She is one of six people to win two Newbery Medals. They recognized her novels The Tale of Despereaux and Flora & Ulysses. She was the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature appointed by the Library of Congress (2014 and 2015).

Patricia Cornwell is a contemporary American crime writer who was born in Miami, Florida. She’s known for writing a best-selling series of novels featuring the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner. Her books (e.g. Postmortem which received the 1991 Edgar Award for Best First Novel) have sold more than 100 million copies.

Tami Hoag is an American novelist best known for her work in the romance and thriller genres. More than 22 million copies of her books (e.g. Kill the Messenger) are in print. She currently lives part-time in Wellington, Florida in western Palm Beach County.

James Patterson is a prolific author of thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels who lives in Palm, Beach, Florida. His books (e.g. Along Came A Spider, first in the Alex Cross series) have sold more than 300 million copies and he was the first person to sell 1 million e-books. In November 2015, he received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation which cited him as a "passionate campaigner to make books and reading a national priority. Patterson has donated millions of dollars in grants and scholarships with the purpose of encouraging Americans of all ages to read more books. His awards include the Edgar Award, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year award, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Children's Choice Book Award for Author of the Year.

Writer and filmmaker Ransom Riggs grew up in Florida, where he attended Pine View School for the Gifted in Osprey near Sarasota. He is  best known for the book Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011) which made The New York Times Best Seller List and was adapted into the 2016 film of the same name.

Karen Russell  is an American novelist and short story writer  from Coral Gables, FlorIda near Miami. In 2009 the National Book Foundation named her a 5 under 35 honoree. Her debut novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” in 2013. 

Lauren Groff, who currently lives in Gainesville, Florida, was named by Granta Magazine as one of the Best Young American Novelists of her generation in 2017. In 2018, she received a Guggenheim fellowship in Fiction. Her fifth book, a short story collection titled Florida, was released in June 2018 and was the winner of The Story Prize for short story collections published that year.  It was also a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.

Edward Bloor, a novelist and playwright who lives in Winter Garden, Florida has won numerous awards. His novel Tangerine alone won several. It was a "Horn Book" Fanfare Book and a 1998 Edgar nominee for Best Young Adult Novel. It also made the American Library Association’s Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults in 1997.

Then there is Key West, Florida which has often attracted eminent authors to live and write there. Notables include Ernest Hemingway (Pulitzer Prize 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea  and Nobel Prize for Literature 1954), John Hersey (Pulitzer Prize 1945 for A Bell for Adano), Tennessee Williams (Pulitzer Prize 1948 for the play  A Streetcar Named Desire), and Judy Blume ( 2004 National Book Foundation medal for distinguished contribution to American letters and Time magazine’s list of the top 100 fiction books written in English since 1923 for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret).

Key West has also been a sometime home to poets like Richard Wilbur (Second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry in 1957 and 1989), Robert Frost (four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943), Elizabeth Bishop (Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress 1949-1950, Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry 1956, National Book Award winner 1970, and Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976), and Wallace Stevens (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1955).

To its credit, in 1984 Florida became the first state to establish an affiliate of The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Located at the Broward County main library in Fort Lauderdale, the Florida Center for the Book strives to bring enriching literary experiences to readers throughout Florida through various avenues, including linking networks of individuals and organizations interested in books as well as developing and presenting a wide range of literary programs.

Author John Updike said, “The Florida sun seems not much a single thing overhead but a set of klieg lights that pursue you everywhere with an even white illumination.” Perhaps that illumination is the enlightenment that has inspired so many writers.      

That Summer I Went to Bay Head

 “History is often the tale of small moments—chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence–that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane.”

Scott Anderson

I was paying for my own tuition at that time so I was pretty focused on school. As a result, my social life was at a standstill. When a friend suggested we go to the shore for the Fourth of July weekend, I hesitated. I was taking summer courses and had little extra cash for a getaway, but she was persuasive. So, I scraped up the money and that weekend that summer we went to Bay Head in Ocean County, New Jersey. It was not the Jersey Shore of Snooki and The Situation. The town of Bay Head, situated on a long, narrow barrier island that separates Barnegat Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, has one of the largest historic districts in New Jersey.  Its large ocean-front homes are architecturally significant structures— at least they were until Superstorm Sandy wreaked devastation there on October 29, 2012.

Our weekend many years before that was idyllic though. On the fourth, we spent the day sunning and swimming and we talked about evening plans. She wanted to go to a “hidden” bar known for upscale clientele and the grasshopper cocktails she had heard about and I wanted to go see the fireworks. We compromised—bar first and fireworks after. At least that was the plan.

After showering and changing at the small inn we had booked, we set out to find the bar. The only clue was that it was in the basement of a beach mansion on the sand and you entered from a narrow road called East Avenue that paralleled the Atlantic coast to the rear of the residences. We found the road and proceeded along, passing private homes with high hedges. Eventually, we heard music and laughter and peeked into a walkway between the greenery. Closer inspection revealed an entrance for “The Bluffs.” We had found our destination.

Though part of an upscale hotel, the bar room looked like a private house basement and it was filled with tanned twenty- and thirty-somethings laughing, talking and drinking. I felt nervous and awkward but my friend was outgoing. She chatted easily and I floated along in her wake. When two friendly guys drifted over and started a conversation, I found myself drawn to one of them. As the evening wore on, I was laughing a lot.

The bar closed at ten so the four of us took a walk on the sand. The conversation flowed and the time flew. Sometime after midnight, we went to a diner for something to eat then the guys drove my friend and me back to our inn. We said goodnight and he asked if he could call me. I had a good feeling about him so I gave him my number.

A week later he called and we set up the first date that we now tell our children about.

Sad to say, “The Bluffs” is no more, except preserved as a memory in a coffee table book, The Bluffs, Bay Head, New Jersey - The Story of a Hotel at the Jersey Shore by Francine LaVance Robertshaw. The well-known and beloved landmark was torn down in 1996 to make way for two big houses. It avoided destruction by Sandy but like so many other beach towns, Bay Head’s historical architecture was already being assaulted by McMansions. The original grande dame of a building will always have a place in my heart though.

The Florida Journey Continues

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.”

Joseph Campbell

We’ve reached the sixth month mark in our relocation to Florida. During that time, we’ve continued to tweak our possessions. Lampshades have been changed out for lighter colors. It’s a small detail but it does give a brighter and more “Florida” feel to our rooms. We’ve let go of more things, not always an easy task when they have memories attached. Some have gone to the trash or Goodwill and a few larger items have been sold.

We’ve had the security system checked and explained and thought we understood it. However, after a weekend away, we returned and opened the garage door, not realizing it would trigger the alarm. By the time we got into the house, I quickly tapped in the code to turn it off. Seconds later, the alarm went off again and I realized I hadn’t pressed “off” after the code. No harm, no problem, right? Not exactly. The security company called and said that because the alarm went off twice, the “authorities” were on their way. It was embarrassing but we resigned ourselves to an all-too-public “all clear.” A patrol car showed up about half an hour later. (Good thing it wasn’t an emergency.) An officer rang the doorbell and inquired, “Are you folks okay?” I explained the mishap and he said, “Okay, but next time I’ll have to charge you.” Then he laughed and said, “Just kidding!” (I got the impression false alarms aren’t unusual in these wired communities.) 

At last report, the gate entry codes for guests were all set, or so we thought. They forgot to tell us to have guests press # after the codes. We learned about the glitch when a guest had a problem entering. It may not be the final solution however, because a new management company has taken over and the gate access system may be changed. If you’re coming to visit us, we’ll try to stay updated.

Air conditioning is a new fact of life for us and we struggle learning to deal with it. As two people with different sensitivities to heat and cold, we’ve had to compromise on the set temperature. It’s often warm for me but too cool for him. Another challenge is maintenance. We had one company come in to clean and check the AC system but we felt they took advantage of our ignorance. We paid their exorbitant fee but we’ve since learned no one in the community uses them. Next time we’ll check with the neighbors for recommendations. The learning curve continues.

We have different preferences for morning workouts. He bikes or runs and follows up with a session in the hot tub. I still enjoy doing my morning pool laps but I’m now being kind to my eyes by wearing swim goggles—not a pretty sight, but they work. 

