In Pursuit Of a Vaccine

“Our vaccine scheduling system is currently live, but full with other customers.”

Florida COVID vaccine at Publix Pharmacy website, 6:00 AM

On December 29, 2020, the Florida Department of Health announced that COVID vaccine appointments for seniors could be made by phone. The hotline number was quickly overwhelmed and it crashed due to high call volume and inadequate infrastructure. In Palm Beach County, less than 200 people made it through the line. Two of my friends were lucky.

The next announcement on January 2 invited seniors to request an appointment through a specific health department email. I sent mine that day but got no appointment.

On January 18, I was happy for my husband who received his first dose. His status as a veteran made him eligible.

 On January 19, DOH-Palm Beach deactivated the email address to focus on scheduling vaccine appointments, based on vaccine availability, for those on the waitlist. They had received more than 200,000 requests. I’m on the waitlist. Still.

 Also, on January 19, Governor DeSantis announced that Publix supermarkets would be distributing the vaccine, and appointments could be made online on certain days. The website went live for 14 counties on Wednesday, January 20 and I logged into the site at 5:45am. Palm Beach County was fully booked by 7:16am and all counties by 7:25am. I had no luck.

I tried the Publix site again on Friday, January 22 but went online at 4:45am and waited. At 6:01am, it went live and claimed many people were ahead of me. By 7:45am, all counties were fully booked except those at least 3 hours away. Two roundtrips of at least 6 hours for each of the two doses doesn’t appeal, even if I could get an appointment. Anyway, no luck again.

On January 25, I learned Broward County had been distributing vaccine at sites like Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale. I called their hotline and left my information and a request for an appointment. I also called the Miami- Dade hotline because they had been administering shots at places like Hard Rock Stadium. The message said they were fully booked. The Martin County hotline message stated their mailbox was full.

 The next opportunity was on Wednesday, January 27. That time I set my laptop sleep mode to “Never” and logged into the Publix site the night before. I figured it should bump me to the front of the line. Not so. I got up at 5am, stared at the screen and waited. When it went live at 6am, I got the same message—many people were ahead of me. Argh! They had added two more counties and two new features this time though. A 60-second countdown clock gave a visual heads-up each time the site was automatically refreshed, and each county showed the available number of vaccines that day with a countdown as they were taken. Palm Beach County started with over 9,500. They were all gone by 7:05am. Nearby counties I would be willing to drive to were fully booked even earlier. Still without an appointment, I was frustrated. I wasn’t alone. News reports had people comparing the system to Whack-A-Mole and The Hunger Games.

 On January 28, I was able to leave my information and a request for an appointment with Miami-Dade.

I tried the same early setup for the Publix site on Friday, January 29. Palm Beach County started with 9,434 available vaccines. By 6:30am, almost 2,000 were taken and, just after sunrise at 7:10am, the “fully booked” message appeared. Surrounding counties were booked by 7:06, and I was still without an appointment.

 On Saturday, January 30, the Florida COVID 19 site offered pre-registration for appointments. I filled out the form and we’ll see what happens.

 In the meanwhile, I’m planning to get up early on Wednesday, February, 3 for the next scheduling event on the Publix site. It’s a crazy annoying system even for someone like me who’s worked with computers since the 1980’s, but it seems almost perverse to have no other option for seniors without computer access or skills and those in impoverished communities without a nearby Publix. It shuts them off from a life-saving opportunity and leaves them at risk. 

 Florida isn’t the only state with problems obtaining the COVID vaccine. As of January 31, The New York Times reported just 7.2% of over-300,000,000 Americans have gotten at least the first dose and only 1.6% have been fully vaccinated. We need a fully-funded national program to get things rolling! 

Crossing the Country

“Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere.”

Orhan Pamuk

I’ve crisscrossed the United States many times by air, but I’ve also made several round-trip road journeys over the years with my husband. All that riding in the car can be mind-numbing, but I maintained sanity by observing and recording random things I saw and heard along the way. The trips were wonderful opportunities to see the mundane but also to enjoy wondrous sights like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and the Beartooth Highway.

 Sometime in the late 1990s, our road trip was from Massachusetts to San Francisco. We planned to board our aging dog at the kennel in our town, as we usually did when we traveled. However, they advised getting a house sitter due to her age or take her with us. We couldn’t imagine her traversing the hilly streets in SF and we didn’t know a house sitter, so we called our son, whom we planned to visit on the way, at his university in Colorado. He made some inquiries and got her a place at a boarding facility run by the vet school. Running free on their enclosed grounds at the foothills of the Rockies was good medicine and the vet students pampered her. 

 A trip in September 2005 was from Massachusetts to Breckenridge, Colorado. In Cleveland, Ohio, I learned some good news—the Cleveland Indians lost to the White Sox 3-1 assuring a wild card slot for our Boston Red Sox, and we had two negative experiences—a room-change request at an inn due to a foul smell and awful Italian food at a chain restaurant. How could they ruin Italian? 

In Iowa, Super Unleaded gas was cheaper than regular unleaded. (They said it had something to do with helping out the farmers who convert grain to ethanol.) On an Iowan radio station, I heard an ad about joining the "Presidential Prayer Team." I had never heard of it but some research revealed it was founded by retired Navy Captain Bill Hunter. He figured Bush and the country would need a lot of prayer after the contentious Bush-Gore election in 2000. With the help of a pastor friend and an advertising agency, they had launched a non-partisan Internet ministry a week after the September 11th attacks in 2001. The result was millions of team members still praying for our country. 

 Further west in Nebraska, high rises were concrete grain storage elevators, and a popular radio show in Lincoln had a lot of politically incorrect guy humor.

 In Breckenridge, Colorado, I hiked lots of trails with my husband and kids—Sunbeam, Moonstone, Barney Ford, & Juniata on the first day then Spruce Creek and Mohawk Lake trails on the second day. The fall foliage was past peak, but some aspens still had their yellow coin-shaped leaves. On the third day, we hiked the Baker's tank trail, watched the Red Sox lose the ALDS to the White Sox, and learned that Pakistan, India, & Afghanistan had a 7.7 Earthquake. On the fourth day, we hiked the Illinois Creek and Blue river trails and I noticed lodgepole pines have needles that look like green bottle brushes.

 In northern Colorado on the return trip, a radio show was pushing Hyaluronic Acid, a "youthful molecule" for anti-aging. The ad claimed the village of Yuzurihara in Japan has 80 & and 90-year-olds who are youthful looking due to high levels of HA. 

Back in Nebraska again, I heard obituaries on the radio in Ogalala and saw a sign: "Nebraska - the good life - home of Arbor Day.” I learned that what looks like a bridge in the distance in Nebraska is usually a very long rolling sprinkler.

 A lot of Iowa farms have round metal structures with pointy roofs. They look like fat rockets. 

 At the Illinois Welcome Center near Joliet, we reminisced about another time there walking our dog on the bluff overlooking the Des Plaines River.

 I saw many vineyards in New York State, and in Utica I listened to an interesting analysis of Bush's government & the Iraq War by Seymour Hirsch, author of Chain of Command & contributor to the New Yorker. Near Schenectady, I picked up WBZ radio. (Hallo Boston!)

 The Berkshires in Massachusetts had colorful foliage, and The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge had huge pumpkins flanking the main entrance. We ran into heavy fog starting near Blandford and the radio reported Logan wasn’t functioning, so there were major flight delays.

 Another ride in September 2007 was to Belgrade, Montana and back to Massachusetts. Each trip teaches me something new. Here’s what I learned that time:

The highest elevation on the Mass Pike is 1,724 feet in the town of Becket.

Minnesota is big into wind energy!

South Dakota has the world’s largest bullhead sculpture and the state also had a good yield of corn in 2007. (“Hay,” by the way, is a generic term for dried grasses, flowers, and plants used as off-season food for animals and is usually rye, oats, or alfalfa.

Gutson Borglum started carving Mt. Rushmore at age 60!

For the first time, I realized cell phone clocks are like the atomic clocks – they change time zones automatically!

The Black Hills are called that because of the way their evergreen-covered sides look from a distance.

Cowboys as young as 10 years old risked their lives to replace the vanishing buffalo herds in Wyoming by bringing longhorn cattle from Texas.

A Montana “loafing shed” is a pasture shelter for horses.

On the return trip, I saw a perfect “butte” in Laurel, Montana. I recognized the difference between a butte, mesa, and plateau thanks to my son’s explanations.

Quite a few side roads in Montana follow creeks and are named for them.

Lots of people in Montana say “Yes, Ma’am!”

There are also “Badlands” in NORTH Dakota!

You can buy elk in Minnesota – half or whole.

Minnesotans are big into having their birthdays reported on the radio.

Colorful Minnesota fall foliage wasn’t too plentiful. (Report: “ a lot of oaks, a lot of conifers, but when you see a maple, you can see it for miles.”)

