The birds are back!

We left Stuart last September to spend a couple of weeks in Nevada and California. During that time, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that Lake Okeechobee was approaching dangerous depths - 15 feet - and posed a risk to the surrounding area by threatening to burst its seams (the dikes) and cause devastating flooding. They started bleeding the polluted lake through its two major arteries, the Caloosahatchee River to the west and the St. Lucie River to the east, in order to relieve the pressure. 

When we got home from our trip at the beginning of October, we looked forward to going out on the boat. Friends told us not to bother; the waterways (not only the St. Lucie River, but also the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Lucie inlet) were a disgusting mess, and the Corps was still bleeding the lake.

We waited patiently for the bleeding to stop, but it continued another month. We made frequent trips down to our dock during that time, and what we saw broke our hearts. The bait fish had left the river, and so did the birds and our beloved dolphins who ate them. 

We have no idea what has happened to the oyster beds that locals were working so hard to restore. I read that an adult oyster, which can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, would not survive three months in the freshwater river we now had. (The salinity level, which usually hovers in the teens (parts per thousand), was then around 0.5 - essentially fresh water.)

They finally stopped bleeding the lake during the first week of November. We went out on the boat a month later. The river still felt like a cemetery. 

Last week we went out again. As soon as we got down to the dock, we felt the difference. The birds were back! Huge flocks of terns. We watched a pelican try to swallow a fish that seemed way too big, even for its flexible throat pouch. And - wonder of wonders - our great blue heron was wading along the shore by our dock eyeing the fish in the shallows.

Dolphins? Not yet, but we are hopeful. Where there are bait fish, there is hope.

Great literature makes good travel even better.

I love to travel. As an Air Force brat, I can honestly say it is in my blood. I moved every couple of years in my childhood. Although in my early years there was always the thrill of where we would be stationed next, I was more along for the ride than following a desire to experience the world. As an adult I have perfected how to get the most out of my travels. Perhaps it was attending boarding school in Switzerland for two of my high school years, where travel was a major part of our curriculum. On second thought, no. During my high school years I was too much into taking a train somewhere - anywhere - with a group of my best friends and no chaperone. It was more about the freedom.

I think it was traveling with my own children that really taught me how to travel. As a parent, I took my role as educator seriously. My two sons, bright and inquisitive, made it fun for me to provide never-ending nourishment for their curiosities. The library became one of our favorite haunts. When they were seven and nine, we had the opportunity to move to Germany for my husband’s job. I longed to show them the Europe I had fallen in love with during high school and teach them to appreciate the diversity of the planet we lived on.

Their first experience in a foreign country was not what I wanted it to be. We were having dinner with friends in a biergarten. Biergartens are such a wonderful microcosm of German life. People come together to sit outdoors under the chestnut trees, enjoy live music, eat some würst and drink some bier, and socialize while the kids play together nearby. Only my children clung to my side. “We don’t speak German,” they whined. “We can’t play with those kids.” What? When had my inability to communicate ever stopped me from exploring a new place? I had roamed our neighborhood in Bangkok at their age with only the ability to count to ten in Thai. They needed to get off the bench and get into the game. Or was it too late? Had they missed out by not being launched into the global playground from birth? Ridiculous! We could do this, and it was my job as parent to make sure it happened.

I stumbled across the path to success shortly after the biergarten incident. Before leaving on a trip to Florence, a friend recommended I read The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. It so immersed me in Michelangelo’s Florence that I was moved to read a passage to my family as we sat in front of his statue of the biblical David in the Accademia Gallery. It was a masterful telling of how the citizens of Florence, beaten down by the perennial onslaught of the Catholic church, hostile neighboring city-states, and the powerful Medici family, responded to Michelangelo’s powerful symbol of defiance. As I looked up from my reading, I saw tears rolling down my husband’s cheeks, my kids were clamoring to know what happened next, and a small crowd had gathered round me surreptitiously listening to me read. I had discovered the key to getting the most out of traveling - good literature. Without Irving Stone, David would have been just another statue.