We have long enjoyed kayaking but we left our old kayaks in Maine. So, we bought ourselves new Florida kayaks for Christmas and we enjoy paddling up and down rivers and the Intercoastal Waterway with its many canals. We pass lots of boaters, paddleboarders and other kayakers and we see ospreys, wading birds, turtles and occasional alligators, which thankfully have left us alone.

There’s little yard work for us here which is a luxury after owning a Massachusetts high-maintenance property. Our work pretty much consists of picking up dead palm fronds and putting them by the curb. An unexpected upside of less yard work is that my fingernails are growing longer and stronger!

We’ve learned that different dangers lurk in the outdoors here. In Massachusetts, we feared ticks and mosquitoes and the diseases they bring. Down here, poisonous toads can be a problem, especially for pets. Haven’t seen any yet but the “Toad Busters” trucks are out and about. 

Back in our early months here, the ocean was struggling with red tide. It soon went away but was replaced for a while by man o’ war jellyfish. Most of the time, however, we are enjoying the beach. Love that salty air!

Moving from a town with no sidewalks, roads like country lanes and minimal traffic to a city with busy multi-lane roads has been an adjustment. Stop lights here last a long time while the various straight and turning lanes have their opportunities. And it has taken a while to learn what lanes I need to maneuver into in order to avoid a forced exit or forced turn when I need to go straight. One positive is they have dotted lane lines to follow when you do make a turn.

Back in Massachusetts, I enjoyed a couple of great writing groups, so I was anxious to find something similar here. It has taken a while but I now take part in two monthly groups which each offer a different type of support. One encourages me to dig deep each time by responding to a writing prompt and having it critiqued. The other group provides feedback on my work-in -progress. 

Writing reminds me of books and, I have to say, I miss the wonderful Boston Book Festival with its deep roster of well-known authors giving presentations at no cost. The Palm Beach Book Festival also has an excellent line-up of authors but it charges a hefty fee.  

Finally, you can’t beat the plethora of restaurants with fresh seafood and outdoor water views down here, especially when Happy Hour prices make them affordable.

Turkish Delight

“Land Really is the Best Art”

Andy Warhol

As we left the Antalya otogar at nine pm for an overnight bus trip away from the Turkish west coast, we were leaving behind beach town vibes and hoping what lay on the other side of the mountains lived up to the hype. Was it really a land of otherworldly enchantment? 

First, we had to get there and the night was looong—nine hours of riding but they tried to make it as comfortable as an overnighter can be.  A young guy, wearing a peach and white striped dress shirt with white collar and black bow tie, served tea, soft drinks and small packaged cakes.  Two other attendants, in dress shirts with the bus company name on the collar and long ties, kept track of passenger tickets as the bus made several stops along the way to drop off and pick up people at various otogars. 

On a mountain road around midnight, the bus had some difficulty and the driver pulled off the highway. All of the attendants got out and looked at the engine with flashlights.  No announcement was made but fifteen minutes later, they all re-boarded the bus. They gave no explanation but the bus was working fine again.

At one am, we stopped at a restaurant-cum-shopping center called Gunaydin.  They made a long announcement in Turkish which a passenger translated and said we would stop for half an hour. We got off, used the facilities and bought espresso. The break may have been the driver's dinner stop however, because it lasted an hour.  When we got going again, it was hard to sleep.  Since we had small TVs at our seats, I watched part of that movie about blue people.  We made a few more stops in the middle of the night— where, we weren't always sure.

Our welcome to Goreme in Cappadocia was worth the ride. Our bus pulled into the otogar just after sunrise and the sky was a kaleidoscope of color. Hot air balloons floated everywhere amongst the fairy chimneys and other volcanic formations that dot the town. I counted at least seventy-five! It was pretty amazing. 

We walked up a small hill to our hotel but we were way too early for check-in.  One of the owners came into the courtyard with his tea and invited us to have breakfast on the roof terrace while we waited.  We ate and gaped as dozens of balloons were still floating overhead.  It gave our meal a magical feel.  

After we got settled in our room, we set out on a two-mile hike to the Goreme Open Air Museum, a Unesco World Heritage site. It’s an area of the rock formations that once housed a Byzantine monastic settlement and has been preserved for tourists. It has a number of small cave-like chapels carved into the rocks with the frescoes still partially intact.  Unfortunately, dozens of tour buses arrived at about the same time we did.  We waited on a long, slow line to get into one of the chapels then we saw it would be the same for the others. 

 It was way too hot and way too crowded, so we left that area and stopped in a cave church that was down the hill outside the official tourist section.  Inside, art students from Verona, Italy were working on restoring the frescoes and we got to watch up close with only a few other people.  

From there, we hiked into the Red Valley (Kizil Vadasi), famous for the red-rose color of the rocks. We wandered the trails and explored other caves carved into rocks without encountering many people. 

 It was a scorching day in September, but we had water with us, so we continued hiking on to the Rose Valley (Güllüdere Vadısı), which had more walking trails and more of the interesting rock formations. 

 All in all, we must have hiked about 5 or 6 miles. We were thirsty when we got back into town and found a small outdoor place for a 'buyak  bira' (large beer).

Cappadocia is a region of extreme weather— 104-113 Fahrenheit in the summer and bitter cold with some snow in the winter. When we were there, evenings were cool and the days were hot, but not in the hundreds. Average highs for September are in the 80s, with lows in the 40s. 

When we got back to the hotel, we were tired, especially since we hadn't had much sleep on the bus the night before.  We took a siesta for a couple of hours, until we went out for dinner.  We tried one of the local specialties, which was a tomato-based stew cooked in individual pottery jars—savory and delicious. 

The next day after breakfast, we went on a minibus tour we had arranged the day before because we’d surrendered our rental car in Antalya.  Goreme seems to be the best town for enjoying the caves and the phallic fairy chimneys rising from the landscape but Cappodocia has a lot to see beyond the town. 

We walked down the hill to the tour office.  Our tour guide, Merve, was a university graduate from the Black Sea and she was well-versed in the history of Cappadocia.  Our tour was in English, but our fellow passengers were like the United Nations.  There were young couples from St Petersburg, Russia, Beijing, China, and Edinburgh, Scotland, two single American girls - one from NYC and one from DC, and a couple closer to our age, from Sydney, Australia.

The first stop was on a scenic overlook, so we got a panoramic view of Goreme and the valleys with the rock formations.  Then we drove to the Ihlara valley and hiked a couple of miles through the Melendiz River Canyon, where we visited another cave church with some frescoes.  Partway along the river, we came to a tea house that was a lovely spot.  All through the canyon, we could see caves carved into the rock where monks lived in isolation many centuries ago.  There were also many dovecotes.  The monks used the birds to send messages and also used their droppings as fertilizer for their grapes.  The hike ended at Belisirma village where we had lunch on an outdoor terrace.  It was our main meal of the day and I enjoyed the local trout.

After lunch, we drove to Selime, where we scaled the rocks to visit an ancient cave monastery set up high from the road.  There were many chambers to visit, because the monks had, not only living quarters, but also some chapels.  From the monastery, the view looked like a Star Wars landscape.  In fact, our guide told us that, despite some of the hype about Cappadocia being the site of filming for the first Star Wars movie, they hadn't been able to get the permits.  It was actually filmed in Tunisia, which has a similar landscape.  

After that, we drove to Derinkuyu to visit the largest underground city in the area.  (For many centuries, the early Christians lived in these underground cities to avoid persecution.) This one was two hundred seventy-nine feet deep and had sixteen floors, of which we were able to go down eight.  We hiked down (and back up!) a couple of hundred steps and crawled through tunnels. It was a remarkable experience seeing how people conducted their lives in the bowels of the earth.

 The final stop was at an overlook of the Pigeon Valley (so-called because of the many dovecotes in the rock formations.). We ended the tour at about five-thirty pm back at the tour office, where Merve served us glasses of apple tea.  It was a nice way to end the experience.  