Wisconsin has lots of police patrol cars.

You could get a free lead paint test kit (good for toys!) from the united steel workers (usw.com).

Wisconsin also has a large industry in sphagnum moss – who knew?

Prisoners in Ohio wear stripes and pick up trash along the highways.

You can pick up a Chinese-American radio station between Erie, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York.

New York State talk show factoid: Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh got a draft deferral from Vietnam because he had a cyst on his tailbone and now he has a job where he sits on his ass!

The Syracuse bumper sticker is ‘CUSE. Kinda cute.

You know you’re in NY when the rest areas have Breyer’s ice cream stands.

 In September 2016 we drove to Ridgway, CO and back. The Midwest had a lot of roadwork, wind power, corn fields, and hay bales. I saw a lot of triple piggyback semis along the way and many Canadian geese in vee formations. On Interstate 80 between Cleveland and Toledo, a quote and picture adorned the side of a barn: "The bold enterprises are the successful ones. "-Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president, born in Ohio. 

 Colorado provided my first glimpse of yellow aspens that year as we passed Vail along Interstate 70. In Ridgway, I loved the cowboy ambience and also the way it showcases the arts. A hike in Dominguez Escalante Canyon near Grand Junction had amazing petroglyphs. We had a fun hike near Cascade Falls in Ouray and were blown away by the awesome aspen colors at full peak while hiking in Telluride. A side trip to Arches National Park in Utah showed us incredible red rock formations.

 Some trips have been about hauling things our kids left behind when they moved out west—a motor scooter and some large plants to our son in Montana and some large tools and a drawing table when he moved to Colorado.

Our most recent cross-country drive was to Colorado in August 2018. On that trip, we attended an Octoberfest celebration near a trailhead after a hike on The Front Range with our daughter, and I had a fun evening birthday celebration in Denver that began with prosecco and an awesome view of the Rockies.

 The drive from Denver to southwest Colorado where our son lives was scenic via Interstate 70 and we did some truckin’ and exploring with our son in Ouray’s Yankee Boy Basin. The return provided stunning scenery as we followed the Gunnison River past Blue Mesa Reservoir and over Monarch Pass back to the Denver area.

 The main point of that trip, aside from getting a chance to hug our kids was to transport a lemon tree to our daughter. Like our children, the tree is thriving out there. 

Exploring Museums Part II – Europe

“The only way to understand painting is to go and look at it. And if out of a million visitors, there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.”

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir

A couple of art history courses in college whetted my appetite for viewing great artworks in person. Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to travel to many places outside the U.S. and enjoy their museum offerings.

Europe has provided many memorable art experiences. I still remember my first entrance into the Louvre in Paris, France and the breathtaking white marble sculpture, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, seeming ready to take flight at the top of a grand staircase. That same year, I fell in love with the many rooms of Impressionist paintings when they were still exhibited in the tiny, former indoor center for court tennis built by Napoleon III, the Musée du Jeu de Paume. Many years later, I got to enjoy them again in their new and much larger setting, the Musée d'Orsay, a former train station built for the 1900 World’s Fair on the Left Bank of the Seine. One of the best Parisian exhibits I attended was a gigantic retrospective of Picasso’s wide-ranging styles of various periods at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées.

Italy remains the number one art mecca for me, and Le Gallerie degli Uffizi, set on a bank of the Arno River in Florence, contain a treasure trove of gigantic proportions. The sixteenth-century building itself is a work of art designed by Giorgio Vasari, and Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” one of my favorite paintings, hangs there. The Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze is a small museum with a whole room dedicated to Michelangelo’s Carrara marble sculptures, including his seventeen-foot-tall work celebrating youthful male beauty—the David.

During my first visit to the Vatican Museums (in the Vatican City State, an enclave of Rome), I was distracted from the beauty of the art by the fact that the male genitals on the statues were either covered with fig leaves or broken off. It was modesty in the name of religion. In other years, I wasn’t surprised anymore, so I focused more on the masterworks of the frescos in the Raphael rooms and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

As a writer, one small museum in Rome I enjoyed was the Keats–Shelley Memorial House at the side of the Spanish Steps at Piazza di Spagna 26. It’s where the English poet John Keats (“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”) died from tuberculosis at the age of 25. The museum houses one of the world's most extensive collections of memorabilia, letters, manuscripts, and paintings relating to Keats and Shelley, as well as Byron, Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, and others.

 Venice was the location of a unique exhibition of Salvador Dali’s work that I attended. It was in a palazzo, the name of which I’ve forgotten. There were giant red lips at the entrance, and one large section was dedicated to his black and white graphic depictions of the Holocaust.

The Museo Cappella Sansevero in Naples serves as the private mausoleum of the Sansevero family and is filled with Baroque art. The centerpiece marble, “The Veiled Christ,” by Giuseppe Sammartino is one of the most amazing sculptures I’ve ever seen. The contours of Christ’s lifeless body after it was removed from the cross are revealed though the exquisitely rendered marble shroud that drapes his wounded form.

The Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain is renowned for its many paintings by Rubens, Velasquez, Murillo, Goya, El Greco, and others. One of the most interesting for me was a Rubens that pictured Hercules as an infant, illustrating a Greek legend and the story behind it. (His father held him to his mother's breast and the milk that squirted out created the Milky Way!)

The Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany houses the largest collection of paintings from “The Blue Rider” school, one of the most important groups of avantgarde artists in the early twentieth century. I remember enjoying exhibits by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and others, followed by lunch at the museum’s lovely outdoor café. Another museum in Munich (which one I can’t recall) had a great exhibit that was an immersion into another culture.. It allowed one to walk through a life-size reproduction of a village in Yemen.

I love the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. The portraits in the collections span centuries and continents. They include paintings (e.g. Henry VIII, Winston Churchill, Ed Sheeran, Elton John), photography (e.g. Princess Diana, the Beatles, Audrey Hepburn, David Bowie), and sculptured busts (e.g. Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, Cecil Beaton). Another of my favorite museum experiences in London is a walk-through of the Churchill War Rooms. This is a multi-media experience in the top-secret corridors of the underground nerve center where Winston Churchill and his inner circle directed the Second World War.

The Archaeological Museum on the island of Rhodes in Greece is housed in a medieval hospital built around 600 A.D. The sculptures and artifacts date back even further in time since Rhodes has been inhabited for about 24 centuries. One particularly lovely statue I remember is a white marble kneeling Aphrodite, often referred to as the Venus of Rhodes.

 Art lifts me up and is always thought-provoking and inspirational. Although amazing creations can be found all around us, the main strength of museums is that they are reliable sources for finding and enjoying masterworks. 

Changing Perceptions of the Color Pink

“My WWE Divas championship belt is pink and sparkly, but it doesn't mean I'm a princess. It means girls can kick butt!”

Eve Torres 

The color pink, as a symbol of femininity in the 21st century, has a number of meanings and can be used to denote a variety of objects, ideas, and moods. Pink is popular in advertising symbols and some of the brands promote the sweet and feminine (Victoria Secret PINK, Hello Kitty, Barbie). In the 2001 film Legally Blonde, Elle Wood, Harvard law student, was at first not taken seriously because she wore a lot of pink, which some correlated with girliness and weakness. She embraced it, showing strength and smarts. Some women (and men) dye their hair pink as a sign of edginess or rebellion (Pink is the new Punk!). In 2016, Pink was the name of a Bollywood movie protesting forced and violent rape and stressing the importance of a woman's consent. The title refers to the street slang for female genitalia. The Pussyhat Project and the 2017 Women’s March used pink hats and the reference to women’s genitals as a symbol of strong women advocating for rights and empowerment. Alecia Beth Moore, the singer known as Pink (stylized as P!nk), isn’t sweet-voiced. Her range is powerful and she uses it to stand up for underdogs, advocate self-love, inner power, courage, and political protest. She calls P!NK “a brand, a snarl.”

Women don’t have a lock on the color pink these days. Some companies (like LYFT ride-sharing with its pink mustache and Vineyard Vines clothing with a pink whale logo) target both male and female customers. In fact, men who wear pink are considered confident about their sexuality. Pink clothing for men (shorts, slacks, sweaters, shirts) is sold at many major retailers like J. Crew, Gap, Nautica, Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic, J McLaughlin, and even conservative Brooks Brothers. Pinkbike.com is a badass website for guys and girls. The name was originally thought up as a joke, the antithesis of names like "extremebiking.com" and "hardcorebiking.com." As time passed, word spread, and Pinkbike grew into a world-renowned source for mountain bike news.

Some male celebrities use pink to make themselves stand out. Rocker Rod Stewart sometimes wears a pink satin jacket and singer Harry Styles often performs in pink suits and shirts. Singer Joey Ramone used to hitchhike in pink, knee-high platform boots. Actor Ed Helms recalls a time when he wore pink Converse All Stars because he thought it made him seem daring and irreverent. Cam’ron, American rapper, record executive, actor, fashion designer, and Harlem trendsetter said, “When I first started wearing pink, it wasn't nothing I planned on doing or strategized. But people showed me so much love for the pink mink I wore, I had to go out to Pantone and create my own color, which is called Killa Pink.” 

