Natural Traveler Magazine - Quarterly Cultural Magazine - Spring 2020

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of looking at things.”

Henry Miller

© 2020 Natural Traveler LLC 5 Brewster Street Unit 2, No. 204 Glen Cove, New York 11542

Natural Traveler Magazine ÂŽ Spring 2020 Editor & Publisher Tony Tedeschi Senior Editor Bill Scheller Staff Writers Ginny Craven Aglaia Davis Andrea England David E. Hubler Samantha Manuzza Buddy Mays John H. Ostdick Pedro Pereira Frank I. Sillay Kendric W. Taylor Photography Katie Cappeller Karen Dinan Buddy Mays Art Sharafina Teh Webmaster Will Rodriguez

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Table of Contents Editor’s Letter Pandemic 2020 Rural Vermont Charlottesville, Virginia Bend, Oregon New York, New York Wellington, New Zealand Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia A multi-generational sojourn in South Africa A Tale of Two “Juniors” A Meeting in the Coffee Shop, The Lost Yesterday Bringing Up a Grandchild Smart Dog Clerihews The Policeman’s Wife

Bill Scheller Ginny Craven Buddy Mays Aglaia Davis Frank I. Sillay Sharafina Teh John H. Ostdick Tony Tedeschi Jay Jacobs Kendric W. Taylor Frank I. Sillay Bill Scheller Tony Tedeschi

Page 3 Page 4 Page 7 Page 9 Page 11 Page 13 Page 15 Page 17 Page 18 Page 30 Page 35 Page 38 Page 42 Page 41, 43 Page 44

Contributors “We are a caravan of hope ourselves, one of us widowed, another an escapee of abuse, one largely an island unto himself, some of us left searching for relevance after career highs and crashing lows, and those searching for a future.,” John H. Ostdick writes in “A multi-generational sojourn through South Africa (Page 17). “We find warmth and joy in this place. Far-flung travel adds rich, layered texture into the life stories of those who go. We leave this place richer, more connected.” He illustrates the journey with his photos and those of his son.

“Poems are meant to elicit an emotion, bring out a feeling, find a way for the words to connect us to the poet’s intent, and perhaps help us to better understand some aspect of life, nature, the universe,” Jay Jacobs says, explaining the underlying inspiration for his “A Meeting at The Coffee Shop” (Page 33). It is followed by “The Lost Yesterday,” about the summer home his family used to rent when he was a boy. Sadly, he says, “the season” fell out of favor and many of those old places fell to ruin. “This poem attempts to describe something of what I felt upon seeing the abandoned remains of the old summer house.”

“The four-line squibs of biographical doggerel called clerihews were first devised by Edmund Clerihew Bentley in the early years of the twentieth century,” Bill Scheller explains. The formula is simple: The first line should consist only of the subject’s name; the rhyme scheme of the four lines is AABB; and meter . . . well, meter is out the window. Ideally, a clerihew should portray its subject in a whimsical light.” On Page 41 and 43, you’ll find a few of Scheller’s literary clerihews.

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Editor’s Letter Pandemic 2020

As a quarterly cultural magazine, we had no aspirations of covering hard news, except perhaps from the perspective of distance. We’d focus on how what had occurred influenced how people looked at themselves, as expressed in the music, visual arts and writing they produced. This quarter, however, is like no other.

We are in the midst of a news story that has been with us for months now and, sadly, is expected to be with us for months more. Given the unfortunate predicted longevity of the coronavirus pandemic, dealing with all the changeable elements of the spreading disease, we knew we could not report on any of this within our long lead times. So we asked four of our contributors, spread across the United States, in areas ranging from sparse population levels to the density of the country’s largest city, plus two of our contributors in the Asia-Pacific Region, to give us their perspectives on how the pandemic has altered their lifestyles, now, and how it may affect them in the longer term. Their reports begin on Page 7, with a look at “Corona virus in the sticks” of rural Vermont; move on to how “countless stories” are being written in Charlottesville, Virginia, then “here comes Armageddon” in Bend, Oregon, and finally, “this is my city, New York, New York.” Our two contributors in Asia-Pacific – New Zealand and Malaysia – give us their takes, with “Lockdown,” in Wellington, New Zealand, and “A Day in the Life,” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, beginning on Page 15.

As with so many catastrophic events, everyone will have their particular chapters to relate when this one recedes into history. But there will be triggers to what we’ve experienced that stay with us, however sublimated, forever. My wife and I spent the first four years of our marriage on a Tactical Air Command fighter base in eastern New Mexico, where I served as a quality control officer whose job it was to make sure the aircraft were ready. We trained pilots for combat deployments in Vietnam. The roar of the F-100 afterburners, as the planes sped down the runway, became part of my daily life. Over the many years, since I was discharged, that sound had been consigned to my distant past, until September 12, 2001, when I walked down my driveway on Long Island to retrieve the morning paper. All commercial air traffic had been grounded, after the terrorist attacks of the previous day. As I reached for the newspaper, I heard, once again, the roar of a jet fighter overhead. The war was back, just different adversaries announcing their presence to a thunderously familiar sound.

Take care, stay safe. Hopefully our summer issue will appear on the far side of the flattened curve.

– Tony Tedeschi

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PANDEMIC 2020

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PANDEMIC 2020

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PANDEMIC 2020

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Rural Vermont Corona in the Sticks

By Bill Scheller

I knew I was getting nuts when I decided we had to wash the dog.

Not that Lily couldn’t use a bath, after a long winter – but routine cleanliness (like godliness, not a canine virtue) wasn’t the issue. We’d hired a man to do some outdoor work, collecting and stacking sections of trees we recently had cut and will split for firewood later this spring.

First thing he did, when he got out of his car, was give Lil a good petting. Fierce German shepherd that she is, she had bounded right over to him, looking to soak up a little affection. And right away I thought, he doesn’t have rubber gloves on

– what’s on his hands that might have gotten onto the dog?

Lily, fierce German shepherd that she is . . .

My wife Kay and I live in a small town in central Vermont. We’re on the outer outskirts, three miles from the village, on a dirt road that gets so muddy at this time of year that without the intrepid Subaru, we’d probably be quarantined anyway. Our nearest neighbors are a quarter mile away, and we seldom see them. A little over a mile to the south, the road turns into a rutted trail just past an abandoned farm, where a desolate, long-unused summer home looks out over derelict meadowlands and a spectacular view of the spine of Vermont, the Green Mountains, that stretches for more than thirty miles. This is where we walk with Lily, here and in the tangled woods out in back of our house.

It’s easy to see that if we had no radio or TV or internet, and no one called with any news, and we had no reason to shop in the village or drive up to Costco in Burlington for a while, that we could go for weeks without knowing that a plague was raging in the outside world.

But we aren’t hermits, and we are connected, from CNN to Facebook, from the online Times to coronavirus-related email notifications from just about every company we’ve ever done business with. So we take all the precautions: we stocked up on enough food, wine, and liquor for at least a month, we wipe down packages from Amazon with homemade alcohol sanitizer, and we leave the

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mail in the garage for three days (just try to survive that long, virus, in that dreary dungeon) before opening it. I stopped taking trash and recycling to the dump, where I’d have to mingle with the other Saturday morning clientele, and arranged for pickup at the end of the driveway. I wear latex gloves to punch the buttons at the ATM in the village. And when the car needed a repair, I left it in the mechanic’s driveway, told him to leave it there when he was done, stuck a check in his mailbox, and sanitized anything in the vehicle that he might have touched.

And we washed the dog.

When we did need to get a few extra groceries, we found a farm store that runs entirely on the honor system. It’s near a state park where we like to wander around, way up a dirt road off a dirt road, and when we got there we found nary a living soul except for the Jersey cattle responsible for the delicious, and ludicrously overpriced, ice cream the place sells. Eggs, homemade bread, greenhouse beets, Vermont cheddar from some obscure Yankee maker – and the ice cream – were all paid with a check dropped in the box.

Adjusted socializing in small-town Vermont We do socialize, mostly with friends I’ve known since college. They live in their own outer outskirts, other direction, and our dogs like each other (no small thing when Lily the Alpha Bitch is involved). We walk the abandoned farm with them as always, but we have to talk louder because we’re six, hell, ten feet apart. The dogs must wonder if the people don’t like each other.

And both Kay and I have farther-off friends, who we regularly meet for lunch, or at least used to.

Every other week, I’d drive up to Burlington and go out for a meal with one of my grad school professors, who I’ve known for over forty years. But he lives in a senior residence. He’s not getting out, and I’m not getting in. Besides, all the restaurants are closed.

And yet we take all of these precautions in a vacuum, almost entirely without any first-hand visual corroboration of what we know is going on in the world beyond a county where, as I write, there have been five COVID-19 cases and no deaths. All of the evidence of the microbes we’re trying to wall out, and the deadly havoc they have caused, comes over television, through the online news, and via Facebook posts contributed by metropolitan friends. We see no empty streets, watch no lines straggle outside restaurant take-out windows, meet no frightened neighbors in apartment corridors. We see trees, and mud, and mountains. None of this means that the enemy isn’t at the gate. But it does separate our responses from our circumstances, in a very bizarre fashion.

After the guy we’d hired sized up the firewood job and went back to his car, the first thing he did was to grab a bottle of Purell and sanitize his hands. Very likely – since he hadn’t touched anything on our property but the dog – he figured that maybe the virus lurked in Lily’s fur. He cleaned his hands, we washed the dog. The fear is real, even here in the sticks.

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Charlottesville, Virginia Countless stories, all dominating the local news.

By Ginny Craven

I had intended to write a very different contemplation of coronavirus, but that was last week. Now, the isolation has closed in.

I live outside Charlottesville, Virginia.

There are so many things to love about this very special place, which has, in recent history, become the poster child for racial unrest. In fact, we’re quite the opposite.

Just for the record, we were preyed upon; we didn’t start that fire.

Charlottesville is a little town with a huge heart – never more evident than during a crisis. Perhaps, we shine forth as the best of America – the spirit of community that is just a little more humane – a little kinder, a little gentler. The University of Virginia (Yes, we’re a proud college town) was an “early adopter,” closing school and cancelling graduation even before the governor closed the state schools. The very . . . But the redbud is brilliant. vibrant restaurant community (they say more restaurants per capita than Manhattan) rose immediately to take-out/delivery only, and countless Go Fund Me efforts popped up to support the bereaved line cooks, bartenders, and servers.

Restaurant owners have been offering specials to “buy now; enjoy later,” in order to keep their employees. Our little town has nearly 2,000 non-profits – all morphing and adapting, and working together to support their vulnerable constituents.

There are countless stories, all dominating the local news, such as the small grocery store owner that has been preparing hundreds of lunches every day. He leaves them outside for folks to take, and they are gone in minutes. Apparently, there IS such a thing as free lunch. Then, there is the

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landlord of a mobile home park who has offered his tenants one free month’s rent – they choose which month. It makes me proud to be part of such a community. In these times of strife, I marvel at the almost instantaneous injection of kindness. That response may be heightened here in Charlottesville, but it is certainly not exclusive to our town. I moved here from Miami, and I remember after Hurricane Andrew, there was a time – albeit brief – of brotherhood, of politeness, and concession. People spoke in grocery lines and loaned generators to their neighbors. I guess the difference in Charlottesville is that the gentleness is a persistent trait; it doesn’t disappear when the crisis ends.

So, it is gratifying, but not surprising, that coronavirus has inspired even more community awareness and solidarity in our little town. As for me, while I am certainly no saint, I do fancy myself a “helper.” I volunteer. I serve at my church. I donate. But, that was so last week.

A greater understanding of the vulnerability I had a freak accident – one of those things that you couldn’t recreate even if you tried. End result: I broke my neck. I was suddenly transformed from a helper to helpless, from a giver to a receiver by necessity. Now, this critical lockdown is much more of a “head game,” and I have a greater understanding of the vulnerability – the abject fear that arises when, in an instant, one’s own capabilities and resources are meaningless. I simply cannot do things for myself – can’t drive; can’t lift more than 10 lbs., and I am saddled with a neck brace that literally feels like a cinderblock around my neck, and forces me to move like a robot. I live out in the country by myself – no family here. Just me. And, at this point, it is a diminished me. So, all the plans I had to combat the anguish, boredom and loneliness wrought by coronavirus – like gardening, exercise, and spring cleaning – have been shelved. Instead, I have had to learn to ask for help, to be a recipient, and it isn’t easy. Do I have regular pity parties? Absolutely! Am I very isolated? Yes! But, I do recognize that this is a great spiritual opportunity, a time of surrender, self communion, insight and reassessment. And, it is a time of deep gratitude for the friends who help. Since I am one who hates to miss a party, at least I‘m not missing anything. And, most important, it is exquisite, uplifting spring here in Virginia.

All this calls to mind the ancient wisdom: “when the student is ready, the teacher appears,” even in the form of a broken neck. But, we are all students of this terrifying teacher. None of us will escape unscathed or unchanged. None of us can skip this class.

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Bend, Oregon Here Comes Armageddon

By Buddy Mays

I went to the supermarket and bought 20 pounds of large russet potatoes, three rolls of toilet paper (that’s all they would sell me), two rolls of paper towels, 15 pounds of green Anaheim roasting chilies (I can’t get Hatch chile this time of year), three-dozen eggs, and three gallons of Green Label Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon. I now feel I am prepared for whatever is about to happen, be it Chaos, Armageddon, Apocalypse, Doomsday, or Ragnarok.

Downtown, Bend Oregon I’m 76 years old and, according to my doctor, if I get COVID-19, I will die. If I don’t get it, something else will kill me in a few months or years anyway, so here’s what I’m thinking. When the toilet paper runs out, I will use the paper towels, then then whatever nature provides. “You boys think Adam an’ Eve had any damn toilet paper?” my scoutmaster used to tell us on camping trips. “If leaves an’ grass was good enough for them two, then it’s good enough for you.” When the eggs, potatoes, and roasted green chile runs out, I won’t need the toilet paper any longer, and life without green chile won’t be worth living anyway.