Before returning to the hotel, we hiked up the road past it, to a ridge overlooking the town and valleys, to watch the sunset.  Quite a few people had the same idea, many with their cameras and tripods. We settled down on the rocks and watched the sky turn to flame and engulf the valleys in a rose-golden glow.  

After sunset, we went back to our hotel, cleaned the dust of the day off, and went to a coffee place for an evening snack and the use of their Wifi.  (Our hotel had Internet access and we could receive emails at the hotel but couldn't send them.) It was a full day and lots of fun, but it was time to pack.

 After breakfast the next day, the airport minibus shuttle picked us up at the hotel in Goreme and drove us about one hour to Kayseri, where the regional airport for Cappodocia is located.  

We flew Anadolu Jet (one of Turkey's budget airlines) to the transcontinental city of Istanbul straddling Europe and Asia, happy to have experienced the otherworldly and futuristic landscape of Cappadocia.  

Family Vacation Back in the Day

 “Memory…  is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

Oscar Wilde 

 (This memoir was written and the sketches drawn when I was about twenty-one. I called the story “The Negative Side of a Plus Vacation”. It was a plus because my family rarely took vacations and this was to be a beach getaway with a rental cottage near the ocean in Lavallette that would be a real treat. The negatives were things that seemed traumatic at the time but are the reasons I remember the trip. Needless to say, it was a time before cell phones and Internet.)

From my younger self:

It was decided that bright and early Saturday morning, the last one in July, the whole family would move bag and baggage to the shore. The idea was to spend one month relaxing, getting tanned and having a good time. This was accomplished in varying degrees and at rather sporadic intervals during our stay.

The whole caravan, after some two hours of loading our gear, consisted of my parents, three brothers, two sisters, myself, one car filled to overflowing, and one yellow sports car which had no room for any baggage, except two people and the tennis rackets.

We left as early as planned, minus a few hours lost trying to decide such weighty matters as “Would leaving the dog at a kennel be bad for its psyche?”, “Should we bring warm clothes just in case?” and “Does anyone have any overdue library books?”

We were also delayed by having to unpack unnecessary items which were put in the car by the youngest saboteurs—things such as their life savings of paper dolls and baseball cards, an entire army of toy soldiers including the fort, and a number of inflatable beach toys which had long since lost their inflatability.

Undiscouraged, we set out on the two-hour trip which we made in record time—five hours. Having spent three hours in traffic covering the last five miles of the beach road at tortoise-like non-speed, we innocently enough didn’t realize it could be a portent of things to come.

After obtaining the keys to the house at the real estate agent’s office, registering at the police station for beach tags, and shopping for food supplies, we turned to the task of unloading the load which had been loaded only hours before. The baby said, “Isn’t this fun?” It was a loaded question.

The next morning was like a new start. The sun was hot and it was a perfect beach day. For Daddy and I though, it was over much too soon. Our vacations were limited to weekends until the later part of the month. So, Sunday night, the two of us rode off in the little yellow sports car in the general direction of New York City and the nine-to-five world. Behind us, we left the others to their leisure.

Leisure? Frantic phone calls from my mother relayed the first melodrama of the season. One night early in the week, my littlest brother came down with the croup. Since there was no phone in the beach house, my mom sent a brother and sister to call a doctor from a phone booth. They only had one quarter, and since it was four am, there was no place to get any more change. Naturally, my sister called the wrong number, got told off by the man she disturbed, and came back to the house with the bad news.

Excitedly, they searched for more change until someone found a dime which had fallen into a crevice somewhere. (All the while, my little brother was breathing with difficulty, my other brother was telling my sister how stupid she was, and my mother, alarmed and alarming, was thinking out loud about the fatality of croup.)

They raced off again into the frightening, deserted, dark of the beach town and phoned again. The doctor’s wife answered, angry that they would call at such an ungodly hour, told them that the doctor was sleeping and to give my brother a lollipop to suck on. If he still had trouble breathing in the morning, she could give him an appointment.

Thankfully, my brother fell asleep in the meantime and, in the morning, help was finally obtained—but from another doctor. The problem was solved, or so it seemed until my mother tried to cash a check to pay for his prescription. After waiting for a credit okay from home via phone, the medicine was obtained.

For the rest of the week, the only thing my youngest brother required was rest. My mother got snatches of a tan in the backyard when my middle sister would watch him. My little sister complained that no one would take her to the beach. My oldest brother offered because he said he didn’t enjoy going by himself. However, my mother considered him too young to watch her. As a result, by the time the weekend came, they were all getting in each other’s hair.

 We told them not to lose hope for the family would be reunited in its hour of need for dinner on Friday night. We were and everyone relaxed. We all got in some weekend beach time bodysurfing at the ocean and crabbing in the bay.

Toward the end of the month when all eight of us could stay, my dad and I joined the others in full vacation mode. In fact, it was pretty mellow until my oldest brother and I took a spin in the little yellow sports car and the brakes failed. At least I was driving at a low speed down a side street, so we were unhurt and the car was fine. A neighbor’s split-rail fence was the lone casualty. Amends were made and that evening we enjoyed a cookout on our deck overlooking a canal from the bay, thankful for eluding disaster once again. We all crossed our fingers and toes that the rest of the vacation would be mellow. It was…  until the end of the month when we sat in traffic gridlock for much of the return trip.

The Journey of a Gift

“Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.”

Maurice Setter

A woman caresses me and who could blame her? I’m gorgeous and valuable. Even Nordstrom acknowledges this by placing me at the front of a display in the center aisle. My cloud-soft, white fibers are irresistible, thanks to the rabbit who was plucked raw, kept in a tiny cage until it was no longer useful, then suffered and died for me in China. The memory haunts me but I live in the moment and the white sequin polar bear wearing a red sequin scarf on my front cheers me. Glitz attracts money. I’m confident I’ll be someone’s holiday surprise.

The words the shopper speaks to her companion confirm my allure, “Oh Sally, my niece Julie will love this! She’ll appreciate the high-end cachet of this label too. I’m going to get it for her.”

I’m gently lifted with two hands and borne to a salesperson who snuggles me into a tissue paper-filled gift box. My fluffy heart swells with pride when I hear ka-ching. It tells me I’ll soon be loved and worn by an elegant girl.

Well, it was later rather than sooner because my presentation didn’t occur for another week. No matter; I luxuriated in my own silky texture.

 I knew gift day was imminent when I was transported in a moving vehicle. The ride was frigid but the destination was warm and filled with the aromas of spices and roasting poultry.

The scent of balsam engulfed me as I was set down under a tree and there I waited while a collection of humans ate a meal. I enjoyed my newfound warmth as I listened to the clink of cutlery and companionable chatter coming from a room nearby.

When it’s gift exchange time, I listen as others are presented and I rate people’s reactions to them. An iPad thrills someone. It isn’t as pretty as me but I give it 9 points for usefulness. Socks and flannel pajamas each get a tepid “thank you”— useful but boring, so 6 points.  A gift of jewelry elicits a kiss and an, “Oh darling, it’s beautiful!” Definitely expensive is my guess—hard to compete, so 10 points, but love (or guilt) have an unfair advantage.

Showtime! I’m lifted up and handed to the girl. As she undoes the ribbons and giftwrap, I anticipate my first look at her delighted face. When the tissue paper parts, my loft rises and I get a floaty feeling until I face a pretty young woman with her mouth stretched into a smile and eyes that don’t match. However, she holds me up and whispers, “Thank you, Aunt Sally. It’s so light and sparkly,” and my doubts are eased.

“A holiday sweater is perfect for right now, Julie.  Put it on and model it for us. Plus, I’d like to know it fits.”

I see that look in Julie’s eyes once more. She doesn’t want me. What’s the matter with her?

“I’ll be right back.” Julie carries me to her room, slips off the top she’s wearing, holds me up and talks to me, “You, my cuddly angora gift, are trashy looking. However, I’m not going to hurt Aunt Sally’s feelings so, here goes.” Julie grits her teeth, slips me over her head, slides her arms into my sleeves and regards my reflection in the mirror. Whispering, “You make me look hideous,” she touches up her slightly mussed hair and heads back to the main room. 

