THE NANBEC BLOG

In a Crocodile Nest

2012-01-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

Last week we went on an outing from Isla Mujeres—to CrocoCun, a reptile reserve a half-hour south of Cancun. We’ve passed it several times on our travels in the Maya Riviera, but never thought of stopping. Luckily, Erick Lara, who works in our Nautibeach Condos office, and his girlfriend Ana used to be guides at CrocoCun, and Erick invited us for a complimentary private tour. We’re glad we took him up on the offer!

CrocoCun is set in a lush jungle, with walking paths laid out among the animals’ enclosures. After Erick and Ana were greeted warmly by the staff, a gorgeous Green Military Macaw seemed to recognize them too. After kissing Becky, she accepted a peanut from Erick, cracked the shell, delicately tongued out the nut, rolled it around in her mouth to remove the papery covering, spit out the skin, and finally swallowed the meat!

Nearby, a stunning Mexican Yellow-headed Parrot watched the peanut maneuver, called out his name, “Lorenzo!” and received his own peanut. Erick told us that the Yellow-headed Parrot can learn 50-60 words, more than any other species except for the African Gray Parrot. Because it is so prized as a pet, poachers cut down the jungle to reach the nests, and this beautiful parrot is on the verge of extinction.

Crocodiles, on the other hand, are plentiful both in the wild and at CrocoCun, from small, limber 3 or 4-year olds to huge lumbering adults. We were allowed to hold one of the youngsters and were surprised at its soft belly. Nothing attacks a croc from under the water, only from above, and its boney, spiny back provides ample protection. Ana had no such protection 3 years ago when, distracted by a school boy in her tour group, she didn’t notice the crocodile reach for her hand. While she went off for 17 stiches and staples, the sobbing child was consoled by his teacher and classmates.

We walked through an enclosed area with about 30 crocodiles behind a foot-high stone wall. This may be the only place in the world where people can walk among crocodiles, which, when provoked, move with the speed of a horse! Erick pointed out the alpha crocodile, alone in the pond. The others stay on land. One male was lounging on the shore with his tail and back legs in the water. We guessed he could scamper away if her highness became displeased by his semi-trespassing in her pond. [Photo by Eric Lara -- he was INSIDE the little wall]

Erick’s favorite reptile is the snake. He cares for 14 snakes in the Cancun home he shares with his mom and sister. Cancun in Maya means snake (Can) nest (Cun). The Yucatan is second in the Americas in its number of snakes, with Costa Rica and Belize sharing the number one spot. Erick handed us a native boa constrictor, which gripped our hands and arm is a strong hug. Its skin was shiny and very soft. After holding the small boa, we were shocked to encounter a rare 12-foot yellow albino python with pinkish eyes . . . thankfully in a cage.

Occasionally a spider monkey would come close for a visit or peer curiously down from the trees. The name comes from the ability to use its prehensile tail to hang from trees while keeping its arms and legs free. Several females had babies clinging to their backs or stomachs. While the babies scampered up the tree trunk, the adults came down for the chunks of grapes we held out, prying open our fingers to reach the fruit.

The oddest animal we saw was not the albino python nor a strange-looking soft-shelled turtle, but Xoloitzcuintle, a rare hairless dog that has been in Mexico for 3,000 years. CrocoCun’s two xolos greeted Erick and Ana like long-lost friends and freely let us stroke their silky bodies. They radiated heat, as their natural body temperature is several degrees higher than other dogs. In ancient times, Xolos were considered sacred . . and also popular in chilly regions of Mexico, not only because of their gentle disposition, but because they helped keep the family warm at night. Eric says that today one Xolo dog can cost $4000.

Thank you to Erick and Ana for a fun and educational morning! For more information, visit http://www.crococunzoo.com/.

Becky and Nancy

A Very Maya Christmas

2012-01-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

Not being Christians, Nancy and I don’t celebrate Christmas. This season, though, we were invited to attend a Mayan celebration on Christmas Day at a little community on the edge of Puerto Morelos sponsored by the Jungle Spa (a great place for a traditional Mayan massage).

The celebration started with the arrival of Joseph, with a penciled-beard, a beautiful teen-aged Mary riding a burro, and an entourage of local adults and children singing Christmas carols. It was sweet to see them moving slowly along the dirt road through the jungle.

Upon the arrival of the holy family, and after much recitation, little baby Jesus was placed in Mary’s arms—a local infant of about 3 months with a head of black hair and a patient disposition as the spa dog, dressed up for the holiday, sniffed his head, and visitors from Denmark, Sweden, Canada, and the States snapped photos of the happy family.

The three robed wise men arrived with their gifts, and then it was time for fun and food. The massage therapists performed several traditional dances, including one with a tray of full water glasses and a bottle of beer balanced on their heads.

Local artisans displayed their wares, and there was delicious Mayan food. The panuchos (pictured right) were excellent, but the pork tamales were so extraordinary that we ordered four to go (85 cents each) for our next two dinners.

We caught a taxi back into Puerto Morelos and stopped at a vegetable and fruit store for pineapple, mangoes, and veggies. We were surprised to see so many stores open on Christmas —perhaps the holiday isn’t quite so revered among the Maya merchants as one would think. We like supporting local businesses—especially when so many all-inclusive resorts don’t give much back.

Sandra Dayton, the founder of the Jungle Spa, gives a lot back to the culture she loves, in part through her non-profit organization. She told us that massage as simple relaxation is foreign to the Maya. Her therapists “are from a culture where giving massages is a way of healing. . . . When they were born, a midwife massaged them out of their mother's belly. They were massaged all during the infancy and at 7 or 8 years old they were taught to massage their parent's and grandparent's tired bodies when they came home from working in the cornfields.”

We envision the day when more cultures incorporate massage into daily family life. Imagine girls AND boys running to give Mom and Dad a foot, hand, and shoulder massage when they return from work.We have a lot to learn from the Maya!

For info about the Jungle Spa, visit www.mayaecho.com/Jungle_Spa.html.

Becky and Nancy

Sedona

2012-01-18T09:29:00.000-08:00

Last September Nancy & I spent a week in Sedona, Arizona, to celebrate our seventeenth unofficial and our third official wedding anniversary. It was the first time either of us had stayed in the red rock town. We were both blown away by the beauty.

The sky takes on a deep blue against the red rocks, and the air seems crystal clear. We were surprised at how much vegetation there was—lots of pines, junipers, manzanita bushes, and many varieties of cactus, not all dust and desert.

We went for a hike every day—and there are A LOT of hiking trails. One morning we did a yoga session up on a flat rock with a spectacular view of Bell Rock, the surrounding mountains, and the green valley. It was one of the vortex sites, where the earth’s electromagnetic energy is particularly strong. Nancy also practiced planking.

We spent time at several vortexes, and finally admitted to each other that we felt no special energy…although Nancy’s hair got some fetching swirls!

We spent a full day hiking at the nearby Grand Canyon. The Canyon is gorgeous, of course. Despite our altitude sickness, the intense heat, and the overwhelming depth of the giant chasm, we loved it.

We would go back to Sedona in a heart beat, perhaps to see the spectacular color later in the fall. We loved it!!!

Becky

Paris Revisited

2011-11-25T19:30:00.001-08:00

Thesummer after I graduated from the University of Minnesota, I was an au pair (live-in-nanny) for a French family wholived near the Eiffel Tower. Each morning, after our pitite dejeuner of fresh crustybread, creamy Montrachet goat cheese,and a bowlful of café au lait, Iwould walk the children to the Eiffel Tower playground. I felt flooded with aweat the fulfillment of my dream of living in France.

Thisspring Becky and I spent a week in Paris. One afternoon, after a picnic near the Eiffel Tower, wediscovered that the playground with its little carousel is still there. My little ones wholoved that carousel would be in their forties now and probably have no memoryof the American who spoke French badly but loved playing with them in thesand.

Beingin Paris reminded of my second visit for the 1986 publication of Ma Soeur, Mon Amour, the French translation of Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. Myco-editor Rosemary (Curb) Keefe and I spoke at a women’s bookstore (no longerin existence) and discovered that Parisian women-loving-women regarded ourlesbian-feminist zeal as rather quaint, unsophisticated, and somewhatembarrassing. Having achieved equality with men, they were past such narrowconcerns. And why were we still using that old term? Lesbian was so militant! They preferred to be “discrete” abouttheir private lives. It sounded to us as if they were still in the closet.

Thistime Becky and I found the GLBT Center of Paris, thanks to a delightful Lesbian Connection contactdyke. This young Portuguese woman who has lived in several countries told usthat the Paris Gay Pride parade draws thousands of revelers, mostly straightpeople. It’s more party than political. Sonia says that French lesbians are still very . . . discrete.

Beingin Paris also reminded me of two months my partner Barbara and I spent there in1988. The Gare D’Orsay had recently been converted into the glorious Musée d'Orsay, full oflight, huge open spaces, and beautiful French art. Barb and I went on the free day each week and enjoyed the sumptuous salad buffet in the chandelieredrestaurant. Since the buffet is no longer offered, Becky and I split an orderof soup and salmon. We felt like royalty lunching at Versailles, surrounded bymirrors and full-breasted women frolicking amidst clouds on the ceiling.

Afterthis fourth visit, much as I love Paris, I don’t long for my magical city any more. My French dreams have been fulfilled by stolling hand-in-hand along the Seine with my beloved wife, exploring Notre Dame together, and walking the magical labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral with her.

Edith Bohan, 1914-2011

2011-11-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

Edith Jean Bohan, 97, died November 2, 2011, at Luther Memorial Home in Madelia. The daughter of John and Ida Norton of Frost, Minnesota, she was born February 19, 1914, and was baptized and confirmed at Bethany Lutheran Church. Her parents were both immigrants from Norway and, consequently, Edith spoke only Norwegian until she began school. After graduating in 1928 from Frost High School, where she won prizes for track events, bread baking, and embroidery, she attended the University of Minnesota Farm School.

(Pictured above: Mom and my sister Vicki)

To support herself during the Depression, Edith became a hairdresser in Minneapolis after graduating from Paul’s Academy of Hairdressing. She moved to Oakland, CA and worked at the salon in the prestigious Claremont Hotel. She later moved to Los Angeles, where she worked for a number of years in a Hollywood salon frequented by movie stars. In the mid-1940s Edith returned to Minneapolis, where she opened her own shop, Miss Modern, on Nicollet Avenue. Benefitting from Edith's Hollywood aura, her business thrived.

(Pictured above: Becky, Mom, Nancy)

On November 5, 1947, Edith was united in marriage to Clarence “Doc” Bohan, D.V.M., at Mount Olivet Church in Minneapolis by Reverend Rueben Youngdahl. After a winter in northern Minnesota, where Doc tested cattle, the couple moved to Madelia and made it their home for the remainder of their lives. While raising two children, she helped in the veterinary clinic, located in the basement of the family home.

Edith was an active member of Trinity Lutheran Church and Rachel Circle. She taught Sunday School for fifteen years and was a Luther Memorial Home volunteer. She served as First Lady of Madelia for the fifteen years that her husband was mayor. Edith’s hobbies included gardening, baking, quilting, and embroidering. She enjoyed traveling and twice visited relatives in Norway. After Doc retired, he and Edith often drove to Florida or the Southwestern United States during the winter.

In 1996, Edith moved into Luther Memorial Home with her husband, who passed away the following year. While diminished by a failing memory in her later years, she maintained a sweet and loving disposition.

Edith is survived by her daughter Vicki Bohan and her husband, Richard Havens, of Lincoln, CA; daughter Becky Bohan and her wife, Nancy Manahan, of Minneapolis; grandson Scott Havens of Boise, ID; and stepchildren Jack Bohan and Deanne Bohan, San Jose, CA. She was preceded in death by three sisters and four brothers.

A memorial service will be held 10:00 a.m. Friday, November 11, 2011, at Luther Memorial Home in Madelia. Memorials should be sent to the Luther Memorial Home or Trinity Lutheran Church in Madelia.

Terry and Amy

2011-08-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

In our blog posts from Greece, we didn't say enough about our friends, Terry Cramer and Amy Posmantur. This delightful couple has lived and worked in college and school education in Vicenza, Italy, for nearly two decades. We met them five years ago in Venice and have joined them almost every year since then, in Puerto Rico, Mexico, or Italy. This year we spent Amy's spring break in Athens and Crete.

Like us, Terry and Amy love to hike, so we took long walks through Athens and longer hikes through the deep Imbros Gorge and across the windswept mountains of Crete.

We shopped for fresh fruit from street vendors.

And then we ate in on a rooftop in Athens looking up at the Acropolis.

Too bad Terry and Amy had to go back to work and couldn't toast Crystos Anesti! (Christ Risen!) while cracking the traditional red Greek Easter eggs.

Our next trip with Amy and Terry? They've invited us to Morocco in April 2012. Inticing!

Nancy

Homage to the Oracle of Delphi

2011-05-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

"Over a vast period--ages in which people came and went, empires rose and fell--the Oracle proved to be the most durable and compelling force in what was arguably the most important society that humans ever devised. She was the guide star of Greek civilization. We have no equilavent. . . . No voice, civil or religious, carried further. No authority was more sought after or more influencial. None. She quite literally had the power to depose kings."

So writes William J. Broad, award-winning New York Times science writer, in his fascinating book The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets. Broad pulls together the strands of ancient history, archeological quest, and modern scientific inquiry regarding this figure shrouded in so much mystery. (Actually, there were many Oracles, often matronly women, succeding each other. During Plutarch's stint as high priest of Delphi, there were two Oracles and one back up. Even Plutarch was not privy to the inner rites of these Oracles.)

The ancient Greeks laid the foundation of our scientific world. Pythagorus, Euclid, Aristotle, and scores more, established the basic principles of mathematics, geometry, physics, and philosophy. These great thinkers respected the Oracle of Delphi. Socrates even credits her with setting him on the course that made him one of the world's greatest philosophers.

As described by the ancients, the Delphic Oracle would sit on a tripod, breath in vapors, enter a state of exaltation, and then answer questions put to her, the answers coming directly from the god Apollo. Her answers were sometimes ambiguous, othe times quite specific. King Croesus once sent a courier to ask "What am I doing now." When the Oracle said he was cooking lamb and turtle stew, it seemed improbable. Yet she was spot on. On that day, at that time, the king was cooking that stew!