 October is the month when pink is seen everywhere. From sports teams to people in the community, thousands participate and the goal is to educate people about the treatment and prevention of breast cancer in both men and women.

Pink Day, celebrated in the U.S. on June 23 and worldwide on many different dates, is a day to wear pink and stand up against the injustice of harassment and bullying, especially against minorities and those of the LGBTQ community. It was founded in 2007 by two teens from Canada after a gay boy was bullied for wearing a pink shirt.

Pink has a complicated history somewhat different from the current perceptions.

A light-hued mixture of red and white obtained from vegetable dyes surfaced between 3000 BC and 30 BC in ancient Greece. The color was called “rhodos.” Pastel shades were chiefly used for fabrics of lighter texture and women were especially fond of them.

 In Ancient Rome, there’s no mention of pink for clothing. Romans preferred white. The Dark Ages saw only subdued colors and the Middle Ages brought only the bright hues of stained-glass windows.

It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that paler colors came into use again, but there’s no mention of pink, perhaps because colors were often given exotic names (e.g. aurore, amorous desires, kiss-me-my-mignon).

Pink was first used as a color name in the 17th century, after a flower of the same name. Pink clothing wasn’t gender-specific for girls. European paintings showed young boys wore it too (e.g. Velasquez’s young boy in a black dress with a pink sash and Van Dyke’s young William II in pink hose and a pinkish-red dress).

Some paintings of the eighteenth century show this trend continued (e.g. John Singleton Copley’s young American boy wearing a black waistcoat with a pink satin collar, Larquilliere’s Prince Henry wearing a lace shirt with a pink underlining, and Francois Boucher’s French shepherd boy wearing a flowing pink tunic). 

In eighteenth century France, pastels were favored by Marie Antoinette and her court and it wasn’t sex-differentiated. Men might wear yellow breeches and a light-green coat with a pink and buff vest.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, men favored pale, neutral colors, but pink (called Levantine) was reserved for women. Pale shades were considered correct for evening although they continued to wear dark clothes during the day time. No mention is made of color differentiation between the sexes for children.

The 20th century brought the acceptance of light colors for daytime as well as evening, and “in the pink” came to mean good health and well-being for both sexes. Neon lights were invented in 1910 and some were pink. A “Pink Lady” drink (sweet and innocent-looking but packing a punch) was first referenced in a 1913 Manual of Mixed Drinks. The 1920s introduced pink nail polish and pink bubblegum. “Tickled pink,” an idiom that means one is well pleased, was first recorded in 1922 where it alluded to one's face turning pink with laughter when tickled. In The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, Jay Gatsby wears a pink suit. It wasn’t a sign of femininity but of “new money.” At the time, pink represented the working classes. The word “pinko” was coined in 1925 in the United States as a pejorative to describe a person sympathetic to communism. (The reasoning: pink is a lighter shade of red, a color associated with communism, so pink could describe a lighter form of communism.) In 1929, gender differentiation of pink for girls and blue for boys first appeared in Bologna, Italy when a midwife started the fashion for colored ribbons to announce the birth of a baby. 

In the 1940s, U.S. WWII Army officers wore light-shade trousers called “pinks” (for the pinkish cast to the light drab cloth). Heterosexual military men accepted the color and the name. On the German side, homosexual prisoners were forced to wear pink triangles. The Nazis perceived pink as feminine and a way to mark gay men as effeminate. 

Pink became trendy in the 1950s when even some cars were pink and the U.S. president’s wife, Mamie Eisenhower, popularized pale pink clothing for women. Men stayed shy of it, but teenage boys in the 1950s and 60s often wore a pink carnation in their lapels to proms. 1963 saw the introduction of the Pink Panther film character- a male who was bumbling but clever in spite of himself. Perhaps the cartoon humor excused a pink coat of male fur at a time when wearing pink was risky for men. 

By the 1970s, pink tuxedo shirts and cummerbunds were worn by some males. The term “pink-collar” was popularized in the late 1970s to denote jobs perceived as women’s work (like nurses, secretaries, and elementary school teachers). Toward the end of the 70s, pink became a symbol of rebellious youth. 1979 saw a number of rock groups with pink in their names—Pink Floyd, Pink Cadillac, Pink Section, and a Japanese bubblegum-sound group Pink Lady. As a counterpoint to rebellion, some correctional institutions began using pink on the walls to soothe inmates—“pink clinks” as Time magazine called them. 

During the 1990s, the discrimination of the gay community diminished, broadening LGBTQ people's access to formerly heteronormative jobs and leading to increased spending power—the so-called “pink economy.” 

Despite the progress, today’s gender-reveal powders come in pink and blue, and pink still isn’t accepted by many as gender neutral. It’s strange because the cones at the back of your eyeball, sitting on the thin, light-sensitive retina, are red, blue, and green sensitive. To be perceived, light pink needs red cones to fully react, and both blue and green cones to partially activate. The RBG spectrum is pretty gender-neutral, isn’t it?

Favorite Books Along the Way

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“The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.”

Harper Lee

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 in sing-song fashion. We often recited them together and I loved memorizing them at a young age.

The book I remember most from when I could read by myself was the classic Heidi by Johanna Spyri. I was impressed by Heidi’s respect for her grandfather and the disabled Clara and that she valued good people over riches. It also highlighted a love of the outdoors and made me want to visit the Alps — perhaps my first bite by the travel bug! 

A favorite book of my early teen years was The Black Opal by Dorothy Maywood Bird. This story of an intrepid college girl sleuth was the first mystery I read. It began a lifelong fascination and is perhaps why I write mystery books for teens today.

My college years introduced me to new ways of thinking through books. The Psychology of Clothes by J.C. Flügel made me consider why humans wear clothes at all. It demonstrated how history pointed to the desire for bodily protection, modesty, and decoration. In The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris, a zoologist, asserted that much of human behavior could be explained in the context of animal behavior, but retrospect shows it was male-centric and he gave short shrift to female hunter-gatherers and their important contributions. Mary McCarthy’s The Group mesmerized me with its frank and controversial exploration of women’s issues, social concerns, and sexuality. Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, both by Tom Wolfe, gave me short stories epitomizing hip times in New York City where I lived. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway lured me to Europe and The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone increased my desire to see the works of Michelangelo in Italy, as well as other artists of the Renaissance. Other memorable books of the era, for various reasons, were The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

Motherhood introduced me to wonderful children’s literature that delighted my son and daughter. Living in Massachusetts, Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey was a lovely Boston story we related to. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein made poetry fun, and The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater emphasized the importance of individuality. My son loved the Curious George books by H.A. Rey and Asterix and Obelisk by René Goscinny‎ and ‎Albert Uderzo. My daughter loved Is This the House of Mistress Mouse by Richard Scarry and the Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel. As the children got older, I enjoyed explaining the facts of life to them with the help of Peter Mayle’s delightful book, Where Did I Come From?

Important adult books for me as a stay-at-home mom were varied. I enjoyed Watership Down by Richard Adams, a charming adventure story from the point of view of a small group of rabbits, as well the torrid, forbidden romance of The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. Burr by Gore Vidal drew me into early American history and I learned about one of the tragedies Native Americans endured through Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Two very different books I read then explored the base instincts of some humans. Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi was about the senseless Manson family murderers in California and Sophie’s Choice by William Styron depicted the lingering catastrophic effects of Nazism. I was drawn into Greek politics by two other books. In A Man, the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci wrote a fictionalized account of her relationship with the man who attempted to assassinate George Papadopoulos, the Greek dictator of the 1960s and 70s. Eleni, by Nicholas Gage, took me back to the Greek civil war of the 1940s and explored the mysterious death of the author’s mother during the unrest.

When I moved to Italy for a few years, I read many books about the country and about the Naples area where I lived. One of the most memorable and provocative was I Castrati. I don’t recall the author, but It was an eye-opening peek into the 18th and 19th century opera world where young boys were castrated to maintain their angelic prepubescent voices.

A few years later, I lived in Germany for a number of years and read many books about the places related to the Nazis and Hitler in Munich where I lived. I also read a lot of books about the Resistance and especially enjoyed one novel set in France—The Blue Bicycle by Regine Deforges.

After I returned to the States in the late Nineties, I read many mystery series. I followed the crime solving of two British detectives—police commander and poet Adam Dalgleish, the protagonist of P.D. James’s novels and Inspector Thomas Lynley, Elizabeth George’s high-born sleuth. Donna Leon’s books introduced me to her Italian crime solver, Commissario Guido Brunetti of Venice. For crime novels set in the States, I turned to Margaret Truman’s Washington D.C. murder mysteries, Lisa Scottoline’s Philadelphia legal thrillers, and Tess Gerritsen’s medical suspense featuring Boston detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles.