At this point, I want to scream, “Hideous? Just wait and you’ll see what hideous really looks like!” She couldn’t hear me anyway so I can only seethe.

When Julie rejoins the group, I’m vindicated. Choruses of, “You look lovely! Just beautiful!” and “You’ve outdone yourself, Sally!” fill the room. At least most of the group recognizes elegance.

My girl is quiet and takes a seat. Someone serves hot buttered rum and another sings a song everyone knows. Julie joins in but I go to work and soon heat is rising from her body. After several more songs, she excuses herself saying she’s tired. After a round of cheek kisses, we return to her room and I’m removed with just a bit too much force. I fear damage to my sequins. 

From my position on the floor where I was tossed, I glimpse her reflection in a large mirror. Everywhere my fibers touched is red and bumpy and I’m pleased I remembered how to cause an allergic reaction. 

The triumph of revenge is short-lived when several days later, Julie humiliates me. She donates me to Goodwill and the price tag they put on me completely underestimates my worth. Plus, they have the nerve to put me on a hanger and gravity puts stress on my fibers. I can feel parts sagging and stretching and it makes me depressed.

I soon hear scraping as hangers are slid along the rack. The space at my front opens up and I hear, “Oh my God, this is gorgeous!”

This girl with impeccable taste lifts me up and holds me in front of her body. Her friend gushes, “Love it! It’s perfect for New Year’s Eve and it’ll look great on you, Darcy.”

Darcy hugs me on the way to the checkout and says, “I can’t believe the price. It’s such a bargain.”

You have no idea, Dahling.

She strokes me and tells her friend, “I skimped on lunch all week to save these five dollars but it’s totally worth it for this. I’ve never dreamed I could afford anything so beautiful.” 

I feel an odd sensation—emotional connection. Maybe it’s karma. Darcy suffered to buy me so I’ll be nice to her. Take me home, girl! 

Relocating South

“Home is where the heart is”

Pliny the Elder 

I wasn’t born there and I left it twice for extended periods but New England was home to me for four decades. Though I gravitate toward warm, sunny places, I’ve loved it in non-summer for the skiing and snowshoeing and mountain hikes. I’ve had great friends, colleagues and writing group supporters there. I’ve even loved the often freezing cold (but exhilarating) Feaster Five on Thanksgiving morning. However, it was time to hit the life reset button.

After four decades of snow blowing and shoveling heavy snows and raking umpteen piles of beautiful autumn leaves in Massachusetts, my husband and I decided to follow the sun. We are not becoming snowbirds (technically “winter visitors). We plan to spend eight months in the warmth of the south and four months back north avoiding hurricane season in the lakes and mountains of Maine.

The process of relocation hasn’t been easy

First, we had to pare down our possessions and ready one house for sale. That took about a year. We put excess things in storage, donated items through once-a-month pickups, sold things online and had yard sales. 

The house was repaired and repainted, inside and out with sweat equity. The hardest part was removing the things we loved that evoked sweet memories. A clean slate was staged so buyers could visualize making it their own but it emphasized that it had ceased feeling like “home” to us even while we still owned it. That done, we endured several months of keeping things “perfect” for open houses and buyer visits until it was sold.

In the meantime, we found a place we loved down south. It wasn’t a rash decision. We had been scouting the area for several years and knew what we wanted. We made an offer, negotiated and signed the contract. Then we found out that we had to be approved by the Homeowners’ Association. We were a little nonplussed and wondered if any biases were being subtly employed. We’ve since learned the community is multi-age, multi ethnic, kid and dog friendly and has residents of varying sexual persuasion. So, what was the deal? I think it was a check to make sure you could pay your HOA dues—a somewhat invasive way to ensure the community doesn’t go belly up. 

Preliminaries over, we began the relocation process. The beginning involved a lot of moving boxes, bubble wrap and packing tape. Then we hired PODS to move our furniture and boxes, which we loaded ourselves with the help of friends. 

We notified the Post Office of our change of address and canceled newspaper delivery, electricity, landline telephone, internet and cable up north and set up those services at our new place. 

Address changes had to be submitted for credit cards, investments, AAA, cell company, New England doctors, AARP, pensions, health insurance, social security, EZ Pass, and services we would still need for our ski house (now winterized summer place) up north.

We had to apply for new drivers’ licenses, change our car registration and auto insurance to our new state, register to vote and find local doctors and contractors.

When the PODS with our stuff arrived and we had to unload them, a couple of our new neighbors gave us a hand and we also found some day laborers at a local resource center. The job of unpacking, hanging artwork, placing furniture and finding storage spots for things took weeks. One of the highlights has been finding a home for about fifty moving boxes, four large boxes of bubble wrap and a pile of moving blankets. Once all that was taken away, the garage space opened up.  Inside the living areas, we’ve had to decide what pieces work, what needed to be replaced with more appropriate new items and what we needed to let go of completely. It’s an ongoing process.

Moving from a single-family home to a townhouse with a homeowner’s association has brought its own learning curve. We’ve had to figure out how to dispose of packing paper and cardboard according to the community garbage and recycling rules. (We used to burn paper in a woodstove.) We had to figure out how to enter the gym when it’s locked. (Use the pool pass.) We were given remotes for the front gate but wondered how to let in guests without trekking over there. A trip to the property management office set up our gate access codes for guests and we can now click them in using our cell phones.  We had hoped to do without a landline phone to avoid robocalls but learned that we need one for the security system the association provides. (We’re still waiting to learn how to use the latter because we don’t have the code yet.) And a new climate brings new challenges. One neighbor showed us how to set up the garage door for hurricane stability. Another showed us how to open our hurricane impact windows so we can clean them. 

We are at the two-month mark in our new home and, though our first weeks here were hectic, we were spared missing beach walks because the red tide had descended. The easing of move-in tasks has thankfully coincided with a healthy ocean shore.  I am now embracing flip-flops and sandy feet in winter, loving my morning pool workouts that ease my arthritic knees and reaching out to establish new writing contacts. It hasn’t been easy but has it been worth it? Absolutely!

Rock Tour

“If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.”

Carl Perkins

“Rock” is a word of contradictions; as a noun it can mean steady or unmoving but as a verb it denotes movement. And that movement can be jerky and twisting or smooth and swaying.

NOUN:

When we think of the noun “rock,” we picture a stone mass of mineral matter. The word is derived from the Old English “rocc,” as in “stanrocc,” a stone rock or obelisk (c. 1300). 

Aside from actual stone, the word “rock” can be a metaphor. For example, the monolithic, limestone Rock of Gibraltar’s image has been used for decades by Prudential Insurance as a  symbol of the stability of the company. 

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, action star and semi-retired pro-wrestler is so-named for his rock-hard body and his steady strength fending off opponents. 

When someone can be depended upon, they are often told, “You are my rock.”

The word “rock” is also sometimes used to denote objects that are not stone but have its shape — a large diamond, crack cocaine, and, dating from 1946, ice cubes (as in having a beverage “on the rocks.”)

In U.S. slang, it can have a somewhat vulgar meaning as well. To “get one’s rocks off” means to experience an orgasm, “rocks” here being testicles, as a pun on medieval “stones.” 

Since a rock is inert, it can also be used to denote someone whose brain is inactive (“dumb as a box of rocks”) or has poor judgment (“have rocks in one’s head.”)

The noun “rock” reminds Christians of the Apostle Peter. He was Jesus’s most reliable follower, steady enough that Jesus said, “Upon this rock, I will build my church.” Of course, he used that analogy because the name Peter comes from “petros,” the Greek word for rock and/or “petrus,” the Latin equivalent.

There are a number of English words that derive from “petros.” Petroleum is rock oil. A petroglyph is a prehistoric rock carving. An object that is petrified is turned to stone and a petrified person is unable to move or think.

To my surprise, the word “parsley” comes from the Latin word petroselinum and from Greek petroselinon. It means rock celery.

VERB, MEANING 1:

One meaning of the verb “rock” is smooth swaying, like a baby’s cradle that is rocked to lull the child. Soothing songs (lullabies) often accompany the rocking. “Rock-a Bye Baby” is the American musical standard of child-rearing and various theories exist to explain the origins of the song:

One says it simply describes a mother gently rocking her baby to sleep, as if the baby were riding the treetops during a breeze then lowering the baby to her crib.