Broad's book chronicles the unearthing of the ruins at Delphi and the scientific search for the source of the fumes that enabled the Oracle to reach her elevated state. After years of research, John Hale, an American archeologist, and Jelle de Boer, a Dutch geologist, published their findings in 2001. The tripod sat directly over the intersection of two geological faults where a mixture of gases, including the ecstacy-inducing ethylene, wafted through tiny fussures.

The media was quick to mock the Oracle as getting high and rambling, but the question remains, how could she have been so accurate and commanded such respect for hundreds of years?

I like to think that the Oracle tapped into "the Field," much like Edgar Cayce did in his self-hypnotic trances, where she could step into a higher level of consciousness, the transcendental state where the past, present, and future all blend, where all knowledge is accessible.

The Oracle continued to have power into the Roman period. The Christians, however, labelled her a witch in league with demons, and after 1200 years and thousands of accurate prophecies, in 395 C.E., the shrine was closed by the Roman emporor. Subsequent earthquakes eventually shut off the fumes.

Nancy and I leave Crete tomorrow to journey to Delphi. Amidst the stunning scenery and awesome ruins, I will be paying my respect to that "sisterhood of mystics" as Broad calls them, who generation after generation, guided one of the world's greatest civilizations.

Becky

What's Missing in Minoan Art?

2011-05-06T01:31:00.001-07:00

The Minoans didn't need Title IX to ensure equality in athletics. Their culture radiated female power and presence as shown in frescos from the palace walls of Knossos, Crete. Here are three bull dancers: the woman (always light-skinned in Minoan art and often bare-chested) on the left about to launch herself over the bull's horns, the man in mid-somersault over the bull's back, and the woman on the right, landing after her vault.

It has taken 4,000 years for the Western world to begin to catch up.

The Minoan civilization thrived on Crete from 3400 BCE to 1450 BCE, when Santorini's volcanic explosion and the subsequent earthquakes and tsunamis devastated the islands, leading to the collapse of the Minoan culture. What remains is the ghost town at Akrotiri, Santorini (only 3% excavated) and the ruins on Crete, the most famous being Knossos because of Sir Arthur Evans's partial reconstruction.
One of the remnants of this amazing culture, so unlike the patariarchal culture of the last four millenia, is the subject of their artwork. The frescos show dolphins cavorting in the sea, blue monkeys picking fruit, an octopus waving its tenacles, a young man stepping through a lilly field, tall papyrus plants bursting with color.

Even the pendants and seals show a remarkable gift for precision and beauty, with representations of bees and deer so finely crafted that I have to wonder if the artisans had magnifying glasses.

What is missing in Minoan art? Scenes of war, of the abduction and rape of women, of torture (on the cross or otherwise), of dour church patriarachs and saints devoid of joy.

The Minoans flourished centuries before the Trojan War, an epic event in the early days of patriarchal hegemony that became a touchstone for art of the Classical and Hellenestic periods. Later, with the rise of Christianity, art has focused for centuries on the passion of Christ and matyred saints. I remember a few years back leaving a museum in Florence feeling queasy because of all the horrific scenes of crucifixion and torture.

Nancy and I leave for Paris within a week. We will, of course, wander through museums during our five days there. But really, do I need to see one more rendering of Zeus taking a woman by force or of a bloody Christ suffering on the cross, or a martyr being beheaded, stoned, flayed, or set ablaze?

Give me the Minoan world of light and sensuality, where the joy of being alive in this glorious world pulses through each brush stroke.

Becky

Our Mediterranean Diet

2011-05-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

Here on Crete, Nancy and I have been enjoying the "Mediterranean diet."
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For example, yesterday for lunch we fixed the above plate and savored by the swimming pool: green salad, fava beans, olives, bread soaked in olive oil, and feta cheese.
Basically, the diet emphasizes plants: fresh fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Moderate amounts of cheese and yogurt, fish, and poultry. A little red meat, mostly lamb. Olive oil is important, and we love the Cretan tradition of drizzling it on rusk, the whole grain hard-as-rock bread.

We have been carrying a tin of Cretan olive oil with us since our first weeks on Crete. The olive oil of this island is renowned for its "lightness." I don't know if that's true, but it certainly is delicious enough that when I return home I will look for Cretan olive oil at the market.

A glass or two of wine also is part of the Mediterranean diet, and here we have all sorts of delicious wines in even the smallest grocery store. On Santorini we tried some local bulk wine in a plastic bottle. Not great, but satisfying. Right now we're enjoying a bottle of dry red from the Boutari vineyards, one of the most prominent vineyards on Crete and Santorini.

The produce here is also reputed to be more flavorful than elsewhere because of the volcanic soil and climate. Nancy praises the eggplant. We have noticed that the egg yolks are the rich, almost orange color we see in the eggs from our Minnesota brother-in-law's free-range chickens.

I don't want to give the impression that we are dietary angels. We have enjoyed plenty of gyros-- spicy shaved pork with thin-sliced onions and tomatoes, tzatziki (yogurt-cucumber sauce), and a few French fries, all tightly rolled in grilled pita bread.

And the baklava! Crispy filo dough, chopped nuts, honey, and cloves wins out everytime over a piece of fresh fruit. Anyone in Athens who is looking for the best baklava, head for the Plaka and Benethe Bakery. Their version is made with pistachios and abundant cloves, a generous piece for only one euro 20 cents that we eat standing at one of the tiny tables on the pedestrian Adrianou St. and people-watch.

Socrates once said, "Moderation in all things, including moderation." That goes for the Mediterranean diet, too. Bring on the baklava!

Becky

May Day Bacchanelia

2011-05-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

Agreco, an organic farm a few kilometers south of Rethymnon, Crete, puts on a special tour and lunch every May Day. (It's a variation of their regular evening dinner.)

Located on a slope overlooking the Sea of Crete, the 40,000 square meter farm provides produce for select hotels in the area. This re-creation of a 17th century farm also operates as a sort of working museum with stations showing traditional Cretan methods of agricultural production.

At the olive press, a donkey (now retired) would move stone wheels that crush olives as the oil runs off through a drain hole. The tailings are dried and put down as floor covering, much as we use sawdust or gravel. We sampled two Agreco olive oils dipped in fresh crusty bread and in Cretan whole grain rusk, a hard crunchy bread that takes a strong set of molars to chew.

We saw spits of lamb roasting on open-air wood fires and bread baking in the outdoor wood-fired oven. All the aromas mingled with the smell of fresh herbs and blooming flowers--many had been picked and woven into wreaths to adorn the heads of the many French, German, and Russian girls -- and boys -- at Agreco that day.

The wine tasting station offered red and white farm-produced wine and next to it, a wood-burning still, where the fermented must from the wine press was boiled. The steam escaped though a tube that passed through an urn of cool water and emerged as 70% proof Cretan raki. Nancy and I tossed back three half-shots of the delicious tequilla-like liquor that the tradionally-dressed workers kept handing us.

"Yamas!" they'd exclaim as they clicked their glasses to ours. This traditional Greek toast is a contraction of “Stin ygeia mas” (Στην υγεία μας), which means “to our health!”

Happily we moved on up the hill to our open-air lunch overlooking vineyards and fields of artichokes and out to the sea.

Course after course of delicious Cretan appetizers, crusty bread, rice pilaf, lamb, chicken, roasted potatoes and eggplant, salad, more lamb, more potatoes, fruits, goat cheese, creamy yogurt, and desserts. Oh, and a pitcher of house wine.

And that's all I remember...except for a vague memory of Nancy and me holding hands and dancing Greek-style in a large circle . . . .

Becky

Note: For more info about the farm, go to www.leoniki.com/agrecofarm/.

Fire in a Greek Synagogue

2011-04-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

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The old synagogue in Chania, Crete, suffered two arson attacks in 2010.

Our guide Alexander smiled sadly. "The police caught the men who set the fires. Two British, two Americans, and a Greek."

"What was their motive?" Amy, a school counselor, asked.

"We don't know," the handsome young Greek said in almost unaccented English.

“What was done with them?" asked Amy’s partner Terry, a criminal justice teacher.

Alexander smiled sadly again. "They were released. There were no charges. We installed a security system, something we never wanted."

Amy, Terry, Becky, and I were visiting Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Crete, where Jews have lived for over 2400 years. The synagogue, originally a Venetian Catholic church, was given to the Jewish Community by the Ottomans when they took over Crete in the 16th century. It remained a place of worship until the Germans occupied the Greek island four centuries later.

On June 8, 1944, the Nazis obliterated the Jewish community on Crete by putting all Jewish families on a ship for the first leg of their journey to Auschwitz. A British submarine sank the ship, killing everyone on board, including many children. The synagogue was destroyed and remained virtually a ruin until the World Monuments Fund named it a most endangered site in 1996, and Nikos Stavroulakis completed the restoration in 1999.

Last January, this exquisite little restored synagogue was broken into and set on fire. Although there was damage, the Torahs were unharmed. Two weeks later, with the synagogue's interior cleaned and repainted, the arsonists struck again. This time the fires completely gutted both floors, destroying the main archive, and burning many of the library's 1000 sacred texts and reference books, valuable 16th century Ottoman textiles, and the synagogue's data base. In the Mikvah, the ritual bathing room, we spotted boxes of charred books. Again, the fires spared the Torahs.

As we four sat silently on the wooden benches, I recalled the monument Amy had discovered in the square beside Athens' cathedral a few days earlier. It depicts the archbishop who opposed persecution of Greek Jews during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation. When arrested in 1943, Archbishop Damaskinos told the Nazis, "Members of the clergy of Greece may not be shot, they may only be hanged. I beg you to respect this tradition. . . ." His life spared, he lived another six years.

Anti-Semitism runs like poison through the centuries. It is inspiring to see people like the Archbishop and Jewish Greeks like Alexander and other members of Etz Hayyim Synagogue face down bigots and affirm their place in Crete, where a long Jewish history came very close to being obliterated.

Information about the Chania synogogue and the story of Crete's Jewish community can be found at http://www.etz-hayyim-hania.org/welcome.html. If you want to contribute to the restoration of the synagogue, contact Alexander Phoundoulakis at info@etz-hayyim-hania.org.

Nancy

Becky's Sinister Paradise

2011-04-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

Becky's first novel, Sinister Paradise, was published in the spring of 1993. We re-met and fell in love that fall, a time of delirious happiness for me.

One night before bed in my apartment in Rochester, MN, I picked up her book. Since I had to teach an 8am English class, and since I don't read mysteries, I intended to skim the three-page prologue so I could say I had at least looked at the book.

But from the first sentence, I was hooked, transported to Santorini, Greece. I couldn't stop reading. Would Britt and Cassie admit their love for each other? Would Britt survive the "accidents" at the archeological site? Would she uncover the smuggling operation? I finished the book at 3am.

I'd had no idea Becky could write so well. Good writing touches me deeply. If I hadn't already been completely smitten, this intense lesbian mystery/love story would have toppled me into the caldera.

I soon learned more about Becky's connections to Greece and other ancient cultures.

When she was 27, for her first trip abroad, she backpacked alone through Greece for six weeks. Four years later, she returned to gather material for Sinister Paradise. She stayed nearly a month.

Becky's idea of a good read is The Iliad. She re-reads it or The Odyssey almost every year. She pores over The Aeneid, Herodotus, and descriptions of Minoan culture. Our Kindle contains, among her books for this trip, Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, The Oracle: Ancient Delphi, and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, published in 431BCE! One day a few years ago, we rounded a corner in a museum in Torino, Italy to a huge breath-taking statue of the goddess Athena. Becky burst into tears.

She often said that she wanted to take me to the Acropolis, Santorini, Delphi, Knossos, and other places she loves, but Greece got bumped to the back burner by other more pressing travel.

Finally we are here, in a land where history is measured in millennia, where huge temples to Athena dominate contemporary cities' high ground, and where Becky believes she lived in one or perhaps many past lives.

Last week our ferry sailed into Santorini's extraordinary caldera, created around 1450BCE, when a volcano exploded and collapsed. We hopped a local bus to Kamari Beach, the site of some of the novel's most intense action. Although it was so cold that we were the only people on the long black beach, I could imagine Britt and Cassie's sailboards blazing through the sun-drenched blue-green Aegean waves.

I had been re-reading Sinister Paradise for the first time since 1993, restricting myself to 3 or 4 chapters a day to prolong the pleasure. That night, I picked up Sinister Paradise to read a chapter near the end. Mistake! Gripped by the action and impressed all over again by the sheer skill of the writing, I couldn't stop until I had reached the nerve-shattering conclusion.

If you haven't read Sinister Paradise, there are several copies on Amazon for one cent plus shipping. Or, even better, you can reduce our attic inventory and get a personally autographed copy directly from the author!

Nancy

Lindos, Rhodes

2011-04-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

The town of Lindos, on the east coast of Rhodes, is a popular resort town with tens of thousands of Europeans flowing to its beaches in the summer. The high season hasn't started yet, so the crowds are thin. Strolling along the narrow streets, many with pavement and floor designs made of colored stones, is easy. We hear a lot of French, German, Danish and Swedish being spoken by tourists. No English, though.

The town is a World Heritage site, its sugar cube buildings dating from medieval times. No cars are allowed--only scooters, donkeys, and pedestrians.

Above the town soars the 4th century BCE Acropolis. It's built on a promontory that separates the two main bays, both with beautiful blue-green water and sweet, though rocky, beaches.

The Acropolis's main temple, built to honor Athena, is mostly a ruin, with only a few columns standing. A female deity named Lindia was being worshipped here thousands of years before Athena showed up.

The Romans built on this site, as did the Knights of St. John, who constructed a medieval fortress around the Acropolis using blocks from the ancient temples. This 12th century religious order, also called Knights Hospitallers, came from European Catholic countries to care for wounded and sick crusaders. They arrived in Rhodes in 1309, built a huge hospital that Nancy and I saw in Rhodes' Old Town, and defended the island against capture by the Turks for the next 200 years.
The morning was rainy as we ascended the winding stairway to the Acropolis. When we reached the top, thunder rolled from the thick dark clouds, and lightning flashed above the sea. It was thrilling. I felt close to the ancient deities who once filled people with awe...and occasionally still do!

