CHAMPIONS FOR THE ARTS

Two dynamic Seattle women—a veteran arts reporter and a longtime arts advocate— join forces with a new podcast on the importance of art in our lives BY MISHA BERSON

PHOTO BY ERNIE SAPIRO

Marcie Sillman thought she had a great plan for the next phase of her life. After 35 years as a widely popular, on-air arts reporter and host for Seattle public radio station KUOW, she would head to New York City and fulfill her dream to pursue a Performance Studies graduate degree at New York University. Sillman had been accepted by the program and planned to begin a year-long academic sojourn in the Big Apple starting in fall 2020.

But months before she was due to head East, the pandemic hit. And her well-laid plan flew out the window.

Meanwhile, high-profile Seattle consultant, arts advocate, and communications specialist Vivian Phillips was ready to try something different after decades working for the Seattle Theatre Group and other local arts institutions.

In figuring out their next moves, these two dynamic women found that two minds proved to be better than one. And that was how doubleXposure, their unique podcast about the importance and meaning of the arts, came into being.

Sillman, who is 66, and Phillips, 68, had known each other professionally for decades. But they grew closer while meeting periodically as advisors to Seattle University’s three-year Arts Ecosystem Research Project.

“Our relationship developed,” recalls Phillips, “and when Marcie retired and I was free, we started talking about how much fun it would be to do something together.”

The “something” turned out to be their podcast, which launched its first season last June after months of development and design. The podcast features nationally lauded Seattle artists such as choreographer Donald Byrd, author Charles Johnson, and visual artist Barbara Earl Thomas in deep conversation with the co-hosts about many aspects of the artistic experience.

According to Phillips, “Every single person we have invited on the podcast has said yes. They are happy to talk to the two of us in their own language. There’s no filter they must go through, no second guessing of how they’ll look and be painted.”

But no matter how high-quality or interesting a podcast is, attracting an audience for one can seem daunting. According to the Podcast Insights website, currently there are roughly two million podcasts out there jostling for your attention. That is, two million series of spoken word, audio episodes, each focused on a particular topic or theme, and available through streaming apps like Apple and Spotify.

Says Phillips, “When this came up I said, ‘Oh, Marcie, doesn’t everybody have a podcast? What’s going to make us special?’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to be special, we just have to be passionate.’ And we are both passionate!”

This is a passion project because both of its producers believe fervently in the value and purpose of cultural expression. And they are eager to bring listeners closer to how the arts can reflect and enrich our society, and the innerworkings of the art world. (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman at the Inspire Washington’s Candidates Forum at Town Hall, Seattle. Photo by Alexandrea Mielcarek

Above: Marcie Sillman interviews Spectrum Dance Theatre Executive Director Tera Beach. Left: Sillman at Spectrum Dance Theatre Photos by Hilary Northcraft

2022 SEASON WELCOME BACK

SUBSCRIPTIONS ON SALE NOW

SINGLE TICKETS GO ON SALE DEC 1, 2021

songs for a new world

“…a collection of shorts, each defi ned by the epiphany at its heart.” —Variety

the book club play

“The show is a celebration for all booklovers everywhere.” —broadwayworld.com

you're a good man charlie brown

“Freshly delightful. A continuous pleasure.” —The New York Times

raisin

“Pure magic...dazzling! Tremendous!” —The New York Times

VillageTheatre.org Box Offi ce (425) 392-2202

CHAMPIONS FOR THE ARTS

(CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)

“It’s a chance to be an advocate,” Sillman says. “It’s a passion for this cultural community and its evolution, its existence, its essentialness. That’s the crux of what we’re doing. I’ve realized more and more over the pandemic that this is what I need in my life.” doubleXposure also provides a platform for the array of skills the women have acquired, professionally and personally. Both are assured public speakers on and off the air, for instance. “Oddly enough my career started in radio,” says Phillips. “I went to work in local Black radio at the age of 19 as a traffic coordinator and continuity director, and went on the air myself in 1977.”

And Phillips brought other valuable tools, including many helpful contacts from her years fundraising and doing public relations for the Paramount Theatre, the Hansberry Project, and other organizations, and from her work as a longtime member of the Seattle Arts Commission. She also wasn’t shy about reaching out to one of her consulting clients, Pyramid Communications, for volunteer assistance.

“They put together a whole team for us, five people, who helped us with audience targeting. They created our website, our logo. That’s why you hear ‘supported by Pyramid Communications’ on our episodes.”

Though anyone can record people talking and call it a podcast, Sillman’s high standards and radio know-how also have been a boon. “When I left KUOW I knew I needed to get a digital editing system, which I bought,” she explains. “Then I signed up with a podcast host site. We record the podcast pretty much wherever we are sitting while on Zoom. And I learned a new audio system that people from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) developed for working remotely and getting high-quality sound called Clean Feed.”

Though the podcast is not currently a money-making venture, it is surely a labor of love—reaching listeners as far as Europe and Africa. The first season of doubleXposure has featured episodes about art and science, COVID and equity, the future of live theater, and the promising research of using dance as a “healing art” with those afflicted by Parkinson’s disease.

But friendship is also at the core of the project. The duo is aware that their differences in background and perspective—Silliman is white and from the Midwest, Phillips is Black and was raised in Seattle—have enhanced their bond, and their podcast.

