VSTYLE Magazine, March 2018

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F e at u r i n g

8 From the bubble to the globe Villagers know how to pack and go for great travel!

Plus

2 Luck of the Irish Wearing of the Green.

14 ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ A timely book for today’s world.

* MVESEtT yAlVeI L L A G E R

St. Patrick’s Day Festival events in The Villages March 14 Lake Sumter Landing Market Square: Sounds of Scotland, 4:45pm; The Villages Cheerleaders, 5:15pm; Rathkeltair, 5:30-9pm; The Villages Twirlers Show Team & Drum Corps, 6pm; The Villages Gem Stone Dancers, 6:45pm; Prime Time Twirlers, 7pm; Mystic Jewels, 7:45pm at Pavilion; Marcille Wallis & Friends, 5-9pm at Lake Shore Drive stage; Perseverance Brass Band, 5-9pm near RJ Gator’s; Sunshine Strollers, 5:45pm near Lake Shore Drive Stage.

March 16 Spanish Springs Town Square: Sounds of Scotland, 4:45-5:15pm; The Villages Cheerleaders, 5:15pm; The Empty Hats, 5:30-9pm; The Villages Twirlers Show Team & Drum Corps, 6pm; Aloha O’ Ka Hula Dance Troupe, 6:45pm at the Gazebo; Marcille Wallis & Friends, 5-9pm at Del Mar Stage; Perseverance Brass Band, 5-9pm on Alverez Avenue; Sunshine Strollers, 5:15pm between TooJay’s and Katie Belle’s.

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Luck of the Irish Villager leads Irish American Claddagh Club to new heights.

STORY: THERESA CAMPBELL // PHOTO: FRED LOPEZ

T

he future of the Irish American Claddagh Club of The Villages was recently up in the air after the death of the club founder/president. The grieving vice president didn’t want to take over, yet Villager Dottie Hockey believed the group needed to continue—just like the late Patricia Ross would have wanted.

Dottie volunteered as president by telling the members: “If you’ll help me, I’ll do it because Pat would not want our club to die.”

Founded in 2007, the club is one of four IrishAmerican groups that began as a social opportunity for Villagers with Irish heritage. The club meets at 6:30pm the second Wednesday of the month from SeptemberMay at Colony Cottage Recreation Center, 510 Colony Blvd.

“We are starting golf, bocce, bowling social groups within the club and planning a possible trip to Ireland in 2019,” Dottie says, adding her group will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 14 with a catered corned beef dinner and Irish pub-style entertainment by Patrick Hagerman.

“It will be a club atmosphere of allnight singing and dancing,” says Dottie, a 16-year Villager from Buffalo, New York. She’s 65 percent Irish and her late husband, Marty, also had Irish roots.

After the one-year anniversary of his death, Dottie learn she had breast cancer.

“I said, ‘OK. It’s here, let’s get it [the surgery] done, because there are things I have to do,” she says, recalling the staff at Moffitt Cancer Center was impressed by her can-do spirit. “At Moffitt, they were saying, ‘We wish everybody came in here like you.’”

Dottie strives to live each day to the max, and she aspires to see the Irish American Claddagh Club grow.

“Yesterday is gone. Today is now and there is no promise for tomorrow, so live it and be up,” she says. “It’s good to wake up every day; I’m living my bucket list.”

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Respect for military burns brightly Pride in service to country is evident.

STORY: JOE ANGIONE

O

*

Villagers are honored to have served their country, and it’s very satisfying to see how active military visiting The Villages are treated.

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ne of the largest concentrations of retired and former U.S. military personnel resides in The Villages. You can see them proudly wearing shirts and caps denoting their branch of service, the wars in which they saw combat, and former naval personnel display the ship they served aboard. Many cars have license plates with military themes.

Villagers are honored to have served their country, and it’s very satisfying to see how active military visiting The Villages are treated. If you show up in uniform, you will be thanked for your service, bought a meal, or a drink at a Villages club or restaurant.