Becky

Acropolis Museum and Noble Athena

2011-04-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

The new Acropolis Museum, opened in 2008, is brilliant and innovative. As Nancy and I walked toward the entrance we were startled to have the pavement turn to plexiglass, exposing an archaeological dig below our feet. There are outlines of buildings, vases halfway exposed, and tables and chairs for the workers. Inside the museum, sections of the flooring reveal more excavations.
The Acropolis with its magnificent Parthenon (Athena's temple), towering high above the museum, is visible through the glass walls. The museum's second story sits at an angle to the first floor, purposefully skewed to parallel the Parthenon. Inside steel columns mimic those of the ancient temple in a 1:1 proportion so you get an idea of the size. All around the museum recreation of the Parthenon are beautiful works of art. The inner row displays the friezes, another shows the metropes, and the third contains pediment sculptures, all at a level where we can see details--something the ancients could not do. Most of these pieces are place holders, waiting for the authentic marbles housed in the British Museum, to be repatriated to Greece.

The museum continuously plays a wonderful movie showing the history of the Acropolis and how it was originally decorated (the marble sculptures were painted). It also shows the painful history of how parts of this mighty structure were destroyed, including the desecration by early Christian zealots and the explosion of a Turkish armory.

One of the most interesting facts that I learned was that the Myceneans had erected a temple to Athena over 3,500 years ago--a thousand years before Pericles built the grand temple whose remains we see today.

It is awe-inspiring to see a temple and its statuary devoted to a goddess. The representations of the female denote strength, in such stark contrast to the churches and religions of the "modern" era where women have been disempowered for millenia.
Each depiction of Athena, from the broken marble figure on the pediment to the 1/12th scale model of the 40-foot statue that used to tower over worshippers inside the Parthenon, radiates serene, dignified power. She is no delicate, subservient girl. Her gaze is calm and direct; her breasts are full; her strong neck supports a noble head; powerful thighs show clearly through her robes. She is comfortable with her mature, womanly body.

I am grateful for such a splendid image of female strength, thankful that her people, the Athenians, have preserved her temple as best they could for nearly 25 centuries. May this beautiful new museum continue to honor her memory far into the future.

Becky

Note: Picture of inner museum is from Wikipedia, Tilemahos Efthimiadi photographer.

Athen's Metro

2011-04-28T04:27:00.000-07:00

From our picture below, would you assume Nancy and I were in a museum?

Now would you think we were at an archaeological site?

Would you believe we took both photos in a subway station in Athens?

Work on the new metro began in 2000 and was slowed considerably by the nature if the city--Athens is built on the ruins of thousands of years of inhabitants. Every time the workers ran into a pot or bone, the archaeologists were called in to catalogue and clear the site.

Some of the artifacts are now displayed in cases. One amazing wall is made of glass, allowing a view of the strata under the city. Pots from the time of the Ottoman empire are visible, as well as an early Christian grave with the bones in place.

The subway is clean and fast. It has substantially reduced air pollution in Athens. The first day of operation in 2006, it took 100,000 cars off the streets. The Metro takes you to the airport or to the port of Pireaus to catch a ferry to the many Greek islands.

It is amazing what a city can do when it has the political will. I think of the struggle we have had in the Twin Cities trying to get light rail expanded. Mass transportation is the future. If Athens can do it, so can Minnesotans.

Becky

The T-Shirt Mystery

2011-04-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

After visiting Kerameikos Cemetary (see previous post), our friends from Italy and we found a shady table at an outdoor taverna. A sturdy waiter brought us crusty bread, light Greek olive oil, grilled souvlaki, crispy calamari, traditional stuffed peppers and tomatoes, roasted eggplant, and a carafe of smooth local white wine.

At the table next to us, a lively group was enjoying a similar meal. A man in his late fifties whose back was to us wore a t-shirt. with the words "I hiked . . . " The rest was hidden. Where had he hiked? We had fun speculating. Finally he leaned forward, and we glimpsed "the trail." Ah. The location must be on the front of the shirt. It became our mission to find out.

Terry volunteered to glance in his direction on her way to the bathroom, but all she could make out was an unfamiliar name word beginning with K. Amy suggested she take a photo of our table from an angle that would include the t-shirt. But as Terry aimed her camera, trying to fit in our table and the man with the T-shirt, one of his dining companions offered to take a picture of our foursome, thinking that was Terry's intention.

Later, I went to their table, greeted them, and said we were curious about his shirt. The man expanded his chest to show the words Mount Kamakou."Is the highest mountain on Molokai," he beamed. Exactly 4920 feet high, I learned later.

"Well, that's impressive," I said. "Where are you all from?"

"From Belgium," the woman who had taken our photo said.

A little while later as we were leaving the restaurant, I saw the Belgian man near the entrance. We talked for a couple of minutes. He and his wife had been on Molokai helping out at the hospital Father Damien founded for lepers. When I was in the convent, studying to become a Maryknoll Missionary, I remembered learning about this missionary priest's extraordinary service to Hawaii's untouchable outcasts.

"Father Damien was from Belgium!" my new friend exclaimed.

"I didn't know that."

"You must see the movie about his life -- Molokai: The Story of Father Damien. He will become saint soon." His clear blue eyes blazed into mine.

My heart overflowed. Obeying an inner prompting, I rested my hand on his cheek. "Thank you for all the good that you do."

He held my gaze, smiling back at me. "I do what I can."

As we women threaded our way down the narrow cobbled streets away from the restaurant, Mary Oliver's question sang through me: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

P.S. Father Damien Day is celebrated throughout Hawaii the same week I met his blue-eyed Belgian champion.

Nancy

Spring in Greece

2011-04-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Spring is a wonderful time to visit Greece. The crowds of tourists and the heat of summer haven't yet arrived. It's cooler than usual this April, so Nancy and I bundle up on our hikes.

Best of all, everything that can be green IS green. The profusion of wildflowers is awesome, and the fragrance of orange blossoms in every neighborhood of Athens is intoxicating.

I can't stop taking pictures of blood-red poppy-like anemone, said to be the blood drops of Aphrodite's slain lover, Adonis.

The fields are white and yellow with daisies, and the meadows full of deep blue lupine.

(Nancy by daisies just below the Acropolis on a sunny day)

The most exciting find was the pink tulips saxatilis, which grows only in high mountain meadows in Crete. This delicate pink tulip is on the cover of my Flowers of Greece booklet, bought one spring 32 years ago when I first fell in love with this ancient country. We were lucky enough to spot at least a hundred of these rare wild tulips in full bloom.

An Ancient Green Cemetery

2011-04-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

As Becky and I approach Kerameikos, we know it is different from the other archeological sites we had visited in Greece. It is the land that received many thousands of bodies for over 1500 years, the most important cemetery of ancient Athens. The earliest tombs date from the Early Bronze Age (2700-2000 BCE). Athenians continued burying their dead there until approximately the 6th century CE (Current Era).

On display in a small museum at the entrance are prehistoric grave offerings, tall urns that held ashes of the deceased, and archaic tombstones inscribed with expressions of grief over the loss of loved ones. One ornate chest is labeled ossuary, used where burial space was scarce. A body is buried in a temporary grave, and after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in the chest, making it is possible to store the remains of many people in a single tomb.

At the far end of one room stands a graceful life-sized statue of Nemesis, the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). Becky and I marvel again at the powerful Godesses and human females depicted in ancient Greek art as well as the sculptors' skill in chiseling such realistic draped clothing.

The most interesting sign was about the Plague that struck in 430 BCE, killing thousands of Athenians. Physicians had no idea how to treat their patients and died themselves in large numbers. Each morning, the bodies were picked up, often near public fountains where the victims had tried to quench their terrible thirst. In violation of Athenian burial law, the corpses were dumped into a mass grave in Keramikos.

Outside the museum, sun-drenched and tree-shaded paths wind through ancient gavesites and the foundations of buildings and walls. (The Acropolis with its magnificent temple to Athena, is visible in the background.) Although we don't see any families lounging on the grass, my mother would have recognized this as a "fine and private place" for a picnic. Proponents of natural cemeteries can applaud Athens for maintaining this prime real estate as a public green space. Of course, Kerameikos was also green in the environmental sense: no embalming fluids, metal caskets, or concrete burial vaults went into the earth here. The cemetery, however, was full of marble tombstones, which contemporary green burial grounds do not include.

Once again, I'm reminded of "time's winged chariot hurrying near." Whether we succumb to hubris or live humbly, remorseless Nemisis pushes us toward the grave. May we drink deeply from the fountain and love our dear ones while we can.

Nancy

Are You Ladies All Alone!?!

2011-04-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

When we pulled up to the US/Mexico border crossing at noon last February 13th, an agent leaned down to our window. “Where are you driving from?” he asked.

“Cancun.”

His jaw dropped. “Cancun?! All by yourselves?!”

Translation: “Without a man along?!”

That response was repeated by the custom officials. Guess they don’t see too many middle-aged ladies driving through Mexico together.

And that, frankly, was a good reason for making the journey of 7,200 miles. It proved to ourselves ,to the people we met along the way, and to those who have heard about our road trip that we can do it.

Another surprising part of this border crossing was that we could bring fresh produce into the United States. We had a few leftover limes, avocados, oranges, bananas, and nuts that we expected to hand over. The only item the customs officials confiscated was an apple that probably had been imported to Mexico from Washington State. Maybe winter when we fly to Cancun, we’ll see if we can bring back a some delicious Mexican limones, avocados, and mangoes. And the next time we drive to Cancun All By Ourselves, maybe we’ll bring in a couple of 25-pound sacks of oranges that vendors were selling along the road by the fruit orchards in Veracruz.

Becky

Driving in Mexico: Pluses

2011-04-05T12:29:00.000-07:00

Why did we enjoy our road trip in Mexico? First there’s the joy of beautiful and surprising sights, for example mile after mile of trees laden with oranges along the Gulf, thundering waterfalls and pine-forested mountains of Chiapas, a breathtaking flock of flamingos in the Yucatan, and the eighth most visited aquarium in the world in Veracruz. (See our February 4, 2011 posting)

Second, delicious and inexpensive regional specialties made from fresh ingredients, like the artistic mango-on-a-stick pictured in our February 10, 2011 posting. One noon we pulled into an open-air restaurant far from any town, right on the Gulf of Mexico. Within minutes, we were enjoying fresh red snapper, savory beans and rice, a stack of hot tortillas, several piquant sauces, and a cold beer, all for under $10.

Third, friendly, helpful people. Everyone was helpful and patient with my Spanish as I bought a cell phone, had my teeth cleaned, applied for a senior citizen card, and took violin lessons. Having a car meant Becky and I got to meet skillful, creative mechanics who went out of their way to solve the water leaks that plagued our rusty old Buick. My new friend on Isla Mujeres, Adolfo, welded patches over the rust holes and then escorted me to the hard-to-find local lavacar, where we had a satisfying discussion of 12-step recovery, parenting, and homosexuality while the car was being washed.

Fourth, a sense of competence in dealing with conditions that don’t exist at home. Being in a foreign country, much less driving long distances in one, stretches a person. It is fun and satisfying to accomplish something that seems difficult and scary.

Fifth, day after day of compatible togetherness. Becky and I love road trips, and this one was especially sweet…probably because it was so adventurous. We worked well as a team. When one person was tired, the other seemed alert. We found ourselves talking through situations effectively, such as locating lodging or trying to figure out the procedure at the border. We loved listening to music and to books on tape. We read a novel out loud to each other—Water for Elephants. The long drives went by amazingly quickly.

People often asked us if we weren’t afraid of all the violence. We didn’t have any trouble and never felt in danger. The main threat we saw up close is to the economy of Isla Mujeres. Restaurants and hotel, including our Nautibeach Condos, were half empty because of people’s fears of Mexico. But Mexico is a huge country, and the Yucatan has a murder rate roughly equal to that of France.*

I’m grateful for the whole experience. Even so, next winter Becky and I will take a direct flight to Cancun. We’ll be breathing in that tropical air and gazing at the turquoise Caribbean waters about 3 hours after leaving Minneapolis!

*Minneapolis Star Tribune, Nov. 30, 2010, D8.

Driving in Mexico: Challenges

2011-04-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

Although we didn’t have any serious problems driving 7,200 miles from Minneapolis to Cancun and back, Becky and I did encounter a few challenges.

The most consistent problem was the inconsistent quality of the roads. After hours of single-lane pot-holed roads, we might find ourselves on a modern 4-lane divided highway cruising along at 100 kilometers per hour. Finally, we’d smile, we’re making good time. And look– we’re only 1100 kilometers from Cancun!

Within twenty minutes, however, we’d usually run into one or more challenges:

1. Lane reduction. The divided highway suddenly narrows to a 2-lane blacktop road with no shoulder but deep, craggy potholes.

2. A village. We brake for ten to twenty topes. We creep over the high speed bumps, holding our breath as the muffler and exhaust pipe scrape against the cement.

3. Road construction. A guy in jeans and t-shirt vigorously waves a little flag. Cars, trucks, and buses creep through the next mile or so of dirt and rocks.

4. A military checkpoint. We wait in line for a few minutes or maybe an hour. Armed soldiers in combat fatigues approach the car. They examine our drivers’ licenses and passports, ask where we’ve been and where we’re going, and sometimes look through our trunk. Although these soldiers are unfailingly courteous, the barricades, machine guns, uniforms, and semi-automatic rifles are intimidating. We’re relieved when they let us proceed.

5. A local cop. In one village, the policeman who pulled us over said we were speeding, a serious infraction. In a larger town, the officer second said we had run a red light, a very serious infraction. The fine for each of these was well over $200. If we didn’t have time to go to the police station, he would allow us to pay on the spot. After negotiating a lower amount, we paid on the spot.

Eventually, we got used to challenges 1-4. Armed with tips from a friend who has often driven in Mexico, we even managed to avoid being pulled over again. But we never adapted to the inadequate signage. One morning, for example, the modern 4-lane highway we were cruising on forked without warning. Both branches looked like main arteries. The sign over the left road said 180D. The sign over the right road also said 180D. Quick! Choose! I went right. Within a mile, the highway petered out and we came to a tiny pueblo. More topes! Guess we should have gone left.

Even more challenging was entering a town with no signs pointing a route through the crowded, narrow streets to the highway on the other side. If it weren’t for our GPS, I wonder how we would have gotten through several large cities. But sometimes the GPS was wrong, and then we navigated by instinct, luck, and the kindness of the locals.