“It’s been a really wonderful experience to have the ability to move our relationship from social/collegial, to one that is trusting and growing deeper daily,” says Phillips. “We both just summed that up as an important thing for us as we age gracefully, and reinvent ourselves, together.”

You can listen to the first season of doubleXposure podcasts by going to the series website at https://www. doublexposurepod.com.

These two dynamic women found that two minds proved to be better than one. And that was how doubleXposure, their unique podcast about the importance and meaning of the arts, came into being.

Misha Berson writes about the arts for crosscut. com and many other media outlets, teaches for the UW Osher program, and is the author of four books, including Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination (Applause/Hal Leonard).

BY GENE J. PAROLA

Left: Gene Parola as a young navy recruit and today.

For some of us, the new tensions with China aren’t new. For all the ballyhoo about President Nixon’s “Opening of China,” that new nation is still a foreign policy issue.

I have a vivid memory of the old China—the one that entered the Korea United Nations Police Action unannounced. There are a few of us still around who participated.

Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii is a well-known tourist destination. The USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park and the boat ride to the USS Arizona Memorial are standard stops after the visitor center. And arrangements can be made for those visits at any hotel in Honolulu. Even a side trip around to Ford Island, to the Battleship Missouri Memorial, and the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum (formerly the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor) has become a regular part of the Pearl Harbor circuit.

But one of Ford Island’s secrets will not be accessible. It remains hidden in the memories of those who served in the Special Intelligence Production Unit (SIPU).

SIPU was the sort of secret that was allowed in a stealthier era and is still employed by arrogant politicians and willful military.

We enlisted men didn’t know why we were ordered to Ford Island, a naval air station. None of our training was aircraft related. But we were not in the “need to know” category. Even with our red, rubber stamp TOP SECRET clearance, we didn’t know what secrets we were to keep, yet.

It all became clear on that March day in 1952 when our Commanding Officer, the aging Commander de B. (is his name still classified?) informed us that we were to prepare targets for U.S. aircraft carrier pilots. The targets were in China. In preparation for its invasion. Throughout the preceding year the Korean War had yo-yoed up and down that peninsula and the American commanding general, Douglas MacArthur, had loudly recommended—then openly threatened—to invade China. His secret decision to cross the Yalu River without political or Joint Chiefs of Staff permission had already prompted the Commander in Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC) to put wheels in motion for just such an eventuality.

The slowness to reverse his orders for those preparations resulted in the establishment of SIPU six months after MacArthur’s firing by President Harry S. Truman. Hence the oxymoron: military intelligence?

Or maybe, the military high command, sensing the possibility of

a Republican president in 1953 and a consequent change in foreign policy, merely allowed the turning wheels to continue to turn.

In any case, a dozen officers and as many enlisted men busied themselves with the 14th Air Force aerial photography of Manchuria— that portion of eastern China that had been held by Japan since the 1930s.

Our responsibility was to aid in a land invasion and since no carrier task groups could venture very far north into the Yellow Sea along Korea’s west coast, our area of concern was the narrow strip of territory west of the Yalu River border. Narrow because it had to be reachable by planes from carriers on the east of the peninsula in the Sea of Japan.

The photo interpreters poured over the old stereo prints, pretty confident that little had changed in that remote area in the half dozen years since the end of WWII. Bridges were still there, both rail and highway ones.

Railroad marshaling yards still bundled tracks alongside the main lines, old Japanese military camps were now new Chinese military camps, and tall industrial smokestacks still cast their long betraying shadows.

Our in-house pilots received the photos, targets now clearly inked with bold borders. After affixing the photos to a prepared format, they added longitude and latitude coordinates, recommended directional approaches for attacking planes, and assigned weaponry depending on the target’s material and construction. Several hundred copies were printed, three-hole punched and mounted into stiffbacked “gazetteers.” They were shipped to the carriers.

In February 1953 there was indeed an inauguration of a Republican president in Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower. The very idea of a land war in Asia shook that veteran campaigner to the bone.

Our gazetteers wound up in incinerators aboard the carriers.

By the time I left the Navy in the fall of 1955 the rigors of the Korean War and the reality of fighting a Chinese army there had cooled most of the talk that had engendered SIPU’s creation and its continued existence. Some time that year the name was changed to Fleet Intelligence Unit. I’m told that the personnel still aboard were later integrated into existing Intel units at CINCPAC.

A tourist bus can be caught to Ford Island. It will take you to the Battleship Missouri Memorial and on to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum—both exciting stops. But you will find no trace of SIPU. The beer garden and swimming pool of that era are gone. The building that housed our secrets has been replaced by what an old bos’n mate would call a geedunk dive—a snack bar. And you can access it only if you are military: active, reserve, or retired.

But not to worry. There would have been nothing there but memories of those of us who performed dutifully in what might have been another difficult war.

Gene J. Parola is a retired cultural historian who served at SIPU. He is the author of The Devil to Pay, a sailing adventure novel, and short stories in Bamboo Bridge: Journal of Hawaii Literature and Arts, Messages from the Universe and Literary Horizons of Hawaii. Lehua, The Romance of a Hawaiian Girl won a first prize as a historical fiction novel.