I’m proud to see the respect for our military that burns so brightly here is spreading across the nation, particularly now when threats from new and old enemies are more terrifying than ever. With a grandson newly graduated from Army basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, I hear stories from him about the surprisingly frequent instances when strangers approach him, thank him for his service, and offer to assist him in some special way.

When traveling here for Christmas last year, he said wherever he stopped someone wanted to buy breakfast or lunch. And when returning to Fort Leonard Wood after Christmas, while sitting in the Orlando airport, a little boy, maybe 4 or 5, stood nearby with his father and kept looking over at my grandson. After a few minutes, the father brought the child over to say hello and immediately the little boy jumped on his lap and gave him a big hug.

There were lots of smiles and a few tears on the faces of those who saw this.

Reactions like these to our young people in uniform are happening everywhere, except perhaps on college and university campuses, where it hasn’t sunk in yet that getting an excellent education in a secure environment is a right and a privilege preserved for them by those who serve and protect “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

We must do everything we can to honor military personnel and to ensure our government provides what they need to do their jobs well.

Not only do our men and women in uniform protect us, without them there would be no freedom anywhere on Earth. In this regard, they are the world’s most precious resource.

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From the bubble to the globe Well-traveled Villagers have seen all parts of the world.

STORY: CHRIS GERBASI

VILLAGES SCUBA CLU B

D

ubai? Check. Machu Picchu? Yes, of course.

New Zealand? Been there, done that.

When Villagers gather to swap travel tales, they cover the globe. Just ask Robert Paluszak, leader of the Worldwide Foreign Travel Club in The Villages.

Robert and his wife, Marilyn, once went around the world in 400 days with 155 different stops. They’ve journeyed to about 40 countries overall—and they’re one of the least-traveled couples in the club, he says.

“It’s humbling. My family thinks I’m a big adventurous person. But there isn’t a place on the planet that somebody in our group hasn’t been to,” Robert says.

Like all Villages clubs, the Worldwide Foreign Travel Club is a social venue for people with similar interests.

The club meets at 4pm the first and third Thursdays of each month at Laurel Manor Recreation Center, 1985 Laurel Manor Drive. Everyone is welcome, and meetings attract anywhere from 40 to 120 people.

About 450 Villagers are on the club’s mailing list.

Robert has taken over leadership of the club in recent years from Charlie Jacobson, who founded the club in 2008 to encourage Villagers to explore different countries and cultures and to provide a forum for travelers.

“The club is all about sharing stories, experiences, and your adventures of traveling overseas,” Robert says.

Each meeting features a travelogue from a member who presents information, photos, and memorabilia

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E D I W D L WOR B U L C L E V TRA

from a foreign trip. These destinations are everywhere and anywhere around the world. For example, Charlie and his wife, Diane, gave a presentation on the Trans-Siberian Railway through Mongolia and Russia.

Member Dianne Zalewski spoke about her month-long cruise to Australia by way of the South Pacific with stops at Fiji and New Caledonia. France, India, and “the five Stans”—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan—also have been highlighted in recent travelogues. In short, the club’s agenda reads like an atlas.

The meetings also have segments such as “Where in the World?” in which photos are shown and members identify the location and relate any travel stories connected to the photo, as well as travel quotes, travel tips, and travel humor.

But Robert and Marilyn particularly enjoy what comes after the meetings: dinner with up to 16 fellow

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club members where the conversation is like their travel—all over the place.

A mention of the Suez Canal may lead to memories of the Panama Canal, and so on, as the friends share anecdotes about trips.

“It’s a fascinating group of people,” Robert says.

Ask Robert about his favorite place in the world and he likens it to picking a favorite child. His favorite depends on what he’s looking for in a vacation, from the beaches of Cook Islands in the South Pacific, to a mountain resort in Queenstown, New Zealand, to the food of Germany.

Shirley Bevan also gets asked that question a lot.