So would we drive to Cancun again? Absolutely!

What, are you two crazy?

That answer must wait for another day.

Nancy

A Night at a Sex Motel

2011-02-12T19:15:00.000-08:00

After a long day of driving and visiting two archeological sites (see previous posts), Nancy and I were exhausted. The sun was nearing the horizon as we prepared to leave the El Tajin ruins, north of Veracruz. We asked an elderly parking lot attendant about nearby hotels. He recommended El Castillo, a nice big hotel, he said, but expensive. Cheaper ones could be had a few kilometers further, in Posa Rica, a small city with ties to the petroleum business.

After laboring along a pitted road crossed with treacherous speed bumps, we came upon Hotel Castillo, an imposing stone edifice that looked like a medieval castle. Hurrah, we thought, we can call it a day.

As soon as our car nosed through the “drawbridge” gate, we realized that we were in a motel, not a hotel. In Mexico, as in Costa Rica, “motels” cater to couples needing absolute privacy. They rent rooms by the hour.

A young man hurried over to greet us, and invited us to look at a room. It cost only 370 pesos, he said, (about $33), and we could stay until noon the next day. Nancy and I exchanged a look. If this was the expensive hotel, the other hotels must be flea bags.

So, we gamely looked at a room. It actually was quite nice but with a few peculiarities. No closet to hang clothes. No chairs. A metal pole in the middle of the room. A little rotating cubby in the wall where drinks and snacks could be delivered discretely. But the room was very clean, the king-sized bed was comfortable, it was getting dark, and we were exhausted. We handed over our pesos, parked the Buick in our private garage, pulled the curtain to hide our car, and climbed up the stairs to our room.

We checked the TV. Three channels of porn as well as soap operas and Los Simpsons. But we entertained ourselves on the bed with a rollicking game of cootie, a form of competitive double solitaire, probably the only time that surface has been used as a card table. The lighting was so low (we didn’t bother turning on the red headboard glow) that we had to wear our camping headlamps to see our cards.

As we prepared for bed, Nancy looked around for a water glass. No luck. Oh wait! There was one on a ledge with napkins in it. “Perfect!” she cried, reaching for the glass. It wouldn’t budge. The glass, the ashtrays, and the TV remote were all glued down.

So we spent the night at a sex hotel, the only real danger being the chance of running head-first into the pole on the way to the bathroom in the dark. Before daybreak we rose, packed the car, and were on the road with the morning sun.

No, I did not duck in the passenger seat as we crossed the drawbridge, as Nancy observed one woman doing, protecting her reputation while her partner drove.

The roads were so rough and congested it took us 45 minutes to go the eight miles through town. As we finally reached the edge of the city, guess what we saw. A huge Holiday Inn!

Becky

Not Another Sports Stadium!

2011-02-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

Nancy and I strolled through El Tajin, a large archeological complex north of Veracruz. The city flourished from 600 to 1200 C.E., although it had been inhabited since 5600 B.C.E. It was the dominant city of what is now the state of Veracruz. Its builders remain a mystery. Like Cempoala (see previous post), the site was abandoned in 1230 C.E.

Although only a portion of the site has been excavated, its scope and imposing stone structures are impressive. Unique to this site are “niches.” One structure, the Pyramid of the Niches, contains 365 recessed niches, one for each day of the year.

Seventeen ball courts have been uncovered, more than any other site in Mesoamerica. These guys must have loved sports, like a town with a basketball court on every other corner.

While El Tajin's structures are impressive, for some reason they did not speak to our hearts. The site seemed dreary, and the buildings lacked the breath-taking beauty and sacred sense we have felt in other Mexican ruins we have visited.

Or maybe it was a message telegraphed through the ages from one of the women of El Tajin, hands on hips, scowling, "What! Not another sports stadium! We need better schools!"

Becky

Ruins of River Rock

2011-02-11T16:47:00.000-08:00

After years of exploring the archeological sites of the ancient Maya, we paused on our drive back to Minneapolis to explore two ruins outside the Yucatan. North of Veracruz at Cempoala (also spelled Zempoala), the Totonac people built their pyramids and other structures out of river stones. Our eyes are so used to the block stone of the Maya, it was rather shocking to walk into the site. The dark stones are smooth and carefully placed in rows, joined by mortar that still holds up after all these centuries.

Cempoala means “the place of the 20 rivers” because rivers converge near the site. Most of the buildings date from the 14th and 15th centuries. The site was occupied much earlier, though, probably by the Olmecs some two millennia ago.

The unusual circular structures may have had astrological significance. One architectural motif is the step pillar, a chair-like stone structure on many of the ruins, including the outer walls. All the buildings are accessible, and Nancy sat on one of these "chairs" as though it were part of a carousal ride.

Cempoala was the first New World city that Cortez ran into. Its 30,000 people were under subjugation to the Aztecs in what is now Mexico City. Seeing an opportunity to throw off their oppressors, they joined forces with Cortez to help bring down the Aztec empire. They ended up helping the Spanish destroy their own culture.

Cempoala is lovely and quiet. No vendors hawk wares, and the summer-like breeze and lovely palm trees dot the spacious areas between the amazing buildings.

As we left the town, we realized that even the speed bumps were shaped like step pillars.

These were the only speed bumps in our 4000 plus miles of driving in Mexico that gave us pleasure!

Becky

Veracruz

2011-02-10T20:15:00.000-08:00

Nancy and I spent two nights in Veracruz on the southwestern rim of the Gulf of Mexico. We found the city, the main shipping port of Mexico, busy and a bit worn. It is not a tourist town and we were the only gringas we spotted on the streets, in restaurants, and at our hotel.

There’s a wonderful boardwalk running along the sea that affords a lovely view of the open water, the huge ships in the harbor loaded with cargo, fishermen pulling their catch from the sea, and families milling about on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Nancy bought a ripe, juicy mango on a stick along the boardwalk beautifully peeled, scored, sprinkled with salt and chili powder, and doused with fresh lime juice. Vendors were also selling sliced pineapple, ham & cheese empanadas, and cooked corn.

We woke Monday to a howling sound. A cold north wind had come barreling down the gulf overnight with gusts up to 40 miles an hour. Not a day for outside activity. So we spent the morning reading and looking out the windows on three sides of our unusual garret and the afternoon at the Veracruz Aquarium, one of the largest and most visited aquariums in the world. It has a huge donut-shaped waterway where large fish and sharks swam while onlookers stand in the middle.

We also spend a chunk of the chilly day in the Gran Café, where patrons clink spoons against their glasses (no coffee cups) to signal the waiter for free refills of the rich local coffee, poured from a small silver pitcher, and hot foaming milk, poured from a big pitcher. A large glass of this Veracruz lechera costs all of 27 pesos or about $2.25.

After a full day of rest, we were ready to be on the road again exploring more of Mexico on our return to the States.

Becky

Birding at Rio Lagartos

2011-02-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we met our birding guide a little after dawn by the pier at Rio Lagartos.

Diego Nuñez drove us to nearby fields abutting the enormous Rio Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, where we spotted 24 birds. My favorite was the Vermillion Flycatcher whose bright red feathers glowed in the morning sun.

Nancy's favorite bird was the Mexican Sheartail, a hummingbird with a brilliant crimson throat, found only along the northern coast of the Yucatan Penninsula.

After three hours of birding on foot, Diego took us deep into the park in his little motorboat. Rio Lagartos was misnamed by the Spaniards who thought the waterway was a river (it’s an inlet from the Gulf of Mexico). The meandering expanse of saltwater weaves in and out of stretches of dense mangroves, providing a sanctuary for 333 bird species, marine turtles, fish, and crocodiles.

After an hour of leisurely birding, we reached our destination: the waters off the salt flats (shown above) where over 40,000 pink flamingos make their home, the largest colony in Mexico. The young flamingos are pale pink. The mature adults are orange from the concentrated brine shrimp in their diet. (My photo below doesn't do the color justice.)

Here's a photo from Diego's website that gets closer to the actual color. The flamingo is a beautiful bird in flight with the black edging on its wings.

On the return trip, we caught sight of two great blue herons in a mating dance, stretching their impressive necks skyward, fluffing their feathers, advancing and retreating through thigh-deep water, and being oh-so coy.

Diego Nuñez, shown below, is an excellent guide.

You can check out his website at http://riolagartosnaturetours.com/

Becky

Note: Photo of the vermillion flycatcher is from the usgs.gov website, photographer Greg Lasley.

Photo of the Mexican Sheartail is by Diego Nunez. Photo of flamingos in flight from his websit, taken by Jim Legault.

Pink Surprise

2011-01-29T14:15:00.000-08:00

When the north wind blows over Isla Mujeres, Nancy & I often take a morning walk around Salina Grande, a brackish lake on the less windy south part of the island. Occasionally a roseate spoonbill appears there, running its large beak through the scummy water for a tasty breakfast.

Last year, only once did we spot its unmistakable pink feathers and long spatulate bill, like a huge gray tongue depressor with an enlarged end. Spoonbills feed by immersing their beak in water and swinging their head back and forth, snapping up small fish and crustaceans.

Normally roseate spoonbills like to be in a group (called a bowl). We tend to see only solitary spoonbills on Isla—maybe it’s the same one year after year. We spotted one when Nancy happened to have our camera in her pocket and was able to photograph this beautiful bird.

Becky

Wearing Flippers to a Museum

2011-01-29T13:48:00.000-08:00

Whoever heard of wearing flippers to a museum?

Nancy and I did just that recently when we visited The Silent Evolution, a marine “museum” in the turquoise waters off of Isla Mujeres. Created by sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, a British-Guyanese scuba diving instructor, this recent marine installation of life-size human sculptures is an eerie presence next to Manchones Reef, a swatch of ancient coral near Isla Mujeres (where Nancy and I spend several weeks each winter).

The 400 sculptures will become an artificial reef where coral and fish can thrive, relieving some of the tourist pressures on natural reefs in Cancun Marine Park, which draws over 750,000 visitors a year.

The Silent Evolution is a place where human intervention can renew and sustain nature in an aesthetically pleasing way. No rusty sunken barge containing toxic substances. This artificial reef is intentional and beautiful, the statues made from materials that will promote coral life.

As we snorkeled over the 420-square-meter installation, the silence and the human forms reminded me of the incredible archeological find at Xian, China, with hundreds of terracotta soldiers in formation, everyone a distinct individual. But here the Mexicans who were used for casting were ordinary people, not soldiers. They include a butcher, farmer, clerk, nun, nursing mother, children—just regular folks who could be milling around a town square that happens to be 30 feet underwater.

Although installation of “The Silent Evolution” was completed only this past November, fish are already swimming about, sea stars are finding anchors, and vegetation is sprouting from a cheek here and a hand there. Mexican marine and art agencies are finding a new way to promote life, to regenerate nature, and to bring pleasure to others.

For more information, check out the website The Silent Evolution. This museum is a must see, and one that will impress even kids.

Becky

[Note: Photographs used with permission of Jason deCaires Taylor. Check the above website for more pictures.

The Walls of MayaLand

2011-01-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

“The Maya of popular history and legend didn’t disappear; they just stopped making big buildings,” says Martin Prechtel in his book Secrets of the Talking Jaguar about his fifteen years living in a Mayan village. I can actually see the imprint of prehistoric sea flora and fauna in the towering Mayan pyramids on the mainland and in the limestone walls we pass on our morning walks on Isla Mujeres.

At Luum Ayni (see previous entry) we saw Mayan men breaking boulders they had wrenched from the farmland. Owner Lisa Hernandez told us she marvels as these short workers tote rocks most men (including her husband, as Cesar himself agreed) couldn’t budge. The knack for handling limestone is deep in the culture memory, and these modern Maya know just where to land the sledgehammer to shatter the rock into the correct size for the Luum Ayni guest rooms they are building.

The skills of their ancestors are on display at Chichen Itzá, the most impressive Mayan ruins in the Yucatan Peninsula. The immense El Castillo Pyramid towers over the site, each piece of limestone in the four sets of wide stairways cemented into its proper spot. There are 364 steps plus the crowning platform, one for each day of the calendar year. At spring and fall equinoxes, thousands of people gather to witness the shadow of Kukulkán, the beautiful, powerful Mayan snake god, slither down these steps to bless the fertile earth.

At the base of this ancient pyramid, excavation continues, unearthing more beautiful stone work.

Nearby is a temple with huge jaguars and eagles carved into the rock. Upon closer examination, we see the eagles poised to devour human hearts. At other sites around the Yucatan, the ancient temples were disassembled by the Maya under the lash of the Spanish conquistadors and then re-assembled into Christian churches, sometimes right on top of the sacred ruins.

Now instead of temples or churches, Yucatan limestone is used in hotel and bank facades, in walls and houses. Here on Isla we see walls built in the old Mayan way, stones fitted into place with mortar, sometimes with shells or small stones or even paint as decoration.

On the eastern seaboard, a huge wall of rocks has been laid in place to cushion the huge waves that slam into the island during storms.

All of these walls are extremely labor-intensive in their creation, something that has not changed for ages.

A Mayan Dream

2011-01-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

It’s not often that one can witness the opening sequence of a dream, but Nancy and I had that opportunity when we visited Luum Ayni (pronounced Lume Ay-nee), a combination of Mayan and Quechuan (indigenous Peruvian) terms for Tierra de la Armonia, "Land of Harmony."

For several years, Austrian-born yoga therapist Lisa Hernández and her Swiss-Peruvian designer husband César Hernandez, owned Elements of the Island, a restaurant and yoga studio here on Isla Mujeres. Nancy and I often attended Lisa’s yoga classes in the big open-air palapa above the little restaurant. Back in Minneapolis, we practice to her yoga DVD 2-3 times a week, transported back to the Caribbean beach.

Three years ago, Lisa and César bought 400 undeveloped acres of jungle in the Yucatan Peninsula, started attending workshops in agriculture, and studied with a traditional Mayan medicine man. Last year, they left their successful business to follow their dream—living amidst the Maya and operating a farm that honors the ancient traditions of Mayan agriculture while employing cutting edge sustainable permaculture practices.

Three months ago, Lisa and César bought a small cattle farm near the colonial city of Valladolid, two hours west of Cancun but just up the road from their own land. The farm already has the infrastructure for their dream (wells, electricity, buildings, and mature fruit trees), shaving off seven years of work.