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A Dr p in the Ocean

By my mid-50s I had reached a point where I was working so hard under huge stress that I was afraid of leisure, afraid it would remind me of what I didn’t want to know—that my marriage was failing. The government agency I worked for had been so eviscerated that I was secretly whistleblowing to the New York Times about the corruption. Bleakness felt more normal than joy. One day I locked eyes with a lynx perched on deep snow just outside my window and watched its furry paws splayed like snowshoes. I felt nothing. That’s when I realized it was either time to make a change in my life, or time to kill time until time killed me. Sailing dreams overtook me in the long meditative languor of 2005’s Alaskan winter.

It wasn’t always so hard, though hardship has been no stranger to me. My whole family died early; my sister in an accident, my mother two years later by suicide in her grief, and my father (later) by cancer. My first husband left me three weeks after my mother’s death and I learned what numbness piled on numbness means. So, in 1978, at age 27 I left my career as a high school science teacher and went to sea as crew on a 72-foot ketch across the Caribbean, where I found something between relief and happiness. I went on to spend the 1980s as a professional captain, but needed to make a better financial plan for my future, so I got a job with a federal agency. Then, at 55, stressed and unhappy, I retired and went to sea again, on a 24-foot sloop across the Gulf of Alaska and down the Inside Passage. It was scary and joyful and the best thing I ever did, because it prepared me for my Third Act. I have found that going to sea opens an elegiac doorway into an unexplored chamber of the mind. It’s as if the amygdala, the brain’s center of primitive emotion, becomes mesmerized and no longer represses thought snippets, memories, and occasionally, endless annoying song fragments. There’s a tidal free flow in and out between the conscious and unconscious, until things I hadn’t remembered in years would spill out on

night watches as I braced tiredly against ceaseless rolling. Oh look, what’s that thought flopping down there? Talk about unguarded moments. The sea bent me to its will through heave and toss, pitch and yaw, a form of sensory overload that when combined with an empty horizon or dark brooding mountains rising up from it, induced an altered state. I felt a nameless gate opening and would shout at the clouds and sing to the birds. For a writer, this isn’t a bad thing.BY KAREN I met my now-husband in Port SULLIVAN Townsend, Wash. We had identical boats and lots in common; we kept one boat and one house. In 2011, we sailed to Mexico, then to French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Tonga, and New Zealand. Returning in 2013, we have since traveled up to Glacier Bay in Alaska. There’s something about doing what you love, with a purpose. It’s balm for overwhelming times. While

Below: Stormy weather coming as Karen looks for the landfall at Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, after 37 days at sea. Right Top: Karen tends the halyards while Jim works aloft on their 24-foot sailboat in a French Polynesian lagoon. Right Bottom: Karen and Jim arrive at the Bay of Virgins, Fatu Hiva.

I HAVE FOUND THAT GOING TO SEA OPENS AN ELEGIAC DOORWAY INTO AN UNEXPLORED CHAMBER OF THE MIND.

politicians have been arguing for centuries, and scandal and intrigue aren’t going away, bombardment by ads, sensationalized news, shouted opinion, and rude behavior assault us in ways unimaginable decades ago. I found that words well-used have the power to do some good. To me, writing equals thinking equals surviving—and helping others.

Another thing—the concept that “the world has shrunk” may be true, and the planet is far more crowded now, but it’s a costly phrase in terms of sustaining a sense of wonder. I dislike it because it implies that my horizons have shrunk.

By choosing to go sailing, I’ve reclaimed the pleasure of following a dream, the excitement of exploration, the joy of making new friends in different cultures, and the twin thrills of self-reliance and accomplishment— plus learning more viscerally how big the world really is, by crossing it slowly, at five knots. By choosing to write about this and other things, I have found an unquenchable thirst for big, full-sized days.

At sea one can empty the mind, while barely hanging onto the stomach, and watch the birds fly. “Look at that delicate petrel doing cartwheels! How is it not broken by the wind?” The albatross moves its long wings inches above wavetops and stares with soulful eyes. Off-watch in bed, ear six inches from the Pacific gurgling at the hull, one can imagine passing over billions of unseen shelled, finned, and toothed lives of which we know next to nothing. Some crawl in freezing darkness 12,000 feet down; others are near the surface. Some are large, intelligent; others invisible, microscopic, but no less alive. Some lives span whole oceans as they migrate with the seasons; other lives are confined to a drop of water.

It all feeds the sense of wonder that, at 70, will keep me going for a long time.

Karen Sullivan is a retired wildlife biologist, former ship captain, science teacher, and spokesperson for a federal agency. Aboard a 120 foot research vessel she helped do seabird research in the Aleutians and Bering Sea. From 2011-2013, she and her husband crossed the Pacific from Port Townsend, Wash., to New Zealand aboard their 24-foot sailboat. She writes for Rainshadow Journal, various magazines, and is at work on a memoir and a novel. Read more of her work at www.karenlsullivan.com.

Cascade Valley Scenic Byway

STATE ROUTE

Appropriately my Cascade Valley Scenic Byway excursion launched with cherry pie and coffee at Twede’s Café (aka the Double R Diner). As fans of the 1990-91 TV show Twin Peaks can tell you, the Double R was a favorite haunt of Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by actor Kyle MacLachlan) who arrived in Twin Peaks, which was actually North Bend, Wash., to investigate the murder of the town’s homecoming queen. When the series and its (limited run) revival in 2017 made Snoqualmie Valley and its environs famous, the grateful town of North Bend declared the day of Agent Cooper’s February 24 arrival, “Twin Peaks Day.”