The Nineties also got me hooked on the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling and one of my favorite books at the end of the decade was Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, about the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster.

I started the 2000s with a great book, Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson, about the 1900 Galveston hurricane, considered the deadliest in history. I also read all the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer and became a huge fan of Tana French and her Dublin Murder Squad series, beginning with the first one, In the Woods.

Two favorite books from 2007 were The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad and Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra. The first is about daily life pressures in Afghanistan as a family struggles between the forces of modernity and tradition. The second novel takes place in bombed-out Naples, Italy during World War II. It’s a tale of abandoned children who become fearless fighters and unlikely heroes.

I most enjoyed two very different books in 2008. The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter is a murder mystery focusing on middle and upper-class Black Americans in Washington, D.C. and Martha’s Vineyard. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is about an eccentric family living in genteel poverty in a decaying castle in England during World War II. It’s also a coming-of-age story of the teen girl narrator. 

The outstanding book for me in 2009 was What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George. I believe it should be read by anyone working with children who live in stressful circumstances.

In 2010, First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung gave me a first-hand account of the terrors of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.

Three books impressed me in 2011. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is the non-fiction story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American man who rode out the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and rescued neighbors with his canoe. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a book of linked short stories about a platoon of soldiers fighting on the ground in Vietnam. The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli is a novel about a female combat photographer in Vietnam during the war. 

2012 provided two good books at the top of my list. The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson is the story of the American Ambassador in Berlin during Hitler’s reign. Outliers —the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell explores some of the surprising factors which contribute to success.

2014 introduced me to neuroscientist and author Lisa Genova and her book Love Anthony, which gives a glimpse into the world of an autistic child. I also enjoyed The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III which is a novel set in Florida in the days leading up to 9/11. 

In 2015, I discovered the first book of Elena Ferrante’s compelling Neapolitan quartet— My Brilliant Friend. I was also impressed with four other books. Little Bee by Chris Cleave is the story of a terrifying event that entwines the lives of a Nigerian girl and a young English mother. The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko is the true 1983 story of the fastest ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It was in a wooden dory, not a raft. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje is a coming of age novel about an 11-year-old boy's journey on a large ship's three-week voyage. It was influenced by the author’s own childhood voyage from Sri Lanka to England. Townie by Andre Dubus III is a memoir of the author’s somewhat turbulent childhood growing up in Haverhill. Massachusetts. 

In 2016, I enjoyed the remaining three books in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series–The Story of a New Name, Those Who Go and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child. Another good book was Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova. It’s a novel about the impact of the neurodegenerative Huntington’s Disease upon a man and his family.

In 2017, there were two memorable books for me. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a true story about the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel which follows one woman on a journey out of human bondage, using the author’s imaginary concept of a real system of rail connections.

Three books about World War II were most enjoyable in 2018. Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly is a novel that follows the lives of three women affected by the war—a Polish Resistance worker, a German doctor, and an American working at the French consulate. Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan is a novel based on the true story of a heroic Italian teenager who spied for the Allies during the Nazi occupation of northern Italy. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn is about the heroic women working as Allied secret agents in occupied France.

The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard is one pick for 2019. It’s an historical novel set in Oak Ridge, Tennessee toward the end of World War II, where hundreds of young girls operate massive machines whose purpose isn’t explained. All they know is they’re working in a top-secret facility on something to help end the war. Another pick is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It’s a non-fiction book about a Black woman and the immortal cell line researchers still use known as HeLa that came from her cervical cancer cells in 1951. It discusses ethical issues of race and class in medical research.

So far this year, 2020, my two favorites are When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton and At the Wolf’s Table by Rosella Postorino. The first is set in the sixties of Fidel, Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, and Florida. The second focuses on the women who were recruited as food tasters for Hitler near his Wolf's Lair military headquarters on the Eastern Front.

In the last fifteen years, I’ve read an average of fifty-eight books a year, so my favorites are only a small part of my literary influence. I’ve learned something from every one of them.

 P.S. More than once, an alert reader has pointed out that this post has a misspelling. While I appreciate the feedback, I want to clarify. The name Asterix is correct for the book character, as opposed to asterisk, which is a punctuation mark.

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Exploring Museums Part I - the U.S.

“Don’t go to a museum with a destination. Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy machines. Follow your eyes to wherever they lead you…and the world should begin to change for you.”

Jerry Saltz, Art Critic

I love museums and I was lucky enough to grow up in a city with dozens of world-class ones—New York City. My three favorites, the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art), the Guggenheim and MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) provided hours of pleasure and whetted my appetite to seek out the treasures of other museums around the world. 

The Met on Fifth Avenue is my number one. Its neo-classical, Richard Morris Hunt-designed entrance is majestic. In the galleries, I love gazing at the oil paintings of Renoir, Picasso, Monet, Goya, Hopper, Pollock and so many other masters. I love walking through the Egyptian Temple of Dendur. It was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Augustus when Rome ruled Egypt and was gifted by Egypt to the United States in 1965. I enjoy the special modern art exhibitions which open onto a roof garden with an awesome view of Central Park and the Costume Institute where I was fortunate to attend a class in college and get an up-close and hands-on look at designer fashions through the centuries.

What I love most about the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, about six blocks north of the Met on Fifth Avenue, is the building itself. The unique concrete, spiral-ramp architecture is a UNESCO World Heritage site designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Paintings and sculptures by Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat and others are displayed along the quarter-mile-long ramp and illuminated from above by a giant domed skylight.

MOMA is noted for thought-provoking contemporary and modern art. Aside from the works of artists like Niki de Saint Phalle, Alexander Calder, Ai Weiwei, Jean Arp, ,Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein and many others, the museum has a large photography collection featuring Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks and many more. Music plays a big role in some of the exhibitions and the museum also has an extensive film vault. One event I attended in the museum theater was an impressive sound and light show. 

New York is not the only place in the U.S. with interesting museums. Having lived in Massachusetts for many years, I’ve wandered through many of them in that state. Some of my favorites are in Boston, Cambridge and Salem.

 In Boston, one of the most enchanting is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, modeled after a Fifteenth-Century, Venetian-inspired palazzo. One of the highlights is the sculpture-rich and flower-filled courtyard in the center when sunlight shines through the glass roof and washes over the surrounding walls and arched arcades. Gardner’s collection of paintings is so vast, the walls are crammed with great works. I remember being surprised to find a glorious Botticelli almost hidden in a tiny niche. 

My other Boston favorite is especially great for kids but inspirational for adults as well. The Museum of Science on the Charles River is filled with learning experiences about biology, paleontology, technology, chemistry, physics and more and makes them fun. It also has an IMAX theater, a planetarium, a full-size T-rex model and a 23-foot-long triceratops skeleton.

In Cambridge, one of my favorite exhibits is the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, the “Glass Flowers,” at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Over 4,000 models are the creations of glass artisans from Dresden, Germany and they’re spectacular.

Salem has a number of museums related to the witchcraft trials of the late 1600s but the museum jewel is the Peabody Essex Museum. Visiting Yin Yu Tang, the reconstructed Chinese ancestral home there from the Qing Dynasty, gives a rare perspective on Chinese art, architecture, and culture. There is also a great collection of New England maritime art and I’ve enjoyed many special exhibitions, such as a collection of vibrant-colored photos from Havana, Cuba. 

In San Francisco, California, the copper-skinned M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (commonly referred to as the de Young) is a fine arts museum in Golden Gate Park that blends into the park landscaping. It’s easy to spend three hours browsing exhibits of American, African, Oceanic, Costume, Textile, Graphic and Photographic Arts. The museum café opens onto a great sculpture garden and the 360-degree view of the Bay Area from the tower rooftop is spectacular.

Some smaller cities and towns also have museum gems. Great Falls, Montana has the Charles M. Russell Museum, honoring the renowned painter, sculptor and writer, known for his Native American and cowboy themes. It’s an impressive complex with modern galleries, his original log cabin studio and his home.

Ridgway, Colorado, an old western town used as the setting for several classic western movies, including “True Grit” starring John Wayne, is home to the Ouray County Ranching History Museum. In addition to rooms depicting ranch life from the 1880s to the present, it showed me the impressive artistry of leatherwork used for riding saddles.

Now that I’m a Florida resident, I’ve uncovered some interesting museums here.

 907 Whitehead Street in Key West is the site of The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. The privacy and tropical landscape of his estate created a sanctuary for his writing and his six-toed cat, whose descendants still roam the grounds.

The Flagler Museum on Palm Beach Island was the Gilded Age estate (Whitehall) of Henry Morrison Flagler, the builder of railroads and hotels who brought tourism to Southeast Florida. A tour of the classical, Doric-columned building gives a glimpse into the luxury and lifestyle of the wealthy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The interior rooms are a mix of styles, including Louis XIV, Louis XV, and the Italian and French Renaissances. Exhibits often include historical fashions, footwear and jewelry, in addition to paintings and photography.

