What a Trip

Dave and I are on the 8th day of our fantastic 15 day cruise down the Danbue and the Rhine rivers. 

Here are a couple of highlights to hold you until we return home on the 7th.

Weather = Couldn`t be more perfect for this Florida girl.  Highs in the 50s and sunny.  We`ve had zero rain.

Castles and Churches = All over the top magnificent.  I told Dave yesterday that our church (which is beautiful) needs to step it up.

Food = Outstanding.  We usually eat lunch outside and watch the world go by.

People = My favorite part of the trip.

We spent yesterday in Nuremberg. Today we are in a smaller port but this afternoon there will be a demonstration against some decision Angela Merkel has made.  My guess is that it is about immigration.  If we happen upon it we will try to behave ourselves. 

Dave has taken zillians of photos.  I have zillians of stories. I will share the best with you later.


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Maitland, Florida

Maitland Art Center

Maitland, a town of about 17,000 folks, is just a few blocks from where I live.  Our condo community fronts on Maitland Avenue.

Maitland's reputation is one of soccer moms driving Volvos.  It's an old town with a long history of continuous politics.  Maitland's little downtown is confusing.  A boarded up Winn Dixie grocery store has dominated the main street for several years.   I have no idea where the city hall is (or if there is one.)

A couple of years ago they redid the main intersection and made it many times worse than it was.  Most people try to avoid it.  Maybe that was the point.

I'm in Maitland several times a week.  We must drive through it to get to our favorite city, Winter Park.  There are lovely homes in Maitland but I don't know of any McMansions. Almost all of our doctors' offices are on Maitland Avenue, all within five minutes of our house.  Dave and I love the park.  We love Lake Lily.  We love the Enzian Theater.  We love Antonio's restaurant.  I love the Designer Resale Shop (but getting there requires going through that crazy intersection so I don't stop by as often as I used to.)

Maitland has an old little jewel of an art museum.  It's hidden away and a little hard to find.  It used to be an art colony and I can envision artists and writers from another era being inspired while they hibernated in rooms facing a lovely little courtyard.  But it's quiet and small, not big and shiny.

Today I read that, according to Road Snacks, Maitland made the Top Ten Lists of Snobbiest Cities in Florida.    I don't get it.  Road Snacks measures median home prices, median income, percent of population with a college degree, private schools, theaters and art galleries.

Here's the list:

1.  Sanibel  (A beach town, this makes no sense to me.)
2.  Coral Gables
3.  Naples
4.  Palm Beach
5.  Marco Island
6.  Boca Raton
7.  Parkland (I never heard of Parkland.)
8.  Longboat Key
9.  Key Biscayne
10.  Maitland

No Winter Park on the list.


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Judgement at Nuremberg

Imperial Palace, Nuremberg, Germany

Less than a month ago, I was talking with a person here in my neighborhood who said to me, in passing, that she used to have a boyfriend who was German but they split up.  When I asked why she said "because he's German."  When I questioned her a bit more she told me that she had sort of gotten over the "hating Germans" thing but then saw the old movie Judgement at Nuremberg and it all came back.

Judgement at Nuremberg is an excellent film staring Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy and loads of other well known actors of the time.  To my knowledge, it accurately portrays the Nuremberg trials, the first one of which has been described as "the greatest trial in history."  

And then, just today, I was looking on Facebook at an angelic looking little boy who, when his dad asked what he knew about Germans, he replied,  "They're baddies."

Angela Merkel
Former Research Scientist, Chancellor of Germany
and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union

As it happens Dave and I will be in a few German cities on the Danube in the next few weeks.  We're looking forward to seeing the cities, eating the food, and meeting and getting to know the folks.

We'll visit Nuremberg and, along with seeing the Imperial Palace and the medieval town center, we'll take a World War II tour.  The war which, by the way, ended 75 years ago.  We may see a baddie or two but my guess is that we'll be with lovely people all along the way.

Yes, the German people are noted for strength and tenacity.  If I were ever in a rope pulling contest I would definitely want Chancellor Angela Merkel on my side.


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Bridge Builders

Yesterday I was early for a meeting so I stopped at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in Winter Park.  I haven't been there in many years.  This is a lovely 23 acre park with a lake, sports and recreation facilities and a community built bridge.

Twenty or so years ago my husband, Ken, and I, along with many other folks, belonged to a group called Bridge Builders.  It was formed to build better relationships between the traditionally African American section of Winter Park and the other part.

One of the projects, along with the city, was building this park.  It was originally called Lake Island Park and was designed to bring these two communities together.  And now, twenty years later, here it is, still doing it.

As I walked in the park yesterday, I remembered how, in the midst of this project, we learned that Ken was suffering from an illness that would eventually take his life.  And that it would be an expensive process.  How did we react?  One of the things we did was to buy a separate brick  for the bridge honoring every member of our family to symbolize the coming together of people and our hope for the future.  I know some of our kids thought we were crazy.