They are now renovating the existing house, replacing the thatched palapa with a roof that will support solar panels. Next month Lisa and César will leave their house in the nearby village, Chichimilá, where they have been trying out eco-technologies such as a composting toilet, greywater system, and rainwater collection. Their experimental garden of nearly 100 plants and herbs is a little nursery and seed bank for the plants they want to grow on the ranch.

Next to the huge, deep swimming pool, which will double as a reservoir for irrigation during the long dry season, Lisa and César are building two guest rooms. A concrete pig barn is destined to be guest quarters, and the cattle barn will be transformed into a classroom and yoga studio. They use local and recycled material as much as possible. Eventually, through solar and wind power, Luum Ayni will be totally energy self-sufficient.

Meanwhile, their tierra armonia is providing avocados, limes, mangos, oranges, papayas, bananas, and herbs. Much of the current water-hungry lawn will be planted in practical crops and medicinal plants. They will avoid monoculture, letting the mix of plants nurture and protect each other. This approach resembles the Costa Rican biodynamic farm we fell in love with two years ago (See our Luna Nueva blog post.)

Lisa and César are hard workers and will accomplish much in the coming year. Their appreciation of Mayan culture is palpable, and their vision of incorporating that ancient wisdom into their modern dream is inspiring. We wish them the best!

Becky

Mexican Maintenance

2010-11-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

Today Nancy & I walked for an hour along the sea wall in Campeche and after a bowl of my homemade granola, set off on a great day of travel. The 200 miles from Campeche to Valladolid took only four hours on a 4-lane divided highway. The two military checkpoints mainly involved inspecting our cooler!

For the past week, we’ve been discovering water in the trunk and on the floor of the car. This morning we finally discovered the source—a small gap in the rear window seal. A gardener at the hotel happened to have a tube of silicone handy, so he squeezed a bead into the gap. Now we just need to pull out the back seat and dry all the carpeting and padding!

This afternoon, after checking into a quaint Valladolid hotel, we got an oil change and new filter. Not exactly Rapid Oil, but the service in the open air shop was fast and friendly. While Nancy was chatting with Martin, the 70-year old proprietor, she learned that his dentist daughter's office was next door. So Nancy went in and introduced herself to la doctora, who happened to have an opening right then. (In Mexico, as in Costa Rica, dentists clean patients’ teeth themselves. Our Costa Rican dentist once said she doesn’t understand why dentists in the United States delegate such an important procedure to people with less training.) Zip, zap car and teeth were taken care of! The father charged $32, his daughter $39.

We love being back in the Yucatan. Even the air feels welcoming. Tomorrow we drive to Cancun and ride the car ferry to Isla Mujeres. This will complete the first part of our 3-month Mexican adventure.

Becky

Palenque Plus

2010-11-21T19:00:00.000-08:00

Our driving adventure from Minneapolis to Cancun/Isla Mujeres for the last eleven days has been challenging but fun. We’ve enjoyed the beautiful and diverse countryside along the Gulf of Mexico south of Brownsville, Texas, where we crossed the border. Two days ago, when we reached the gorgeous cloud forests of Chiapas, the state bordering on Guatemala, we thought we were back in Costa Rica. However, the Chiapas roads, while much better than Costa Rican highways, have more frequent speed bumps, road construction, and even blockades by indigenous people. Yesterday we spent 8 hours driving the 122 miles between San Cristobal and Palenque. At one blockade, we waited in line with hundreds of vehicles before paying $5 for the campesinos to let us through.

We have to drive especially carefully because our 1996 Buick is so low to the ground that going over speed bumps has scraped the exhaust system many a time. We are also wary of local police who will stop gringas on any pretence. Twice, despite not agreeing that we had exceeded the speed limit or gone through a red light, we took the officer of the law’s advice and paid “a reduced fine” on the spot.

This evening Nancy and I are in the modern town of Palenque, back from touring the awesome Mayan ruins of the same name. Ancient Palenque had its golden age from 600-800 C.E. when many of its main structures were built. It boasted a population of 8,000 or four people per square meter!

Palenque is the only place in the Americas where a sarcophagus has been discovered. The small burial chamber in the Queen’s pyramid and her plain stone box with a lid look amazingly like ones I have seen in Egypt. Like the Egyptians, the Mayans trace their history way back—the first date recorded on many inscriptions corresponds to 3114 B.C.E. in our calendar. That date starts a cycle that will end December 21, 2012. (BTW, the 32nd century B.C. E. was quite eventful. It marks the start of the first Egyptian dynasty and the building of Stonehenge in Great Britain and Newgrange in Ireland.)

The connections to Egypt seem to be beyond coincidence. In addition to pyramids of the same proportions and sarcophagi, the Mayan knowledge of astronomy was on par with the ancient Egyptians. Our guide told us that Palenque’s three main buildings, including the Queen’s pyramid and the pyramid of Pakal, Palenque’s greatest ruler, are aligned with Orion’s belt, just as the pyramids at Giza are. NASA measurements have proven that the coordinates correspond perfectly to the constellation. Every important building at Palenque was constructed with equinoxes, solstices, or some other astronomical function in mind.

Pakal (603-683 C.E.) oversaw the building of his own monumental pyramid tomb. His ornately carved sarcophagus, only discovered in 1952, rests in the nearby modern museum. It is impressive, larger than King Tut’s sarcophagus. The top alone would cover two side-by-side king-sized mattresses. It’s miraculous that such a huge ornately-carved slab of stone could survive almost 14 centuries without cracking.

Palenque is a technological marvel. A large stone-lined aqueduct runs through the city, providing the pressurized water piped into the palace for baths, saunas, and a sanitation system. (See Nancy sitting on a stone Mayan toilet, sewage pipe directly underneath.)

Despite Palenque’s many 7th century comforts, Nancy and I are grateful for the Best Western hotel, where we enjoyed guacamole and chips as the full moon rose behind the royal palms surrounding the swimming pool.

Tomorrow we round the hook of southern Mexico and head north to Campeche as our destination for the night. We are looking forward to being in the Yucatan, where the roads are straight and the seafood exquisite.

Hasta luego!

Becky

Adios, Vista Esmeralda!

2010-08-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

On August 6, Nancy & I sold our house in Costa Rica. With all the documents signed and stamped a dozen times, we passed our mountain retreat outside of San Ramon to three Costa Rican sisters.

We bought the lot and partially built house in 2003 when Nancy took Minnesota community college students down for a Spanish immersion semester. I returned in June of that year to shoo the local horses out of the building and restart construction. (The original owners had run into financial difficulties and needed to sell.)

In January, 2004, the first year of Nancy's phased retirement, we returned to Costa Rica where our "completed" house awaited us. My body knew there was trouble ahead because the night before we boarded the plane I broke out in hives for the second time in my life (the first being when I was a kid and Mom sprayed perfume on me).

We spent the next four months dealing with builders, repairmen, and craftsmen, trying to get the house finished...or at least the plumbing to work correctly. I cleaned 120 square meters of tile on my hands and knees, using acid to remove grout, paint, and crud because the workers never bothered to put down tarps when they worked.

Nancy got quite proficient at speaking rural Spanish and using words such as wrench, O-ring, faucet, leak.

God, we worked hard. But then, mid-afternoon, we'd take a break on the veranda, swaying in hammocks, breathing in the fresh mountain air, and looking over coffee and sugar fields to the volcanoes in the distance. Ahhh, we'd landed in paradise!

We still own the lot just below the house. It's a little piece of security, I guess, a bit of holding onto possibilities. When we stayed a few days with our friends Joanna and Jose up the hill, the glorious mornings, the fabulous birds, the fecundity of soil, and the spirit of a community built at the edge of a cloud forest, tempted us to think...hmmm...someday...

But for now, we say adios, Vista Esmeralda. Thanks for wonderful memories and (now) funny stories!

Becky

Ways to Shine: A Lesson from Birds

2010-08-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

"Birds attract each other in two ways," Gary our local Costa Rican guide says. "Colorful birds attract by their beauty. Plain birds attract by their singing."

Nancy, Gary, & I are hiking along the coast toward Costa Rica's huge Corcovado National Park (what National Geographic has called "the most biologically intense place on Earth") when we spot scarlet macaws in the tall palm trees fringing the beach. Their harsh squawks are unmistakable, like cranky couples squabbling with each other. But the beauty of these tropical parrots is other-worldly. We stand enraptured by the bright blues, reds, yellows and whites.

Then there are “LLBs,” the little brown birds who trill their hearts out. One such bird, the riverside wren, graces our days with liquid tunes floating through the tropical forest. And each spring the clay colored robin, as undistinguished in appearance as its name, burbles the graceful music that harkens the arrival of the rainy season.

The guide's words resonate with me. I’m neither colorful nor tuneful, but my soul finds ways to shine, through my work, my words, my dancing, and my rich, loving relationships. Unlike birds, programmed for either colorful feathers or attractive song, we humans have many ways to be gifted--physical beauty, talents, intelligence, wit, competence, and compassion, to name a few. May we all shine, sing, and express our personal gifts freely and fearlessly, like the flamboyant macaw and the humble wren.

Becky

Luna Lodge in the Osa Peninsula

2010-08-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

The Osa Peninsula in the southwestern corner of Costa Rica, is home to Corcovado National Park, which contains the largest primary rainforest on the Pacific Coast. Visiting this remote park has been a dream of Nancy and mine for years. Five years ago, we got close, but the arduous hike in searing temperatures into the roadless park kept us at a nearby tent camp accessible by car.

Corcovado still is not easy to get to. We took a 12-seat propeller plane from San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, one hour southwest to the village of Puerto Jimenez. The plane bumped to a stop at a dirt road after taxiing past the town cemetery. "Convenient," our friend Joanna Marsh quipped.

Luna Lodge, where Nancy, Joanna, and I stayed for 4 nights, is at the end of a massively pot-holed road where 13 bridgeless river-crossing require a high-clearance vehicle and courage. The ride from Puerto Jimenez to the lodge would have taken two hours, without the stops to see monkey troupes crossing the road and a flock of chestnut-mandibled toucans.

All-inclusive Luna Lodge provided three satisfying meals a day, mostly organic. Situated about a mile from the coast, it is high enough to be out of the oppressive heat of the shore. The owner, Lana Wedmore, is the gracious proprietor from Colorado whose vision and determination have created a Shangri-La-like retreat in the jungle. Now she is spearheading the White Hawk Project in hopes of raising funds to purchase a large tract of virgin forest between Luna Lodge and Corcovado National Park to protect it from unbridled development.

We loved the quiet lodge, where all we heard were birds, frogs, and falling rain. The open-air yoga studio, where Lana offers classes twice a day, is perched high on the hillside, surrounded by forest with a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean deep in the background. No closing of eyes during that session. My eyes were feasting on nature.

Becky

Luna Lodge cabin and howler monkey photos by Joanna Marsh.

Below, Nancy & Becky doing yoga at Luna Lodge overlooking the misty jungle of the Osa Peninsula.

Photo by Klea Brewton-Fitzgerald

Jane Lynch weds her life partner

2010-07-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

One of our favorite actors, Jane Lynch, recently married her life partner, Lara Embry, a clinical psychologist. Becky and I first discovered Lynch's comic genius in the Christopher Guest film Best in Show (2000). Our appreciation grew with her performance as Julia Child's sister in Julia & Julia, and during the four seasons of The L Word, where she played a tough-as-nails, sexy lawyer. More recently we've howled at the outrageous cheerleading coach Lynch plays to perfection on Glee.

Becky and I wish Jane (49) and Lara (41) much happiness as a couple as a moms to Lara's eight-year-old daughter Haden. For the full New York Times story, click here.

Crash Course

2010-06-03T16:51:00.001-07:00

Is The United States on a crash course? According to Dr. Chris Martenson, red lights are flashing all over the dashboard, yet we keep driving down the freeway instead of pulling over and rethinking our trip, our speed, and our gas-burning vehicle.

Yesterday Nancy and I attended a presentation at the Minnesota History Society co-sponsored by the Legislative Committee on the Environment and the U of M Institute on the Environment. Martenson painted an alarming picture of the economy, energy, and environment.

Given the exponential growth of population and need for energy we humans are in a fix. He believes that massive changes are ahead of us in the next decade or two as we face economic upheaval, energy demands that cannot be met with fossil fuel, and dwindling resources that require ever more expense to extract fewer and fewer minerals from the earth.

"It's not a problem," he says, "it's a predicament." Problems have solutions, predicaments require management. But instead of tackling the challenges--for example, putting money into a Manhattan-type project to come up with an energy/economic system that can replace the mess we have now, the U.S. government continues on the path toward insolvency.

Bottom line, we need to shift our paradigm of what constitutes a fulfilling life. We need to use less energy, fewer resources, and shrink the economy. (Europeans use half the energy per capita that Americans do and still have a satisfying lifestyle.) We need government to start dealing with the hard problems. We cannot sustain an economic system based on consumerism, debt, and continual growth.

Martenson offers a free three-hour course on his website (www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse). Nancy and I were riveted by his twenty short, clear, engaging chapters. I encourage you to check it out and share The Crash Course with others who would like to know what they can do about the probability that the next twenty years will be nothing like the last twenty years.

Becky

Beer from the Brau Brothers

2010-06-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

Our favorite brewery is located in Lucan (pronounced LOO-CAN), Minnesota, population 220, a forty minute drive from Fort Ridgely State Park where Nancy and I camped last weekend.

Brau Brothers occupies a large red utilitarian shed at the edge of town. Outside is a pond used to drip-irrigate the nearby 600 hops, each plant requiring 6 gallons of water a day. A hops plant can grow up to 12 inches daily, curling up a rope in a counter-clockwise direction as it follows the sun's movement across the open prairie sky. Adjacent to the hops yard is a barley field. While it's fun to think that the Braus raises their own beer ingredients, these fields provide a miniscule percentage of their brewing requirements. They do get most of their grain locally, however, from a distributor in Kasota, near Mankato.

Dale Brau, the father of the three brothers who run the brewery, showed us around and gave us generous samples of ice cold beer. (Being the designated driver, I switched to Schell's 1919 Root Beer after the first round--how classy to offer premium root beer on tap!)

The brothers, Trevor, Dustin, and Brady, started the company in 2006. They bought repossessed brewing equipment in Virginia and shipped it to Minnesota on three semi-trailers. The beautiful copper vats line one wall of the building.