That’s when I’ll drink the bourbon, and with any luck I’ll be too wasted to give a hoot when I starve to death.

I know, I know, facing the possible destruction of humanity, or at least of “life as we know it,” is hardly the time or place for levity. As I write this, there are 396,000 cases of coronavirus worldwide with about 17,000 deaths. There are 49,000 cases of COVID-19 in the United States with about 600 deaths, and there are 191 cases in my state of Oregon, with five deaths. With the number of COVID-19 cases rising steadily every day, humor (and washing our hands a lot) is about the only plausible solution to what the scientific community insists is a potentially dim and possibly fatal future for civilization.

Personally, I don’t want civilization — as rotten as it can sometimes be — to end. I agree with author Pat Frank who, in his award-winning 1959 apocalyptic novel Alas Babylon, wrote: “There are as many good things about civilization as bad, perhaps more. And we would miss them. From toothbrushes to electric lights. From clean water to democracy. From bookstores to the kind of gentle, tolerant argumentation that never resorts to violence and allows for the slow changing of opinions . . . and the gradual and diverse evolving of everybody’s minds.”

But I also concur with British novelist Nevil Shute, who took the opposite approach. In his postWorld War III best-seller On the Beach, published in 1957, he wrote: “You know, now that I’ve got used to the idea, I think I’d rather have it this way. We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know

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when it’s coming. Well, now we know, and there’s nothing to be done about it. I kind of like that. I like the thought that I’ll be fit and well up till the end of August and then – home. I’d rather have it that way than go on as a sick man from when I’m seventy to when I’m ninety.” In a later paragraph, Shute added, “It’s not the end of the world at all. It’s only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

Our state’s governor Kate Brown has issued an authoritative “Stay at Home” order and has banned gatherings of more than four people. Consequently, my family and I are bunkered down, socially distancing ourselves from others as much as possible. It isn’t all that difficult for us because we live in a rural area and our nearest neighbors are a block away. Most folks out here aren’t all that friendly towards each other anyway, so SDing is sort of second nature. In the nearby city of Bend, bars, libraries, bank lobbies, churches, movie theaters, schools, and most non-essential business -even our local ski run -- are closed by government decree. Restaurants can serve only take-out meals from call-in orders and will deliver them curbside. Grocery stores are open for business, but many require shoppers to wait at the front door until someone exits, just so there is no jostling or touching inside. Home Depot has closed off all but two entrances and exits in its giant store and is allowing only 50 shoppers inside at a time. The fact is, however, that a lot of people aren’t paying much attention to Governor Brown’s Stay at Home order. The main thoroughfares in Bend are still busy with traffic, and the businesses that are still open are bustling.

During the first week of the COVID-19 media blitz, we noticed right away that people were panic buying. Toilet paper, paper towels, hand-sanitizer, pain killers, pasta, fresh bread and distilled water went first, lugged out of the stores in overloaded carts by little old ladies (you gotta love ‘em) wearing rubber gloves and surgical masks. A week or two later, the panic buying slowed but the hoarding began. Flour, salt, sugar, fresh meats, eggs, canned goods of all kinds, whatever people could buy, they bought, by the carload. Most stores quickly placed a two-item limit on goods, but not before many items were cleaned out. Luckily, our local supermarkets still have plenty of food and necessities, but there are lots of empty shelves as well.

As I said earlier, we live in the country, and I’ve noticed that the frequency and intensity of gunfire out on the Bureau of Land Management property behind our house has increased substantially over the past few weeks. We all know who it is. Every BillyJoRayBobJohnBoy redneck in the county is out practicing with every firearm he or she owns (and many of these peckerwoods own dozens), sharpening themselves up for the day when the A-rabs, or Commies, or possibly their neighbors, show up, eager to rape, steal, and pillage.

In Revelation, the final book of the Christian bible, God said, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

That’s heavy-duty stuff, and I prefer to look at this whole experience with a bit more of a laissezfaire attitude. Down through history, our world has been ravaged by plagues and floods and rampant, runaway viruses many times, and we somehow survived anything Mother Nature threw at us. I’m sure humanity will weather this one as well. Like Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, freckle-faced, thought-provoking MAD Magazine mascot, used to say,” What, Me Worry?”

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New York, New York This Is My City

By Aglaia Davis

Yes, for years – probably 20 – I have had dreams of grandeur of moving to Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where I will one day live on a spacious piece of property with a few horses, a couple of cats, a “pound puppy,” and at least two cars. I have spent most of my legal career practicing New Jersey law and, as of 2019, am an official member of its bar. I spend Saturdays and Sundays in the Garden State, driving to my beloved “Wally-World” (Walmart) and Sam’s Club, spending time with my adored car, and riding equines at the barn in Woodland Park that has become my weekend home.

I have dubbed myself a “country gal at heart,” because I grew up about 360 miles northeast of Manhattan, in the It wasn’t real to me until . . . middle of Maine, in rural town with one country store and no traffic lights. I have wondered aloud and many a time why I still reside here, 25 years after moving from Fayette, where I’d grown up with horses and dogs and cats and rabbits and, well, a pair of parents who really have loved me. I have decried the uncivility of living in a city where parking is both at a premium and being taken away in favor of the dreaded Citibike.

Not that I cling to aphorisms – like Joni Mitchell’s, “You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”

But there’s something about seeing the city that you have on some deep level loved get hurt . . . really hurt. I’m not talking 9/11 hurt, though I did feel extremely protective then, too, and I did worry about my City. Yes, I’m talking about the virus that spread throughout the world and finally so deeply into the sidewalks of New York that our mayor approve drastic measures in response.

It wasn’t real to me – the COVID-19 coronavirus – until Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged New Yorkers to work from home and avoid mass transit. Its severity wasn’t real to me until he announced cancellation of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. And I didn’t think it would really hurt my City until he announced that – as Billy Joel sang – “the lights” would officially “go out on Broadway.”

As I walked by the American Museum of Natural History a day when it would normally be swarming with tourists and schoolchildren, I snapped a photo of its locked doors and barricaded entrance. Suddenly, my very crowded neighborhood was parking-a-plenty, sidewalk-open, and terrifyingly abandoned. My city had been wounded.

I likely will never be able to describe how my pride about, and compassion for, the city, awakened the day it had been hit – not by a 757 full-of-jet-fuel or a super storm named Sandy — but by a pandemic that sapped the town of its vitality. Instead of fleeing Manhattan, as several of my wellheeled neighbors decided to do (the Hamptons come early), I dug my heels into the concrete

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sidewalks and determined to stand silently beside my City rather than gallop off to greener pastures.

It sounds dramatic to say that I felt the need to bear witness. But I did. I needed to walk unencumbered up, down and across the streets and avenues, and see with my eyes and through my iPhone camera what COVID-19 was doing to the city. New York was abandoned – the sleepless city finally sleeping – gutted of its deepest innards and standing like a skeleton of its former self.

I took it personally when Mayor DeBlasio ordered all gyms shut down, because my workouts in the morning were something I treasured each day. I would have to return to Central Park and walk its drives or Reservoir, suffering for miles on hamstrings that were long since torn. But I did it. I climbed the stairs in my building; I did what little strength training I could do in my studio apartment; I spent my time loving my City, certain that it needed my compassion and companionship.

I stayed when life shrank into the walls of my studio apartment, while neighbors dubbed it “cool” that our Upper West Side neighborhood had emptied of its museum- and park-going crowds. I stayed when the roads of escape to New Jersey grew thinner, on executive orders eliminating “nonnecessary” travel; when I knew I would lose my drives to the barn on the weekends and my car would be parked, possibly for months.

Now, weeks into the pandemic, I am still here, visiting the park, passing shuttered businesses, and enduring the deafening silence of busyness and business slowed. Has anything really changed for me? Will I still rage over the lack of parking when life resumes and the ratio of cars to parking spots is a bit like it is women-to-men in dating? Absolutely. And will I still say I am a country gal at heart and don’t belong in New York City? I will.

But not now. I walk outside, around the park, down 5th Avenue, across 57th Street, all the while taking photos of the vacant storefronts and empty buildings. I stand on 7th Avenue and 57th Street and look down the avenue to an empty Times Square. I cross crosstown streets against the light because, well, there are no cars to wait on. I walk the sidewalks once filled with pedestrians, and now scarcely traversed, not knowing how many of the darkened businesses will never turn their lights back on. But I keep walking, while the news grows dimmer day by day. I grind on like the City of New York has always done.

So, show us what you’ve got, COVID-19. You will do your damage but you won’t do us in. This is the Town that never sleeps. This is 5th Avenue. This is Central Park. This is the Museum of Natural History. This is Manhattan. This is New York. This is the Greatest City in the World.

This is my City.

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Wellington, New Zealand Lockdown

By Frank I. Sillay

My wife, Meg, normally lives four hours north of here, where gardens flourish and her 99-year-old mother does the same. We travel back and forth, usually four or five times a year, for leisurely visits of a week or two in duration.

Meg arrived for one of those visits a few days before the lockdown was imposed around 20 March. Ordinarily we’d go out for lunch every day in various of the many ethnic restaurants that line the suburban main street where I live, but we only got a couple in The next problem was a suitable bread pan. before all the restaurants, bars, fast food establishments and food delivery services shut down. The only businesses open are supermarkets, drugstores, and medical practices. People are allowed to travel to these places, so long as they’re in the neighbourhood, or for exercise or dog-walking. Almost all the cars on the road are driven by policemen.

Both of us being over 70, and so classified as high-risk, we have managed to organize home deliveries of grocery orders lodged over the internet, and so only step outside the door a couple of times a week for a walk. It’s a great piece of luck that there are two of us here for this shutdown, we manage to pass the time just fine, and neither of us has to cook for one, which is one of those activities when the game is hardly worth the candle.

Early in our marriage, we paid a visit to my boss’s widowed mother, on a farm in the southern part of the South Island. She had only recently gotten the electricity connected, and still baked bread on a cast iron wood range every day, and she gave Meg instructions on the dark arts involved. This was such a success that daily bread baking became a regular feature at our house as long as we had kids at home.

As we adjusted our lives to this new, Spartan regimen, Meg said she might start baking bread.

Well, flour was one of those things that instantly disappeared from supermarket shelves, though I’m certain 98% of the people who bought it had never baked anything in their lives. The day before the final lockdown, I went into the wholesale grocery place in Wellington where I have an account and bought the smallest bags I could get of white and wholemeal flour: 44lbs and 22lbs, respectively.

The next problem was a proper bread pan. Nothing in my kitchen was of suitable size and proportions, which are important when baking. Years ago, I’d made several bread pans from

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tinplate, but they had long since been given away. I had neither usable material nor tools for making new ones. Although all the requisite tools are at No.2 son’s workshop, I might have trouble explaining my trip to an inquisitive policeman.

In the end, I took an empty two-litre olive oil can, burned the paint off with a blowtorch, cut it down with a pair of snips, and gave it a wire edge using only a hammer and the edge of an anvil.

Although it’s the most amateurish looking loaf pan, I’ve ever seen, it works fine, and the bread is beautiful!

Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, New York

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia A Day in the Life

By Sharafina Teh

Day “whatever” in isolation. It doesn’t matter. To be honest I have lived a life in isolation for an elongated period of time before. Back when I was jobless for a few months.

But this time is different. The reason was much grimmer. There was a heavy feeling hanging around when I was in the house. I knew I couldn’t just leave to get some fresh air whenever I wanted. I know it’s silly, but I have anxiety over getting caught by the police working for just even stepping outside. It’s all an exaggeration of my own mind, as I can leave for essential purposes, like getting groceries so I can survive another week.

Roadblock, police checkpoint

My daily routine in quarantine life starts with me getting up later than I usually do just because I can. I look to my hamster by my bedside to see if she’s doing well. She’s only been living with me for two months, but I can feel her importance in my life right now to fill any void of loneliness. I get ready for the day and try to resume work that I had from the office. Most of the time since isolation started, I wasn’t that productive, however. And I excuse myself with the reasoning that I might not get paid the next month. But I still push myself to do it just to have something to do.

At the very least, being forced to live all the time in my house pushed me to cook and clean more.

Before, my usual routine right after work involved crashing into bed. Okay, that’s an exaggeration but it might as well just be a simplification.

Now I have an abundance of energy and time to do personal projects because I don’t travel. Even getting other people to participate is motivating because of the extra free time I have. Drawing has been a second life of mine, writing felt like a goal and voice over was somewhat of a fantasy. Just being able to delve into each felt euphoric.

Ending my day, I like to stare outside my window, the view being the road heading to the highway.

There’s a roadblock, with police working to check each person who travels. I stare at them, wishing that one day they’ll be gone and this will all be over soon. But I know it won’t be that easy and that soon. For now, I will live with anxiety and acceptance of the situation, and try to sleep it off.

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Zebras in the morning fog, Kruger National Park

A multi-generational sojourn South Africa provides gifts beyond its amazing beauty and soul Story by John H. Ostdick Photography by Hunter Lee Ostdick and John H. Ostdick

Deep in the caves at South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind, the dark walls, fed by a constant 19degree © temperature (66F), are cool to the touch. With every new step down this portion of a winding 62-foot descending path, the ceiling drops in degrees. My tour-provided bright-orange hard hat glances off it, and my generous 62-year-old frame can no longer bend in this space and remain upright. I slide down slowly and proceed arse-to-path, skittering along for a short distance on the palms of my hands.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the cautious gaze of my almost 30-year-old son, Hunter, who is trying not to show he is poised to rescue the old man if needed (the thought crosses my mind that maybe he is just pretending not to know me). Between grunts, I have to smile. I’m not too

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The traveling circus (sans John) bundled up against the morning cold in Kruger National Park

proud to know my limitations. He stoops down and clears the low spot easily. Oh, how our perspectives have changed over the past 25 years, our watchful, cautionary roles reversed.