Twenty years later I continue my quest for good literature set in places I want to visit. A couple of months ago, I read Cannery Row aloud to my husband as we drove from Reno, Nevada, to Monterey, California. Because of Steinbeck’s engaging characters, we were not disappointed by the run-down buildings and vacant lots on the real Cannery Row. The real thing, once you got away from the schlocky tourist shops and luxury spas, was just as I pictured it from the book. I could just see Mack and the boys sitting on the front steps of the flophouse passing around the jug of “leftovers” Eddie collected from his bar-tending job and hear the strains of classical music from Doc’s laboratory over the pounding of the waves. Great literature makes good travel even better.

Holiday letter survey

Okay, now's your opportunity to vent on the subject of holiday letters you receive from family, friends, and barely-acquaintances. Since my kids were young, I have annually sent out holiday letters updating friends and family who don't live within visiting distance on what my family has been doing for the past twelve months. While opting not to brag about my kids' exploits, I have limited my writing mostly to places we have traveled. This format began when we lived in Germany for two years. It was so much easier to write one letter and duplicate it several dozen times than jot the same few brief lines on a plethora of Christmas cards. Somehow it seemed more personal to give more detail about our lives than to just skim the surface in an assembly-line kind of way. I always, however, kept the text to one printed page.

I still do this even though my kids no longer live at home. I know they don't communicate with my friends and family, so I keep everyone up to date. Often our friends have kids who grew up with mine. I love reading what their kids are doing, and I respond in kind. Until this year.... I'm having second thoughts.

My husband shared with me an article from the Wall Street Journal about the incessant bragging in today's social media. While I don't have a Facebook page or tweet my every thought, I do have those darn holiday letters (and now this blog - which very few people know about) which accomplish the same thing, only not with such consuming frequency.

How do you feel about holiday letters? Do you want to know what's going on in my life, or is a brief telling of my annual travels nothing more than poorly disguised bragging?

Are you out there, dear readers?

Please comment to this blog:
a) I enjoy reading holiday letters from friends and family, or
b) no offense, but no thanks.

I promise I will not hold your heartfelt opinions against you. This is a search for truth. Thanks!

Laugh until your heart overflows

This is the quote on the inside of a Dove chocolate wrapper that is wedged under a ribbon on a message board that hangs over my computer, where I see it every day. It’s not the kind of sentiment that I usually hang on to. Normally I would think it’s kind of a cheesy platitude, like “Have a nice day!” or “Live, Laugh, Love.” But this quote, or more precisely, this wrapper, reminds me of two chocolate-loving buddies I used to work with.

It was an unlikely relationship. Not between Marilyn and myself necessarily. She is ten years older than I am, almost to the day. My birthday is two days before hers, so I kid her that I am two days older than she is. And I feel we are the same age. Twins separated at birth. Two very different lives, but we think alike. We bonded very quickly. I started out working with her and eventually moved on to other jobs within the same company, but my desk was always across a narrow aisle from hers. At one point the guy who ended up being my boss suggested he move me downstairs to sit with other people in our group. I told him I would chain myself to her desk if he tried. Nothing more was said about it.

Lue started working with us three months after I started working for the company. She was a college student working part time while she finished her degree. Marilyn and I were... well, we hadn’t been college students for quite some time. But the three of us clicked right off the bat, and I give a lot of the credit to Lue. She may have been 21, but she had wisdom well beyond her age and did not flinch at befriending two women old enough to be her mothers. Lue was an immigrant from Kosovo. Her family won the lottery at their refugee camp after the Kosovo War ended in 1999 and landed in Fort Dix, NJ, courtesy of Bill Clinton and NATO. (Despite the bad press, Lue was always Bill Clinton’s biggest fan. Her country reveres him for his efforts to end the genocide in her country.) She arrived at the age of 17, not speaking a word of English, but she picked up the language much faster than her parents or older brother, thanks to an ESOL program at the Hartford, CT, high school she attended. She rapidly became the grown-up in the family, having to handle everything from employment applications to insurance issues because of her ability to communicate. None of this phased her. She is one of the strongest people I know.

Lue, Marilyn, and I had many good months working together. We worked steadily, and we worked hard. We shared a strong work ethic and a love of laughter. Lue shared stories about Kosovo, her boyfriend (now husband) whom she met in the refugee camp and was still over there, her struggles to learn to live abroad, and her triumph at becoming an American citizen.

Three women, unlikely friends thrown together by a work relationship and strengthened by laughter. It’s been nine years since we worked together. I miss them.

Laugh until your heart overflows.