“My favorite place is the place I’ve never been to,” says the globe-trotting founder of the Traveling Villagers.

Shirley unwittingly kick-started the club in 2017 when she asked neighbors if they enjoyed traveling as much as she did, and soon a club was born. Now it has

about 220 members who meet at 6pm the second Monday of each month, except July and August, at Moyer Recreation Center, 3000 Moyer Loop.

Members with similar travel interests get together to plan trips. For example, some members recently went to Australia and New Zealand, and another group is heading to national parks.

“It’s a social club where people who like to travel meet other people who like to travel,” Shirley says. “We have the perfect venue, because if you want to travel with another person, you can go to lunch or go golfing and spend time with each other before going on a trip with each other.”

Shirley curbed her club duties this year because, naturally, she’s too busy traveling.

Earlier this year, she and about 500 other Villagers took a Caribbean cruise on the Norwegian Epic—where Shirley won a dance competition—and she’s booked trips to Arizona, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Spain, Africa, and other locales. Last year, she went with fellow club member Ellen Cora on an Asian cruise that included stops in Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and China.

“I would’ve never done that if I hadn’t met her,” Shirley says.

Shirley’s traveling increased four years ago after she and her husband, James, retired to The Villages. Now a widow, she’s found an easy way to fund her fun. During The Villages’ peak season, she rents out her villa—which nets a pretty peso—and hits the road.

“I rent my villa for an absurd amount of money,” she says. “I pack up my stuff and take off for five months on their money. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

When she’s visiting another country, Shirley likes to immerse herself in the culture by taking public transportation, shopping where the locals shop, and dining at neighborhood restaurants.

“I love meeting people and I love to see how other people live,” she says.

For many Villagers, the fun is less in the journey and more in the destination, such as locales for outdoor adventures.

This year’s itinerary for The Villages Scuba Club includes a Caribbean cruise with dives off the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao; the Rainbow Reef Diving Center in Key Largo; the Jupiter Dive Center; Cayman Brac, one of the Cayman Islands; as well as the Mexican island of Cozumel for scuba diving and whale shark snorkeling.

The club has 166 members, some of whom, like Madeline Helbock, never dived until they retired to The Villages.

She was one of the original members when the club formed in 2002 and now is copresident. The sport provides exercise, and the club provides camaraderie, she says.

“We have great people, we go to great places, and everybody likes everybody,” says Madeline, speaking by phone from a boat after a dive off Key Largo.

Villagers obviously don’t need to travel far to enjoy other worlds. On water and on land, clubs cover the state of Florida.

The Deep Sea Fishing Club offers monthly saltwater fishing charters that include Atlantic and Gulf deep sea fishing and flats fishing on the Gulf, while the Freshwater Fishing Club organizes eight fishing and picnic outings a year.

Both The Villages Goldwing Club and The Villages Nomads schedule extended motorcycle road trips throughout the year to cities around the state.

The Barefoot Beachcombers Club travels to beaches within one to three hours’ travel time of The Villages, and occasionally to farther spots for overnight trips. This year, Homasassa Springs and Crystal River, New Smyrna Beach, and St. Pete Beach are on the agenda.

Reef Rovers, a beach travel club, enables Villagers to enjoy sand and surf while forming new friendships, according to its website.

Among this year’s destinations are Nokomis Beach and Treasure Island.

The Reef Rovers’ motto extends good wishes to Villagers no matter where they may travel across the globe: “May you always have a shell in your pocket and sand in your shoes.”

Each meeting features a travelogue from a member who presents information, photos, and memorabilia from a foreign trip. These destinations are everywhere and anywhere around the world.

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* BVOSOtK yClL UeB

‘The Orphan Master’s Son’

By Adam Johnson. A frightening look into the totalitarian country of North Korea.

STORY: DIANE DEAN

T

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Because so little is known about the real North Korea today, it is difficult to sort out what might be fiction and what is actually factual.