This World Heritage site, about a 90-minute drive from Johannesburg, is home to about 40 percent of the world’s human ancestor fossils. For a moment or two, I feel like I might be one of them.

The caves and the adjacent interactive, evolutionary development-focused Maropeng Museum prove a fruitful launch moment for a 17-day, multi-generation adventure of new discovery and strengthening old bonds.

The participants assemble Four siblings and a brother-in-law have carved out the time to visit one siblings’ daughter, Julie, and her transplanted family about an hour from Johannesburg. The cast of characters ranges from early 70s to twelve years old.

My younger brother Mike, who moved from California to Australia almost 30 years ago, played instigator in this familial sojourn. As he approached his 60th birthday, he proposed a group trip reunion of the six sibs. Two brothers in California cannot join us, but a plurality is a victory. His training as a landscape architect makes him precise and attentive to detail while possessing a broad understanding and appreciation of the natural world. He and brother-in-law Patt (known as “the Patt with two Ts” in the family — why will become apparent shortly), who has been visiting Africa for about 40 years, worked for several months with Julie (Patt’s daughter), honing our itinerary.

Although members of our troupe have traveled together previously as adults, this jaunt will be a first for the twelve of us together. For the past several years, matriarch sister Pat (our one-t Pat) and Diane (Julie’s mom) have gone on cruises together. My son Hunter and I, both animal and

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outdoor activity enthusiasts, have traveled frequently. I’ve spent time with brother Mike in Australia. It is the first time in Africa for Pat, Mike, Hunter and myself.

Outside of planned media tours I’ve participated in, for most of my adult life I have formulated the travel plans for both my writing assignments and family trips. This time, however, I have ceded that to my brother and our hosts, limiting myself to background reading and identifying sites that interest me. The relinquished control in itself makes this safari (“journey” in Swahili) unusual for me.

Australian brother Mike lives in a part of the world both similar and different than that of his siblings. We’ve visited him and he’s returned to the States at various times since his relocation, but we’ve all evolved with time, distance, and different environs, and he finds this group immersion into yet another culture enlightening. Not only are we learning about how we have changed since our last encounters, we are learning how we react differently to a new culture, what nuances resonate and those that go unnoticed.

The Brew Crew

He arrives a few days before the rest of us and plans to continue his adventure solo after the rest of us go home. He, niece Julie, and family quickly assimilate. And as the trip unwinds, Mike shares a passion for trying new brews with his nephew Hunter, who works in the liquor business. Hunter carries a small notebook that includes every beer he has tasted. We help him add to his list as we sip significantly from the burgeoning craft beer industry here.

Patt, who first visited Africa as a young man with his mother, says that he has found all of the continent invigorating. South Africa, in particular, pulls on him in a way that he says may be difficult for most people to follow.

He draws a parallel between the Texas he calls home and South Africa, both primarily land-based entities where people love spending time outside of towns. “My love for and South Africans’ love of country are very similar,” he explains. “I like the birds and animals as well as the mountains, valleys, and coastlines. The animals have been a large draw for me here, not for hunting them but for the variety you encounter.”

While here, Patt is always wondering, “What is around the next corner?” He has spent his life working diligently but here he is content sitting by a fire with friends, doing nothing but enjoying being there, where no one owes anyone anything, and all we owe everyone is love and a thank you for sharing their world.

There are no Pollyannaish blinders on the eyes in this group. South Africa continues to wrestle with race and economic inequities, repression, and ways to level the playing field since the abolishment of apartheid in the early 1990s. The tension roils constantly just beneath the surface, sometimes erupting like a red-hot geyser. Still, its beauty and spirit persevere.

For her part, Julie is excited to show us the country that is part of her blood now, and that her children (Jocelyn, 20; Lilly, 16; Jaxton, 14; and Reagan, 12) are getting a chance to reconnect with

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their aunt and uncles. Her husband Willem (Willie), of Afrikaner descent, has two sons by a previous marriage as well but commitments don’t allow them to accompany us.

Their home serves as our launch and periodic crash pad, and introduces us to the African boma tradition. The boma, a gathering spot sheltered by closely bound branches, dates back to precolonial Africa, when native groups such as the Zulu and Xhosa used wooden fences to enclose livestock and fortify family homesteads.

Nights by a boma fire

Modern Africa has adopted this tradition on farms as well as at safari game lodges and other outdoor entertainment venues. We spend most nights by a boma fire, laughing, drinking, and swapping life tales that we might never had dared share when we were younger. These run from intensely personal, big-picture themes to silly side moments in family history: Julie is particularly amused by how as a visiting teenager I got drunk with Patt’s younger brother (Julie’s uncle) and ended up getting sick all over her stern grandparents’ bathroom. Our cares and worries dance away on the escaping smoke and into the star-smacked sky above us.

Sleep is deeply restful, if morning a bit abrupt. The bountiful Hadeda Ibis, heavy-bodied SubSaharan Africa brown birds with pink shoulder patches, blare a haaa-haaa-haaa when in flight, especially in the mornings and evenings when they fly out or return to their roost trees. Theirs is an indescribably loud presence.

Acclimation complete, we embark in Willie’s oversized hunting camp van on a looping exploration east, with a quick stop scheduled at Thaba’nke Lodge (mountain of the leopard), Willie’s property near Groblersdal.

Driving east we encounter fields of corn drying in the sun, destined to be used as a South African version of grits. Enormous circular termite mounds emerge on the side of the road.

The more than 12,000-acre plot is Willie’s inherited share of a vast estate cobbled together by his grandfather, who started farming other people’s land when he first came to the country. He was good at it, and ended up earning enough to buy a small farm that he had been working. He kept adding property as the years went by. Willie has built an incredible entertainment hall and guest cottages for his hunting parties. On this day, Willie’s scheduled hunting party cancels so he is able to join in on our adventure.

After a quick tour and a night under the stars at the boma, we are off.

Navigating today’s South Africa for the first time can be a tad confusing, as it’s not uncommon for places to carry multiple names or be in the process of undergoing name changes. When a country has 11 recognized official languages, a fondness for slang and colloquialisms, a complex political history, and an inclusive constitution, there is a lot to ponder.

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We stop for the night in Kaapsche Hoop (original Dutch spelling), which translates as “hope of the cape.” It sprung from an 1873 gold rush and prospectors’ hopes for successful finds and the shape of the Kaapsehoop ridge; a cape that bulges out from the Drakensberg escarpment into the lowveld (a wide-open landscape between 500 and 2,000 feet above sea level).

During a town stroll before Mabalingwe Nature Preserve mom and child rhino dinner, we pop into Salvador, a local pool hall/bar, and Patt, as seems to be his fate, immediately attracts a misfit. This is one really drunk fellow. They engage in a lengthy unintelligible conversation, which prompts Patt to get up from the table and talk him slowly away. Another tipsy dude soon joins them near the bar.

They ramble, quite animated, and Patt humors them a bit before slipping back to us as our flight of South African beers arrives.

We return to our modest lodgings for a casual, lengthy dinner. The conversation bounces from one subject to another, and we drift away to bed as each feels the calling. As I head back to my room, our two youngest females are earnestly quizzing the eldest on her views of today’s gender and sexual identity issues. I am struck by how interested and respectful Lilly and Reagan are of aunt Pat’s perspective.

Although Hunter and I are enjoying each turn in this journey, anticipation builds as we head farther east toward Kruger National Park. Like many in my generation, the 1960s wildlife documentary television program Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom fanned my youthful fascination with wild animals in their original habitat (I can still hear host Marlin Perkins telling sidekick Jim Fowler, who was always on camera with the animals, to stick his head in a lion’s mouth or some such . . . well, he may never had said such a thing but I can still hear it in my head nonetheless). Hunter, a friend to all animals, is always game for seeing as many as he can.

And Kruger has always been a destination dream. The bushveld here is home to all of Africa's iconic safari species — elephant, lion, leopard, cheetah, rhino, buffalo, giraffe, hippo and zebra, as well as 137 other mammals and more than 500 varieties of birds. The geography and flora varies as greatly as its fauna: stunning granite kopjes (hills) dot the southern reaches; in the east, the Lebombo Mountains rise from the savannah; and the northern reaches are covered by tropical forests.

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Kruger National Park Cape buffalo

Our base for an abridged two-day exploration is the incredible Manyatta Rock Camp in the Kwa Madwala Private Game Reserve southeast of Kruger. Our troupe splits up into the simple chalets that offer views of the Reserve. A thatched-roof reception area is cut from the edge of a cliff, and is built on stilts jutting out over rocks, with a stunning view of the kopjes and Lebombo Mountains.

Monkeys constantly try to poke their way through the thatched roof and outsmart the serving staff to snatch food.

Our main guide is Chris “call me ‘Big Boy’ because you wouldn’t be able to pronounce my name.”

He leads us on animal-watching drives and identifies area plants for us, explaining their context in the South African culture.

The camp exudes a comforting, natural stillness. Two towering granite rocks emerge from one side of the compound (hence the name). Morning coffee while transfixed by the fog shrouding the Lebombos is a stunning start to each day.

We visit with the trainers of elderly elephants rescued from herd-thinning death in other parts of Africa, and they do a demonstration of the large beast’s sense of smell (matching a person to the scent of his or her shoe) and memory (everyone introduces themselves and then steps to the side; the elephant then points to each person as their name is randomly called). One elephant kicks a soccer ball with Hunter and Jaxton, alternating evenly between the two with perfect kicks. FYI: When you are standing next to an elephant and he shifts his weight, you are going to move a bit — quickly. I’m amazed at how the back sides of their ears feel like worn velvet.

We enter Kruger on a frosty early morning, driving through a surreal yellow-orange haze. Julie awards Hunter with the trip’s initial “gold star” for spotting the first critter, a bird hard to identify in the eerie light (we later determine it was a Sand-billed Stork). Hunter wears the imaginary award proudly. We pass our first elephant in the park (Tinker’s Kruger Park Map & Guide puts the elephant population here at about 13,750), an enormous fog-draped silhouette back-lit by the rising sun. Full faces emerge from blanket shrouds throughout the open-sided touring truck.

The sun climbs as quickly as our animal count. I am seated in the second row of the truck behind Patt and our driver Chris, straining to hear their observations and discussions over the sound of the engine. Hunter and I begin handing cameras back and forth, filling memory card after memory card. I feel that the smile on my face matches the one frozen across his.

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More elephants with incredible eyes. A brown-spotted hyena slinks nervously past the front of the vehicle, and gazes fully upon us.

Vulture. Yellow Hornbill. Seven zebras in a wonderfully lit fog patch. Impalas at every turn (cruelly called “Big Macs,” 152,000 or so are fast-food items for the large predators). A mother and baby elephant cross the road single file ahead of us. Kudu. More elephants, splashing in a river. Enormous Cape Buffalo with formidable curved horns peer out of some short trees very close to the road. Giraffes lean across each other’s necks as they check us out.

Baboon troop with nursing mother Smiles, bright eyes, and banter fill the truck now. Cameras and binoculars swing this way and that. “What is” and “how do” questions resonate. Almost two hours into our odyssey, Chris slows the truck to a crawl and notes an impala in a clearing off to our right. Its muscles are taught and its gaze transfixed on some point in the distance. “A predator is near,” Chris explains. The impala darts off.

We enter a stretch of road where three other vehicles are trolling slowly. Word is out that a predator is on the prowl. Chris scans the horizon at our left. He brakes, peers some more, and then slowly backs up the road. We all are straining to see what he may have seen, but all we spot is a vulture land atop a tree not far from the road.

Chris points at some trees in the distance. “Follow where I am pointing, at that large tree in the distance, about halfway up,” he says. “Can you see the leopard, dragging something to a higher point in the tree?”

After much straining through our binoculars, we lock in: A leopard is struggling to pull its fresh-kill impala carcass out of reach of scavengers below. “I located it in the tree because it flushed that vulture away,” Chris explains.

We all stare at the distant, vivid Circle of Life scene: The leopard finds a satisfactory perch and begins chowing down. Flashes of red meat framed by tan fur being turned and mauled. I work hard to capture it with my long lens but cannot get a crystal clear shot even leaning against the frame of the now-silent vehicle. The strength the leopard exhibits in dragging the impala up high into this giant tree is mind-boggling.

We finally drag ourselves away from this amazing scene. Lions stretch out on some rocks above a river. Hippos hunker down in waters off the road. A troop of spooky baboons off the side of the road stares us down. It includes a mother nursing her infant.

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We continue for several hours, with one incredible turn after another before circling back for the road back to camp. We return to Manyatta, overjoyed and weary.

Elephant crossing the road in Kruger National Park

We spend the next day wandering Kruger under the tutelage of Willie, and benefit greatly from his hunter guide’s eye and animal behavior insights.

At one point, a savannah off to our left is dotted with more elephants than we can count.

We just about decide that we are going to only register four of the “Big Five” in Kruger when we reach a vehicle-jammed bridge about a mile from our exit. Diane is first to spot several white rhinos, partially obscured in some trees down by the river to our right, that are playing hide and seek with the visitors on the bridge. Willie maneuvers us to a good vantage point. They are magnificent beasts, even at this distance.

One of the running games we play during the trip is identifying each person’s “ice cream” (which Reagan, early on, states she wants with every meal). Brother Mike’s ice cream is visiting waterfalls and Hunter’s, beyond the animal spotting, is sampling new craft beers. So when we finally begin a circuitous route back west, we take a northern tack up through Sabie (where we sample the beers from the Sabie Brewing Co., located in a refurbished trading post dating to 1921) and visit a string of 200-foot-plus waterfalls — Lone Creek, Bridal Veil, and Mac Mac. Before visiting Mac Mac, we stop in Graskop at Canimambo, a Portuguese/ Mozambican restaurant. Mozambique-born co-founder and head chef Carla Marques Gibson immigrated to South Africa in 1974 at the age of 11. She is now considered one of the top Portuguese chefs in the country. Hunter orders the house special, the Juicy Rump Espetada, cubes of aged rump steak, bay leaves and lemon which are dipped in coarse salt before being grilled and served on a skewerand-metal apparatus. The table is shocked at the sheer size of the dish.