Nancy and I had our first taste of Brau Brother's Cream Stout one night at the Guthrie Theatre a couple of years ago. We immediately loved its rich, smooth depth --and have sought it out in local liquor stores every since. We tasted the Ring Neck Braun Ale and wow, does that slide down easily! For me, it's a toss up between the Cream Stout and Ring Neck. Both are fabulous.

For the first time the company is offering a light beer to answer demand. We don't care for light beer, and this one met our expectations--thin. But if forced to drink a light, I'd choose Old No. 56, named after Dale's newly acquired fire engine made by Forstner Fire Apparatus of Madelia--our home town! If we didn't already appreciate Brau Brothers, we would now with a little fire truck from Madelia scheduled to start pumping samples of their micro brew at the Lucan BrauFest street dance next weekend.

A Nine-Holer at Fort Ridgely

2010-05-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

We continued our yearly exploration of Minnesota state parks at Fort Ridgely, where we tried out our new tent. Although this park is only 100 miles southwest of Minneapolis and was less than an hour from Madelia the whole time we were growing up, neither Nancy nor I had ever been there. What a gem!

Situated on 478 acres of rolling hills on the north bluff of the Minnesota River Valley, Fort Ridgely is home to a crucial part of state history. Here the Dakota Sioux in 1862 rose up to fight the white men who were treating them so abominably. The fort became a retreat for hundreds of settlers as the small garrison, led by a 19-year-old lieutenant, fought off four hundred Dakota. It was this uprising that resulted in the Sioux being banished from the state.

Walking at sunset around the historic area that contains the foundation of the barracks and reading the descriptive plaques explaining what happened during the 3-day battle, Nancy and I were struck by the beauty and sacredness of the wide open spaces, the wooded ravines, and the reddening sky. It seemed hard to believe that as the Dakota were engaged in a struggle for their culture here in Minnesota, the United States struggled for its survival in the Civil War.

The commissary is the only military building left standing--its strong granite walls now houses a museum run by the Minnesota Historical Society, featuring an 18-minute video that is well worth the watch. Several picnic shelters and bathrooms were built by the CCC in the 1930s.

What makes this former military site doubly remarkable is that it is now wrapped by a golf course! Nancy and I played a round, although Nancy quit after three shots because her sprained thumb hurt too much to play, but she made a good caddy for me. The 1927 nine-hole par-35 course was renovated last year, and it is a challenging beauty. The hills are so steep that from the first tee, you descend 33 stone stairs to the fairway. There are plenty of woods, ponds, and high prairie grass in which to lose balls, but with few players and no carts , the course is leisurely. In fact, at the third tee, we lounged for several minutes under the oak canopy, enjoying the big blue sky, fresh breeze, and gorgeous view.

Tick season had passed, and mosquitoes were few, but we witnessed an infestation of tent caterpillars. They dropped from the trees with a splat onto our tent, table, and toes and crawled around. If we shifted position in our camp chairs, we had to make sure we didn't squash one.

Ridgely Creek runs along the campground, gurgling at night and providing a convenient place for kids to take a dip. There are miles of hiking trails and horse trails. Near the oak-shaded picnic area, a historic cemetery holds the remains of settlers and the soldiers from the Dakota uprising.

Fort Ridgely State Park is a winner. We want to return again and again!

Ellen DeGeneres and Our Wives

2009-11-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

My sister Pat keeps us up-to-date on the Ellen DeGeneres show. Last month she told us that Ellen was rapping about her “wife name Portia,” and the audience cheered. This week, she saw Ellen and Portia on Oprah in their first interview as a married couple.

Becky and I watched a wonderful You Tube clip of that interview. Oprah’s pride in the couple, Ellen and Portia’s palpable joy with each other, and all three of them so comfortably saying “wife” helped dispel the painful memories of the snickering I heard when lesbians began using that term a few years ago.

After our wedding, in September 2008, Becky and I started introducing each other as spouse rather than partner. But watching Ellen rap and seeing Oprah celebrate this legally married couple, Becky and I have begun calling each other wife. It feels wonderful. I wonder how much of other people’s discomfort with the term was a reflection of my own.

For those of you who missed hearing about our marriage at San Francisco City Hall, here are photos of me and my new . . . yes, wife!

Nancy

(P.S. Thanks for Becky's sister Vicki Bohan for taking these pictures, ensuring that we had a visual record of this momentous event in our fifteen-year relationship.)

The Unknown Suffragist, Part 2

2009-09-02T06:02:00.001-07:00

Sally Roesch Wagner, the executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (http://www.blogger.com/www.Matilda%20JoslynGage.org) said in her lecture at the Esoteric Quest for Inner America conference that Gage, the 19th Century feminist and radical thinker, developed an intimate relationship with the Native peoples in Upstate New York. Gage was even adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) nation.

Gage saw that it was the Haudenosaunee women who chose the chiefs. A man was automatically disqualified if he had committed murder or theft, or if he had abused a woman. The women made sure that the tribal chief had the best interests of their community at heart, rather than self-aggrandizement and power.

The women of the early feminist movement could see with their own eyes that unlike themselves, who had no status and who were considered property rather than persons, tribal women enjoyed respect and power. Gage believed that the Native people embodied the principles needed to transform society from one that oppressed women to one that was egalitarian, fair, and free.

In fact, many 19th century reforms were inspired by the Iroquois. Dress reform was taken from the Oneida women, who wore leggings. Food reform was inspired by the fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains in the diet of the Iroquois, who lived much longer than their white counterparts. Birthing reform was based on Indian women who had a healthy diet and exercised and who did not labor under the notion that the pain of childbirth was a deserved punishment due to Eve’s transgression.

Sally Wagner commented that even the holistic medical movement reflects Native American values. Conventional Western medicine, she noted, is based on religious principles—surgery and drugs “exorcise” the demon of disease. The Native Americans believe that the body is basically healthy and that effective medicine naturally supports the body and soul to regain health.

Wagner’s inspiring lecture made clear that the intersection of religious doctrine and political power is deadly. It crushes independent thought and democratic principles, while sanctifying the oppression of women and other “minorities.” The esoteric philosophies so popular during the mid-1800s attempted to transcend religious dogmas. In the end, the egalitarian principles of the Iroquois Nations were critical to the radical thinkers, feminists, and spiritual nonconformists of what came to be known as the American Renaissance.

Becky

The Unknown Feminist, Part 1

2009-09-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

Three women were at the heart of the women’s suffrage movement in the mid-1800s: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Who the heck is M. J. Gage? Well, without her The Wizard of Oz might never have been published. But more on that later.

At the conference Nancy & I attended last week in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York (An Esoteric Quest for Inner America: Exploring the History and Renewal of the American Soul (http://www.blogger.com/www.EsotericQuest.org), we heard a powerful lecture by Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D., on the early feminist movement, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) in particular.

Both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage believed that religious doctrine is the basis of women’s subjugation. The Sin of Woman is the foundation of Christianity: If Eve had not laid lips on that apple there wouldn’t have been a need for a savior. America’s Founding Fathers adopted the Blackstone doctrine based on the Church of England canon law, which stated that a woman who marries loses her personhood and becomes property of the husband, giving divine sanction to men’s oppression of women.

Gage’s anti-religious radicalism, and that of the early suffragist movement, has been white-washed by historians who focus only on the work for voting rights. Later Gage broke with the mainstream women’s rights movement over the issue of religion. Her call for the dismantling of the Christian church is still radical—you do not hear many contemporary American academic or public figures talking about the need to do away with religion.

Gage’s more popular contribution to our culture was through her son-in-law L. Frank Baum. She encouraged him to publish his Oz chronicle. A slice of that story has become famous, but in the 14-book series, his vision of a matriarchal society based on social justice came directly from his mother-in-law.

Gage’s own book, Women, Church, and State (1893), was banned by the U.S. government. An analysis of the rise of patriarchy (including sexual abuse by priests), it is a clarion call for freedom from religious dogma. The opening of her book salutes the Native Indian culture from which we still have much to learn. More about that in the next entry!

Becky

Message from a Clan Mother

2009-08-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

On Monday Nancy & I checked into the Menla Mountain Retreat and Conference Center nestled in the forested Catskill Mountains where every morning we see deer. We’re attending An Esoteric Quest for Inner America: Exploring the History and Renewal of the American Soul sponsored by the Open Center in New York City.

The conference opened with remarks from Freida Jacques, an Onondaga Iroquois clan mother. She told us about her people’s deep spirituality. Instead of worshipping, they give thanks to everything in creation. People spend a long time enumerating all that they are thankful for: the trees that provide shade, nuts and fruits, and syrup; the four-legged animals without which humans would be so lonely; the four winds—the south wind that brings warmth, the north wind that brings the cold so that the earth can sleep and renew itself, etc. They like to say “I am thankful for what I have; I have what I have.”

The Onondaga do not have casinos. A casino would mean:
· Having to sign legal papers
· Having to give up a chunk of land
· People gathering not in thanksgiving, but in greed, the “antithesis of contentment”

When the colonists landed in America, they found flourishing societies where women had rights and power. The clan mothers selected the chief. Since clan members felt responsible for each other and shared everything, they could do without all the laws the colonist brought with them from Europe.

Freida Jacques expressed alarm at the level of violence in our culture. Her clan does not allow children to play games (especially video games) that involve killing anything, whether human or monster. They believe that killing in play is unhealthy, instills a lack of respect for life, and models unsafe behavior.

When the founders of the United States were formulating our government , they borrowed concepts from the Iroquois Nation, including the separation of powers and a republican form of representation modeled on individual tribal governance (state government) and councils comprised of a union of the tribes (federal government.) Ben Franklin, who was familiar with the Iroquois, wrote in 1770 that no “civilized” person who had lived with the “savages” could “afterwards bear to live in our societies” (Franklin Papers, vol. 17, p. 381).

Freida Jacques was one of several presenters who acknowledged the deep debt owed to the Native Peoples for the wisdom embodied in this country’s founding documents. Her talk, at least for Nancy and me, grounded the entire conference.

Button Bay Memories

2009-08-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

When I was 16, I was chosen to attend the third International Senior Girl Scout Roundup. Ten thousand teen-aged girls from every state and many other countries camped from July 27 to August 3, 1962, at Button Bay State Park on the shores of Vermont’s Lake Champlain. The requirements were stiff and the competition fierce for this tri-annual cream of the crop campout showcasing the best of Girl Scouting.

With seven other lucky girls representing the Peace Pipe Council of southwest Minnesota, I boarded the train in St. Paul for the 2-day trip to Burlington, VT. We wore our green dress uniforms and white gloves. Our gear was marked with the number on the official dog tag around our neck so that any lost items could be returned to their owners. (I occasionally run across a beach towel on which I had inked 4M1032, more indelibly imprinted in my memory than my social security number or any address I’ve had since.) We each carried hundreds of little gifts showing facets of our home town or culture, items we had made ourselves to exchange with Girl Scouts and Girl Guides from around the world in “potlatch” ceremonies.

Thousands of army tents pitched in a huge grassy field housed and fed the girls, our troop leaders, and the many volunteers who ran this temporary city. I threw myself into the Roundup, attending as many activities as I could, and meeting hundreds of fabulous girls. I walked to the amphitheater in my beloved camp uniform – sleek forest-green shorts, a crisp white blouse, green Girl Scout socks, and my straw Roundup hat. I sat on the grassy slope overlooking Lake Champlain for the opening ceremony, as moving as any Olympics opening ceremony. Imagine singing “Make New Friends” in harmony with 10,000 voices, the first part beginning about 2 blocks away, with each part coming closer until it was your turn.

We sang all week. One afternoon at the amphitheater, I thrilled to Basque Girl Guides in brilliant native costumes performing complicated Basque dances. I was from a rural village. If you had given me a map of Spain before that day, I couldn’t have pointed to Basque country.

I stayed up late around campfires, singing the Girl Scout songs we all knew and making many new friends. I wanted the week to last forever. I vowed to attend the next roundup as a staff member so I could experience the magic again. (I did, in 1965, in Farragut, Idaho.)

This week, Becky I visited Button Bay State Park. We had a picnic and walked a trail through the forest to Lake Champlain. It was even more beautiful than I remembered. A park ranger pointed out a tall white pine tree that the Girl Scouts had planted in the meadow 47 years ago. Suddenly I remembered the tree-planting ceremony. He suggested we look for a commemorative plaque at its base.

There it was, a testament to the creative genius of an organization that, although it called off the huge, expensive Roundups after Idaho, continues to support and empower girls all over the globe.

(To learn about other Roundups and inspiring Girl Scout experiences, you can read my book On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experiences, available from on-line book dealers or directly from me.)

Nancy

Stowed Away!

2009-08-23T18:53:00.000-07:00

The annual Manahan reunion has flown by, the seven days filled with fun and relaxation. At the checkout at the end of our stay, several people rated it an A+. Winding Brook Lodge was perfect. This rambling 1940s resort has 15 bedrooms and a large living room where we all could gather. Secluded nooks invited playing cards, putting together a puzzle, or reading. The huge well-stocked kitchen, with four sinks and a six-burner stove, made cooking for 42 almost easy, and the dining room seated us all. But the crowning jewel was the swimming pool—the 14 children practically lived in it, and the adults loved both swimming and sitting around the edge watching the kids frolic.

Nancy and I learned to love letterboxing—an outdoor hunt for a hidden box with a notebook and rubber stamp inside. It’s a great way to get kids outside and practicing navigational skills. Our nieces copied the directions for the searches from websites such as http://www.letterboxing.org/. Pictured above is a find of a red fox stamp off the 5-mile paved Stowe Recreation Path.

We took several hikes along this beautiful biking/walking path sans letterboxing, and also an hour’s stroll through Wiessner Woods, an 80-acre preserve just a half mile from our Lodge. The trails wound through fragrant white pine, and the path was littered with needles, making our footfalls soft and silent. At the base of one pine tree, a gnome surprised us.

One afternoon Nancy and I went to the nearby Ben & Jerry's plant. We took the tour for $3.00, saw an inspirational documentary about the visionary ice cream makers, and sampled a flavor released last September 21 on the 39th anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s legendary “Bed-In for Peace” event. Imagine Whirled Peace features a sweet cream base with swirls of caramel plus toffee bits and chocolate peace signs. It’s delicious. Ben & Jerry's (now owned by Unilever but with social and environmental responsibility as part of its mission) donates a portion of the proceeds to Peace One Day. Way cool.