West Palm Beach is home to the newly-restored Norton Museum of Art. The stark modern façade was built to accommodate a humungous banyan tree outside the front entrance and a former parking lot was transformed into a 37,200-square-foot, lush, sub-tropical sculpture garden. A quirky touch to the outside front is a colossal typewriter eraser which I love. It’s by Claes Oldenburg, one of the founders of Pop Art. Indoors, the museum has large collections of American, Chinese, Contemporary and European art, as well as Photography.

Because of COVID, many, if not all of these institutions have been closed to the public, except virtually, for months. As cases decline and safe protocols are put in place, I look forward to the museums reopening soon.

Walking Lakeview Highlands in Summer

 “I will be the gladdest thing… Under the sun!... I will touch a hundred flowers… And not pick one…. I will look at cliffs and clouds… With quiet eyes… Watch the wind blow down the grass… And the grass rise….”

“Afternoon on a Hill” by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Our hillside in Maine (Lakeview Highlands) is a former farm that was converted into a community of private homes starting in the 1970s. When we bought our lot in 1983, we had only a few neighbors—a handful who purchased lakeside cabins the farm used to rent and had them moved up the hill and four homes the owners either had built or built themselves. We joined the latter do-it-yourself group when we built our place. Today, the hill has more than 40 well-spaced homes.

We originally bought our lot for its proximity to Saddleback Mountain and winter skiing and we used it year-round on weekends and during vacation periods until we took up residence in Florida two years ago. It’s now our summer home and one of the things we enjoy is a daily morning walk around one of the hillside loops. It’s only two miles but the hilly terrain makes it feel more challenging than our flat, three-mile, daily walk at home. The road is dirt and fine shale and dust is kept down with occasional treatments of calcium chloride. The former pasture land is now dotted with tall trees— spruce, pine, cedar, white birch and poplar.

A left out of our driveway takes us uphill. About a quarter mile up, the next house on the left is the first house built on the hill that wasn’t a cabin. I have memories of my young children building a tree house with the two boys who visited their grandparents there in the summers. Two houses up on that same side, is another of the early houses and I remember how the original owners had a shadow box filled with individual rocks they found on dozens of Maine peaks. A small road climbs to the left and I remember it used to lead to one of the cabins where we enjoyed pancakes made by the owners using blueberries from their expansive blueberry patch.

The right side of our road has three houses and a steep lot that was once the top of a short-lived ski slope. Openings in the trees offer expansive views of the southern end of Rangeley Lake and the Overlook, the hill to our south that was unbuilt on when we arrived and is now dotted with homes and is part of our landowners’ association. The last house in the row is also one of the early ones. It was built by the owner the year before ours went up and we’ve watched it grow in size over the years. The property has morphed from one house into a compound of buildings and we’ve shared many good times there. As we walk past, the scent of balsam wafts from the trees lining their roadside. 

When we arrived here in 1983, the road took a sharp left after that last house and there were no more houses until you took a right after about a mile and came upon some of the old cabins. Today, that mile has about ten houses and one of them is in the process of having an addition built.

 New roads have since been opened at that turn. One continues straight ahead, ending in a cul de sac and another is to the right. Our walk takes us right and downhill. At a curve we pass a break in the woods for power lines. A path underneath them is carved from the ruts of snowmobiles and ATVs . It makes a steep decline on our hill, crosses Nile Brook and has an even steeper incline up the Overlook hill. It reminds me of the adventures our young children had climbing down to Nile Brook and their tales of a baby moose there with long, spindly legs and finding abandoned baby rabbits they nicknamed Sam and Maxie.

One house further down on the left reminds me of former owners who had the odd habit of feeding a bobcat. Continuing downhill from there, the lake comes into view again. On the right is a weathered barn that marks the road leading up to a bed and breakfast.

Along the way, we get hints of animal musk drifting in the clear air. Even when we don’t see them, we know the woods are home to moose, deer, coyotes, foxes, black bear and rabbits. We hear the sounds of bird song. Our eyes feast on glorious wildflowers—lupine, daisies, Indian paintbrush, yellow hawksweed and more. In the woods, a few storm-tossed trees lean. Colorful kayaks are stacked under some house decks. 

Toward the bottom of the hill, the road curves right. Paralleling Route 4 and the lakeshore below it, it touches the upper boundaries of the land occupied by the farm’s original main house and outbuildings. The house has operated as The Farmhouse Inn since the 70s. The most recent owners added a huge event barn about a hundred feet long. Due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, it stands temporarily empty and an outdoor wedding arch is gone.

The road climbs uphill until we reach the corner and turn right onto our road again. This is the steepest part of the walk. The next house on the left, next-door to ours, has a small apple orchard and is the home of one of the farmer’s descendants. She was the last baby in that family born in the farmhouse.

Nearing the end of our walk, we turn left into our uphill driveway. It’s a workout!

Guarded Road Trip During a Pandemic

 “We can't lower our guard. We are still far from half-time.”

 Erna Solberg, Norway’s Prime Minister

Since March, when our Florida county detected its first virus cases, we stayed safe in our home, venturing out only for a few miles of exercise on uncrowded sidewalks or to make occasional grocery forays armed with masks, disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer.

By June, the month of our annual migration to our vacation home in Maine, the virus was still a threat. We wanted to head north for a number of reasons but we were unsure what COVID-19 conditions we might encounter during the journey.

We ruled out flying since sitting in recycled air with a bunch of strangers for a few hours didn’t seem advisable. The alternative was driving. The plus was it meant only the two of us would be sharing the space. The minuses were the stops we’d have to make for bathroom breaks, gas, food and sleeping but we decided we could be in control of the risks with careful planning and taking adequate precautions. 

In addition to bringing our masks, wipes and hand sanitizer, we prepared in a couple of other ways. We purchased cotton bed sacks to sleep in. They allow you to avoid direct contact with hotel bedding and even have a pouch to insert pillows. We also filled a cooler with food so we could avoid dining in restaurants. 

Since we didn’t want to linger anywhere, we planned for two overnights and no visits to family and friends along the route. As for hotel choices, we had heard positive things about the way one chain was operating during this challenging time and made reservations through them.

On a partly sunny, 75 degree, Monday in mid-June, we set out with some trepidation at 7am. Our first stop was a rest area in northern Florida about two hours later. We put on our masks to enter the rest rooms but were dismayed to see few other travelers doing the same. There were no precaution signs either. Not a promising start.

In Georgia, we ate lunch in the car— some of our brought food and coffee from McDonald’s. 

A South Carolina rest area had good cleaning precautions making us feel safer. In addition, many travelers were wearing masks. The only downer was the weather—showers.

North Carolina was our target state for the first overnight, so I did a mobile check-in for the hotel after we crossed the state line. Then the problems began. First the showers turned to hard rain, and after a rest stop, the car wouldn’t start for a few agonizing moments. When it finally turned over, the ABS light, traction light and 4WD light all came on! We googled and it sounded like it might be a sensor problem and could still be driven, so we continued on our way with fingers crossed.

At the traffic light just around the corner from our hotel in Rocky Mount, the car died again and wouldn’t restart. Two good Samaritans helped push the car while I steered it as far as it would go. They pushed again and I steered it to the hotel parking lot. It was still raining. One of the guys opened the hood and discovered one of the terminals on our new battery hadn’t been tightened enough when it was installed. He borrowed a wrench from the hotel, tightened it and the car started right up.

The hotel lobby was empty except for 2 people behind the reception desk not wearing masks. The only contact though was when one of them handed us our key cards. The hotel restaurant was closed. Our room was clean but I wiped handles, switches, etc. with disinfectant wipes. For dinner, we microwaved baked penne we brought from home and poured some wine. We relaxed into our bed sacks, shedding the stress of the day.

Tuesday started with pouring rain. After coffee in our room, we left the hotel after dropping key cards into bowl of liquid disinfectant. After coffee and egg McMuffins from a McDonald’s drive-thru, we headed north.

 In Virginia, where we had on-again, off-again rain, we were surprised to see a large Confederate flag flying next to the highway just south of Petersburg, VA. It felt especially insensitive in the wake of several recent killings of unarmed Black men. 

 A Virginia rest stop sign said face masks were required to enter the restrooms and Virginia highway signs said, “If you have to travel, do so safely.”

The rain stopped in Maryland and highway signs there said, “If out and about, do your part. Keep social distance.” Except for Delaware, all of the next states we passed through had highway signs pertaining to COVID-19 caution. New Jersey’s said, “Face coverings required in service areas.” New York had two different signs: “Outside with no mask? Fuhgeddaboudit!” and “Wear masks in public. Wash hands with soap.” Connecticut followed with, “Connecticut respect: If you have to ask, wear a mask.” Our second overnight target state, Massachusetts, declared, “All travelers entering Massachusetts are urged to self-quarantine for 14 days.” 