From Graskop, we follow the Panorama Route north through some incredibly lavish country, stopping at Bourke’s Luck Potholes, a series of natural geological formations carved by centuries of water flowing through the landscape. The potholes occur where the Treur (“sad”) River joins the Blyde (“happy”) River at the mouth of the Blyde River Canyon, the two rivers forming swirling eddies of water. Over time, this action formed huge cylindrical potholes in the sandstone bedrock.

The effect, seen from the crags above, is now a fascinating network of tunnels and tubes and interconnected whirling pools. The different soil levels in each hole give them each a unique color and makes for a striking and colorful landscape.

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The formations get their name from a prospector, John Bourke, one of the first to proclaim that the region had gold deposits. Bourke never found a single ounce of gold — though luckier prospectors would later find rich amounts. Even if he walked away emptyhanded, his name lives on in the stunning scenery.

As we enter the visitor’s center, a collection of shops and native vendors, a large woman vendor is dashing amazingly fast through the parking lot, screaming at the top of her lungs in pursuit of a thieving monkey churning on all fours, an orange in its mouth and another curled up in its front left hand. The scene is cartoonishly comical.

The bridges and viewing platforms at the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve, which at about 62,000 acres makes it the world’s third-largest canyon, offer sturdy Hunter riding the Ling Tom trekking above the Potholes. Visitors can also clamber Toboggan on Misty Mountain about portions of the smoothed tops of them as well.

Our troupe scatters — Mike studying and photographing various aspects of the formation; Patt and grandson Jaxton sitting at a high spot, launching into contemplative discussion; and the girls playing at beauty shots with the stunning backgrounds. I find myself slightly envious of Hunter jumping across one pothole, then another, something I would have done years ago as well.

Not far north we stop to gaze at the Lowveld View, a vantage point almost 4,000 feet above sea level. The Blyde River cuts its way through the valleys below. The Canyon is the second-largest in Africa, after the Fish River Canyon in Namibia, and is cited as the largest “green canyon” on Earth, the result of its lush subtropical foliage. On the rim here, an uncommon thing occurs: Hunter calls over to me that he wants a photo of the two of us, on the rim with the spellbinding scene behind us. “I’ve thought a couple of times today, ‘This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,’” I tell him, my arm around his shoulder. He smiles, and nods in understanding.

The visages and vistas start piling up in our memory banks with each stop. Misty Mountain, a more than 690-acre South African Natural Heritage Site located on Long Tom Pass, lives up to its name and then some. Our rooms come with an inspiring mountain view, a perfect fit for a foggy morning cup of coffee.

Before departing, the crew checks out the adjacent Long Tom Toboggan, a three-minute, just more than a mile-long toboggan cart ride on a slender downhill rail through forest and wildflowers.

The youngsters are thrilled when Pat joins in on the almost 30-miles-per-hour jaunt.

We reach Mashishing (“long green grass”) on the last Friday afternoon of the month, a universal payday here. The city center of this farming town lined with 19th century buildings is jammed with traffic, sort of resembling a Midwestern U.S. town on a Saturday morning in the 1950s.

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We return to Willie’s property for two days to recover from sensory overload. Julie and Willie invite some friends to a boma potjie dinner, a stew slow-cooked in a three-legged Dutch oven.

Willie’s recipe calls for onions, potatoes, carrots, gourds, and browned oxtail to be simmered on an open fire for hours in a liberal dousing of Coke. Hunter is charged with watching over the pot and keeping it properly moist (which he does, mostly feet up, beer in hand).

A long, casual evening under the stars ensues.

Fully rested, Patt and Diane welcome us into their piece of this fabulous land, a “bush house” they have purchased for their many visits to see their grandchildren. It is located in the Mabalingwe Nature Reserve, a low-key area about an hour-and-half drive north of Johannesburg. The almost 31,000-acre reserve is home to 36 wildlife species, including hippos, elephants, rhinos, giraffes, sables, and hyenas.

Our welcoming committee is a fat and sassy warthog at a watering hole below the bush house balcony. Although she is the spitting image of Disney’s animated Pumbaa, Hunter christens her Beatrix. We toss food pellets off the balcony for her, and thank her for coming out to greet us.

Mabalingwe (“leopard spot”) is also home to a comfortable resort, Itaga Luxury Game Lodge, where Pat, Mike, Hunter, and I stay. On the ride from the bush house, we spot several elephants, white rhinos (including a mom and her baby), and some giraffes. Staff members provide two tours of the preserve, one a night trip during which we hear elephants loudly munching on trees before we ever see their shadowy presence. We come across zebras, giraffes (we learn that a giraffe’s 18to 20-inch tongue produces melatonin to protect it from sunburn), and catlike genets staring out of the bush.

During a late-afternoon tour we sip on beer, watching hippos appear and disappear in a lake off the side of the road. Grass, golden in the sun, waves slowly in front of us. A kingfisher pops up above the water beyond the grass and hovers, flutter-flutter-flutter rapidly frozen in place before diving strait down to capture a fish below. It’s a magical show.

We also get a thorough introduction to the grey lourie (Corythaixoides concolor), known as the “go-away” bird because of its loud, nasal “kweh” call. They frequent arid to moist, open woodlands and thorn savanna, especially near water. When intruders approach, the lourie announce their presence with the call that sounds like “go away.” Their species is not popular with hunters.

Too soon we are back on our way to Pretoria, where we spend the day wandering.

Part of our group then flies to Cape Town for a few incredible days. We buy “Jump On Jump Off” loop bus passes to navigate the area and hire a driver service for specific spots. We get lost in the multicultural beauty and soul of the place, from the bustling Waterfront where we stay, to the colorful Bo-Kapp neighborhood tucked into the slope of Signal Mountain, Table Mountain rising above the town, the sobering informal settlements of the Cape Flats poor, the African Arts & Crafts Market in the city center, and the stunning Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and Green Point Urban Park, where staff members at its restaurant paint our faces and serenade Mike for his birthday.

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Cape of Good Hope group hug . . . “We find warmth and joy in this place.”

The Cape of Good Hope, the gorgeous southernmost point in Africa, offers the best familial highlight of this tour full of them. Spontaneously, Diane, Julie, and Jocelyn put their arms around each other in a three-generation embrace, glorious water and hills before them.

We are a caravan of hope ourselves, one of us widowed, another an escapee of abuse, one largely an island unto himself, some of us left searching for relevance after career highs and crashing lows, and those searching for a future. We find warmth and joy in this place.

“Mama Africa has a charming and magnetic lure to her, almost as if one feels at home within her welcoming and nurturing arms,” Julie says. “It’s almost like our DNA remembers that we are all from here. It’s much deeper than government and political agendas; she carries a sense of oneness and community that is hard to attain anywhere else.”

Far-flung travel adds rich, layered texture into the life stories of those who go. We leave this place richer, more connected. As we wait for our return flight to board, we receive a Whatsapp post from Julie: “Thanks for making the effort to experience my world first-hand. It was an honor to show you a tiny glimpse of South Africa’s beauty and magic, and we hope (are totally keen) that you will come to visit again.”

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A Tale of Two ‘Juniors’ There were only two chairs in the dim-lit room with the guitar treasures, the only illumination coming from a faux Tiffany lamp.

By Tony Tedeschi

Before he died suddenly in July 2013 of acute myeloid leukemia, Dr. Billy Alpert, a podiatrist who lived in Savannah, GA, was known to players, collectors and instrument dealers throughout the southeastern United States for his uncommonly large affection for vintage guitars.

“Billy was a collector,” said his son, Maury, “guitars, guns, baseball cards. And, he was good at everything he took an interest in.”

Maury, whose musical relationship with guitars is limited to a few chords, nonetheless has an intense appreciation for what his father had collected. And, in terms of guitars, what Dr. Alpert collected was, well . . . I’m getting ahead of the story.

For several years, my brother-in-law, Tony Padula, has been eBay-watching the sales of Gibson Les Paul Juniors like the 1954 his father bought used for $50, from a pawnshop in New York City, back in 1958. Once the lead guitar player in an early rock ‘n’ roll band in New York’s borough of Queens, Padula, now in his seventies, splits his time between Florida and Long Island.

“I’m blown away by how much people are asking – and sometimes getting – for these guitars,” he says. “So, when I see a ’54, for which someone is asking a nice price, I watch it to see what happens.”

That’s when he noticed something familiar about a posting for a ’54 Junior in Savannah.

“It was the serial number in a picture of the back of the headstock: 43562,” he says. “I looked at the back of mine: 43561. I mean what are the odds of finding, 60 years later, two of the same model guitars that came out of the Gibson plant, one behind the other?”

A long, long shot, given that 823 were sold in 1954, according to Walter Carter in his definitive history, “The Gibson Electric Guitar Book.” Tracking the history of a Gibson that old is extremely difficult, according to Carter, a former historian for the company.

“Gibson records for 1950s Les Pauls consist of ‘day books,’ which are daily shipping records,” Carter explains. “Gibson doesn’t let anyone in to look through the books, and it’s too time-

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consuming for them to allow a customer service rep to do it. The Junior was introduced in 1954 (at least one prototype has turned up with a 1953 number). It immediately became the best-selling of the Les Paul models because it was the cheapest.”

I felt that tracking the history of two guitars, out the door one behind the other, more than a half-century ago, could turn into an adventure.

Little did I know.

In advance of visiting, I’d heard rumors about the rest of Billy Alpert’s collection and was intrigued. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for what I would find once I got to Savannah.

Maury Alpert picked me up at my hotel and took me to the house of his mother, Grace Corvatt, long divorced from Dr. Alpert, but lifelong “best friends.” At the home, Maury retrieved the Junior, still in its original case and in remarkably good condition: minimal dings Tony Padula plays his ’54 Gibson Les Paul Junior and buckle rash, all-original components, down to the tuner buttons, which have a tendency to crumble on guitars that old.

Once I was convinced that the guitar was the match of Tony Padula’s Junior, Maury started showing me some of his father’s other gems. First, he brought out a 1952 Fender Telecaster, models this early asking $30,000 or more on eBay, clearly only for wealthy collectors. Next a ’53 Les Paul Goldtop, $40-50,000 on eBay. A ’64 ES-175, one of Gibson’s earliest archtop designs.

Not that Billy owned just electrics. Maury showed me a ’68 D-45 vintage version of Martin’s topline “Dreadnaught” design, new ones selling for as much as $30,000 and these guitars are known to mellow with age There seemed no end to the procession of vintage classics.

“While he was in medical school, he played in a band and suggested I take lessons,” Grace Corvatt said, in the midst of preparing something savory at the kitchen stove. “Right from the start, I could sense that I was not going to be very good at it, but the music teacher was very impressed with the guitar I brought with me.”

Small wonder, although she couldn’t remember what the guitar was.

There were more, Maury informed me; many more. We headed out.

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The approach to Billy Alpert’s former home seemed oddly out of place, given that it was not far from one of the more populated areas of Savannah. A gravel road, rimmed in live oaks, hung with Spanish moss and strewn with the detritus that falls from southern trees, it wound close to 100 yards off the suburban street toward a nondescript, one-story dwelling.

While the building had begun to show the disheveled look that comes with the lack of an occupant, Maury assured me it was tightly secured.

Within the house, there was definitely a sense of abandonment. All but a few items of furniture had been removed. There was very little lighting and the whole house had the kind of moldy, musty smell one might associate with a cave or a tomb. One could almost expect a pharaoh’s chamber of vintage guitars for him to rock his way into the afterlife. And so, there, in one dimly lit room, stood rows of cases that held . . . I could only guess, or wait to find out.

Miles Hendrix plays the Alpert ’54 Gibson Les Paul Junior, as Maury Alpert looks on.

We were soon joined by Miles Hendrix, a vintage guitar aficionado and musician, who was delighted to have a chance to handle the ’54 Junior Maury had brought with us. Clearly, Hendrix had a special affection for the guitar.

An Easter egg hunt with nothing but golden eggs

“People throughout this region knew Billy was a collector,” Hendrix said. “If potential sellers were visiting, they would try to get in touch with him to make a deal. This Junior belonged to a player from North Georgia or Southern Tennessee. He brought it to Billy in the early ‘90s. He wanted cash, but Billy eventually got it for a couple of other guitars that he owned. I don’t think it came out of its case much until it went on eBay.” Once again, Maury began displaying some of his late father’s treasure trove. I literally had to catch my breath. In these weathered, sometimes battered cases, were still more premier pieces that would leave serious collectors weak in the knees. Dr. Alpert definitely had a keen eye for vintage treasures. If you wanted to sell something interesting, he would be interested.

Here was a ’57 Gibson Goldtop, favored by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd; there a ’61 Gibson SG, a precursor of the one played by slide guitar virtuoso Derrick Trucks, but this one with the distinctive, folded-on-itself tremolo arm of the earliest models. Here was another ’54 Les Paul Junior, this one in a yellow finish to show up better on black-and-white TV; there an ancient

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lapsteel played by swing jazz legend Charlie Christian; here a ’66 Gretsch Country Gentleman, Chet Atkins’s model; there a . . . well, you get the idea. It was like a long-running Easter egg hunt, with nothing but golden eggs. Even lower-end models like the Kalamazoo and Harmony he showed me seemed tastefully selected.

“While so many of the guitars Billy collected he just handled once or twice then put away, he had his favorite players,” Maury explained. “He loved playing this red Gibson archtop 335.”