We are impressed with Vermont! The forested hills and mountains remind me of the Black Forest, and I can see why Maria Von Trapp’s family settled near Stowe. The Trapp Family Lodge (pictured left) is a couple of miles up the hill from Winding Brook. It's a mini-version of the Austrian Alps. Nancy & I occasionally couldn’t help but break into a tune from “The Sound of Music.”

Reunions are an unparalleled precious time to reconnect and tighten the bonds of family. This week was manna for the Manahans . . . and for me.

Becky

On to Vermont!

2009-08-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

After spending a couple of weeks at home in Minneaapolis, Nancy and I again took to the road. This time the high road . . . to Vermont via Canada. The drive across northern Wisconsin and southern Canada was more beautiful than we had expected, with mile after mile of dense pine and fir forests. We lunched at wooded rest stops beside pristine lakes and rivers.

After a night in Escanaba, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we crossed an enormous bridge at Sault St. Marie which spans the rapids of St. Mary’s River connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron. Picnicking in a park beside the water, we raised a root beer in honor of our first hour as a legally married couple since our California honeymoon last September. The whole wonderful country of Canada recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Our second night was in Sudbury, Ontario, an old copper mining town on a picturesque island-studded lake. The closure of the mines has hit Sudbury hard, and that evening we walked through a run-down neighborhood past a homeless shelter to Bell Park, pictured above.

The third night we stayed with our friend from Costa Rica, Ghislaine Yergeau, and her husband, Bill. They live in French-speaking Gatineau, Québec, just across the river from English-speaking Ottawa. Ghislaine doesn’t lock her car, and didn’t hesitate to take us for a 9 pm walk on a paved path along the Ottawa River.

On our way through Ottawa the next morning, we walked around Parliament Hill, marveling at the huge stone copper-roofed government palaces. We were impressed by how gorgeous and green Canada’s capital city is.

Two and a half hours east of Ottawa, we lunched in Montréal’s old quarter, enjoying the narrow cobblestone streets and quaint shops. An example of an interesting restaurant exterior is pictured below. Nancy struck up a conversation with a bicyclist resting beside the St. Lawrence Seaway only to discover, when the woman answered in rapid French, that our English, Spanish, and high school French might not be that useful in Québec.

Onward to Stowe, Vermont for the annual week-long Manahan family reunion. This time the border crossing was quick and easy. (We could have taken the fresh Ontario peaches we left with Ghislaine.) We snaked up winding roads through Smuggler’s Notch, a pass in the Green Mountains where American slaves escaped to Canada and decades later, Prohibition bootleg liquor flowed into Vermont from Canada. At Winding Brook Lodge, nestled in the mountains, we met up with 40 of Nancy’s nearest and dearest family members. After a day of this many Manahans, I’m going to take a nap!

Becky

Voyageurs National Park

2009-08-12T08:27:00.001-07:00

The only national park in Minnesota (and one of the few in the whole Midwest) is Voyageurs National Park on Kabetogama (pronounced Cab-ah-TOE-gah-mah) Lake on the Ontario, Canada border. It is part of the waterway that the 18th and 19th-century fur traders used. These French-Canadian voyageurs paddled 300-pound birch bark canoes 2000-3000 miles to fetch the beaver pelts so popular for European men’s hats that the beaver came close to extinction.

Voyageurs is a gorgeous wilderness, not as busy as the popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area on its southeastern flank. It was created in 1975 and abuts two Minnesota state forests where camping and trails are available. Voyageurs National Park’s campsites are accessible only by boat. Same with the trails, except for a small one by the visitor center, overlooking Kabetogama Lake.

We thought we might stay near Voyageurs, but the lodging was outside our budget--not surprising for a resort area. So we headed south and stayed at a mom & pop motel in Orr, MN. We heated our last hot dogs and beans in the lobby microwave, cracked open a Summit Great Northern Porter from our cooler, and enjoyed a picnic in our room. Perhaps not as tasty as our campfire meals, but we were clean, dry, and warm. Ahhhh! What a sweet end to our exploration of Minnesota's northwestern corner.

Franz Jevne State Park

2009-08-11T09:49:00.001-07:00

Coming off the disappointment of Zipple Bay State Park, Nancy and I screwed up our courage for a bonus stop at Franz Jevne State Park. It wasn't on our original itinerary, but we were so close we thought we should stop.

We drove through rainstorms to get to this small, unstaffed park on the beautiful Rainy River separating Minnesota from Canada. We circled the cold, empty campground, disheartened by the 18 wet, dark, cramped sites. As we filled our water bottles from a creaky hand pump, Nancy asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 how much I wanted to stay there--10 being we absolutely must stay.

"Oh, about a .5," I replied. "What about you?"

"Point 2," she grinned. "Let's go."

We tossed our raincoats in the back seat, left Franz Jevne, and headed for home...but we were side-tracked -- the subject of my next blog.

Zipple Bay State Park

2009-08-08T07:11:00.001-07:00

At last Nancy and I reached the park we had most looked forward to--Zipple Bay on Lake of the Woods, just 8 miles from Canada. Neither Nancy nor I had ever seen the huge lake that comprises the notch at the top of Minnesota, jutting into Manitoba. Lake of the Woods has 65,000 miles of shoreline (yes, sixty-five thousand!) and over 14,000 islands. It is an angler's paradise.

It was not our Garden of Eden, however. The campsites seemed neglected and inhospitable with long grass, scrubby vegetation, and fierce mosquitoes. There were clean outhouses in the campground, but the showers were at the entrance to the park, a long ways away. The lake was brownish-gray, too cold for swimming (though Nancy tried), and the beaches smelled like dead fish. We wound up staying only one night at the park that had been the original goal of the whole trip!

Hayes Lake State Park

2009-08-07T07:13:00.001-07:00

Hayes Lake, a tiny park we had never even heard of, was our favorite of the whole trip. What a gem! We had moved east from the prairie, through aspen-oak stands and into coniferous forests. For the first time we were in the northern Minnesota that's familiar to us--the tall red and white pines, and a lake that could be in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area . . . except that it was created by a dam on the Roseau River.

We stayed two nights under the pines, enjoying the quiet, meticulous campground. It was clear that the staff takes pride in their park. The large picnic area and sandy swimming beach are lovingly maintained.

On the morning of our last day, we woke to deep pink clouds--one of the most beautiful daybreaks we have ever seen, a magical way to end our stay at Hayes Lake.

Lake Bronson State Park

2009-08-06T14:24:00.001-07:00

Lake Bronson State Park is a little northeast of Old Mill State Park, just 20 miles from the Canadian border. The WPA created the lake on which the park is situated by damming the Two Rivers, a daunting task by in those days. Given the extreme weather and relentless mosquitoes, there was a high turnover of workers. How bad were the mosquitoes? Well, they couldn't figure out why so many horses were dying, so they autopsied them and discovered severe lung inflammation caused by inhaling so many mosquitoes.

The stone work of the WPA is really magnificent, especially the tower/fire lookout station. It’s the only dual-purpose tower in the state park system.

We loved our two nights at Lake Bronson. The huge campsites were widely-spaced, and the trails through prairies in full bloom and aspen-oak forests were well-maintained. With so few campers, it was peaceful reading or dozing in a hammock. One morning we rented a canoe for a leisurely paddle up the slow, winding river past beaver lodges and what looked like moose hoof-prints. We had the entire river to ourselves.

Old Mill State Park

2009-08-05T11:39:00.001-07:00

The first night of our camping trip to the northwest corner of Minnesota we stayed at Old Mill State Park, near the border with North Dakota. As Nancy and I sat by the campfire finishing our hot dogs, sprinkles started, and then rain blew in. The wet, cold, and wind kept us in the tent all night. But the next morning dawned clear, and we explored the park which contains both prairie and oak savannah. There's a lovely swimming hole created by the CCC in the late 1930s and a beautifully-crafted stone bath house.

The focal point of the park is, of course, the Old Mill itself. Lars Larson homesteaded the area in 1882 and built the grist mill, which became an important social hub in the Red River Valley. Hundreds of people used to gather for picnics there when they hauled their grain to be milled. Once a year the mill is started up and visitors can catch a glimpse of the way our hardy ancestors lived.

Eons ago this area was the lake bed of Lake Agassiz, which covered the entire state. The land now is amazingly flat and fertile. The fields of wheat and rape seed (canola) stretch to the horizon.

North Dakota? What Happened!

2009-07-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

Nancy and I are on a road trip camping at state parks in the northwest corner of Minnesota. So what are we doing in North Dakota, and why did we spend an afternoon at one of THEIR state parks???

Well, we set out Tuesday morning driving toward the upper left hand corner of MN 350 miles away. But the thunderstorms and unrelenting wind buffeted us for hours across the wide-open prairie of western MN--miserable weather in which to set up a tent, much less to sleep in one.

So we breached the border, scooted up I-29, and took shelter in the Guesthouse Hotel in downtown Grand Forks, about 60 miles from our intended destination of Old Mill State Park. When the rain let up we walked the park along the Red River of the North, crossed the bridge back into Minnesota, and bought hiking shorts at Cabella's Sporting Goods in East Grand Forks. As we walked back to the hotel the heavens opened up once again and we got soaked in a thunder and lightening storm.

We spent Wednesday afternoon at Turtle Lake State Park with a beautiful prairie in full bloom, marchlands, forests, and hordes of hungry mosquitos. Several park buildings were erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), part of FDR's New Deal that put hundreds of thousands of unemployed men to work building parks and other natural resource programs across the U.S.

A beautiful stone building now stands in tribute to the CCC. It is now a picnic shelter, but originally it served as a bath house where the public could rent bathing suits and swim in the Turtle River.

With steady winds from 25-30 mph and dark, threatening skies, we decided to spend a second night in Grand Forks. Today we set out for the Old Mill State Park , the first of four Minnesota parks we intend to visit. More rain is predicted for today, and the weekend looks cool but dry. On with the adventure...and our long-johns!!!

Amy and Al

2009-07-07T15:24:00.000-07:00

"Are you on your way to work in Al Franken's office?" a man at the adjacent gas pump asked me in Pennsylvania as he eyed my Al Franken bumper sticker.

"I wish!" I replied. “But we ARE going to visit Minnesota’s other senator.”

He was one of many people who commented on the Senate race in Minnesota during our recent East Coast trip. People seemed to take a keen interest in the unresolved election and in the unusual situation of Minnesota’s having only one senator in Washington, DC.

As of noon today, with the swearing in of Al Franken, Minnesota finally has two senators. Thanks to Amy Klobuchar for doing double duty while seemingly endless recounts and legal challenges ground slowly to their conclusion in the Minnesota Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling last week that Franken had won the election by 312 votes.

A few days after this exchange, Nancy and I visited Senator Klobuchar in her office in the Hart Senate Office Building. Every Thursday, she hosts a "Minnesota Morning" for constituents who are visiting the capital. We were among the 80-plus Minnesotans who showed up to sample pastries from the Iron Range (where Amy grew up) and kibbutz with our senator.

It was the first time I had heard Amy Klobuchar speak. I was so impressed! Her commitment to the causes I believe in (environment, sensible health care, education, agriculture, and alternative energy), her articulate command of the issues, and her down-home humor and friendliness knocked me over. Unlike so many politicians, Senator Klobuchar seems the real deal, authentic to the core.

Nancy and I gave her a personally inscribed copy of our book, Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond. Perhaps now that she’s not handling all of Minnesota’s requests for assistance with federal agencies, she’ll have some time for reading.
We hope that Senator Franken takes a page from his Minnesota colleague. If he works half as hard as the first woman our state has elected to the U.S. Senate, he will serve his constituents well.

And now, at last, I can take the Franken bumper sticker off my car!

Antietam National Battleground

2009-06-17T12:25:00.001-07:00

The dogwood was in full blossom at Antietam National Battlefield in late April when Nancy and I arrived at the site outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland. The serenity of the rolling landscape and the daffodils and tulips in full bloom made it hard to imagine that the bloodiest one-day battle of the American Civil War took place here on September 17, 1862.

We took a noon walking tour of the site. The park ranger gave us a 20 minute lecture on the battle on the lush grass outside of the Visitor's Center. Behind him in the distance lay the cornfield where the troops fought intensely and control of the area switched several times during the day.

The ranger lead us south to the Piper Farm and around to Bloody Lane. The Confederates used a sunken road as a protected firing line and caused great devastation to Union troops. Through much bravery and determination the Union broke into the lane and blazed their rifles down the length of the trench, slaughtering the trapped Southerners.

At the end of the day, the armies had suffered over 23,000 casualties of killed and wounded. While the battle was pretty much a draw, Lee quietly withdrew his army during the night, which gave Lincoln the claim to victory he needed to release the Emancipation Proclamation he had already written.

Nancy and I concentrated our visit on only a portion of the 11-acre site. Every month the ranger walk focuses on a different area or aspect of the battle. Of the twenty-some people in our tour group, we were the only ones who had not been to Antietam before...and most of the visitors had gone on previous tours.

We were so impressed with the visitor's center--the movie, the displays, and the educational programs--here and at other historic parks. The quality of the preservation and presentation of our national heritage sites is a credit to our tax dollars well spent.

Becky

Note: Photos are from the U.S. government website cited above.

Still Married!

2009-05-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

Nancy and I were disappointed at yesterday's ruling by California's Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8 and denying marriage to same-sex couples. We are grateful, however, that the 18,000 marriages--including ours--that took place last year before the proposition passed in November are valid. That means we're still legally married in the states that recognize gay & lesbian marriages.

The Huffington Post carried an interesting story regarding the decision (click here to see). It said that conservative lawyer Ted Olson (yes, he of Gore v. Bush) will represent a suit in the federal courts that asks that the ruling and Prop 8 be set aside under equal protection. He asks what would happen if a state passed a proposition outlawing inter-racial marriages.

We view yesterday's court decision as a temporary setback. When even ultra conservatives like Ted Olson are stepping up to the plate in support of marriage equality, the world really is changing.

Becky

GeePerS!

2009-05-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

Nancy & I are having our best road trip ever. Why? Because of our new GPS, “Geepers.” We bought a refurbished 765 Garmin for under $200 through Best Buy’s on-line store. (Refurbished indicates an item returned to a store, tested, and put back on sale.)