After the Massachusetts state line, I did a mobile check-in for our hotel in Worcester. The hotel lobby was empty except for one guy at the reception desk behind a clear plastic partition and the floor was marked for social distancing. Again, there was no contact, except for the key card handover. The hotel restaurant was closed. Our room was clean but I wiped down surfaces just to be sure. We microwaved pizza slices we brought from home and drank some wine then slept in our bed sacks. 

Our last day on the road was sunny. As we left the hotel, we deposited our key cards in a receptacle at the parking lot exit. Breakfast was a Dunkin stop for coffee and sandwiches which we ate at a picnic table outdoors with no other people nearby. Knowing we’d have to self-quarantine in Maine, we made two grocery stops in Massachusetts to stock up. Market Basket limited customers to 127 and had one-way aisles. Customers and store personnel wore masks. Costco had the cart handles wiped down and masks seemed universal there as well.

I noticed no highway signage in New Hampshire but Maine greeted us with, “Executive order – non-essential persons entering Maine must 14-day self-quarantine.” When we entered our little mountain lake town, Rangeley, a road sign reminded us once more, “Welcome…Remember Social Distance…Quarantine.” 

Venezuelan Honeymoon Adventure

“If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventures should be a priority.”

Richard Branson 

Today’s Venezuela is violent, poverty-stricken and one of the countries with a “Do Not Travel” recommendation from the U.S. State Department. That was not the case in June 1971 when my husband and I spent our honeymoon there. It was then under the leadership of President Rafael Caldera who helped forge an unprecedented period of civilian democratic rule. Its oil production peaked the year before and Caldera made a visit to the U.S. to meet with President Nixon who committed to increasing the market share of Venezuelan petroleum exports to the United States. We were free to visit and enjoy the wild natural beauty of the country.

We flew from New York to Caracas via Viasa, the now-defunct, international airline of Venezuela. We were provided with a menu booklet, then dinner and an aperitif were served.

Since Caracas is close to the northern Caribbean coast of the country, we started with some idyllic beach days at a nearby seaside resort in Macuto. As was usual in those days, the hotel kept our passports during our stay.

When it was time for us to leave for Caracas, we were a bit disconcerted when the Macuto hotel insisted on keeping our passports. They insisted it was required and assured us they’d be forwarded to our next hotel. We took their word for it, hoped for the best and moved on to explore the capital city.

My memories of Caracas are a blend of mountain vistas, massive traffic jams, wolf-whistles because my mid-length pencil skirt had a slit up the front that reached just above my knees, shopping with the local currency (bolivars) and the importance of being respectful at the a giant equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar who led Venezuela and several other counties to independence from the Spanish Empire.

Our first venture away from the city was by gondola. The Teleférico de Caracas ascended El Ávila Mountain within El Ávila National Park. The view from the top showed the city of Caracas on one side and the coastline on the other. There was a tower with steps leading to a building, so we headed up to have an even higher vantage point. We stopped when an armed soldier wearing a cape rushed out the door and pointed his rifle at us. Backing down with hands up and eyes wide, we apologized and used the ignorant tourist excuse.

Our next adventure was a long day trip via Avensa, a small regional airline, also now defunct, to remote Canaima National Park, the sixth biggest national park in the world. It’s located in southeastern Venezuela between the borders of Brazil and Guyana and is home to indigenous Pemon Indians. The only ways to get there are by air or water.

We flew over miles of jungle and part of the Orinoco River until we landed at Canaima Airport. We were then driven to a jungle camp on the banks of a lagoon on the Carrao River where we had lunch under a thatched roof shelter at an open-air restaurant. Plates were turned upside-down until food was served, we assumed to keep them clean from insects, dust or both. The water they poured into our drinking glasses was tea colored. It was safe to drink, the color coming from natural tannins in the water.

After lunch, we walked over to a sandy beach, boarded a boat and crossed the lagoon to get close to a cluster of powerfully wide waterfalls (Ucaima, Golondrina, Wadaima and Hacha Falls). They all had the same yellowish-brown tint as the drinking water.

Our next journey was to go further into the park by plane to see Angel Falls, the world's highest uninterrupted waterfall. It drops over the edge of a tepuis (table-top mountain) with a height of 3,212 feet and a plunge of 2,648 feet. Surrounded by a thick jungle, it’s one of the least accessible tourist attractions in South America and can only be seen when flying by it in a plane or riding near it in a boat. It requires some flying skill and luck to reach as it depends on weather conditions. I remember how the winds buffeted our plane as the pilot navigated the canyon but we were fortunate to have no clouds blocking our view, as sometimes was known to happen.

Following that spectacular ride, the plane headed back toward Caracas and we soon headed into a heavy rain storm. The rocking and rolling of the plane didn’t bother us too much. Our nerves ramped up when saw the flight attendants stuffing paper into places where the rain was leaking into the cabin. To calm everyone down, thy handed out small nips of alcohol.

At the end of the day, we did arrive back in the city safe and sound. It was a wonderful adventure to a park which has since been declared (in 1994) a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It’s off-limits right now, but it would be cool to go back and visit Angel Falls by water in a dugout canoe sometime.

For one of our last adventures in Venezuela, we rented a car. We had heard about what was once called a “lost” German village in the mountains west of Caracas. We located Colonia Tovar on the map and headed out onto a highway. At some point, we took a wrong turn and stopped to ask directions. A young man pointed up to the mountains, said the way was hard to describe and offered to go with us. He hopped in and soon we were on steep mountain roads with no guardrails. There were occasional crosses near the edge and he yelled, “Muerto!” at each one. It was nerve wracking but we couldn’t turn around.

When we did finally pull into the village, we learned it was 7,000 feet above sea level. We had come up the steep side and it soon became evident it wasn’t worth the effort. Colonia Tovar was a Disneyesque version of a German town and was filled with tourists, most of whom by the way, had arrived via a direct superhighway from the city. We took a fast look around and went back to Caracas the quick way. It took us over three hours to get there and less than an hour and a half to return. 

When our adventurous honeymoon was coming to an end, we checked out of our hotel and requested our passports, but they didn’t have them. The beach hotel in Macuto had forgotten to send them but promised to have someone bring them right away. Worry about missing our return flight to New York loomed as we waited. When they finally arrived, we had a frantic ride to the airport, where we found out our plane had already boarded. The people at the reservation desk called and had the plane held then they hustled us across a field dotted with rifle-toting soldiers. It was a dramatic end to our stay.

All in all, our honeymoon was romantic and memorable with lots of adventure thrown in–just the way we liked it.

Navigating Winter into Spring During COVID-19

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"

Fred Rogers

(Part of my coping with COVID-19 restrictions and avoiding too much navel-gazing, has been a daily 3-mile walk and keeping a diary.)

Week of January 26th

Though China told the World Health Organization about reports of a new coronavirus at the end of December, it didn’t affect my personal radar until January 27th when two friends were heading to Hong Kong. The CDC issued a travel health warning about the virus and I worried as Hong Kong cancelled the Lunar New Year celebration, the marathon and schools. On January 28th, 30 high school kids and 3 teachers from my town here in Florida were put into self-quarantine after attending the Model UN program in New Haven, Connecticut. They’d been exposed to coronavirus.

Week of February 2nd

After a few days stay, due to impending flight cancellations from Hong Kong to the US, my friends cut their trip short and returned to Boston.

Week of February 9th

In mid-February, two other friends left on a multi-stop international trip.

Week of February 23rd

When our friends got to Tokyo at the end of the month and the reports were ramping up, I started to worry about them.

Week of March 1st

Our friends continued to Singapore where cases were being reported and my husband and I had our last kayak outing before boat ramps were closed in Palm Beach County.

Week of March 8th

Our friends continued to Dubai where cases were also reported. On March 10th, I got my last haircut before salons were closed here. On March 11th, my husband and I had our bags packed for a flight to Argentina the next day. However, we received an email from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires stating we’d have to self-quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. That was pretty much our whole trip! We wouldn’t be able to see the sights, go to restaurants, learn to tango or take a paid-for flight to Mendoza. Airline phones and web sites were so overwhelmed, we had to go to the airport to cancel. The terminal was like a ghost town which was good for social distancing and getting things done quickly. Due to the pandemic, they gave us a code to re-book using our non-refundable tickets. At the time, they said they’d be good for a year. Now all tickets are good through 2022. That same day, March 11th, Palm Beach County had its first coronavirus case. On March 12, we unpacked our bags, cancelled our Buenos Aires – Mendoza flights and our county’s second coronavirus case was verified. On March 13th, I had my last meal in a restaurant with my husband and four friends, before restaurants were closed. We ate at a table on an outdoor porch and I wiped the plastic cover of the menu and the metal table with a disinfectant wipe. One friend sprayed all of our hands with alcohol when we finished eating and I washed my hands well when I got home.