Taking the music public

Definitely not just a basement virtuoso, Dr. Alpert took his love of music public, opening the Crossroads Blues Bar in the 1990s, in the historic City Market section of Savannah. It was a popular watering hole for players and blues-lovers until lease issues eventually caused Alpert to sell out.

There were only two chairs in the dim-lit room with the guitar treasures, the only illumination coming from a faux Tiffany lamp. Miles Hendrix sat on the floor, holding the Junior with the reverence with which only a true guitar lover holds an instrument. His fingers then began gliding over the stings and flying up and down the fretboard.

“Sometimes Billy would go for months without playing anything,” Hendrix said now cradling the guitar in his lap, “but then he would pick up one of his guitars and immediately go off on a great run.”

Sans any amplification, all you could hear were tinny un-projected notes, but Hendrix played the Junior as if he were the other Hendrix playing Woodstock. OK, Jimi was a lefty, playing an upside down Fender Stratocaster.

“I had some Marshall amps here,” he said, “and I played everything. This guitar taps out a fairly high note and the pickup is pretty warm. It sounds like rock ‘n’ roll. It is one of my favorite guitars with its vintage P-90 pickup. It plays so flat and easy. The rest is probably all about the pickup.”

Beyond playing, Hendrix enjoyed hanging with Dr. Alpert.

“Billy was a real hoot,” he said. “He’d beat you for $5 at the end of a trade, then take you to a $100 dinner. He was my best friend for 20 years plus.”

“Not all of Billy’s collection were super collectable vintage guitars,” explains Timm Kummer of Kummer Vintage Guitars in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, who has had more than 30 of the Alpert guitars for sale at his store and on Gbase.com. Kummer, who had known Billy Alpert for more than 30 years, said Alpert “was very astute at refining his collection to include many player-grade guitars.”

As for the Savannah Junior, I could gather nothing more about its prior history, except that it certainly appears to have been the Dixie cousin of Tony Padula’s Yankee.

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“My father bought me the guitar because my uncle Rudy had given me an electric guitar – some unknown brand, canary yellow no less – then asked for it back a few months later,” Padula explains. “My father thought I was disappointed to lose it, so he went out and bought the Junior.”

It turns out Padula wasn’t all that overly impressed with the Junior.

But that blow-you-away sound

“I thought the action was too high, but didn’t know what to do about it back then,” he says. “That made it more difficult to play than my Gibson hollow body. However, I was always impressed with the blow-you-away sound.”

With the breakup of the band he was playing in, Padula relegated the Junior to the back of closets or under beds in spare bedrooms, those resting places for so many guitars belonging to teenagers of the 1950s and ‘60s with unfulfilled rock star dreams. Then, three years ago, he slid the Junior back out into the light of day and decided, despite a 50-year hiatus, he wanted to take lessons and get back into playing.

“I had no idea what it was worth,” he says. “If someone would have told me a couple of hundred dollars, I would have said, ‘you’re kidding, right? My father paid 50 bucks for the thing and I never liked it all that much.’”

But, then again, there was that unmistakable blow-you-away sound still emanating from that ancient P-90, nestled into that slab of mahogany. And, once back to playing again, at open mics on Long Island and in Florida, Padula couldn’t help but notice how audiences still seemed to connect with his brand of ‘50s and ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll-based music. One night at an open mic on Long Island, when he handed over the Junior to one of the area’s best blues players, the man had no sooner put plectrum to strings, when he stood back from the mic and mouthed, “I’m in heaven,” as the rest of the band began to play.

Guitars like these two Juniors were marketed to young people new to the instrument or simply those who could not afford the more expensive Les Pauls. So, it would seem part of a natural progression that history eventually would consign many of them to those forgotten places under the bed or the back of the closet, when interest in the instrument faded. Both of these Juniors sat for decades without fingers or picks bringing their music to life. But these two, at least, have managed to crawl out from under the bed and are now prepared to bring those killer P-90s back to life in a kind of rockin’ dotage.

Before leaving Savannah, I was given a written copy of Maury Alpert’s eulogy to his father. “Billy had a special place in his heart for misfits and musicians,” Maury had said at the funeral. “A person of many interests and talents, his passion was music.”

Amen to that.

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A Meeting in the Coffee Shop

By Jay Jacobs

Knowing it is a mistake, I nevertheless agree to meet you at the coffee shop.

I arrive first and wait on the padded bench at the front.

I see your car pull up, and watch your approach.

Stepping inside, you bring the hurt in with you like a cold winter’s wind, your words of innocent greeting icicles that pierce my heart.

Wounds I thought healed open and bleed again.

Kiss on the cheek, big smile, here we go.

To my dismay, you bring up old times, as if time were a commodity to be bought, sold and traded.

But I might have known, because discarding bad memories was always so easy for you, like so much trash to be brought to the curb and forgotten.

Unlike you however, I carry the many injuries suffered at your hand.

They are hidden in plain sight, but I’ve become a master at disguise and conceal them under a cloak of false smiles and banal pleasantries.

Sitting, I order coffee for me, green tea for you.

The old familiar pain floats anew, buoyed up on the tide of your proximity, ebbing and flowing with each memory sound your mouth makes.

I look around frantically, but here among the tables, chairs, water spotted dinnerware and the inane chatter of strangers, there is no rock behind which I can hide, and so I will you away to the center of the earth, the moon, a distant planet, or anyplace where my eyes won’t see you, ears never hear you, and my heart never long for you.

Paying the check, we get up to leave and I help you with your coat.

Almost free, I think, but it’s not over yet.

In the parking lot you damn me with your words.

“We must do this again soon” you say, and I send a fervent prayer to heaven that tomorrow when I wake up science will have invented a pill that will allow me to permanently forget you, and the life we had so long ago.

Watching you drive off I know this can never be, because you are unforgettable.

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The Lost Yesterday

By Jay Jacobs

Along the rural road set back in the woods, a neglected fence overgrown with untended hedges shelters from view the life size empty boxes of rotting wood, caved-in roofs and shattered glass, that are the last remains of another when.

Times long since past peek through the fallen planks, torn shingles, and broken windows; pale reflections of days all but forgotten, yet reluctant to fade away entirely.

Here and there, desolate islands of crumbling concrete, the last bastions of paths that once meandered through well tended lawns, bear witness to a doomed battle for dominance against the overwhelming horde of invading weeds.

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In this graveyard of what was, phantom snippets of conversation, children’s laughter, insect hum and bird-song seem to echo faintly for an instant, only to be buried beneath the forlorn moaning of a sudden wind which scatters dead leaves and old memories alike.

Unexpectedly, the dim sky brightens as the sun comes out, and the gray day is put on pause.

With the radiant beams comes a fleeting glimpse of cozy summer days past smelling of flowers, freshly mowed grass, and the scent of a lover’s hair; each a precious sip from the fountain of youth.

Eager arms reach out to embrace the lost yesterday only to close upon wisps of mirage that with a touch, vanish amid a heart wrenching sense of loss, as hungry shadows close in to devour the remaining light.

A cold gust mercilessly carries away the last lingering vestige of warm reminiscence, and sets to rocking a child’s abandoned rusty swing, one creaking ghost of many that reside here.

Among the peeling chips of paint, fallen timbers, broken furniture, mildewed cushions and other detritus of the former inhabitants, new tenants scurry, crawl, slither, and bore their way through the decaying ruins of the old summer house, now closed forever.

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Bringing Up a Grandchild Grandparent’s Motto: Spoil, Spoil, Spoil.

By Kendric W. Taylor

Having a grandchild is a wonderful gift, and actually being part of raising one from the very beginning can be even more gratifying. Gender doesn’t matter of course, but I have found granddaughters much easier to deal with, even when they are really up and running, when all they do is hop and skip everywhere. However, there’s no denying girls remain cute, cuddly and totally huggable.

Having been presented in due course with a tiny red haired girl, I naturally found myself to be quite overjoyed, and she didn’t disappoint me. The fact that I only have been given the one, allowed me to focus my complete attention on her, and to put into full practice the Grandparent’s Motto: Spoil, Spoil, Spoil.

Another plus is the fact that grandchildren usually come along at a grandparental age when he or she has managed to gain a modicum of wisdom to pass along to the new arrival. This generally provides a head start toward being a halfway useful grandparent – two wonderful sons (twins) and the redhead’s mother, somehow managed to survive my training period.

As was true in our case, as it is in so many others in these times, her mother works and travels, so it wasn’t long before the infant was put into nursery school, which happened to be right down the road from where I worked. I would visit at lunch most days, occasionally getting to pop a bottle of formula in her mouth, those blue eyes staring up at me intently, as if daring me to rush her. Most afternoons as she grew from infant to toddler, I would pick her up and drive her home. As I carried her up the long ramp to the main door of the church basement, we passed a wall handpainted with colorful renditions of wonderful animals and birds. I would point her finger to each painting and make a noise for each creature, except for the giraffe (too tall to hear what they are 38

saying, or even if they are saying anything at all). The gaudily stripped tiger got a growly grrrrrrr, the sheep a resonant baaa, and the fat brown cow its traditional mooo. There were assorted birds for chirps and bees for buzzings, but the last rendering was the best: a happy brown monkey swinging in a coconut tree. We both liked making those noises (hoh hoh hah huh!). Any grandparent will tell you they can get away with acting like this -- it’s part of the fun. On the other hand, I have found that once past the baby-talk stage, it’s usually best not to speak down to children; I’m quite sure they resent it, even if they can’t yet tell you to knock it off.

On the way home, as she sat in her car seat watching the world go by, I’d name the things of interest we’d see passing by, and she watched, and listened, and remembered. Then I would drop her off at equally spoil-ready grandmother’s, who took over until the mother arrived from work.

Ready to be grabbed by the hand

By early grade school, small children can still be coaxed into accompanying adults on shopping trips: toy and pet stores are favorites. My job in each case – say, at the pet store -- was to be ready to be grabbed by the hand (“Mom, can I take granddad to look at the little kittens?”), to visit the little orphan animals, who made me sneeze. I did like the tropical birds. The fish tanks were another favorite, as she was concerned I was lonely, and goldfish would surely keep me company (“But they keep dying on me, sweetie.”)

One memorable Christmastime at Costco, herself ensconced atop our shopping cart like Cleopatra on her barge, we encountered a woman demonstrating an elaborate Karaoke machine, who held out the microphone. It took no coaxing -- in an instant the entire store was being serenaded over the public address system with a favorite Christmas tune. Who knows, maybe the entire mercantile chain was hooked in as well. Merry Christmas Washington state! (She later brought down the house in seventh grade singing “Over the Rainbow” in her school production of the Wizard of Oz).

And, as she and I share one quality alone among our family of being only children, I was often summoned for play dates. These were strictly organized, as attested by this particular Plan of the Day posted in her childish scrawl: • • • • •

Friday Eat Breakfast Watch Sabrina Play with Grandad Eat Lunch Decorate My Room

These visits were fun for me, for wherever they were living at the time, her mother managed to turn the child’s bedroom into a neat, cozy, frilly sanctuary, complete with stuffed animals, beloved dolls and Ariel figures, along with her jumpers, pants, sox and undershirts, each individually rolled up and lovingly tucked neatly into fresh smelling bureau drawers and wicker baskets.

As she grew older, for after-school and vacations, I shared with her my love for the local library.

These great community cultural centers provide readings for the children, computers to use and

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endless arrays of wonderful books to choose from. In her case, it was also a chance to annoy the adults upstairs by rushing over to hug her favorite librarians while bombarding them with questions.

Hours can be spent in McDonald’s, or Burger King or Wendy’s, favorite meals ordered, and the favorite seat occupied by the window: perfect for storytelling. And sharing French fries. It was around this time I found that I might prove myself useful beyond simply babysitting. With my painfully won level of maturity, I could provide what might be worth-while advice, especially to my fellow only child. It’s not uncommon that kids might listen to a grandparent at times, rather than their parents. They often feel more comfortable discussing certain things, or ask certain questions; they might want to share with a parent at that time (figuring too in my case, what the hell, the old goat will forget anyway).

Until the first iPhone arrives

These years also can be used to build on their vocabularies, provide historic background on things they might be studying in school, dig up ancestors in faraway lands to brag about, (grandparents can often be the only remaining link to generations of family long past) and try and point out mistakes and pitfalls before they occur: “Grandad, what’s Navy boot camp got to do with my life?”

The drive home after school or sports is always a good time for this, right up until the point that the first Iphone arrives on a Birthday or Christmas. Then it’s Game over Man. After that – hope for battery failure.

But still, it is a great chance to dig into your own experiences to get some points across beyond the basics: Don’t be boastful (grandparents will do that for you: Oh, she’s the prettiest, smartest, cutest, best, etc., etc.).

Books are friends as well as an imperishable resource Things generally balance out. Broken hearts generally heal, unless you don’t want them to, like Miss Havisham in “Great Expectations,” in which case, you deserve it.

Cherish your family if you are lucky enough to have one that is cherishable. Most generally are.

If the spoilee goes to high school in another town, this Uber ride phase offers even more opportunities for wisdom, and if the subject of boys comes up, it’s another wonderful chance to put Great Expectations to use, this time Lawyer Jagger’s admonition about boys, especially to someone in a girl’s school: “I have a pretty large experience of boys . . . a bad set of fellows.”

Having been a boy myself, he’s not far off the mark.

As mentioned, mom traveled, and so indeed, did we, pooling our miles. Pre-teen Granddaughters are the easiest to travel with, tending to curl sleepily around the mother like spaghetti. This leaves the grandparent to read or deal with jumpy legs or slow drinks service. Once there, while Mom worked, we’d adventure: Miami and South Beach, Disneyland, zoos and aqua venues and theme parks on both coasts. Having discovered she was not shy about speaking up, she did all the talking and asked all the directions. She had her first horseback ride, fed her first dolphin, and went

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swimming with Paulie Walnuts from the Sopranos. We all have these stories of course, and the bigger the family the more the stories. Like the time at the Orange County Zoo, playing on the swings after a day stuffing junk food into her like Mr. Creosote in “Monty Python and The Meaning of Life.” A lovely woman came over from a large group of Moslem moms and small children playing near us and asked if we would like to share some of their ice cream treats.