Bookended by Exit 31 on I-90, which skirts the North Bend Premium Outlets and Woodinville’s Highway 522—and reached after running a gauntlet of tempting wineries—the 28-mile Cascade Valley Scenic Byway meanders through bucolic rural flatlands and suburban enclaves. Offering up history, picturesque walks, winter shopping possibilities, and Christmas tree farms, your toughest decision will be which direction to drive it.

After the pie repast, I used the downloadable, self-guided North Bend Historic Walking Tour to explore.

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In the early 1900s the town was a stop on Sunset Highway, the cross-Cascade route predating today’s Interstate 90. Many of its historic buildings served as gas stations, hotels, and restaurants for early motorists navigating Snoqualmie Pass.

Just outside North Bend is Meadowbrook Farm, a 460-acre preserve and interpretive center with epic views of Mt. Si. Once the largest hop farm in the world, it’s also a significant site for the local Snoqualmie Tribe. A flat three-mile walk through meadows and wetlands ends at the Marie Louie Project, an art installation honoring the Snoqualmie medicine woman. Painted cedar posts mark the seasonal direction of sunrise demonstrating how the Salish calendar was oriented to natural events like the ripening of berries. If you arrive at the preserve in the early morning or twilight, you might see the elk herd that calls Meadowbrook home.

Charming Snoqualmie is rightfully famous for its railroad history. I marvelled at the outdoor museum of railway cars

A winter road trip that will warm your spirits

BY ANN RANDALL

located next to the oldest building in town, the stately Queen Anne-style Snoqualmie Depot housing the Northwest Railway Museum. You can “Ride the Rails” on weekends taking a 5.5-mile train excursion between Snoqualmie and North Bend, or if road tripping with grandchildren, take the Santa Train in November and December. The two-hour journey begins in North Bend and ends at Snoqualmie Depot for cookies and hot chocolate with Santa and his elves.

Using the self-guided Snoqualmie Historic Walking Tour, I discovered the town’s former theater is today’s Sigillo Cellars and strolled past the building where the fraternal Modern Woodsmen of America once convened. Railroad Avenue is lined with small stores for holiday shopping, while Snoqualmie Falls Brewery makes a warm place to tuck in for a bite to eat and glass of Meadowbrook Farmhouse Ale brewed with hops grown down the road.

Snoqualmie Falls provides a jaw-dropping geology lesson about the combined effect of ice, glacial debris, a river, and a 268-foot drop over a granite cliff. The waterfall is a place of cultural importance to the Snoqualmie Tribe, and when threatened with development around the falls in 2019, they purchased the iconic Salish Lodge & Spa to preserve the site.

Enroute to Fall City, detour to Fall City Wallaby Ranch to visit their marsupials. A visit requires reservations. Park near the historic Roadhouse Restaurant & Inn to begin Fall City’s self-guided walking tour. While strolling, I learned about the valley’s first phone company operating out of the restored Prescott-Harshman House, and the town’s importance as a river transportation center. The first Saturday in December Fall City gets into the holiday spirit with a market and treelighting ceremony.

Before leaving the byway’s rural miles for the suburbs of Redmond and Woodinville, I travelled a stretch of exposed red-brick highway built in 1913, dubbed the James Mattson Road. To find this designated King County Landmark, turn right off the byway on 196th Avenue NE.

Ignoring the siren call of Redmond Town Center mall, I navigated to Woodinville where a plethora of wineries, distilleries, and brewpubs awaited. My first stop, however, was Molbak’s Garden + Home, a 60-year-old Woodinville institution. Back in the day its Danish immigrant owners, Egon and Laina Molbak, served Danish Kringle and coffee, a holiday tradition in my family. Today it brims with sights, smells, and plenty of gift and decoration inspiration.

I chose Maryhill Tasting Room & Bistro and a glass of its award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon for my final stop. Located in the Hollywood Schoolhouse, the 1912 red brick landmark, built on traditional land of the Duwamish Tribe, served first as a school, then a dance hall, and finally a roller-skating rink before its current iteration. Like the valley corridor I’d just travelled, it had a heritage best savored by making the journey there.

Ann Randall is a freelance writer, organizational consultant, and independent traveler who loves venturing to out-of-the-way locales, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. Retired from a career as a teacher and union organizer in public education, she now observes international elections, does volunteer work in India, and writes regularly for 3rd Act, Northwest Travel & Life, West Sound Home & Garden, Fibre Focus and Dutch the Magazine.