Another identifies the rhyme as the first English poem written on American soil, suggesting it dates from the 17th century and that it may have been written by an English immigrant who observed the way native-American women rocked their babies in birch-bark cradles suspended from the branches of trees, allowing the wind to rock the baby to sleep.

One links it to an 18th century legend in Derbyshire, England about the Kenny family who lived in a huge yew tree where a hollowed-out bough served as a cradle.

Yet another theory suggests that the lyrics, like the tune "Lilliburlero" it is sung to, refer to the son of King James II of England, widely believed to be someone else's child smuggled into the birthing room in order to provide a Roman Catholic heir for James. The "wind" may be that Protestant force coming from the Netherlands bringing William of Orange who would depose James. The "cradle" is the royal House of Stuart.

The most depressing theory is based on a 17th century ritual that took place after a newborn baby had died. The mother would hang the child from a basket on a branch in a tree and wait to see if it would come back to life. The line “when the bough breaks the cradle will fall” refers to the fact that the weight of a dead baby was heavy enough to break the branch.

VERB, MEANING 2:

Another meaning of “rock”, dating from the late 13th century, is “to move jerkily.” 

It took on a whole new context in 20th century America. The word was used to mean “to move with musical rhythm” in 1922 blues slang and often had sexual overtones (as in the song, “My Man Rocks Me” (with one steady roll). 

By 1948 it had come to mean “to dance to popular music with a strong beat.” A popular song then was “We’re gonna rock.”

The term “rock-n-roll” became a slang word for sex in the late 1940s and especially in the early 1950's when the number of young people under 25 in the US driving cars and trucks increased dramatically. More people were having sex in automobiles and when 2 people drove to make-out areas and got it on, the car would then rock back and forth. Thus, many people referred to having sex as rock-n-roll. Because of the sexual reference the term implied, it resulted in one of the early reasons why conservative adults back in those days disapproved of rock-n-roll as a type of main stream music. 

Rockabilly was one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating back to the early 1950s in the U.S. especially the South. It blends the sound of country western music with rhythm and blues, leading to what is considered "classic" rock and roll. Some have also described it as a blend of bluegrass with rock and roll. The 1950s were the height of the Rock ’n’ Roll era as many of the songs attest to: “Jailhouse Rock,” “Rock Around the Clock,” “Rockin’ Robin,” “Rock and Roll Waltz,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “Rock and Roll is Here to Stay.”

Rock music has stayed. It has continued to “rock on” in many variations since the early days. 

 Here are a few examples:

British invasion rock transformed the American music world, starting with the Beatles and soon followed by other British bands. The Beatles were an English rock band formed in 1960. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. They later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. 

The 60s also introduced surf music (rock associated with surf culture particularly as found in Southern California), acid or psychedelic rock (associated with the counterculture), blues rock and garage rock (sometimes called '60s punk or garage punk). 

Heavy metal rock (or simply metal) developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely with roots in the United Kingdom.  The lyrics and performance styles are sometimes associated with aggression and machismo. 

The 70s brought Southern California soft rock (or lite rock), British glam rock, hard rock and gothic rock (alternately called goth-rock or goth).

Alternative rock emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s.

Rock music in its many subgenres still dominates music today and the language of rock and roll has seeped into our culture. The Urban Dictionary defines a “Rockstar” as someone who can stay up and party all night long and then wake up and take care of business in the morning (“rock n’ roll”}.

And, since it’s November, we all need to “Rock the Vote!”

Jeep Jaunt in Mui Ne

“Sand lines my soul which is filled with the breath of the ocean."

A.D. Posey

The equivalent of sixteen dollars bought each of us a bus ticket from Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon) to the beach resort of Mui Ne, a four and a half hour trip up the Vietnamese coast. The driver instructed each person to remove shoes and provided plastic bags for us to store them for the journey. Assigned seats were reclining beds so we stretched out and had a relaxing exit through the frenetic city traffic. 

The scenery changed as we headed north, from urban streets packed with motorcycle traffic and suburban towns with flower-filled rotaries to rural areas where we began to see the first bits of elevation in the form of small peaks along the coast and in the distance to the west.  The China Sea came into view as we entered Phan Thiet, a coastal area made up of about thirty miles of towns (or wards) that have been transformed into a resort destination. We followed the beach road further north to the ward of Mui Ne with more than a hundred beach hotels, as well as restaurants, bars, shops and cafes.

Our hotel was a pleasant surprise. The bargain price of 700,000 Dong (about thirty-eight dollars a night) had made us wary, despite the photos we had seen at the agent’s office in Ho Chi Minh City, so we booked only two nights in advance in case we didn’t like it.  However, the hotel had tropical gardens, a large pool area that led to the sand and rooms with nice amenities and balconies.  Paradise! After a swim, we arranged to extend our stay to five days.

On our second day there, during one of our walks through town, we came upon a local company advertising a private Jeep tour of some of the natural wonders of the area. The price was reasonable and it sounded intriguing so we booked an afternoon tour for the next day. 

We woke to sunshine and blue skies and by afternoon it was hot, so the Jeep’s first stop was a welcome relief.  We drove to a soft, red creek known as the Fairy Stream (Suoi Tien). It is colored by the clay and limestone particles that filter in from the multi-colored rock formations at its shores. We got out, took off our shoes and walked upstream on the soft red dirt bottom. It was no more than knee-deep at its highest spots and felt pleasant and cool in the intense heat. Winding its way through bamboo forests, boulders, and the dunes behind Mui Ne, the whimsically-named stream soon opened up to a natural fairyland—a high-walled canyon of orange, white and yellow sand formations on the banks of the stream. (Water flows into the cliffs and erodes the sand blocks to create strange ever-changing shapes that ignite the imagination.) It was otherworldly and beautiful and led us to a waterfall.

After wading back downstream and returning to the Jeep, our driver took us into the center of Mui Ne’s fishing village. Fishing is at the heart of Vietnamese culture and many communities rely on it to provide income and food for their families. Offshore were many vessels in the elongated traditional wooden boat design used for deep-sea fishing. Closer to shore, the port was busy with the movement of round woven tubs, the traditional basket boats of Vietnam they call Thuyen Thung. These coracles are native to Wales but have been used in Vietnam for centuries.Some fishermen were using them as dinghies to paddle out to the wooden boats anchored offshore and carrying cargo to and from the larger vessels. Others were fishing directly from them with their nets. (It’s said that during the French Colonial Era, when a new tax on owning a boat was introduced, they were also a means of evading the tax. The fishermen argued they were not taxable because they were not boats at all, but baskets and they were successful.)

After some time spent wandering the waterfront looking at workers sorting and preparing the catches for sale, we boarded the Jeep again to see Mui Ne’s famous and enormous red and white sand dunes. We drove to the white dunes (doi cat trang) first, about 15 miles north of town.  This took us past some stunning coastal scenery.  At the dunes, I rented a hand-made plastic sled from a young boy and hiked up into the hilly desert dunes.  I coasted down several times. It was fun but very hot in the baking sun so we headed to the tree-shaded area at the bottom, got some cold drinks and set out in the Jeep again.

Next stop were the red sand dunes (doi hong) where we hiked to the top and watched the sunset. We experienced a Sahara-like remoteness far away from the built-up resort areas but it was not a solitary experience; the ridge was filled with people observing the fiery climax of the day. We hiked back down as the evening cooled.

On the ride back to the hotel, I noticed a metal plaque on the dashboard of the Jeep. It read “Property of the U.S. Army.” I wondered how it came into the Vietnamese owner’s hands. I later learned that when the U.S. evacuated from Saigon, it left behind lots of military vehicles and equipment, including not only Jeeps but also aircraft. U.S. planes still litter the field at Tan Sun Nhat airport.

Have you been somewhere on holiday and seen remnants of war?

Following the Remains of Great British Writers

“We carry the lives we’ve imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost.”

Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk

Discovering the tombs of so many famous writers and poets in Westminster Abbey made quite an impression on me during my first visit to London, England as a young woman. There were so many names I recognized because I had studied their poems and read their books going back as far as elementary school.  The ones I mention below are each identified by one piece of writing but each of them produced many more literary works of note.