Fearing my child would explode at this point, I had to decline, which she accepted graciously, but I spend years feeling guilty they might think xenophobia instead of fear of that last tiny wafer.

Itineraries expand internationally

As she grew, our itineraries expanded internationally. This is the best time -- places I dreamed of as a boy and was lucky enough to finally see, I could now share with them -- Paris and London topping the list. For a pre-teen, imagine meeting Henry VIII at Hampton Court, and then going back to school and studying about him. “I am on my way to a council meeting," he told us, but tarried a moment in the Royal courtyard to pose for our picture. He was also wearing the most formidable codpiece, embarrassing my daughter no end. We then experienced one of the best lunches of the trip down in the Tudors’ original kitchen: Shepherd’s Pie and amazing fresh baked cookies. At another lunch, at the Louvre in Paris we sat across from a Russian couple whose husband looked startlingly like Vladimir Putin. I was very tempted to get her to ask him who was minding the Kremlin.

As it must, the last signpost on the road to college arrives -- driving instruction ( (Jeezus -- look out for that ditch!), where I learned a lesson: if you still live in the same town you grew up in, avoid driving down boyhood streets pointing out where old girlfriends once lived (“Grandad, I don't want to hear this; I'm beginning to wonder about you”).

Soon enough they will be completely out in the world. My pre-war generation grew up pretty much in the same place, and had to wait for the armed forces to take us places. Today’s Millennials are a pretty sophisticated bunch – if they haven’t already been there and done that, they’ve seen it on TV. Not much that will awe them, but they will find something, guarantee it.

Bill Scheller’s Clerihews Thomas Carlyle Cannot make us smile And please don’t start us on Sartor Resartus Ogden Nash Did something rash He escaped meter’s curse By writing wildly improbable utterly meterless verse

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Smart Dog

By Frank I. Sillay

Tyrone lived a long, happy, and cosseted life.

Tyrone (Ty to his nearest and dearest) was the smartest dog I ever met.

He was what we called a Heinz, not because the American Kennel Club recognized a breed of that name, but because of the 57 Varieties that were represented in his ancestry. In size and shape, he resembled a Staffordshire Terrier, and was white with black polka dots, in the style of a Dalmatian.

He was a very amiable dog, with a knowing look, and a streak of independence to leaven his general obedience and sound citizenship.

His owners were George and Alice Powers, who lived three doors down the road from us when I was a kid. Alice was exceedingly proud of having attended a finishing school in Switzerland, and since George was a dermatologist with a very lucrative practice, and stood ready to cater to her every whim, their large two story house was built with a footprint in the shape of a cross as represented on the Swiss flag.

The ground floor of the house was devoted to communal activities and entertaining, and the intersection of the four wings housed a grand, helical staircase which led to the upstairs bedrooms.

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The master bedroom was in one wing, and the children’s rooms in two of the other wings, with guest rooms in the fourth.

The fire started on the ground floor, and very quickly turned the staircase into a raging inferno and began to spread out through the upstairs wings.

The parents were woken by Tyrone’s barking, and realizing access from their bedroom to the other wings was impossible, they quickly made good their escape, and began a frantic quest to rescue their children. Although they could find no access to the upstairs, Ty found a way, woke the two older kids, and led them to the only part of the veranda roof that was still safe to walk on, from where firemen easily rescued them. He found his way into the third wing where the baby slept, knocked over her high-sided crib, and dragging her by her diapers and nightdress, somehow got her all the way out on to the lawn, where the family was reunited. Before they could begin to make a fuss over Ty, the parents saw him return to the house, which was now fully ablaze from end to end. Distraught at the prospect of his inevitable loss, they assumed he had become confused in the excitement and thought that there were still members of the family needing rescue inside.

Emotional turmoil prevailed on the lawn; joy at the survival of the entire family, but heartbreak at the death of the heroic dog who was responsible for saving their lives.

At about the time the first part of the roof collapsed, Ty arrived on the lawn, though barely recognizable, laid a neatly folded wet bath towel at George’s feet, and sat expectantly, with clouds of smoke issuing from his wagging tail. Upon examination, the towel was found to contain the fire insurance policy.

Tyrone made a good recovery from his numerous minor injuries, and lived a long, happy, and cosseted life.

It was not until some weeks after the event that George remembered the insurance policy had been locked in the safe.

Bill Scheller’s Clerihews Old Ernest Hemingway Would while the time away Wishing he could fish again The bays of Lake Michigan Jack Kerouac Went west and came back His restlessness showed When he wrote On the Road

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The Policeman’s Wife I asked if she were running for the exercise and she said yes, but that she’d like to do the New York Marathon some day.

Tony Tedeschi

“He’s police. Some kinda big shot.”

Carlo, my gardener, was my information source for everything: the best house painter, carpenter, electrician, even the guy who cleaned my fireplace chimney. He was also my best source of local intelligence, now, on my new next door neighbors.

“She’s retired,” he went on.

“Retired?” I questioned. “I’ve only had a glimpse of her, but she doesn’t look that old.”

“Some kinda disability. She was police, too.”

“O.K.,” I said with a smile, “since you have the complete dossier on the family, who is the young woman in the powder blue Volkswagen Beetle, who comes almost every morning?”

“She comes to help with the boy. He’s no good.” Sometimes Carlo’s English is altered just enough by his Calabrian accent that I’m not quite sure what I’ve heard.

“No good?” I questioned. “He on drugs or something?”

“Nooo. A policeman’s son? He’s crippled.”

“Crippled?”

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“In a wheelchair.” Carlo reached down to re-crank his riding mower. “Sad story,” he added, then swung the mower through a one-eighty and continued with my lawn.

Hell, they were my next-door neighbors and he knew about them before I did.

The husband was a stealth neighbor. I’d only seen him for a brief moment as I set off on my run one morning. He came out to hand a manila envelope to someone waiting in a black, late model Ford, with darkened windows and all kinds of antennas sticking out of the roof. We nodded to each other.

During the course of the next several weeks, I saw her outside on sunny days, with her German shepherd, her son in his wheelchair, and the young woman in the Volkswagen who had been hired to help with the boy. The son was clearly, severely disabled, his head bent so low it nearly touched the chair’s armrest. When he raised it, it appeared as if he did not have the strength to hold it up for long. Nonetheless, the two women often tried to entertain him by throwing a Frisbee about and having the dog retrieve it. But there just didn’t appear to be too much they could do for the boy.

Finally, I met her one morning, just before the outset of my morning run. She had gotten out of a black, Lexus SUV and was heading for her front door, when she noticed me finishing up my stretches and stopped where her property abutted mine.

“You Nick?” she questioned, walking onto and across my lawn to where I was standing.

“Yes,” I answered somewhat haltingly, wondering how she knew my name.

“Carlo, the gardener,” she said, as if responding to my questioning look. “He said I should meet you. He said that you were a very interesting man.” She held out her hand. “I’m Laura.”

I took her hand and nodded. “You should listen to Carlo,” I said, smiling. “He’s very wise.”

She smiled. It was infectious, genuinely warm. “All right then,” she replied, letting out a bit of a laugh. “He said you were a writer. That’s interesting.”

“Yes,” I answered, “I am a writer. Interesting? I don’t know.”

“What kind of things do you write?”

Over the years, I’ve come to dislike the question, for I’ve been a journeyman writer, scrambling for whatever I could find in the way of work, and the questioner either perceives that right off from my answer or is unduly impressed by the litany of genres where I’ve been published. My stock answer is: “Anything I can get paid for.”

“Like?” She persisted.

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“I have a number of newspapers and magazines for which I write features on a regular basis; some websites where I blog. I have a corporate client for whom I do marketing plans and other assorted business stuff, which pays most of the bills. And, like most writers, I am a frustrated novelist.”

“Impressive.” There was warmth to her tone that seemed to go well with her smile. “Have you written any novels I would be familiar with?” she asked.

“God, no,” I replied. “But, hey, I did self-publish one that sold a couple of hundred copies and is now out for a look-see with a Hollywood production company.”

“Wow, now that sounds exciting,” she said her smile brightening.

“A slim possibility at best that anything will come of it,” I said. “But hope springs eternal.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” she replied, almost sounding now like a remonstrative parent. “Who knows, that could be your big break.”

“Thanks for the sentiment,” I said. “Too bad you’re not an exec with the movie company.

Anyway, thanks, that’s sweet of you.”

There was a pause, as if we had exhausted all topics of an initial conversation, then, “you run often?” she asked.

“Pretty much every day.”

“I used to run,” she said, “before my surgery. I want to get back into it.”

I hesitated a moment, as if expecting her to add something, but when that was not forthcoming, I said, “Well, this town is a good place for it. There are not a lot of dangerous streets with fastmoving traffic. The high school is about a mile from here and the track there is good if you want to time your pace. I usually do a mile or two on it most mornings.”

“That’s good to know,” she replied. “Gotta take off some pounds and get my cardio back where it belongs.”

She was wearing jeans and a polo shirt and, from what I could see, looked to be in decent shape. I wanted to say something to that effect, but I decided that would be a bit forward after just meeting her.

She was one of those attractive women whose beauty lay in its understatement. Her hair was a medium blonde, with lighter highlights, cut to just below the top of her neck, and framing her face in a pleasing oval. She had features that were an attractive array, although nothing dramatic about the shape of her face, the slope of her nose, the fullness of her mouth, but nonetheless defining a face that said pretty, in an American, girl-next-door kind of way. Her smile, however, the flash in her greenish, hazel eyes, conveyed a warmth that made you feel you did want to be at least some part of her universe.

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“Here’s hoping I see you up there some morning,” I said.

“Yes,” she answered. Then the conversation just seemed to have exhausted itself. “Well,” she said, “gotta go. Nice to meet you, Nick.”

“You as well, Laura.”

I walked to the edge of the property, then started a slow jog down the road. There is something about her, I thought. You like her as soon as you meet her. ***** One of the rooms in my new neighbors’ house faced the small window in my master bathroom.

The fact that the room in her house lacked shades to cover the large picture window and smaller vertical ones on each side, I did not find unusual, since ordering those kinds of accouterments often took some time. But when months had gone by and still nothing, I assumed they were just going to leave them without shades, perhaps to maximize the light for what appeared to be a living room or a family room.

With those windows shade-less, I couldn’t help but glance over there each time I used the bathroom and as often as not, I could see Laura moving about the room. There was nothing untoward about my looking across to the window, since my neighbors had opted not to shield the room and it was not as if it were a bathroom or a bedroom, where something intimate might occur.

Nonetheless, the fact that I could gain a glimpse of something about Laura’s day, and that she was unaware of being observed, began to take on a level of excitement for me. Each time I would use my bathroom, I would glance over to get a brief glimpse of her private life. I could not help feeling how strangely erotic those few frames of her life were becoming for me, despite the fact that all she was doing was puttering about the room.

By late autumn, I’d only seen her outside a few times more, just to wave while she went from her SUV to her front door or vice versa. But, with the coming of winter, life here on Long Island migrated indoors, for the most part. I’d not seen the husband at all since that first brief encounter.

Then, one day mid-winter, a twenty-degree, twenty-mile-per-hour-wind morning, the husband came out of the house carrying a manila envelope and walking toward the black Ford parked in front, just as I was about to set off on my run. We made eye contact and it demanded some sort of verbal exchange.

“I’m Nick,” I offered, hopping up and down to stay warm, “your next-door neighbor.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I know.”

I continued hopping in place, while he stood there file folder in hand, until, seemingly as an afterthought, he said, “Jim Brennan,” and offered his hand, ungloved despite the weather. I removed the glove I was wearing and shook his hand.

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“Well,” I said, “I need to head off and work up a sweat before I freeze to death.”

He nodded, turned from me and began talking to the driver of the car. I headed off down the road. ***** Throughout the winter, I’d had brief exchanges with Laura a few times, but nothing beyond, “hello, how you doin’?” before cold had turned to spring, the trees began dressing in tiny chartreuse leaves, bulbs and blossoms began painting the neighborhood in gaudy pinks, reds, yellows and the brightest of whites. Then, there she was one morning up at the high school wearing a pair of black tights and going through a series of stretches by the side of the track. The tights left little to the imagination and everything I noted of what was revealed looked mighty good.

She had her back to the track as I entered and while my first instinct was to shout a hello, I didn’t want to startle her, so I ran past and headed off around the oval. By the time I’d come alongside her again, she had turned, saw me and flashed that beautiful smile.

“Hey, neighbor,” she said, “don’t you say, ‘hello’?”

I slowed to a walk and approached. “I didn’t want to startle you.”

“Oh Kaaay?” More of the killer smile.

I returned the smile, then “Hello?” I responded meekly.

Her smile grew warmer, ushering in a bit of awkward silence. Then, she said, “run a few laps together?”

“Sh-sure.”

We stepped out onto the track and started to jog.

“Be gentle with me,” she said, again with the smile. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this . . . with a man.”

I turned toward her, but she was facing forward trying, then failing, to restrain a bit of a laugh.

“I’ll do my best,” was all I could muster.

Thus began almost daily runs together, each time meeting up at the track, despite the fact that we were next-door neighbors. After a few weeks, we graduated from the mile around the track at the high school to running a couple on the streets. Laura grew markedly stronger with each passing week. The conversation was most often just convivial accounts of things going on in our lives, with

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the occasional coquettish comment by her, but a few rejoinders in kind by me as I became more comfortable in our friendship.