Week of March 15th

The March 15th headline in the Palm Beach Post channeled the hurricane zone buying sprees: “Toilet paper is the plywood of the pandemic.” In Colorado where my kids live, all ski areas were closed. On March 16, I attended my first Palm Beach Gardens Fiction Writers critique meeting via WEBEX video. On March 17, our friends were supposed to leave Dubai and head to South Africa to visit family. However, due to coronavirus, the South African government started denying entry to foreigners and they flew home to the U.S. instead. That same day, Argentina suspended flights to the US. Also, Palm Beach county closed parks to group activities and a medical relative of my husband was ordered to stay home from the hospital for two weeks because he’d been on an airplane. Florida ordered all bars closed. On March 18th, I took my last walk on a beach before the county closed them the following day.

Week of March 22nd

On March 22nd, Palm Beach County closed all boat launches and marinas. On March 23rd and 26th, I connected with Newburyport Writers in Massachusetts via ZOOM. The first day was a test run and the second was a workshop on How to Get Your Writing Rejected. On March 24th, my son in Colorado social-distanced and kept busy by building a beautiful wooden pergola over his wife’s garden bed. On March 25th, I took my last walk in one of the natural areas that are now closed. Right after that, our resident association closed the community pool and our town issued a stay-at-home advisory. On March 27th, a nearby spa closed, so my facial was cancelled and I finished sewing 13 cloth masks.

Week of March 29th

 On March 31st, my son’s place of employment was ordered to close, I participated in an author video podcast using ZOOM and my husband and I went to Costco where the lines were socially distanced all around the parking lot at 7:30am for the 8-9am senior shopping hour. On April 1st, I posted a blog about walking during the pandemic, my dentist cancelled because the state closed them down except for emergencies and I touched base with family in hard-hit New York. My sister was doing an online boot camp run by her physical therapist. A niece was finishing her final semester of graduate work via video. My musician brother was entertaining via online video and another brother was conducting medical equipment trainings via video rather than traveling to various hospitals. On April 2nd, my daughter who is a neuroscience nurse in Colorado tended to her first COVID patients and I attended a ZOOM video workshop run by the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. On April 4th, during a morning walk, I came upon a couple social distancing and beating the heat by sitting in a blow-up pool on their lawn and drinking beers. Coincidentally the same day, my daughter in Colorado told me Avery Brewery in Boulder was giving away cases of beer to CO nurses and doctors. That same day, I attended a Florida Treasure Coast Sisters in Crime ZOOM meeting about editing.

Week of April 5th

On April 5th, two snowbird friends made a straight-run drive home to Massachusetts and a neighbor was reprimanded by the police for riding his bike into an empty county park. On April 6th, I admired a neighbor’s bromeliads (air plants) on a tree. The next day, I began collecting one air plant each day during my daily neighborhood walk and attaching them one of our trees. On April 8th, my dermatologist cancelled my appointment because the office is closed due to pandemic. On April 9th, I wore a cloth mask for the first time to grocery shop at Publix. On April 10th, my daughter the nurse was given a super power backpack by her boss.

Week of April 12th

On April 12th, I gave 2 cloth masks to neighbors who had none and two friends in Germany tested negative for COVID-19 after one was exposed at work. On April 13th, I trimmed my husband’s hair because barber shops are closed and, related to our cancelled trip, finally got the International coverage charges for our cell phones removed. On April 15th, Palm Beach County announced high school seniors will have virtual graduations and my daughter’s neuroscience department went from 0 to 13 COVID patients in less than a week. On April 17, my husband went to Costco and encountered no lines and no toilet paper.

Week of April 19th

On April 20th, I went to Publix and they also had no toilet paper. (Good thing we have enough for a while.) In the evening, I had my Palm Beach Gardens Fiction Writers WEBEX critique meeting. On April 22nd, I had my first ZOOM critique meeting with the local chapter of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. On April 23, my husband’s May eye exam was cancelled due to the pandemic, I attended a ZOOM meeting on Beta Readers with Newburyport Writers and enjoyed my brother and others playing and singing in a ZOOM Facebook Live event with Staten Island Arts. On April 25, I virtually attended the Newburyport Literary festival via ZOOM and my daughter’s hospital received face shields from the collaborative effort of 3 outdoor gear companies: Yeti, Smith and Black Diamond.

Week of April 26th

On April 28th, one of my husband’s photographs became part of a virtual online exhibit for The Lighthouse Art Center in Jupiter, Florida. On April 28th, Palm Beach County reported 17 new deaths from COVID-19, its highest daily death count yet. The next day, the 29th, the county re-opened (with 19 pages of restrictions) county parks, golf courses, pools and marinas. Our own community sent an email saying they wouldn’t comply and our pool would remain closed. As much as I miss my morning swims, I think it’s the right move. On the 29th, my husband picked a handful of grape-size coco plums during out morning walk. On April 30th, I found toilet paper in the supermarket for the first time in a very long time!

A Neighborhood Walk Before and During a Pandemic

“As a nation, we can’t be doing the kinds of things we were doing a few months ago.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci 

When the world was normal, a walking loop around my Florida neighborhood was done for enjoyment. Today it’s done because I need a break from isolation, fresh air and exercise to help my immune system stay strong and relief from the bombardment of depressing virus news on my devices.

Not far from my front door, the walk takes me past the community pool, patio, clubhouse and gym. A short while ago, people would be swimming, lounging and working out. All of these facilities are closed now, and the county has closed public pools and even the beaches and boat launches. 

As I exit toward the street through a gate, I don’t dare touch it with my hands like I used to do without even thinking about it. Instead, I elbow it open.

Heading north, the sidewalk is about ten feet wide, serpentine and shaded by palms, live oak and pine. Once in a while, a small lizard scoots underfoot. I’d often pass walkers, joggers and cyclists before, but now they’re scarcer. Cyclists whiz by fast enough that I don’t give them a second thought but when another person on foot is approaching me, I watch to see which side of the walk they edge over to and I choose the opposite edge. Neither of us wear a mask and some give a tentative greeting but we keep our six-foot distance. At times, I’ve heard bits of cell conversations as they pass, “Yes, honey, I’m doing that. Don’t worry.” Like many, they’re reaching out with technology to loved ones isolated far away.

  A few hundred yards up is a canal where I sometimes see fish swimming and birds like egrets, herons and wood storks wading. These days, I’m careful not to touch the railing when I peer over the edge.

 The next mile passes the gates to another housing community before trees line the grass on the road side and jungle-like bushes edge the other all the way to the next intersection. Depending on the time of day, this intersection used to have a crossing guard who’d give a friendly greeting. The nearby schools are closed now, so he’s out of a job.

 A right turn takes me east and I pass a large county park on the left with a wooded walking trail and several grassy athletic fields. Soccer teams of all ages used to be there either practicing or playing official games. During games, the parking lots facing the fields would be full of cars, and the benches along the field were filled with families and friends. A playground with a jungle gym would be busy with squealing younger kids. For now, there’s a sign on the fence that says, “Field Closed” and playground use is forbidden. At first, the fields were only closed to group events, so I’d sometimes still see three or four teens kicking a ball around. My guess is they were high school players trying to stay in shape in case their cancelled season got a reprieve. Now, they can’t even do that, since all county parks have been closed, as the state parks were a week earlier.

Two schools (elementary and middle) are on the right. Before, I might see cars with parents behind the wheels lined up all down the road. They’d be waiting to pick up their kids after classes let out. School buses would be lined up in the driveways and the parking lots filled with teachers’ vehicles. The schools are closed now and teachers have prepared online curriculums for who knows how long. The latest projection is until May 1, but it may be extended. 

One day about a week ago, there was a sign on the elementary school fence that said, “Digital Pickup.” Laptops were being made available for kids to borrow if they didn’t have computers at home. It’s a great idea but I wondered if those same kids would have access to WI-FI for using them. Poverty disadvantages kids in so many ways.   

Reports yesterday allayed my worries. More than 30,000 have been distributed countywide and some companies are offering free internet access temporarily. The district has provided a list of potential options. In addition, for those who can’t access lessons online, the district is also offering televised classes during the school day through the district’s TV station, The Education Network.

 The fence gates are now locked and the schools are shuttered but learning continues, relying in large part, on the dedication of parents who must oversee their children’s participation.

 At the next corner, I turn right and south and there’s a tennis park on the left with many courts. Those were always busy and used to have crowds at times watching tournaments. Because a tennis game has a maximum of only four people, they remained open until last week. They’ve since been closed. 

 High hedges are on my right, then further on, line the sidewalks on both sides. They shield multi-age housing communities from passersby. Some of these communities used to be quiet during the day because kids were at school and many adults were at work. These days, they’re quiet for several reasons. Some workers are holed up in their houses telecommuting and some are lying low and worrying about finances because their jobs have been shut down. Though kids are home, they can’t play outside as carefree as they used to.