I’ve since learned that the Abbey’s South Transept (“Poets’ Corner”) started with the burial of “The Canterbury Tales” London poet Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400 as he had apartments in the Abbey where he was employed as master of the King's Works. He is considered to be the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages—“Time and tide wait for no man.”

Other British-born poets were given a Poets’ Corner honor later. Among others, they included the following:

 Londoner Robert Browning was interred in 1889 (“Love Among the Ruins”). Browning lived with his poet wife Elizabeth Barrett in Italy and both died there—“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” Casa Guidi in Piazza San Felice, Florence, Italy, where Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning once inhabited the piano nobile apartment, is now a writer's house museum.

 Alfred Lord Tennyson (“Charge of the Light Brigade”), a Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland from Lincolnshire arrived in 1892 —“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” A Tennyson Museum is at Farringford House, Tennyson's home of 40 years on the Isle of Wight.

 John Masefield (“I must go down to the seas again…”), another Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from Ledbury in Herefordshire joined them in 1967—“In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.”

The Poets ‘Corner honor was extended to a few British writers of other genres:

Samuel Johnson (“A Dictionary of the English Language”) from Litchfield city in Staffordshire—“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” was interred in 1784. The Samuel Johnson Museum Home is in the center of Litchfield.

The Victorian novelist Charles Dickens (“A Tale of Two Cities”) from the port city of Portsmouth in Hampshire arrived in 1870 —“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.” The Charles Dickens Museum is in one of his former homes on Doughty Street in London.

Rudyard Kipling (“The Jungle Book”) who was born in India (which inspired much of his work) to British parents—“He travels the fastest who travels alone” joined them in 1936. One home of Rudyard Kipling, Bateman’s, is a large estate now under the jurisdiction of the National Trust. It can be visited at Bateman’s Lane, Burwash, East Sussex. There is also a Kipling estate in the U.S. (where he wrote The Jungle Books and Captains Courageous) at Scott Farm Orchard in Dummerston, Vermont.

This one small area of the massive Abbey called “Poet’s Corner” overwhelms one with its gathering of hundreds of years of literary talent.

Many other writers, like the following, are memorialized in the Abbey but are buried elsewhere in England:

Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire is where William Shakespeare (“Hamlet”) was born and he was buried there in 1616. He is widely regarded as both the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist—“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum is on Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon. 

London-born John Milton (“Paradise Lost) was a poet and also a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England and was buried in 1674 in St. Giles' Church without Cripplegate, London—“They also serve who only stand and wait.” Milton’s Cottage, one of his former homes, is open as a museum at 21 Deanway, Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire.

Jane Austen (“Pride and Prejudice”) is from Hampshire and was buried in 1817 in Winchester Cathedral there. Her novels interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century—“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” Jane Austen's House Museum is on Winchester Road, Chawton Alton, Hampshire.

Though Lord Byron (“She Walks in Beauty”) was born in London and died of a fever in Greece in 1824 while fighting in the Greek War of Independence, he is buried at the Church of Saint Mary Magdalen in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. (The Greeks mourned him deeply and some say his heart is buried at Missalongi there. They sent the rest of his remains to England to be buried at Westminster Abbey but the Abbey refused on the grounds of “questionable morality.”) He did rate a memorial though—“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire is the ancestral home of Lord Byron and now houses a museum containing Byron memorabilia.

William Blake, a poet of the Romantic Age, (Tyger! Tyger! burning bright…”) was laid to rest at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, London in 1827. He is also considered one of Britain’s greatest painters and printmakers—“To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.” There is a Blake Room at the Tate Museum in London.

The Brontë sisters, whose novels have become classics of English literature, were born in West Yorkshire and Charlotte (“Jane Eyre”) and Emily (“Wuthering Heights”) were buried there in the village of Haworth (Emily in 1848—“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” and Charlotte in 1855—“Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves”). Their sister Anne (“The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”) wrote under the pen name Acton Bell and was buried in 1849 in North Yorkshire in the village of Scarborough —“But he that dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose.” The Brontë Parsonage Museum is on Church Street in Haworth.

William Wordsworth, another Romantic poet, (“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”) is from Cumbria in the Lake District and was buried in 1850 at St. Oswald Churchyard in the town of Grasmere there—“The child is the father of the man.” His home, Dove Cottage, is also located in Grasmere and is now the William Wordsworth Museum.

“The Mill on the Floss” author George Eliot (pen name of Mary Anne Evans) from the town of Nuneaton in Warwickshire was buried in 1880 at Highgate Cemetery, London.—“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” Though one of the leading writers of the Victorian Era, Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey because of her denial of the Christian faith and her "irregular" though monogamous life with George Henry Lewes. A George Eliot Collection is at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry. The Nuneaton Museum also has a permanent display on their local writer George Eliot.

American-born T.S. Eliot (“The Wasteland”) from Missouri is memorialized in the Abbey as well, perhaps because he was a Nobel Prize winner who eventually became a British citizen—“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” T. S. Eliot is perhaps best known for his clever verse made popular in the musical, “Cats!” He died in London in 1965 and the Dean of Westminster offered burial in the Abbey but Thomas had left other instructions; his ashes were buried at St Michael's Church, East Coker, Somerset, the village from which his ancestor had set out for America in the 1660s. The T.S. Eliot House at 4446 Westminster Place, St. Louis, Missouri is a City Landmark.

 Though C. S. Lewis (“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities and was buried in 1963 in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford—"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” C.S. Lewis’s home, The Kilns, Headington, Oxford, is now a study center and can be visited.

Like Lord Byron, other British writers who are memorialized at the Abbey, traveled widely in Europe and died in foreign countries but some, like the following, are buried abroad: 

Piazza di Spagna, 26, a house at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy is where the Romantic poet and Londoner John Keats (“Ode to a Grecian Urn”) died of tuberculosis at the age of 26 —“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” His tombstone in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery reads: "This Grave contains all that was Mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart, at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone - Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water, Feb 24th 1821". 

Sussex-born Percy Bysshe Shelley (“To a Skylark”) was a friend of both Byron and Keats and spent quite a bit of time in Italy.  Less than a month before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley drowned in 1822 in a sudden storm on the Gulf of Spezia while returning from Livorno to Lerici in his sailing boat. The boat was named “Don Juan”, a nod to Byron and he died with a small book of Keats' poetry in his pocket. Shelley's body was washed ashore and later, in keeping with quarantine regulations, was cremated on the beach near Viareggio. Like Keats, he is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome—“O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

The apartment that Keats stayed in while in Rome has become a small museum devoted to his life and the life and works of other Romantics, such as Percy Bysshe-Shelley and Lord Byron. There are thousands of Romantic texts in the woodworked and glass cabinets along the wall. Keats's death mask and a few other relics from the poet's life are on display. 

Italy has another small museum related to a British writer that is based on pure storytelling. Shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet” takes place in Verona and the story is fiction—“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” However, the ever-resourceful and willing-to-bend-the-truth-for-tourism Italians have designated a building there as “Casa di Giulietta” fronted by a balcony said to have inspired Shakespeare. They even have a person on staff that answers advice-to-the-lovelorn letters and she signs them “Juliet.”

Finally, two British expat brothers and authors, Gerald and Lawrence Durrell, were not memorialized at the Abbey but Lawrence was short-listed for the Nobel Prize and Gerald was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) honor. Born in India of British parents, they spent much of their lives abroad. The Durrells’ White House on the Bay of Kalami in Corfu is open on exclusive days for one hour as something like a Durrell museum.

Lawrence Durrell (“The Alexandria Quartet”)—“A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants” was caught in Corfu at the outbreak of World War II and escaped to Crete with his wife and daughter. Then he went on to Egypt, serving in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as in Belgrade, Yugoslavia as a British press officer throughout the war. After that, he lived and worked in Rhodes, Greece and Cyprus for many years. Villa Cleobolus, his kiosk-like home in Rhodes New Town, still stands in the Turkish graveyard near the harbor. Lawrence spent his last years in the south of France and was buried in 1990 on the grounds of his home in Sommieres.