Jim Brennan remained a non-entity, with just a word or two passing between us on the rare morning when I would encounter him at the black Ford in front of his house, while I headed up to the track for the daily run with his wife. Although Laura and I never spoke of why the logistics were such, it just seemed an unwritten rule that we would not meet up in front of our houses.

While Jim was surely aware that the two of us set out running at about the same time each morning, nothing in his demeanor indicated that he gave a damn. In fact, the more the morning runs revealed to me how gregarious Laura was, the less I understood her relationship with taciturn Jim. On the other hand, as a two-time divorcee, I did not consider myself much of an authority on what factors made a relationship work.

Eventually, Laura opened up to me about her surgery. She’d had non-malignant fibroid tumors that caused abnormal bleeding and needed to be removed. Her gynecologist recommended a hysterectomy and, since she and Jim had their hands full with their son and did not want any more children, the operation would not affect their family planning.

“However, it did push me into retirement,” she said, one morning as we ran on a macadam path in a section of what had become our course, this portion along a beautiful stretch of Long Island Sound.

“How so?” I questioned. “It doesn’t sound like something that would prevent you from ever returning to work.”

“It wouldn’t have,” she answered. “It was simply a matter of my having passed the twenty years on the force that would allow me to retire and both Jim and I decided it would be a good idea if I spent more time tending to our son. While I do have that wonderful girl to help me, Patrick requires a good deal of affection, and it is a joy to watch him smile. Jim had just received his appointment as one of the city’s top detective supervisors and that, along with my retirement pay, would serve us nicely.”

“That all makes sense to me,” I replied.

“Yes,” she answered, without elaborating.

We were quiet a while, just our rhythmic breathing counterpointing the morning sounds of birds, the wind rustling the trees and the waves lapping against the rocky coast of the sound.

Then, she said, “but it did have an effect on our . . . relationship.”

The comment caught me off guard. I didn’t know how to respond. I wasn’t sure I would be ready for a discussion of what would make a marriage turn a bit rocky or if she would want to discuss anything about intimacies.

49

When I didn’t reply, “for some reason,” she took up, the slightest quaver in her voice, “for some reason, the whole idea of what they’d done to my plumbing . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

“Laura,” I offered, but she cut me off.

“I’m sorry, Nick,” she said, “I shouldn’t have gone there with you. I, I just needed to say . . . something . . . to someone.”

I stopped running. She took a few more steps then stopped as well, but continued to face forward, without turning around. We were both at a loss for words. I took a step toward her. She held her ground, bending forward and putting both hands on her knees. Without turning to look at me, who had taken one more step toward her, she said, “damn, why did I go there?”

I moved to her, placed a hand, gently on her left shoulder and said, “because you know you can talk to me.”

She turned her head toward me, and, without taking her hands from her knees or straightening up, she said, “I know. Thank you, Nick.”

We were down by an area of the sound, thick with cattails and scrub trees trying to eke out an existence in the briny marshland that lay to the waterside of the macadam path.

“Come on,” I said, aiding her back to an upright position. “We both need to head back.”

She rose to a standing position and said, “Why? Why do we have to head back?” There was an unfamiliar edge to her voice. “Do you have something urgent to attend to? I know I don’t.”

I let out a long sigh. “Don’t you need to get back?” I asked.

“Of course I do,” she answered, the edge still there. Then, she let out a sigh of her own and started running again.

I fell in alongside, but shortly we were beside a narrow dirt trail that led into the wooded area of the marsh and suddenly she was heading off down the trail. I followed behind her and when we were out of sight of other runners or bicyclists, who were on the macadam path, she stopped. Bent down again, hands on knees and just stood there in that position, silently again, the only sound that of her breathing.

I walked up to her and stood waiting for her to say something, but she just held the position.

Finally, I said, “Laura, tell me, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”

I was suddenly overwhelmed with intense feelings I had harbored for her from that moment I’d first seen her outside her home, to those moments I’d glimpsed her puttering about behind that un-shaded window to . . . our present circumstance. She rose to a standing position, but still head down, the posture of someone beaten or carrying a heavy load. Slowly, she lifted her head and

50

stared into my eyes. It was a look of an intense affection I had never experienced before. Then she said, “Nick, could you hold me?”

We were on a trail not far off a macadam path that, with the brightening morning, was attracting more and more runners, bicyclists, skateboarders, whatever. I was with the wife on an important police captain and . . . I didn’t give a damn about my surroundings or how anything we’d do would appear to the outside world. I pulled her gently to my chest and held her, feeling the warmth of what we had generated during our run, but also a warmth that had nothing to do with exercise.

She lay her head on my shoulder and ran an arm around my neck, an embrace I felt I could hold forever. Then she raised her head, looked into my eyes for a moment and, instinctively, we kissed. The taste of her mouth, the scent of her body were beyond lovely. The moment was fraught with that realization two people have that something about their togetherness is special.

What else to do at this point was uncharted territory.

We disengaged and she said, “come,” first taking my hand, then letting it drop, “we need to get going.”

“Yes,” I answered and we were off and running again. ***** For the next three days, she did not come out for the morning runs and I, of course, did not know what to think, except that her absence was not a good sign. There was no way I could get in touch with her that I was comfortable with, certainly not phoning or going to her front door. All manner of scenarios were running through my mind, none of them positive. Had she used our moment of intimacy to confront her husband about his lack of intimacy? Had she felt so guilty, she confessed to him in a tearful mea culpa? Had someone who knew Jim Brennan spotted us? Along with beating myself up for helping to create this situation with her, I also played out defenses for my actions. She had been the aggressor. I had been caught completely off guard. I was a divorcee; she a married woman. For Christ’s sake, we had only kissed, briefly, then went back to our lives.

None of these thoughts had me feeling good about myself, when, mid-morning of the fourth day, she called. “Nick,” she said, “we need to talk.”

“Of course,” I answered, but before the conversation went any further, she said, “can you take a walk up to the high school? I’ll drive up about 20 minutes after you start out and pick you up.

Then we can go somewhere and talk.”

“I’ll leave in five minutes,” I said.

“See you in a little while,” she answered and hung up.

I finished a sentence in an article I was typing, closed out of the computer program, made a bathroom stop and headed out. My thoughts, while I walked toward the high school, were filled with many of the scenarios I’d been analyzing during the previous three days, still nothing more in the way of good answers. As I turned onto the road that ran along one side of the running track, I

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could hear a car approaching, turned and recognized her black Lexus SUV. She pulled up to me, slowed to a stop and I got in.

“Thank you, Nick, for doing this,” she said and drove off.

“It’s O.K.,” I answered and waited for her to lead the conversation.

“I know a spot,” she said, “where we can talk.”

Not far from the high school was a nature preserve, with a mansion, formerly owned by a ridiculously wealthy, early twentieth century robber baron, the building now the headquarters for the park staff. A road led from the preserve’s entrance to the mansion, around the front of the building, then out an exit and back onto the main road. The property had a number of walking trails, used mostly by bird-watchers and other assorted nature-lovers. It also had a little-used road that led down to a dilapidated building where four garages once must have held some of those vintage Jazz Age Rolls Royces or Cadillacs, with chauffeurs keeping them in gleaming condition.

Laura pulled the SUV off the road, onto a weedy lawn, then behind the beat-up building, pretty much sheltering us, even in the unlikely event that someone might decide to drive down the road.

She shut down the engine and turned toward me.

“I’m sure you feel as I do,” she began, “that we needed to talk.”

“Yes,” I answered, “I’m so sorry – ” “You’re sorry?” she cut me off, a perplexed expression on her face. “For what?”

“Clearly,” I said, “I’ve caused you anguish.”

“You caused me anguish?”

“Laura,” I said, “we haven’t spoken since . . . since . . . I’ve had a bad feeling about this. I was sure I hurt you.”

“Nick,” she replied, shaking her head. “Oh, Nick. O.K., yes, you have caused me anguish, but if you think it has anything to do with guilty feelings, you could not be more mistaken.”

“Well,” I said, “here I am again, not sure what to say.”

“I was struggling, yes,” she said. “I was struggling with how good it felt.”

She flashed that deadly smile of hers, then she fell silent, again staring into my eyes, as she had done when that look had instigated our kiss. Again, I felt the warmth her look generated. She reached toward me and placed a hand on my cheek, then shook her head.

“Oh, Nick –”

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I kissed her.

Suddenly, she lifted herself over the console, to my side of the SUV, and into my lap. We were locked in an embrace, kissing repeatedly; the taste of her mouth, the smooth silk of her face, the smell of her hair, all of it taking control of my actions: my arms about her, then running a hand over her cheek; kissing her cheek, her forehead, her mouth . . . the glorious taste of her mouth.

She pulled away from me and let her head fall against the headrest. She let out a deep breath, then just stared at the roof of the SUV, a contemplative look on her face, as if she would sort this all out.

“You’re taking me to a place I’ve never been,” I said, finally. “What do I do with this?”

She smiled. “You know, Nick,” she said, turning her head toward me, a slight smirk on her face, as if I had broken her concentration, “for a writer, you say all the wrong things.”

“I –” She was back to kissing me again. Then she took my hand and slid it inside her blouse and onto one of her breasts.

I looked into her eyes, deep into those eyes that had given me such pleasure when they lit into a smile, but it was not a smile that I was seeing now. It was smolder.

She said nothing but just stroked my hand over her breast.

“You’ve got to have known how much I’ve wanted to connect with you,” I said in a tone that was approaching a gasp. “What are you doing to me?”

“I don’t know, Nick,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

We were silent for a while. Then she asked, “do you want to leave?”

Now it was I who sent penetrating looks into her eyes. “Of course not,” I said. “Just let me die here and now, O.K?” I looked at her a moment, silently, then, “I am completely at sea here, Laura,” I said.

“You don’t feel anything for me?”

“Of course, I do. You’ve got to know that.”

We sat in silence another moment, then, “can we move into the back seat?” she asked.

I studied her face, yet again, and let out a breath I’d felt I’d been holding forever. “You know that will change everything,” I said. “They’ll be no going back.”

53

She sat for a moment, then climbed back over the console, opened the driver’s side door, got out, opened the back door and climbed into the rear seat. I just sat there, staring ahead.

“You coming?” she asked.

“I’m trying to keep from getting aroused,” I answered, “but it’s not working.”

As I got out to join her back there, I couldn’t help but feel we were like a couple of teenagers who had to sneak off in the family car because we couldn’t do this in our bedrooms at our parents’ houses.

Everything I could possibly fantasize about being with a woman like her became reality in the back seat of that SUV. As we separated, and I rolled onto my back, I was stunned by what I had just experienced. Yes, I had done this many times before. No, I had never had such a complete connection with a woman. We had, for a brief few moments, become the same person. There was almost nothing that could be said, at this point.

Finally, “that was beyond beautiful,” she said.

I nodded, “yes, beautiful,” was all I could muster.

We lay in each other’s arms, for a few moments, then I said, “I don’t think it’s wise to be exposed like this, even in a spot this secluded.”

“Yes,” she sighed and lifted out of my arms. As she pulled up her panties and jeans, “you know,” she said, “I’m going to have to put these panties in an old brown paper bag and push them to the bottom of our garbage pail.”

I smiled and replied, “or you could just give them to me.”

“To do what with?”

“None of your freakin’ business.”

We both laughed as we got dressed quickly and resumed our positions in the front seats.

On our way back to the high school, where she would drop me off for my return walk home, we said little, and I was frightened that she would suffer a post-coital letdown, as she crept back into a day that would be anything but normal.

As we slowed to a stop by the high school, she said, without looking in my direction, “I so want to kiss you once more, Nick, but obviously that would not be a good idea here.”

I turned toward her and said, “It kills me not to, but, of course you’re right.”

“When you step out, leave quickly,” she said. “No more conversation.”

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“Understood.”

“Nick,” she said, “see you tomorrow for our run?”

I smiled, opened the door and stepped out. She drove off down the road. ***** The caller ID said “Brennan.”

Why was she calling? Was this wise? Was she having serious recriminations?

I answered the phone.

“Nick,” the voice was male. “Jim Brennan.”

Instantly, I was petrified to hear his voice, his name.

“Jim . . . How are you?”

“Nick,” he replied, “what’s this business about the marathon?”

“The marathon?”

“My wife says she’s running the marathon. That she is training with you.”

I could all but restrain sucking in enough air to hyperventilate. The marathon? Where was she going with this?

“Training with me?” I said, while trying not to sound tentative. Obviously, she had said something to him about our running and it caused some kind of issue. “We run together some mornings when I see her up at the high school track,” I went on. “I asked if she were running for exercise and she said yes, but that she also would like to do the New York Marathon some day. I told her I’d done it a few years ago and could offer her some advice based on my experience.”

“What kind of advice?” The tone of his voice was repressed anger, measured in the nature of a man accustomed to maintaining control, of himself, and of the situation.

“You work toward the goal slowly,” I said, “in a deliberate way, so you don’t hurt yourself.”

“Could she get hurt?” His curt questions seemed to come before the sound of my answers had even dissipated.

55

“It takes months to prepare,” I said, now regaining a bit of grounding. I was, after all, on a subject I knew well and he appeared to know very little about. “If you try to push it, you can get shin splints that turn into stress fractures, tear a meniscus in your knee, that kind of thing. You have to take a careful, measured approach.”

“Why would she want to do that?”

“Run the marathon?” I questioned.

“Yes,” he said. “Why would she want to put herself through that?”

“I can’t answer for her,” I replied. “You’d have to ask your wife. I can only tell you, from my experience, completing that race gives you a great feeling of self-esteem, a real sense of accomplishment. But you have to commit to the training that prepares you to go the distance.”

“I don’t know,” he said, “sounds crazy to me.”

“Perhaps,” I replied. His words, his tone of voice had started to piss me off. “You do need to be a little crazy to take on this challenge,” I went on, the slightest touch of sarcasm in my voice.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t want her to get hurt. We have Patrick to think about and she won’t be much help if she’s hobbling around on crutches. Can you tell me what you teach will keep her from hurting herself?”