The California

Growing up in the 60’s, I thought California was the center of the universe. I didn’t live there. I had only visited once or twice, but one of those visits was to Disneyland. Back in the days when it was the only Disney Land. California was a magical place to me; the entire state was Fantasyland. 

As I came of age, some of the best music from the rock era came out of California: The Mamas and the Papas, The Beach Boys, Crosby Stills and Nash,  Linda Ronstadt, America, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, to name a few. Even the singer-songwriters who did not hail from California congregated at The Troubadour nightclub in LA: James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Van Morrison, Dusty Springfield. 

Didn’t almost every TV show I watched as a kid take place in California? The Streets of San Francisco, Kojak, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Julia, The Big Valley, The Rockford Files, Barretta, CHiPs, Emergency 9-1-1, Columbo, McMillan and Wife, Sanford and Son?

So unique and quirky and diverse and living on the edge of the San Andreas fault, California is where everything happens first. I came to think of it as "the California." Not THE California, as if it were the original in a slew of wannabe states claiming the same name, but a name that requires a definite article in front of it, like the Mona Lisa or the David. Everyone knows it; it defines itself. The California.

I recently spent a week in the California. Just driving from Reno, Nevada, to Monterey I saw towns on the road map whose names I knew: Livermore, Petaluma, Mill Valley, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur. How do I know these names? They were featured in countless news stories, homes of research centers, universities, computer manufacturers, celebrities, and surfer dudes. This is where it was all happening while I was growing up, and still is.

Did you know that if the California were its own country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world? (Okay, Wikipedia says eighth, but fifth is the ranking I’ve heard being tossed around.) In the world!!! That alone requires a definite article. Salinas Valley produces 80% of the lettuce eaten in the United States. The California has an ocean, several mountain ranges and deserts (it is home to both the highest and lowest elevations in the lower 48 states), volcanoes, and some very big-ass trees. It is an amazing state. I am a fan. Would I want to live there? Not really, they also have one of the highest costs of living in the United States. I couldn’t afford to buy a house there - or, more likely, I wouldn’t want to live in the kind of house I could afford there.

If you have any doubt that this is an awe-inspiring state, make the drive from Monterey to Big Sur sometime on the Pacific Coast Highway. But be prepared to stop every few minutes to take photos. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never seen coastline like that.

Soundtrack to my life

I had a life's soundtrack moment yesterday boating and snorkeling on the intracoastal waterway when the Foo Fighters' "Ain't It the Life" came on.

Reason #4: Viva la difference!

When I lived in New England, I didn’t mind the winters. The longer the cold, gray months of winter dragged on, the more resplendent the spring, summer, and fall. I think I was the only New Englander who loved snow. (I had to be careful who I confided that bit of information to; my mental health was often held in question after that confession.)

Summer is Florida’s winter, and I mentally prepared myself upon moving here two years ago to spend the summers indoors just as I would spend the winters indoors in New England. Only I had two aging dogs to walk two years ago. In the middle of the day. Approximately five times in the middle of the day. In the heat and humidity. So much for staying indoors.

The first summer was brutal. I know I wasn’t acclimated to this climate yet, but I still contend that the summer of 2010 was an exceptionally hot one. I get a lot of blank looks from the natives when I say that. Delineating hot, hotter, and hottest has no meaning to a Florida native.

Last summer we had the great benefit of spending the summer in Reno, Nevada. Like jumping from the frying pan into the fire? Not exactly. It’s a dry heat. Even the dog (we were down to one by then) noticed the difference. Life on the desert provides some deliciously cool nights and early mornings. We slept with the windows open.

This summer I had to reconcile myself to a second summer in Florida. Small consolation that we don’t have any dogs to walk this summer. When my sister-in-law asked if we wanted to meet her and her family in the mountains of Colorado for a week in July, I jumped at the chance. Dry air, highs around 70°, lows in the 50’s; perfect respite! I packed sweaters, sweatshirts, jackets, jeans, closed-toe shoes - things I hadn’t worn in two years. We hiked without sweating (much). And when I blew my hair dry, it actually stayed the way I styled it! But by the end of the week, the cool temps had penetrated to the bone. The house didn’t have an opportunity to warm up to my satisfaction during the day before the evening temps started to cool it down again. I would go outside to warm up, and even then I was moving from patch to patch of sunlight to stay warm. I was beginning to long for the deep Florida heat. I wanted to be warm again. Go figure!