Top: Fall City Road House Below: North Bend Theatre Photos by Ann Randall

For further information:

• Downloadable historic walking tours of

North Bend, Snoqualmie, and Fall City:

www.Savorsnoqualmievalley.org

• Meadowbrook Farm:

www.meadowbrookfarmpreserve.org

• Snoqualmie Train Depot/Northwest Railway Museum:

www.trainmuseum.org • Fall City Wallaby Ranch: www.wallabyranch.org • Molbak’s Garden + Home: www.molbaks.com

• Maryhill Tasting Room & Bistro:

www.maryhillwinery.com

Going Places Once Again

Travel in the PostPandemic Era

BY HARRIET LEWIS

Since 2019, the world has become a very different place. From one-way grocery isles to plexiglass dividers between restaurant booths, we see evidence of the pandemic everywhere in our daily lives. And nowhere are these changes so obvious as they are in the travel sphere, arguably one of the industries most affected by COVID-19. Thankfully travel and tourism are coming back, but how is the industry changing with the demand for safe, yet immersive, travel? Some of the shifts have been obvious, like masks and sanitizing measures across the board, but what are travelers not seeing? Each piece of the travel puzzle has adjusted in its own way. Guided touring companies have carefully thought-out adjustments, while cruise companies have made So many of us are yearning to their own thoughtful changes. There’s travel again, but no single solution to this problem and how different each country is tackling the COVID does the guided crisis differently. Tourism hotspots, too, need to keep their visitors safe and secure while they enjoy their visit. That means the travel industry’s trip and cruise industry look now, in a post-COVID approach must be nuanced and world? changing with the ebb and flow of current information. I know for a fact our 36 offices around the world are navigating changes daily. There have been some tried-and-true methods to ensure travelers are confident that they can hop on a flight or board a cruise and have an incredible time while staying healthy.

Group Adventures Adjust to the Times

Guided tour companies made a pronounced shift toward small group travel to solve the issues of crowds and social distancing. Even before the pandemic became a global problem, travelers that enjoyed guided touring were taking advantage of the “small group” philosophy—

Traveling with smaller groups allows you to get into closer, more off-the-beaten path locations and attractions. Photos courtesy of Grand Circle Corp/Overseas Adventure Travel

smaller groups allow you to get into closer, more off-thebeaten path locations and attractions. Plus, experiencing the true heart of a country or culture is easier when you can connect with people one-on-one, made possible when you’re traveling in smaller groups. Traveling by rickshaw in Ho Chi Minh City or dining with a Croatian farmer at their home is possible in smaller groups and provide for many memorable and rewarding moments.

The small group travel philosophy is proving to be a winning strategy in the post-pandemic era, where many locations and attractions are putting limits on how many people can visit at once. Small group trips also tend to head off the beaten path and away from the larger crowds. With minimal adjustments, these adventures can still immerse travelers in the local culture, all while complying with crowd regulations and social distancing measures. It’s the best of both worlds—being able to travel and travel responsibly.

Cruises Big and Small Make the Necessary Changes

Cruise companies have faced a lot of challenges over the pandemic. How do you keep everyone safe and healthy on a ship where close quarters are a given? Cruise companies were early adopters of requiring negative COVID tests to board, and instituted limits on cabin capacity. Small ship cruising have also grown in popularity. On smaller ships, it is easier to make sure that everyone—both crew and passengers—is vaccinated or tested negative for COVID. Cruising is an incredible and relaxing way to travel and it’s great to know that you can travel via ship with confidence, with measures in place to keep everyone healthy, like eliminating buffets, and installing HEPA filters to the air filtration systems.

Some small ship cruises have also implemented groups within the ship, breaking out meals, activities, and onshore excursions into multiple sessions. That gives everyone more space to be comfortable and safe, while having no impact on the actual experience. While group A is having lunch, group B may be headed into the town the ship is currently docked at, already having eaten lunch right before. With these simple and effective scheduling measures, travelers can cruise on small ships and limit their exposure to larger crowds.

It’s a Bold New World, Ready for Exploration

For most travel companies, the traveler and their experience is the first thought and main focus when they create a travel itinerary. This is a fact that has only become more and more true as the COVID-19 pandemic wore on. Many businesses, like my own company Overseas Adventure Travel, focus on delivering an incredible experience. Whether it’s catered to the solo traveler or a family group excursion, they need to feel they can rely wholeheartedly on the travel provider they’ve chosen. We’ve seen a great response since returning to operations in July, with 92% of returning travelers rating their trip “excellent,” even with all precautionary measures in place.

Having confidence in your travel provider is more important today than it ever has been and the travel industry has risen to the challenge of a new travel landscape. People want to travel. Destinations that rely on tourism want travelers back. And the travel industry is here to provide a great experience for all, while minimizing the risk of exposure to COVID-19.

Harriet Lewis is a world traveler, philanthropist, and the vice chairperson of Overseas Adventure Travel, whose mission is to provide life-changing experiences around the world—primarily by connecting travelers with locals who live in the areas they explore.

What We Owe Each Other

by Hollis Giammatteo

Last summer, as wildfires and air quality allowed, we drove our Teardrop to Montana, and that question, what we owe each other, spanning eons and religions, hit me, triggered by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A Small State Park

Approached by an older man offering to help me pump water, I wondered, did I look that feeble? Resisting sarcasm, I opted to chat. He was driving from Arizona to Minnesota for the fishing. It was bad here. COVID insinuated itself into our conversation. The gist— a suspicion of mainstream news. Take South Dakota, “nothing happened.”

“That motorcycle rally?” I asked.

“Hoax!”

“Vaccines?”

“Lies and profit motive.” “Hydroxychloroquine, perfectly effective with regard to timing.”

Where to begin? What do I know, after all? I am the walking talk of what I read. I shrugged. We walked past his pick-up. In the bed was tethered a cute, yellow raft for his fishing, and this I admired.