“How can I do that?” I replied. “If she listens to what I suggest, she should be all right. Can I guarantee she won’t get hurt . . . How could I do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sounds nuts to me.”

He rang off abruptly, as if I had simply reinforced what he felt about the whole thing. Great to have that kind of spousal support, I thought. ***** “I would have preferred you giving me some warning,” I said, the following morning, as we finished two laps on the track and headed out onto our course.

“I didn't want you to stress over him calling,” she said, as I almost detected a smile.

“Well, I would have stressed,” I answered. “You're right about that.”

“And, I didn't want you to sound rehearsed,” she said.

“Well, no time for that, now, was there?”

“You did great.” Damn it, she was smiling. I still didn’t grasp the humor.

56

“How do you know that?” I asked, trying to adopt a strained tone.

“He's accepted me running the marathon,” she said, “even though he thinks it's crazy.”

“Yeah, and what about that?” I asked. “You mention, once to me, that you would one day like to run New York and now we’re training for it?”

“Well, think about that,” she said. “It gives us a reason to spend time together.”

She turned toward me and flashed an exaggerated, toothy smile.

I shook my head, couldn’t hold back a laugh. “You know,” I said, “you’re really good at this. It’s starting to get me wondering."

“Wondering?”

“Yes,” I continued, “how did you get so good at this?”

Now she was shaking her head. “I used to be a cop,” she answered. “I saw all the ways other people screwed up and I made mental notes.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Well, more often than not, someone got hurt badly, sometimes killed. And in almost all the cases it was the woman. I didn’t want that to happen to me.”

“Why would you think you would need to do that?”

“Nothing concrete,” she said. “It’s an investigative thing. You can’t help but analyze where people screw up.”

I felt I really needed to know why it appeared she’d been planning something like us for some time, but I was sure persisting would not turn out well.

She began to sense that my concern was real. “I don’t know, Nick,” she said. “It’s what someone with an investigative mindset does. I didn’t plan on anything concrete that would involve me, but . . .”

“But . . .”

She seemed at a loss for words. “But here we are and while I never really anticipated meeting someone like you, let alone living next door to someone like you . . . well, but there it is. And . . . here I am.”

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We ran along in silence for a while, then I said, “well the good news is, your running has been getting stronger for several months now, so we are a good way toward where we need to be, but now we need to get serious.”

She smiled, broadly, and we headed off toward the cattail marsh. ***** Thus began many months of an ever-intensifying relationship. Laura was very adept about finding excuses, places and times for us to continue our affair, whether it was hot sheets motels or the back seat of the SUV down some secluded road. She was right about running providing us a natural excuse to spend time together and she emphasized to her husband that she would need to work her way up to longer and longer training runs. A positive byproduct of our relationship was that she got very strong as a distance runner. When we applied for the marathon, we both managed to draw places in the lottery.

She told me her husband worked out of their home one day each month, the day before the black Ford showed up, because he had to prepare a report for New York headquarters and he needed the time and isolation to work it up on his home computer. The rest of the days, he left early each morning and spent long hours at his office in the city, which provided us with much time for longer and longer runs, and longer and longer assignations. All of our runs took place during the week, when Laura had the benefit of her helper to look after Patrick. Weekends, when she and Jim did all the household things they couldn’t do during the week, Laura and I were virtually incommunicado.

As the race date approached, I informed her that we would need to do one very long run. All the training guides suggested, a month before the race, contestants do a twenty-mile run over varied terrain, which, unless you suffered an injury, would pretty much assure you could go the twenty-six mile distance of the marathon.

“Let’s do it in Central Park on a Saturday,” she said.

“A weekend, in Manhattan,” I countered, “I’m confused.”

“I would not want to go anywhere near the city during the week,” she answered, “but on a Saturday, Jim would be stuck watching Patrick and we would have hours together.”

Of course I said yes and, true to form, Laura found us a short stay hotel, midtown on Tenth Avenue, where we celebrated the relative ease with which both of us had done three times around the park.

When we did our last training run three days before the race, she said she was hoping we could celebrate finishing, with a couple of hours at the hotel on Tenth Avenue. With that as an incentive, it was difficult to keep me from trying to run the race at a pace that would seriously jeopardize my finishing. Laura, on the other hand, kept reining me back to the pace that served us well throughout our training.

58

The marathon was truly one of the high points of my life, watching the joy on her face as we ran across the Verrazano Bridge, all two miles of it undulating, as if the bridge would fly apart under all those running feet. We ran for miles up Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, at one point past a fullblown Latin band. At the halfway point, just over the Kosciusko Bridge from Brooklyn into Queens, we were met by Laura’s family: her young helper all smiles; her son, Patrick, lifting his head to see his mother running toward him and smiling broadly, as she stopped for a moment and caressed his cheek with her hand; only Jim, the look of disbelief on his face, making me want to slug him. How could he possibly be so self-centered, so unfamiliar with who his wife was, what she was capable of accomplishing, that he seemed clearly surprised she’d made it this far? It grated on me for the next couple of miles until we got to those loud, cheering throngs on Third Avenue in Manhattan.

As we turned off Central Park South for the final three-hundred-eighty-five yards in the park to the finish line at Tavern on the Green, I stopped with about a hundred yards remaining, the finish in sight, and clapped for her as she completed the rest of the course. When I jogged up to the finish line, we fell into each other’s arms, sweat painting our bodies, the beautiful scent of hers nothing short of a glory for me.

The flimsy metallic capes the attendants draped over us, the medals they hung around our necks, seemed like the vestments of royalty. The bottle of cold mineral water we each received might as well have been the finest champagne. We walked along some of the nearby footpaths to wind down, then retrieved the duffle bags with our street clothes, pulled on sweatpants and light jackets and headed downtown, using our marathon numbers to enter the subway. As the train motored toward what was rapidly becoming our favorite hotel, her smiles of celebration had oddly dissipated and, when I questioned that, she said she was pretty exhausted.

Ensconced at the hotel, post of making love, she still seemed not in the celebratory moment I was sure completing the race would bring for her. I tried to understand this altered state as a result of what she had said was her post-race exhaustion. We had, after all, just run more than twenty-six miles. But . . .

"You all right?" I asked.

“Yes,” she said, without conviction, “why?”

“Laura,” I said, “forgive me. I think I can say I know you intimately, by now. There’s something you are not telling me, or are having trouble getting out there.”

She seemed in a trance, and, again, I’ve understood what the race could take out of a person, so I lay there for a while, and held my peace.

Finally, without shifting her position, on her back staring at the ceiling, she said, “Jim’s been offered a new position.”

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I lifted up onto my left elbow and looked at her. She just continued to stare at the ceiling. I pushed a pillow back against the headboard, rose up and sat with my back against it.

“Really?” I questioned.

“Chief of detectives,” she answered.

I’d asked a one-word question. I got a three-word answer. I was not getting a good vibe here.

“Sounds impressive,” I said.

She didn’t reply, continued to avoid eye contact.

Finally, “what is it?” I questioned.

“Chief of detectives . . . in Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“Yes.” As the impact of what she had just revealed fully took hold, I just stared at her, no appropriate words coming to mind.

Finally, she raised the pillow she had been lying upon and pushed it up to her side of the headboard, sat with her back to it, but maintained a clear separation between us.

“He heads out there the end of the month,” she said. “Patrick and I stay around until we can sell the house.”

I just shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Well,” she replied, finally turning in my direction, “say something.”

“I don’t want you to leave?”

“Couldn’t you say that with conviction?”

“My God, of course, you must know I don’t want you to leave. I love you.”

“Wow, there’s a word I haven’t heard before.”

I lowered my gaze and shook my head. “What did you want me to say, Laura? You are a married woman. I just didn’t feel it was appropriate. But I was sure you knew how I felt.”

“I guess.”

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I looked at her, my eyes filling with sadness. “That hurts,” I said. “That . . . hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” she answered. “I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s just that my world . . . my world is coming apart . . .”

The sentence just hung there. She looked at me and smiled, not the smile I had come to cherish, but a sardonic one.

“My world is coming apart and I am a prisoner in it,” she said, finally, her eyes taking on a deep sadness.

The thoughts that raced through my head were all self-pitying, all about what I would be losing.

Was this all about her having an affair before she had to go back to her unhappy life? That beautiful warm smile painted across the face of her sad, sad life. I couldn’t help but articulate what I felt. “So, you just wanted a fling before you went back to your life?” I knew the words were a mistake as soon as they passed my lips.

“How dare you?” she said. She stared at me, a tear running down from her left eye.

I studied her a while, “I know you’re hurting –” “Hurting?” she replied, now a distinct edge to her voice. “I’m trapped, God damn it!” Then, “I’m trapped,” she repeated, her voice softening and she began to sob softly.

I couldn’t bear to see her cry. I wanted to fold her into my arms and somehow plot, with her, the rest of our lives together, but she just stared off toward the blank wall on the opposite side of this cheesy room in this cheesy hotel.

Many times, when I could not help but go over and over that first time with her, I wondered whether there was something primitively appropriate about it, something so devoid of any embellishment it gave the experience its unique purity, a moment that I could never recreate no matter how long I lived. But, the special nature of that moment had faded into our history. We were now simply two people who had come back into a world of other plotlines.

“You knew all along it would end this way, didn’t you?” I said. “It would end this way whether there was a Chicago or not. You knew that one day you would have to go back to your life and I would be left to deal with the emptiness it would leave for me.”

“Where is this coming from?” she replied. She just stared at me, as if she were trying to understand someone totally unfamiliar to her.

Finally, “Leave him,” I said.

She continued to stare at me in silence for a moment, “then what?”

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“Come live with me.”

She shook her head, said nothing for a moment, then “And, what about Patrick?”

I was unprepared to answer that. I should have seen it coming, but did not. It just added to my sense of being so unprepared for this, I just did not have either good questions or good answers for any words that now passed between us.

“You have no answer,” she said, “so that is your answer.”

She was right. I didn’t have an answer, at least not the noble one.

“So I guess I was just a fling for you,” she said, her tone almost mocking my initial comment about her. “You wanted the benefits of a relationship, but not the responsibilities. At least not the big one that is Patrick.”

I still couldn’t find anything to say. I had no answer.

She stopped sobbing. Her look softened into a combination of deep sorrow and the affection I had come to love. “Let’s just say you gave me a year of joy, Nick, and leave it at that,” she said.

“Can’t you see what you did for me? I love you, Nick, but I’m trapped.”

I felt I had nothing more to add. I’d already said I loved her, but even that could not alter the circumstance in which she found herself.

She sat for a while staring at her hands, weaving the fingers into and out of various formations.

Then, she looked at me, an almost religious calm settling across her face. “Everything in life is finite,” she said. “Can’t we just accept what we did as simply the love we got to share for our moment in time? How special that moment in time was for us?”

I didn’t answer for a while, then, “yes,” I said, without conviction.

We sat in silence, a few more moments, then she said, “we need to go.”

I nodded and we both got up and dressed. We said not a word on the train ride all the way home to Long Island. ***** With the powers that be in Chicago guaranteeing the price of the Brennans’ house, it sold quickly.

I watched with unfathomable sadness the day the moving van came. An hour after the big truck had left, my doorbell rang and there she was.

“Nick, before I leave, I have to tell you, again, that I love you. I’ve loved you more than anything I could ever imagine.”

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“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“You have given me the great joy of my life, Nick. Thank you.”

There was a Zen-like calmness to her demeanor. She seemed to have made her peace with what we had meant to each other and she would now take that with her into the remainder of her life. I couldn’t help but be impressed with how she was holding it all together. But then, tears began running down her face. I held open my arms and she fell into them.

“You know I love you, Laura,” I said, as she began to sob openly.

We remained, locked in that embrace for a few minutes, then she said, “I have to go.” She let herself loose, turned and left.

I closed the front door, then stood staring at the back of it for one of those emotional eternities that are, in actuality, just a few moments, but an eternity in terms of their penetrating effects. I reflected on how we had enjoyed, for a brief period, a love most people would never know in a lifetime. But now, with it finished, that just made how special it was so much more difficult to bear. Finally, I turned, walked into my living room, sat on the sofa and cried like I had not cried since I was a small boy. ***** For the first several months after Laura’s departure, I could barely find reasons to leave the house: the groceries depleting, the dry cleaning piling up, sometimes even the mail sitting in the box by the curb for a day or two, until my carrier removed it and brought it to my door. Then, finally realizing I needed to at least try to move on with my life, I connected online with a woman I had dated for several years in college. She was also a divorcee and had bounced around a few relationships with strangers that had gone nowhere. When we met for a cup of coffee in Manhattan, near where she owned an apartment, we began to recall those cultural connections we had in common when we dated. We settled into an accommodating friendship. I stayed over in the city when we would go to the theatre, opera, a jazz club or cabaret. She would come to the island to escape the summer heat in the city.

Having had many, many days to reflect upon my year with Laura, the individual elements, the special moments of our time together, I finally had to accept that she was right, of course.

However limited, our time was not about any finite number of days together, any effort to extend that time period. Even if we had remained lovers for years, there would never be any way to go beyond that year-long love affair, there would be nothing else that could approach it. I could never even entertain the thought of duplicating that experience with another woman.

Nonetheless, I did have to deal with my human frailties and there were agonizing periods when I missed Laura terribly. But having not heard from her in more than a year, and not really expecting to, ever again, I felt I had finally gotten to the point where I needed to bring that whole episode in

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my life to closure and accept my return to the prosaic experiences of my former life, the remainder of my life. I sat down at my computer, and began to type:

“He’s police. Some kinda big shot.”

Carlo, my gardener, was my information source for everything: the best house painter, carpenter, electrician, even the guy who cleaned my fireplace chimney. He was also my best source of local intelligence, now, on my new next door neighbors.

“She’s retired,” he went on . . .

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