But here I was yesterday, with the help of one of the caretakers, finding all of the bricks at the foot of the bridge.  It was quite an experience.


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Great Expectations!

We're hosting a huge, exciting conference at our church, First United Methodist Church of Winter Park, starting on October 22nd.  It's for people over 55 years old, a fast growing demographic.  It's not just for us, it's for everybody over 55 who's looking for a big, meaningful life. If you're interested, look up our church and get the scoop.

If you do, you will find a three minute video featuring Dave and me and some other people, telling you about the conference.

Do you have some Great Expectations about your future?

In the year 2000 I was caring for my extremely ill husband, Ken, pretty much 24-7.  During that time I wrote the following in my journal:

Nuremberg

Someday I'd like to travel to big cities all over the world where the weather is cool but not cold.  I'd like to meet and have discussions and meals with interesting people from around the world.  

Amsterdam

The bad news is that Dave and I won't be attending the Great Expectations Conference.  The good news is that, on October 22nd, we will fly to Budapest.  From there we'll board a Viking Longboat and cruise up the Danube and the Rhine rivers, all the way to Amsterdam.

Did I know, in the year 2000, what the future held?  Of course not.  But in 2004, after Ken died, even in the midst of tremendous grief,  I continued to write about my expectations for the future.

I didn't know there would be a Dave in it.  But I did re-up my passport!

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It's Safe to Come Back

We Floridans love our exotic pets.  Sometimes they escape but we're fine with it as long as the tourists don't stop coming.  So, in that regard, folks around the world must be happy that Elvis, the eight foot long King Cobra, missing for over a month from a guy's house here in Orlando, has been found.

The King Cobra is one of the most deadly snakes in the world with enough neurotoxins to kill an elephant.  King Cobra Elvis  owned by "Airplane Repo" star, Mike Kennedy, was found by Kennedy's neighbor under her clothes dryer.

One of our best Florida writers, Carl Hiaasen, wrote a story a while back trying to calm us down about the snake, and to especially calm down our potential tourists.  His article was titled:

Come on Down, Forget the Big Snake!

In the article he said that you've got a better chance of being carjacked or catching the norovirus than being eaten by the snake.  He's right, but those two things happen several times a day down here so it wasn't very reassuring.


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The Cat Always Wins

Paul Noth is a cartoonist for The New Yorker.  This is the zenith of cartoon publishing.  Only the best of the best are published in this magazine.  As you may know, some folks buy the magazine for the cartoons and that's all they see.  I read the entire magazine but I also love the cartoons.

Some of you may know Paul Noth as the guest writer for Conan O'Brien who created "Pale Force."

I particularly love this cartoon.  It was in one of the September issues of The New Yorker.  Think about the stereotypes for cats and dogs.  Most are in this cartoon.  Of course the cat, who is winning all the money, doesn't have a tell.  Cats are inscrutable.

On the other hand, every one of the of dogs has a tell.  The happy ones with tales wagging, the sad one, the angry one, the cunning one, probably all think they have a chance.  But they might as well give it up.

The cat always wins.


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From Dust to Dust

My niece, Sheri, put a photo album on Facebook today.  It was put together by some family members featuring the life of her dad -  my brother - Paul, who died almost a month ago.  Among other things it reminds me of how fragile we all are.

If life goes the way it should, we get stronger and stronger until we don't.  At some point, the process reverses and we find ourselves dealing with some of the same issues we did when we were little ones.

I was reminded of this process while reading an article by my favorite Jewish, gay, atheist, author (13 books), neurologist (authority on the brain,) music lover, Oliver Sacks, shortly before he died last month.  I've shared before how much I loved everything he wrote and how much he taught me about myself.

I hope you will find and read this very short (one page) article in the September 14th issue of The New Yorker because I cannot possibly do it justice.  It is about some of life's most important issues - only in the guise of gefilte fish.  The article is titled "Filter Fish."

He writes about his mother, who was a surgeon, taking off work early before the Sabbat to prepare gefilte fish.  She started with live fish and her preparation was meticulous.  As a child, Dr. Sachs loved gefilte fish.  He says he had a "passion" for it.

But then his mother was gone and he thought he'd never have gefilte fish again.

Then in his 40s, he did.  His housekeeper, an African-American church going Baptist - because she cared so much for him -learned to make the fish.  Dr. Sacks and all his friends loved it.  But when, after 17 years of working for him, she died, he mourned her deeply - and lost his taste for gefilte fish.

That is, until just a few months ago when Dr. Sachs was dying, he rediscovered his taste for the fish.  With difficulty in swallowing, it was the only way he received protein.

It sustained him as a toddler.  It sustained him as an 82 year old dying man.  If this isn't a modern day parable about the cycle of life, I don't know what is.


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