  At the next corner, a right takes me west onto a street filled with once-bustling restaurants, cafes, outdoor bars and small businesses. Most of them are closed now, except some of the restaurants are offering curbside take-out service for anyone who dares to venture over there. Behind these shops is an empty golf course. All golf courses in the county were closed this past week.

At the back entrance into my own community, I turn right and pass a few dozen townhouses and a couple of ponds. When I reach home, I’ve walked a loop of almost three miles. I’ve been doing this walk with my husband most days and, up until they closed the parks, we got some variety walking in uncrowded natural areas. The question in my mind now is, Will a neighborhood walk remain possible? 

A Fork in the Road of Life

“The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.”

Thornton Wilder

Many people around the world dream of life-changing journeys, but their reality is full of roadblocks. Here is one man’s story:

He’d been a good son. When his mother pushed him to clean behind his ears, brush his teeth and dress properly, he didn't complain. In fact, he was grateful for those good habits because they raised his esteem in the eyes of others. When his father asked him to study hard and make him proud, he persevered until he earned a university degree..

But his education makes him see the world in a different way from his father, and his attractive appearance gives him social opportunities his mother doesn’t understand.

His body feels weighted down with indecision as he stares with blank eyes into his soul. Two paths lay before him, but which should he choose? The first is what he considers the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to do graduate work abroad. The second is to honor his parents with obedience. They oppose his leaving because they have other plans for him which they consider important for the family; to marry the cousin they have selected and to take a government job in his country. 

He’s a man torn between two cultures, two generations, two worlds — the modern one he yearns to experience and the traditional one he’s obliged to occupy and not question.

Leaving would break many hearts and distance him, perhaps for good, from the family that has nurtured and loved him. He loves them too, but also understands their love is intricately bound up with rituals, restrictions, obedience and ideals he sometimes questions. He yearns to be free, not of his family, but of the taboos that stifle reasonable dissent. 

Staying and taking a government position doesn't guarantee stability. It might provide protection for his family but who knows? His country's government is volatile and the regime in power is corrupt. Anyway, he’d be sacrificing his ideals and hopes for democracy.

And the marriage! His cousin is a nice enough girl, but he feels no attraction for her in the least. She’d be nothing more than his baby-making machine for padding the family tree. It isn't fair — to either of them. He wants love. Is that so unreasonable?

The thing is… it's hopeless. Leaving requires a cold heart, courage and money. He lacks all of these, especially the money.

If he abandons his parents, they lose not only his future financial support but also the chance to watch his children grow and carry on the traditions. Dreams of his mother's tears and his father's rebukes would torture him..

If he refuses his cousin, she will be shamed and perhaps seen as unsuitable for marriage. He’d carry the weight of her humiliation with him.

But why should family demands override his needs and goals? Shouldn't parents feel joy when their child has new opportunities for growth? Why are they so resistant to change?

Last week he almost convinced himself it was foolish to be sentimental when his life was at stake. He made discreet inquiries about a student visa; it was no problem if he could afford to pay for his transportation, room and board. Perhaps, he thought, he could sell his computer and his old motorbike. After that, he’d find a job. 

Yesterday, he stashed the laptop into his backpack and made a dusty trip on the bike to see the merchants. The little cash they offered was contemptible. It would fund his getaway but he’d be penniless when he got there.  

He rode back home discouraged and doubt set in again. He told himself it would have been foolish to surrender the laptop that was essential for school. And without the motorbike, how would his brother take over the errands he did for the family now? 

Here in the dark room, the ramifications of leaving make his head throb, but the thought of staying makes his stomach ache. Is it more courageous to stay or to go?  How will he live with himself either way?

For Better or Worse—Memorable Trip Moments

“Live life with no excuses, travel with no regrets.”

Oscar Wilde

Sometimes the travel events we remember most are the mishaps, oddities, eye-openers or scary things. My life has had its share of those.

Mishaps

After touring with my two sisters visiting us in Italy, we packed the car for a trip to Greece. Somewhere on the Autostrada heading for the ferry between Brindisi and Patmos, their luggage flew off the roof of our car and we never found it again. 

On an Easter Sunday visit to a Croatian beach, we locked the keys in our car. Most places were closed. A local family helped to jiggle the window down and their young son was skinny enough to reach through and retrieve the keys.

On my husband’s first day of work at his new job in Italy, he exited our hotel to find that our car had been stolen from its parking spot directly in front of the hotel lobby. He spent several hours at the police station before reporting to work.

After a flight from New York to Istanbul, Turkey, we learned that our luggage was lost and one of our credit cards had been hacked at JFK. The luggage turned up several days later. The credit card was replaced, but not in time for use on our trip. Luckily, we had another card.

Some mishaps were health related and required doctor or pharmacy visits—a skin rash in St. Thibery, France, mal de schiena (lower back pain) in Rome, Italy, a meniscus tear on a ski slope in St. Anton, Austria, getting achy and feverish after a hot tub dip in Val d’Isere, France and a fat lip for my son after running and tripping in a restaurant in southern Italy.

Oddities

Thanksgiving is a very American holiday and when one is in a foreign country, the day is marked only in touristy hotels in major cities. Prato, Italy, where we found ourselves one year, is an old textile center and not touristy, so our T-day dinner was not traditional. In fact, our meal was unusual even for Italians, because the only restaurant we could find open was Chinese.

We saw some rather macabre catacombs (Catacombe dei Capuchini) with many bodies preserved, fully dressed and hanging in upright positions in Palermo, Sicily. The most memorable, however, was not standing but lying in a glass-covered coffin. It was that of Rosalia, a two-year-old girl in lifelike condition, despite being dead for almost a century.

Eye-openers

Eye-openers can be conversations you didn’t expect to have. For me, one happened in a Warsaw, Poland restaurant (prior to the wall coming down). An East German guy asked us why we were there when we had the freedom to travel to so many wonderful places beyond his reach. He was bitter because he had few choices, all of which were confined to the Eastern Bloc countries. 

A request from Morocco shocked me with the revelation that an everyday product in the U.S. was a scarce commodity there. My husband and I hand-transported 1,000 bars of hotel-size soap to a health clinic in a small village so our nurse friend in the Peace Corps could provide anti-bacterial care for wounds and minimize germ contamination.

A late-night arrival at JFK resulted in a long wait for our 6am connection to Boston and showcased the dire straits of homeless people who sought refuge in the nearly deserted terminal.

Scary Things

Our honeymoon in Venezuela included a hairy plane flight between Canaima and Caracas. The attendants gave us complimentary alcohol and then proceeded to stuff leaks in the plane with toilet paper.

When we passed through (then) Czechoslovakia on our drive to Poland, we stopped in Prague, only to find out our visas were one-way. We spent half a day in a government office filling out paperwork and hoping we’d be able to re-enter the country on our way back.

On leaving Poland, our car, with our children asleep in the back seat, was subjected to a complete search late at night. We had an “unofficial” painting bought from an art student in Krakow instead of a government store, so we were on edge.

After a harrowing detour on a high mountain road skirting a volcano in Baños, Ecuador, we were making a windy, steep descent into town when our rental car lost its brakes. 

Finally, we survived an earthquake in Naples, Italy. It could have been worse; we were at a soccer game near the epicenter only hours before.

As trying as those events were, my travels have also included amazing, surprising and sweet moments.

Amazing

Amazing moments for me have been many, like walking amidst blue-footed boobies on Isla de la Plata, Ecuador and having an outdoor bed massage on a beach in Koh Lanta, Thailand. 

Many amazing experiences have involved food— a dinner in a former camel caravan stall in Sarajevo, in what was then Yugoslavia, flying in to have lunch in a jungle camp near Canaima Falls, Venezuela, a complimentary bottle of sherry, almonds and chocolate at a parador near Huelva, Spain and enjoying giant, grilled shrimp at an oceanside inn in Figueira da Foz, Portugal. 

France didn’t disappoint in the amazing meals department either— a spectacular fish platter (Plateau Prunier) in Bayonne that was as large as the table, an eighteenth-century costumed, holiday dinner party in a French castle near Paris and a Michelin-starred dinner in a Beaujolais cave.

Surprising

We’ve had some surprises along the way. A Parisian waiter defied the French reputation for rudeness when he noticed I left my purse at a café and tracked me down on his motorcycle to return it.

In the largely Muslim country of Morocco, we encountered a painting of the feminist Betty Friedan in a museum in Agadir.

The teenage daughter of an Italian friend had a picture of American singer Jackson Browne in her bedroom at their vacation home in Sapri.

The manager of the hotel we stayed at in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam gifted me with a lovely white wool scarf on the day we left.

Sweet

My husband and I, both of retirement age, were sitting together at the edge of a fountain in Madrid, Spain when a local photographer asked to take our picture for a love-themed contest.

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.