Gerald Durrell (“My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives”) left Corfu with some of his family at the outbreak of World War II and returned to England. He was not only an author but also a British naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist and television presenter. He founded what is now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey. He died in 1995 and his ashes are buried at Jersey Zoo—“Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing-not unlike friends and wives.”

If you’ve read this far, you may very well say, “But she’s omitted the most important one!” Let me know which British author’s work, memorial or museum has inspired you.

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Trip to a Hammam

“If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.”

Doctor Seuss

We stepped off the Easyjet plane in Marrakech carrying a thousand tiny bars of soap in our luggage. We weren’t being clean freaks; they were for our friends in the Peace Corps who needed them for a health clinic in a Moroccan hill town. We were looking forward to visiting that town and to meeting their Moroccan host family.

After an overnight stay in a Marrakech ryad (hotel) and a morning spent wandering the medina, we took a taxi to the bus station then took a three-hour bus ride to the coastal town of Essaouira where we met the host family—Hossein, Khadijah and their son. Hossein, the husband and father, was warm and welcoming and spoke English well. The child, an alert and active eight year old, liked TV and Spiderman, standing on his head and drawing pictures. Khadijah, his mom. spoke only a little English but communicated on a human level in a very nice way. It was she who provided two very memorable experiences for me.

  At the time, Khadijah was attending culinary school and the first experience was the meal she prepared for us. It started traditionally with mint tea and cookies, nuts, and sweets.  After that, she served a delicious shrimp soup, followed by fresh fish from the local pier cooked with olives, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, parsley and lemon. The exquisite presentation of the fish platter showed her skills and portended her future success as an entrepreneur offering Moroccan cooking classes for tourists. Khadijah’s Kusina now gets 5 star reviews on Facebook.

The second experience resulted from a conversation during that meal. I mentioned that I was interested in visiting a hammam (a traditional bathing facility) while in Morocco. Khadijah said that the ones offered for tourists were overpriced and she offered to take my Peace Corps friend Mary and me to her local hammam and to teach us the ritual. I was excited to have the opportunity and we agreed to meet her the next afternoon. She instructed us to bring towels, a scrubbing mitt and shampoo.

Since we had a few hours to kill before our rendezvous, we spent the next morning exploring. First stop was the Essaouira fish pier where a group of French female artists were sketching the bright blue boats. Afterwards, we walked the town ramparts then chatted with some local teenagers who had set up an information booth in the nearby square for International HIV-Aids testing day. Lunch was at a very cool restaurant where we sat on couches around a low table in a cave-like alcove and then we set off for our hammam experience.

Mary took me to a hanut (small store) to buy a scrubbing mitt and we met up with Khadijah who brought her own bucket full of goodies and guided us into a petit taxi.  It took us to her favorite hammam, a short drive from the town center.  

Once there, we entered the women’s part of the facility into a beautiful floor-to-ceiling tiled room that had blue and white padded benches.  We stripped down and checked our clothes at a counter.  They gave us each a big bucket and some plastic sandals.  Clutching our towels and buckets, we entered a series of steam-heated tiled rooms. They were filled with grandmas, middle-aged women and young girls in various stages of their bathing rituals, and for many of them it was the one place they could remove their headscarves. Khadijah found us each a small low-to-the-ground stool in one of the rooms and showed us where to fill our buckets with a mixture of cold and hot water. She gave us each a small packet of olive oil liquid soap and instructed us to massage it into the skin all over our bodies.  

The next step was called gommage.  You take a scrubbing mitt and rub that on your skin.  I started in on my arm and then Khadijah wasn't satisfied.  She took over and, rubbing harder, sloughed off lots of dead skin.  It was amazing. I dumped buckets of water on me to rinse off.  

The next instruction was to go to the relaxation room and lie down on one of the tables. I did as instructed and enjoyed the tranquility for a while. 

 Afterwards, I returned to the bathing area to shampoo my hair and soap up my body with a nylon loofah-type thing that Khadijah provided and then I rinsed with more buckets of water poured over my head and body. 

Next, Khadijah took out some small square tablets that looked like bath salts or bouillon cubes and dissolved them in water to make a paste which she smeared over her face and body and invited me to do the same.  After a final rinse, we were all done and I was feeling wonderful!  

One bonus of this experience was that it cost us the equivalent of about $3.00 apiece, including the taxi!

Have you had a local experience in another country that exceeded expectations?

A Trip of the Tongue

                    “Meow means woof in cat.”

                                                                George Carlin

I have moved around quite a bit during my life, so I’ve experienced firsthand the challenges posed by language differences and I’m not just talking about understanding languages that are not English. 

It took a few years of working and socializing with British people to realize that every time they called something I did “brilliant,” they weren’t referring to my intellect. I had a British student who referred to the juice packs in her lunch box as “Ribena.” It took me awhile to realize it was a brand name in the U.K., not a pet name or a non-English word. I never heard my British friends use the term “Bob’s your uncle” but when it popped up in British mystery novels, I looked it up. It means “your success is guaranteed” and relates to some long ago Prime Minister’s use of favoritism appointing his nephew to a political position. It’s a good example of needing to know the local context to understand an expression. If I said, “Bob’s your uncle,” I would merely be telling my American kids about my brother. 

And I didn’t have to cross the pond to be bewildered either. Growing up in New York, I caught lightning bugs on summer nights and quenched my thirst at the park by drinking from a water fountain. I also drank treats like sodas, egg creams and shakes, ate heroes, and enjoyed ice cream in Dixie cups or in cones with sprinkles. 

When I moved to Massachusetts, I had to translate. Kids caught fireflies and drank water from bubblers. Soda was tonic but the tonic of gin and tonics was tonic water and gin was bought at packies, not liquor stores. Shakes were frappes, heroes were grinders and nobody seemed to know what an egg cream drink was. The ice cream cups were called Hoodsies and cones didn’t have sprinkles; they had jimmies.

 As a young adult in New York, I went into “The City” (Manhattan), rode the subway, drove around traffic circles, and traveled uptown, downtown or crosstown. In Massachusetts one goes into “Town” (Boston) to ride the T. One drives around rotaries and the streets are alphabetical or seem to go willy-nilly around town. For beach vacations, New Yorkers go “down the shore.” In Massachusetts, people go “down the cape” or “up the coast.” 

I live part-time in Maine and English there has quirks of its own. I described one example in my book, Maine Roots Run Deep, when a teenager from away meets an old man who’s a native:

“… ‘Before we get stahted, we need somethin’ ta quench ahr thirst. A friend was up ta Bangor t’other day and got me some Moxie. Int’rested?’

‘What’s Moxie?’

‘Best soft drink in the world.’

… I’m curious, so I say, ‘I’ll try some Moxie.’

‘Young lady, you are in for a true Maine experience. Moxie comin’ right up!’

… The old man looks at me, screws up his eyes, and says… 'You’re not only kind, ya have moxie.’

I’m confused. ‘Well, yes, you gave me a Moxie to drink.’

‘I mean the other kind of moxie. Moxie the drink is spirited, so a person with spirit or pluck or gumption, for that matter, is said ta have moxie.’ He gets a mischievous smile on his face and adds, ‘Course, the naysayers claim it takes courage ta drink that soda, so ‘moxie’ can also mean courage.’”

Traveling out west has taught me new meanings for some words. In New England, “The People’s Republic” refers to liberal-leaning Cambridge, Massachusetts, but in Colorado it refers to Boulder, a town whose inhabitants are often referred to as “granolas.” On the east coast, a “gaper” is a person who stares, but in western ski towns, a gaper is a skier or snowboarder who is clueless. Hikers in New England try to bag 4,000 footers but out west they climb 14ers.  The western U.S. also introduces new words and a visitor soon wonders about the differences between plateaus, mesas and buttes and whether or not a wash, an arroyo and a gulch are the same.