Hutterite Corn

We arrived in Choteau, 85 miles south of East Glacier. My wife would be off for a weeklong, packhorse-supported hike in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. I’d remain in the Mountain View Campground with, more accurately, its view of a huge seed-cleaning operation across the highway. An older woman, shimmering, approached. “There is Hutterite corn on the corner of 89 and the hardware.”

“Ah, the Hutterites,” I say. “I saw the movie.” I amended, “I mean, there was a documentary.”

She praised their corn. In turn, we praised summer, a mainstay being corn. She said her name was Carole and I said mine.

She said, “I won’t remember. I have short-term memory loss.”

I laughed. It had been tossed out that lightly.

Later, I was sorry that I hadn’t asked, “How is that for you?”

Simone Weil believed compassion was manifested with the question, “What are you going through?”

Dot and Scale

I was reading Willa Cather’s My Antonia then, and like her narrator, I was enthralled by the land. Each day, I’d drive toward the Rocky Mountain Front on dirt, surfing the sea-scraped, rolling plains. I’d go forth with the dog in my orange tin box, swallowed by scale. Once, four horses stood gossiping in the middle of the road—lovely, curious, affable. They approached. Each in turn stuck a perfectly beautiful head

“Some Indian legends say that the first buffalo came out of a hole in the ground. When the buffalo were wiped out, there were Indians who claimed the whites found the spot, hazed the herds back into it, and plugged the hole.”

into the car, snorted softly, withdrew. They ambled on. We owed nothing to each other. They were a gift, and I resumed dot stature.

Going Forth

I’d laid an expectation on myself, that I go forth, like my wife, into the wilderness. This was fully realized while asking the Forest Ranger if I, alone, female, and entertaining agerelated caution, was safe to go forth hiking. The force with which she responded, “You’ve got to know what you’re doing out there!” Humbly, I took the list of hikes she offered. My wife had left me her can of bear spray. I was not amused.

No, I would not go forth to be eaten or mauled. She was with her beautifully guided group; there was spray and expertise aplenty. She was not in jeopardy. This, I told myself, is what we owe each other—not to put ourselves in harm’s way; rather, to take care of ourselves for the good of one another. At the very least, this is what we owed each other.

History

A historical marker on Highway 89 indicated a stone that marked a place no longer standing called Old Agency. According to the sign, this bit of land had been “given” to the Blackfeet Indians “with unusual generosity.” The whites permitted the Indians to choose the location of their reservation. The tone of the sign lacked irony.

Up the highway, another marker noted that in 1806, the country I was gazing out upon—this vast and undulating grassland bordering the Rocky Mountains from here to Canada and south to the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers—all was buffalo range, the hunting grounds of the Blackfeet Nation. The herds meant everything to them—meat, moccasins, robes, leggings, teepees. The marker says, “Some Indian legends say that the first buffalo came out of a hole in the ground. When the buffalo were wiped out, there were Indians who claimed the whites found the spot, hazed the herds back into it, and plugged the hole.”

Flags flew at half-mast everywhere I stopped in Montana. “Afghanistan,” a man pointed out, when asked. I went every day to the Hutterites for corn and tomatoes. I retrieved my wife, both of us ebullient and giddy. I would try to keep the question—what we owe each other—shimmery and living. I thought of a sentence from Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book: “Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again.” We’d been lucky with the smoke and fires.

A practicing Buddhist for more than 30 years, Hollis Giammatteo has sought experiences that challenge her practice, from teaching writing to working with the elderly. OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE

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Reaching us is.

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Simple and Delicious Meatless Meals

Eating a plant-centered diet is good for your health and the planet’s, too

BY REBECCA CRICHTON

Iremember the first time I was served a vegetarian “loaf” of some kind as a main dish, circa early 1970s. I wasn’t the only one at the table who found it inedible. We made jokes and concluded that vegetarians and vegetarian lifestyles were weird.

As they say, “We’ve come a long way, baby!” Vegetarian options on menus ranging from fast food chains to highend prix fixe meals are now expected, and equally as tasty and inventive as their meaty counterparts. This year one of the world’s most acclaimed and expensive restaurants, Eleven Madison Park in New York, went completely vegan. Vegans and foodies of all stripes banged their pans in unison.

The reasons for switching to a plant-based diet are many. In her new cookbook, EATMEATLESS: Good for Animals, The Earth & All, Dr. Jane Goodall—famous for her work with mountain gorillas—reminds us that “Every day we live, we have the choice of what kind of impact we want to make.” She goes on to write that the positive impacts of eating a plant-based diet on our bodies, our climate, and our environment impact is indisputable. How to eat ethically, responsibly, and healthily can play into our daily calculations as we plan our meals, choose from menus, and shop for groceries.

The first time a friend said she didn’t eat “anything with a face,” I thought she was kidding. Another friend, happily living as a vegan, says he feels good that nothing must die for his dinner. “No face, no legs, no feet” is my newest criteria for what shows up as a main dish at my table, which is meatless.

The fact is, eliminating or reducing meat from our diets has never been easier. Or tastier.