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he Bookworm Book Club selected a timely book for this discussion: “The Orphan Master’s Son,” by Adam Johnson, takes place in North Korea. Our facilitator, Beth Hicks, lived in South Korea in the early 1990s. While much has changed since then, her examples of culture, lifestyle, and values of the Korean Peninsula were enlightening. Beth stressed the value Koreans place on respect for and care of the elders in their society. She noted the most important thing to them is to “save face,” to not be insulted or demeaned, to appear less than someone else.

The book reflects other cultural factors, including indoctrination to an attitude of hatred and distrust of the United States.

The characters develop an inability to make decisions easily because they are told what to do rather than make their own choices.

There is no personal freedom, and the entire family of a defector is likely to be killed or put in prison. The fear of stepping out of line or doing something that could be construed as disrespectful to the “Dear Leader” orchestrates the path of their existence. Beth noted this is “normal” for the Koreans. Some readers wondered, “Who are we to define ‘normal’ for another country’s people?”

The DMZ—demilitarized zone—exists today still under a “truce,” not a peace treaty.

The North and South sides meet each week to talk about this. The meetings have gone on

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Fiction Bestsellers for decades. This year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang County, South Korea, opened a window for talent from the North to participate.

The main character’s name is Jun Do. The similarity to our American name of John Doe was not lost on readers.

We read of his growth and experiences, first as a sailor, then a prisoner, then an imposter and husband to a woman he idolized. Yet throughout, Jun Do is loyal to the regime of Kim, the “true orphan

master.” The story is told with multiple voices and has a complexity some found confusing.

Because so little is known about the real North Korea today, it is difficult to sort out what might be fiction and what is actually factual. The author stated, “I feel my book is a very accurate portrayal of how the tenets of totalitarianism eat away at the things that make us human: freedom, art, choice, identity, expression, love.”

As of February 16

1 The Great

Alone

BY KRISTIN HANNAH

2 The Woman

in the Window

BY A. J. FINN

3 An American

Marriage

About the author Adam Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. He also wrote “Fortune Smiles,” “Emporium,” and “Parasites Like Us.” “The Orphan Master’s Son” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013.

BY TAYARI JONES

4 Still Me

BY JOJO MOYES

Member comments: I want my grandsons to read this book just so they will gain some appreciation for the country where they live. It is a story that will stay with me for a long time.

—Pat Gable, Glenbrook Yes, this is a difficult read and I often had to put it down. However, we should not turn a blind eye to the horrific events that this book depicts. It certainly is akin to reading about other horrific events in history such as the Holocaust and the genocides in Armenia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. North Korea systematically and without impunity kills, imprisons, and tortures its own citizens for often imagined slights to the “Dear Leader.”

Perhaps this book will shed some light on why it is so difficult to open a dialogue with North Korea.

—Kathy Porter, Rio Ponderosa I found the novel interesting but hard to read. It was depressing reading about the cruelty and degradation the lead

character had to deal with. I was glad I read it, however, because it gave me a better understanding of what is going on in North Korea.

—Brenda Bobay, Hemingway

5 Dark in

Loved it. Like a nightmare you can never wake up from and full of wonderful dark humor, but with a protagonist you find yourself rooting for until the end.

—Judy Whiton, Dunedin

6 Look for Me

“The Orphan Master’s Son” was a big disappointment to me. I read the first third of the novel and kept wondering, “How did this ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?” Usually I finish a book for our book club discussion, but this was one that I couldn’t.

—Mary Jo Johnson, Ashland This book is a depiction of a country that brutalizes its people and seems to be able to suffer the consequences without care. It’s important for us to see that these conditions really do exist.

—Nancy Vaas, Hacienda

Death

BY J. D. ROBB

BY LISA GARDNER

7 Little Fires

Everywhere

BY CELESTE NG

8 City of

Endless Night

BY DOUGLAS PRESTON, LINCOLN CHILD

9 Origin

BY DAN BROWN

10 End Game

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