The optimal way to learn languages other than English is to not only learn the words but to understand their idioms. Literal translation of a foreign idiom doesn’t explain the meaning. Likewise, literal translations of our expressions can lead to some confusion. For example, when my husband wanted to tell an Italian colleague that he was knowledgeable and competent, he said he was “sulla palla” (literally “on the ball”). The reaction was a puzzled expression until it was explained. Oddly, the Italian expression should have been "in gamba" which literally means “in the leg.” Neither the English nor the Italian idioms make much sense to me.

“Break a leg,” an English expression for good luck, would be met with a wince by many Italians. Their expression for good luck, “In bocca al lupo” (in the wolf’s mouth) is equally perplexing to English speakers.

I explored the quest for English-Italian communication in my book, Upheavals at Cuma in an encounter between two teens:

“… I feel a light touch on my arm and turn around. He puts his finger to his lips as if to say, ‘Don’t tell anyone’ and hands me the ‘pesca.’ I offer the two coins but he refuses. He points first to me and then to himself and asks, ‘Amici?’

At this point, I’m freaked and I try to give the ‘pesca’ back. All I know is that ‘amo’ means love, and I don’t even know this kid!

His frown returns and he runs his fingers through his hair as if he’s frustrated. Then his large brown eyes light up in sudden recognition. ‘Amici…friends, no?’

Friends…that’s okay.”

In German, idioms are sometimes related to their food. For instance, someone who got lucky “had a pig” (Schwein gehabt). If they don’t care and think “it’s all the same to me,” they say “Das ist mir Wurst” (It’s a sausage to me). 

When we fall in love with someone, we say we are “head over heels” but the Germans are “Hals über Kopf” (throat over head). Theirs is more of a tossup of the usual order. 

If a German tells you they have “Die Daumen drücken” (thumbs pressed), it’s the same as our “fingers crossed. When we cross our fingers, the thumb does press against them, so it a difference of where a culture focuses. 

Cross-cultural communication seems to be a theme in my books and I explore it again between a German and American teen in White Flutters in Munich:

“… ‘I wonder if German fish speak the same language as American… or Greek… or Russian fish. Don’t you sometimes wish that people had a universal language and understanding?’

‘Du bist sehr tief.’

‘See? That’s what I mean… no universal understanding! I have no idea what you just said. It’s exasperating!’

‘I don’t understand this exasperating but if you had just asked me, I would have translated. I said, you are very deep, meaning…’

'I know what it means… and for your information, exasperating means irritating.’ Then, noticing the look of incomprehension on his face, I add, ‘You know… upsetting…’

‘Ah zoh…’

‘The fact that even you, with your good English skills, can’t understand everything I say, emphasizes my point. As for me, I’m pathetic. I’m living in a country where I can’t understand much more than food and hotel words!’

‘You know what I think? I think that Freundschaft… friendship… is a universal language. We can use it to help one another understand German and English, no?’”

I think it’s important to learn the language of the places you spend time in but one thing I’ve learned is that real universal communication is not verbal. The things all people understand are smiles, tears, laughter, music, art, and body language. Combining all of those with words is ideal.

Have you had to communicate in an unusual way? 

Exploring Islands in the South China Sea

“She paints the view from the veranda of our house, the  sweeping feathery boughs of flame of the forest trees, the sea beyond with junks like wind-borne butterflies. Further out, the receding headlands of Lamma Island, each a paler shade of grey-blue, disappearing into the misty mirage of ancient ink and brush scrolls.”  

Alice Greenway, White Ghost Girls
 

In one small area of the South China Sea, Hong Kong is the most famous island of the Wanshan Archipelago but far from the only one. There are two hundred and sixty-plus outlying islands and some of these are accessible from Hong Kong by ferry.

One of my favorite trips was to Lamma Island. Buildings higher than three stories are prohibited there and the only automobiles are diminutive fire trucks, ambulances, and open-back construction vehicles. The community's means of transport is either by foot or by bicycle. We took a catamaran ferry to the small fishing village of Sok Kwu Wan on Lamma. From the town, we hiked a circular path through green hills unspoiled by development. In the beginning we skirted the coastline past two sandy beaches, Mo Tat Wan and Tung O Wan. This part of the hike took us through tropical foliage like banana trees and past the ruins of the homes of early settlers of the island. It had some ups and downs but was relatively easy. From Tung O Wan, we headed inland and started to climb. We encountered a lot of steps. The high point (Shan Tei Tong) is the tallest mountain in Lamma at 1,158 feet above sea level and it brought us to a pagoda-like pavilion with an expansive view. It’s here that we met a German girl who told us of her recent travels and made us put the multi-colored sands of Mongolia on our bucket list. As the author Lawrence Durrell said, “But that is what islands are for; they are places where different destinies can meet and intersect in the full isolation of time.”

 The downhill took us past many burial places in bamboo forests and brought us back to Sok Kwu Wan where we had a meal at one of the many fish restaurants on the waterfront. The whole trek took us about 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Another ferry ride from Hong Kong took us to the dumbbell-shaped island of Cheung Chau. About an hour away from Hong Kong, it’s a fishermen's island and former pirate haven with no high rises, no cars, but lots of bikes. The village harbor area on the west side has many alleyways with small shops and fish restaurants and the east side has a nice sand beach, Tung Wan, with shark nets for protection. We took another swim in the sea and found a bunch of beach glass on the shore. (Lee Lai Shan, a windsurfer from Cheung Chau, won Hong Kong's first and last Olympic gold medal in 1996, the last year before Hong Kong began competing as part of China.) After leaving the beach, we visited the Pak Tai Temple. Pak Tai is the island's patron deity and was credited with saving islanders from the plague in the 19th century.

Not all of the islands require a ferry ride. Lantau Island is connected by train to Hong Kong Island. This is mainly because Lantau is home to both Hong Kong International Airport and Hong Kong Disney. It’s not all commercial though. One day we took the train to Tung Chung on Lantau where we got on a cable car to take us to Ngong Ping, site of the112 ft. high, bronze Tian Tan Buddha as well as the Buddhist Po Lin monastery. The 4-mile, 25-minute cable car ride is breathtaking as it crosses over a bay and then over 3 steep peaks before landing in Ngong Ping village. A walk through the village brings you to the 250 steps leading up to the Tian Tan Buddha. At the top, the view is expansive and the terrace is decorated with large statues of Buddhist saints (Bodhisattvas). 

All of these excursions were counterpoints to the urban experience of Hong Kong Island’s north shore, which is fascinating in its own way. It has morphed from the place of miniature skyscrapers and a sprinkling of white bungalows and luxury flats near the peak as depicted in Richard Mason’s book, The World of Suzie Wong, into a cosmopolitan behemoth. It now has more buildings over fourteen floors than any other city in the world and puts on a daily light and sound show over Victoria Harbor that is dazzling. 

  However, you can still find your Zen on Hong Kong Island. Forty percent of the territory is country and nature reserve and the south side is home to wooded areas and beautiful beaches. 

The south can be reached by taking a train from Hong Kong’s Central Station to Shau Kei Wan and transferring to a bus. The bus ride is over narrow, winding, mountainous, coastal roads with spectacular views. Shek O (rocky bay), on a peninsula in the southeast, is a pretty village with some beautiful villas, no high rises, and an excellent sandy beach for swimming.

West from Shek O along the south shore is the town of Stanley. It was named for Lord Stanley, British Colonial Secretary in 1842 when Hong Kong was ceded to the United Kingdom. There’s no direct bus from Shek O to Stanley but taxis are both available and reasonable. Stanley has a decided Mediterranean feel with a lovely harbor, waterfront restaurants, and nice beaches. It also has a thriving market.

From Stanley, you can take a bus all the way along the south and west coasts and back to Central on the north shore. It’s another ride with great coastal views taking you through other beach towns like Repulse Bay, and Deepwater Bay. (Forbes calls the latter the "wealthiest neighborhood on earth”.)

Interesting features of some architecture along this road are the giant holes you see in high rise buildings. These “dragon gates” are deliberate and part of a belief system called feng shui. They allow the dragons that tradition says lie under the hills, to fly from the mountains to the water. Blocking the dragon's path is thought to bring misfortune.

Hong Kong prompted Paul Theroux, author of Kowloon Tong, to say, “When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.”

Is there an island somewhere that has inspired a story for you?