If you can’t let go of biting into a juicy, meaty burger, the newest food choices standing up to health and taste tests are plant-based meat substitutes. Beyond Meat produces ground meat in bulk or burger patties, and several delicious sausage varieties. Impossible also offers beef-like products. In taste tests people can’t believe they aren’t eating meat. These products can include soy, peas, spices, and other ingredients that give the flavor and texture of meat. So, check the ingredients if you have food allergies.

The Loma Linda Blue brand of plantbased products (available online) might remind you that Loma Linda, Calif., is home of the Seventh Day Adventists, among the first groups who turned to vegetarian eating and nutritional supplements in the 20th Century. Loma Linda is the only location in the U.S. that made the list of Blue Zone locations. That is, places with a significant centenarian population and healthy lifestyles. Dan Buettner’s bestselling, The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who Have Lived the Longest, describes how healthy eating, close communities, and living with a sense of purpose contribute to a vital life.

If you want an easy way to dip your tasting spoon into this whole new world, consider one of the many food delivery services that offer fresh menus with all the ingredients and cooking instructions. Some offer heat-and-eat selections, others are more geared to people who like to cook. Be adventurous! The world of meatless eating has gone mainstream and will contribute to your health and that of the planet. (And you can form a connection with your fellow animals guilt-free.)

Before Rebecca Crichton worked for Boeing, taught leadership development, or became executive director of the Northwest Center for Creative Aging, she was a caterer, recipe developer, and food journalist. She has taught cooking to seniors and others, and can reel off food ideas and recipes for any part of a meal or event. She believes in easily prepared, healthy, and taste-filled food that delights and satisfies.

Eggplant or Zucchini Putanesca

Two eggplants should feed four to six as a side dish. Four medium zucchini can substitute for the eggplants. Feel free to adjust the ingredients to match your own taste for these strong flavors.

Ingredients

• 2 medium size eggplants or 4 zucchini • ¾ cup pitted kalamata olives • 3 Tbsp. capers • 3-5 cloves garlic • 1 Tbsp. anchovy paste or ½ can anchovies (or the whole can if you like anchovies)* • ¼ cup fresh basil or 2 Tbsp. fresh thyme or oregano • 12 grape, Campari or 4 small goodtasting tomatoes • *4–8 oz. Feta or Parmesan cheese • Olive oil • Juice of ½ lemon • Salt and Pepper

*Eliminate the anchovies and cheese if you want this to be vegan.

Directions

1. Cut eggplants in half lengthwise (same for zucchini), put fleshside down on plate and microwave for 10 minutes. They will be pretty soft. 2. Arrange eggplants or zucchini, skin-side down, on an oiled or aluminum-covered baking sheet and score deeply both lengthwise and crosswise. (The aluminum makes clean-up easy.) 3. Chop remaining ingredients in food processor until chunky. Taste for the balance of flavors that pleases you. 4. Stuff the filling into the vegetable along the scores, pushing it into the spaces, and piling more filling on top. (Making extra filling will give you topping for bruschetta or baked potatoes or other good things.) 5. Drizzle with olive oil. 6. Bake at 400 for half hour, or until bubbly and brown. Serve hot or warm.

Butternut Squash, Kale, and Barley Risotto

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp. canola oil • 2 cloves garlic, minced • 1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves (or ½ tsp. dried) • 1 cup hulled barley • Salt and pepper to taste • ½ cup white wine or apple juice • 1 medium butternut squash, peeled and diced • 3 cups broth • 1 bunch kale (curly or Tuscan), washed and cut into strips • Grated parmesan for serving (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees while you add oil to a warm Dutch oven or large oven-proof pot with a lid. 2. Add garlic and thyme, and cook until fragrant (about a minute). 3. Add barley and stir with oil until coated. Add salt and pepper. 4. Add wine or juice, and cook, stirring until mostly absorbed. 5. Add squash and broth. Bring to a boil, stir in kale and cover with lid. 6. Bake in oven until barley is tender and the liquid is mostly absorbed, about 30 minutes. Serve warm, garnished with some grated parmesan.

Black Bean and Corn Salad

Ingredients

• 1 can black beans, drained • 1 can sweet corn kernels, drained (NOT creamed corn!) • 1 small can diced California Chiles • ½ bunch of green onions – chopped • ½ bunch of cilantro – chopped • Juice of 1 lime • 1 tsp. cumin (optional) • Salt and Pepper

Directions

Mix together well. Taste for preferred blend of sour, hot, salty, etc. Add hot sauce if desired. Chill and serve.

Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

Stories that inspire joy and defy stereotypes about the last decades of life.

Edited by Nancy Peckenham · Reviewed by Victoria Starr Marshall

I was delighted to discover Medium.com a few years ago. If you are not familiar with the site, it’s an online publishing platform for writers—a place where they can publish and promote stories and we (the public) can like and follow our favorite writers. Think of it as Instagram for the literary. You can search Medium by topic to get a selection of essays by individuals, and groups of stories curated as publications. One of the publications is Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age, edited by former CNN executive producer and documentary filmmaker Nancy Peckenham. Peckenham’s mission is to bring “a wide variety of writers together to tell our stories of endurance and adaption as we grow older by the day. It’s a place to speak out against ageism and to share advice. … It’s a place to celebrate our age and to break stereotypes, turn aging on its head.” Bravo! A collection of Crow’s Feet best original essays and poems is now available, offline, in a book of the same title. 3rd Act Magazine readers will find the voice and topics explored familiar and enjoyable. Crow’s Feet offers an expertly curated selection of well-written, honest, and inspiring accounts of living with age. Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age is available on Amazon.com.

We All Know How This Ends.

Lessons about life and living from working with death and dying

by Anna Lyons & Louise Winter · Reviewed by Victoria Starr Marshall

“One day you’ll eat your very last meal. You’ll speak your final words. You’ll take your very last breath. Your heart will stop beating. Your blood will no longer flow. You will die. You will be dead.” This simple, direct statement—one we all know to be true—begins our journey with Anna Lyons, an end-of-life doula, and Louise Winter, a progressive funeral director, in their new book, We All Know How This Ends: Lessons about life and living from working with death and dying. Lyons and Winter challenge us to look death in the eye, to acknowledge it, and to talk about it. Why? Because, according to the authors, “Talking about death can be life-affirming and lifeenhancing.” Each has shepherded many through dying, death, and grief, learning that everyone experiences life and death differently, and there are many insights to be gained. Combined with essays, poems, and quotes, the authors use a “Five Things” format as in, “Five Things I’ve learned about…” grief, loss, a terminal diagnosis, end-of-life-care, and scores more scenarios—all personal accounts shared by people they’ve served. The format makes challenging, and often heartbreaking, subject matter, easy to read and absorb.

An interesting aside is the book was written in the United Kingdom and is therefore based on UK health care and perspective. It’s fascinating to see how the UK differs with U.S. health care and elder care, and frankly, how much more support is available to aging UK citizens compared to our own.

This book is a supportive, insightful, and affirming. An excellent guide for the living and the dying. We All Know How This Ends: Lessons about life and living from working with death and dying is available on Amazon.com.

GAMES FOR YOUR BRAIN

ANSWERS

(Puzzles on page 64)

What do they have in common?

1. They are all types of dolls. 2. They all have pockets. 3. They all have tails. 4. They are all dances. 5. They all have crowns. 6. They all have pins. 7. They are all types of fish. 8. They are all slang terms for money. 9. They all use brushes.

Add it up

1. 5 sides to a pentagon + 202 (area code for Washington, D.C.) = 207 2. 1,941+1,962 = 3,903 3. 50 (U.S. states)+4 (U.K. countries) = 54 4. 88+8 = 96 5. 9+6 = 15 6. 14+20 = 34

It’s a Lulu

1. Bureau 2. Luau 3. "Adieu” 4. Bayou 5. Trousseau 6. Guru 7. Impromptu 8. Caribou 9. Emu 10. Haiku

for your brain

Exercise your brain and have some fun with these puzzles designed to stimulate different cognitive functions.

What do they have in common? (easy)

Each question contains a list of several items. Can you figure out what they have in common?

1. Paper, rag, and kewpie ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. A pair of jeans, a pool table, and a catcher’s mitt _____________________________________________________________ 3. An airplane, a tuxedo, and a horse _________________________________________________________________________ 4. Jig, Twist, and Tango ____________________________________________________________________________________ 5. A monarch, Miss America, and a broken tooth _______________________________________________________________ 6. Bowling alleys, seamstresses, and hand grenades ____________________________________________________________ 7. Pike, ray, chub, and tang__________________________________________________________________________________ 8. A pen, a newspaper, and a squid ___________________________________________________________________________ 9. Clams, cabbage, bread, and dough_________________________________________________________________________ 10. An artist, a dental hygienist, and a hairdresser _______________________________________________________________

Add it up (harder)

This game involves simple addition but you have to figure out which numbers to add up.

1 Add the number of sides in a pentagon to the area code for Washington, D.C._____________________________________ 2. Add the year that Pearl Harbor was attacked to the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis________________________________ 3. Add the number of U.S. states to the number of countries in the United Kingdom _________________________________ 4. Add the number of keys on a piano to the number of days in Hanukkah___________________________________________

5. Add the number of Supreme Court justices to the length of one term in office for a U.S. Senator_____________________

6. Add the number of days in a fortnight to the number of years in a score __________________________________________

It’s a Lulu (hardest)

All of the answers in this word definition game end with the letter U. 1. Chest of drawers _____________________________________________________________________________________ 2. A Hawaiian feast or party ______________________________________________________________________________ 3. Goodbye, to a Frenchman _____________________________________________________________________________ 4. A marshy wetland along the Gulf Coast __________________________________________________________________ 5. Collection of clothing and household linens for a bride _____________________________________________________ 6. Hindu word for a very wise teacher _____________________________________________________________________ 7. Unrehearsed, spontaneous, improvised _________________________________________________________________ 8. The term North Americans use for reindeer ______________________________________________________________ 9. A large flightless bird native to Australia_________________________________________________________________ 10. A Japanese poem with three lines and 17 or fewer syllables _________________________________________________

Reprinted with permission from Nancy Linde, author of the best-selling book 399 Puzzles, Games, and Trivia Challenges Specially Designed to Keep Your Brain Young, 417 More Games, Puzzles, and Trivia Challenges Specially Designed to Keep Your Brain Young; and On-the-Go Games and Puzzles to Keep Your Brain Young. She is also the creator of the website Never2Old4Games.com, which is used by many senior-serving organizations in the U.S. and Canada. ANSWERS ON PAGE 62