The GPS takes 95% of the stress out of driving in new territory. It directed us 1200 miles from our Minneapolis home to the front door of our friends’ house in Silver Spring, Maryland. It allows the passenger to enjoy the scenery—and naps—without having a finger and eyeball glued to a map. It eliminates confusion over which road to take, whether to turn right or left when exiting a parking lot, and when we should arrive at our destination.

In addition to guiding us through spaghetti bowls of freeways, tricky exits, and obscure streets, the GPS has enabled us to:

Locate nearby hotels as we whiz down the freeway. It gives us their telephone number, and as we approach the town, we call them on our cell phone. In Champagne/Urbana, the first motel was full. The second motel only had smoking rooms available. The third motel was expensive. The fourth one had a non-smoking room within our budget. We bypassed the first three and drove directly to the fourth motel. Our GPS/cell phone combination eliminated 3 futile stops and frustrating delays when we were tired and hungry. It also listed nearby restaurants, so we didn’t have to drive around searching for a place to eat dinner.
Avoid traffic delays. In Virginia, a road sign warned of a major traffic delay. We punched in the detour option and Geepers determined a new route. Within a quarter mile we were off the road and sailing along the charming back roads of Virginia, bypassing a three-mile long back up
Find attractions from Antietam Battlefield to the Jamestown Settlement, the birthplace of America. One day, we were craving some Trader Joe’s treats. We typed in the name and up popped several locations, one within a mile of where we were parked. How would we ever have known?

In short order, we have become converts to this wonderful and miraculous technology. In upcoming blogs, we’ll share more of our explorations of the Mid-Atlantic states with you.

Becky

A Tip o' the Hat to the Wee People

2009-03-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

A tip o' the hat to the Wee People on this St. Patrick's Day. And a fine morning it is, with the sun out and shining like a pot o' gold.

When my parents, Cecil and Ruth Manahan, lived on the small farm outside of Madelia, MN, my father put toy furniture in the hay loft of the barn--a tiny table, tiny chairs, little beds, and even a mineature plastic toilet. This is where the Wee People lived, he told the wide-eyed grandchildren.

On their visits to Grandma and Grandpa's farm, the children would sneak up the wooden ladder to the hay mow and creep around the pale-golden bales of hay searching for the Wee People's living quarters. The furniture moved from spot to spot, and the kids never knew where they might find it tucked into a corner.

Although they never managed to spot the very shy Wee People, it sometimes seemed as though they had just left their little chairs. It was thrilling to imagine these wee families living in our very own barn, a parallel universe that almost no one knew about.

My father, a staunch Catholic, always maintained his deep Irish appreciation the world of fairies, leprachauns, and wee people, and he passed on that delight in the mysterious to his many grandchildren. I salute Dad's memory and will raise a glass in his honor today, wishing I could join him and my half-Irish mother on the farm for their famous Irish stew party, waiting for the moment when the grandchildren would steal off to the barn in search of the magical Wee People.

Nancy

Sacred Architecture

2009-03-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

Homes are re-creations of the world, we learned last Thursday night in our "Our Call to Sacred Places" class at the University of Minnesota.

After weeks of looking at slides of various sacred places and spaces from around the world, including ancient Greek and Roman temples (Pantheon pictured left), Gothic cathedrals, Buddhist temples, and majestic mountains and enormous canopied trees, we are left with the overwhelming sense of how important the vertical is to sacred space.

Temples and churches are filled with vertical and open space, drawing our attention to the heavens. The buttresses of Gothic structures mimic trees, as does Gaudi's cathedral in Barcelona (pictured right). They have columns that stretch from earth to heaven, representing both the upright human's spinal column and the path to the heavens.

Hindu and Buddhist temples and structures such as Japanese tea gardens don't point so much upward and they remind us that the divine is all around and within. They stress the sacred as imminent, rather than as transcendent.

In the last class we turned our focus from Chartres and the Pantheon to our homes.

The house, at least in temperate zones, is a vertical structure with a basement, street-level floor, perhaps an second floor, and an attic. It reflects an archetype of the sacred: the Tree of the World that so many cultures embrace, with the roots (underground/body), the trunk (center/mind), and the canopy (heaven/spirit).

Nancy and I have talked about how sacred our home feels. Each area has its individual personality, but they blend together to make a pleasing whole. Bill's bedroom, office, and bathroom are in the finished basement. My office and bedroom are on the first floor. Nancy's office and dressing area are in the finished attic. We each spend hours in our respective spaces, at our computers, on the phone, and reading. Perhaps the sense of space and the vertical explains why this is such a harmonious arrangement.

Even our fireplace provides a sense of the vertical. The chimney breaks through the roof reaching toward the sky and the trap door on the bottom of the hearth lets ashes fall down a chute to the collection box in the basement.

The old saying of "your body is your temple" may be true. However, we can also say our house is our temple, with the vertical connecting us to the earth and to the sky, to our bodies and to the Infinite.

Really, the whole world is our temple.

Becky

Surviving Our First Minnesota Winter in 7 Years!

2009-03-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

For the first time in seven years, Becky and I are spending most of the winter in Minnesota. Although it has snowed several times with temperatures hovering near zero, it hasn’t been nearly as rough as we anticipated.

First of all, we were reminded of the magic of Minnesota winter when four days after our January return from Mexico, we skied 3K in the dark on a candle-lit Minneapolis lake. (See our Luminary Loppet Blog entry below.)

Second, thermal underwear! What a difference the new high-tech stuff makes, at home and outdoors.

Third, we try to go outside every day. When it’s 20 degrees or above, we take our usual one-hour walk around the neighborhood. Other days, we barely make it around the block, our cheeks and our tears frozen. One housecleaning day, we dashed out on the deck to shake rugs and dust cloths in shorts!

Fourth, we were finally here for our family’s annual Oscar party, with a cast of around 40, fabulous Indian curries, and guests arriving in costume. (Imagine Richard Nixon, Harvey Milk, and lots of little niece and nephew slumdogs.) Becky correctly picked all 6 winners, thereby winning her own Oscar, which she gets to keep until next year’s party.

But the best winter treat is the leisurely pace we’ve fallen into this first Minnesota winter of our retirement/inspirement. There’s no urge to ride my bike around a lake or take a swim. No thoughts about the garden. No yard work. No free outdoor concerts or Shakespeare in the park. No camping, hiking, or canoeing. Just delicious hours of reading, writing, cooking, baking, watching DVDs, talking to friends and family members, and then reading some more. Together we do about forty hours of book promotion per week, deeply engaging and satisfying work.

I would never have predicted that the pleasures of our last six winters in Costa Rica would be rivaled by these quiet Minnesota joys. I've finally found the scholarly, contemplative life of service I longed for all my life. I didn't find it in the convent in my twenties, nor in academic life during my thirties, forties, or fifties. But now, in my sixties, here it is, unimaginably sweet, precious, and fulfilling.

(Photo from our hooneymoon in Yosemite National Park, September 2008.)

Nancy

My Mother's Kringlas

2009-02-19T08:26:00.000-08:00

Every holiday season when I was growing up in Madelia, MN, my mother, Edith, would bake hundreds of Christmas cookies, scrolls, and kringlas--a Norwegian pastry twisted into figure eights and flavored with anise. She'd put the goodies in big round cookie tins and store them in the unheated porch off the dining room. The treats would carry us through Christmas and well into the winter.

It's been a long time since I've tasted my mother's pastries. Twenty years ago she hung up her apron, unable to follow the recipes or operate the oven. She was seventy-five. Since then, Mom has become less and less verbal, but she can be alert, follow a conversation, and communicate what she wants.

Although she doesn't say much, Mom's sweet tooth has not diminished. She loves pecan pie, chocolates, cookies, and ice cream. She may pick at the meat loaf, baked potato, and green beans at the Madelia nursing home, but she spoons up every last bit of her brownie.

As a special treat for her 95th birthday this week, I baked a batch of kringlas. I had tried in the past to make them from a recipe she wrote by hand in an old spiral notebook. The results looked like kringlas but were dry and tough.

Recently my sister sent me her recipe for Mom's kringlas (see below). This recipe said to chill the dough overnight before rolling it into ropes. Doh! I made another attempt, and this time the results were . . . well . . . surprisingly good.

I will never equal my mother's baking skills, nor attain her artistry in creating uniform figure eights, but my new kringlas have the taste and the texture I remember. I hope that the anise-flavored pastries will trigger some long dormant synapses in my gentle mother's brain.

Becky

Edith Bohan's Kringlas

1 cup sugar
2 Tbl butter
2 eggs
1 tsp anise 1 cup sour cream
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt

Mix sugar, butter, beaten eggs and anise. Stir baking soda into the sour cream and add. Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Refrigerate overnight. Roll, rope fashion, cut in strips and fold in knot or figure 8. Bake until light brown at 375 degrees.

Note: Dough must be chilled well. Work with small amount at a time.

Luminary Loppet

2009-02-06T17:58:00.000-08:00

As we were basking in the warmth of Mexico and thinking about our return to a Minnesota winter, we decided to not let the cold and snow keep us indoors. We would go outdoors and, by gosh, we'd enjoy it!!

True to our vow, five days after arriving home, Nancy and I clicked into our cross country skis for a lap around the frozen Lake of the Isles near downtown Minneapolis. We were part of the annual City of Lakes Luminary Loppet that draws thousands of participants into a crisp January evening. (The term loppet, Swedish for citizens’ race, refers to a recreational cross-country ski event popular in Scandinavia.)

Candles placed in nearly 500 small and large hollow ice blocks lined the 3-kilometer circuit. Bonfires blazed at select points where kids and adults could roast marshmallows and sip hot chocolate or apple cider. A one point there was a group of ice pillars with candles hanging inside. At another point, a five-foot ice pyramid glowed eerily atop the dark, silent, snowy lake.

Thanks to cell phones, our friends, Ann and George, who entered us in the event, found us in crowd and the dark. It was fun to join up with them and also pleasurable to be on our own, whizzing along, with only an occasional candle to show the path, trusting the ski tracks in a strange meditative state of consciousness.

We skied under a wedge of silvery moon and eyed Orion's Belt, a favorite sky-mark on our night walks on the beach of Isla Mujeres, now latitudes away.

It was a magical evening...perhaps the greatest magic being back in winter and enjoying it!

Becky

Obama Esperanza!

2009-01-25T13:17:00.000-08:00

We were walking through a local neighborhood in Isla Mujeres the morning after the inauguration. A gray-haired Mexican man was sitting in a lawn chair in front of his cement house, taking the sun and reading the morning’s news. He looked up, smiled at us, and called “Obama!” He held up his newspaper for us to see. The front page banner cried “Esperanza!”

Hope!

We grinned back and said, “Si se puede!” Yes we can!

Did he know we were Obama supporters? We were so happy that morning, perhaps we glowed. On the other hand, he no doubt had read the news the week before that for the first time in history, a US president-elect met with the Mexican president in Washington. D.C. Taking time to do so just days before taking office surely sent a message that Obama cares about US relations with Mexico. That gesture of respect may give people here a bit more hope.

The day before, we had spent several hours at Jax, a local open-air sports bar/restaurant. About 40 Americans watched the sea change happen in Washington. A passerby might have thought there was an important football game on because the bar was packed and everyone was totally focused on the five TV screens. Newspapers were spread out on the tables with big photos of Obama and headlines like “Sueno Realidad” – Dream Reality, referring to Martin Luther King’s dream being at least partially realized in the election of our first African American president.

On this Caribbean island, we cheered, we cried, and we got goose bumps witnessing this pivotal moment in U.S. history. We felt close to the other Americans, friends and strangers alike, who cheered Bill and Hillary when they appeared, who roared when the camera first picked up Barack, and who rose at the end of the ceremony, tears spilling from many eyes, to sing the national anthem. We were proud of our country, proud of the course correction we are making, and thrilled to have shared this moment in a small bar in Mexico where the people seem as happy as we are to have a new US president.

P.S.
A couple of days later, we were on the mainland doing errands in Cancun. Our taxi driver told us that his ex-wife and their grown children, who live in Dallas, are delighted by the election. They have, he confided, “Obamamania.” Not a term we ever anticipated hearing from a Spanish-speaking cabbie.

In the Yucatan -- Your Family Awaits You!

2009-01-14T14:07:00.000-08:00

As we visited Mayan ruins last month, Becky and I were delighted to discover that highways in the Yucatan are smooth, modern, and well-signed. They also are one continuous course in driving safety and etiquette.

One day, on our way to the archeological site of Uxmal, we passed large glossy black and white signs every 50-100 meters. First the basic instructions.

OBEY THE SIGNS

DO NOT MALTREAT THE SIGNS

DO NOT DESTROY THE SIGNS!

And after 50 kilometers, we saw a gracious remark:
THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE SIGNS

Once drivers know that the signs are not to be maltreated, the signage moves to a higher level of instruction.
AT LESS SPEED MORE SAFETY

DO NOT THROW TRASH

DO NOT DRIVE TIRED

CHOOSE YOUR LANE OPPORTUNELY
DO NOT PASS ON THE YELLOW LINE

(There are many solid yellow lines in the rolling hills of southwest Yucatan. The entire Yucatan is not flat, as we had supposed.)

THE SEAT BELT SAVES LIVES USE IT

These and other cautions are repeated over and over. That’s probably wise since apparently it takes a minimum of seven repetitions for a message to make an impression on our brains.

But our favorite sign of all was --
DRIVE CAREFULLY YOUR FAMILY AWAITS YOU

This message shifts drivers out of our narrow individual world to the reality of the larger social network and the people who love and depend on us.

Finally, during our 1000-kilometer trip through the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula, we saw virtually no advertising billboards. Wouldn't US highways be safer if we had fewer distracting ads and more reminders to drive carefully because our family awaits us? That's a sign I would never grow tired of seeing.

Nancy

John, a Light on My Path

2008-12-26T06:16:00.000-08:00

In the workshops and presentation that Nancy & I give based on our book Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, we often ask participants: What makes a good death?

The answers include no pain, time to say good-bye, finishing one’s business, having those you love by your side, being free of anxiety, and being at peace.

These elements can be achieved when one is dying of disease and has the time to prepare consciously for the end, as Diane Manahan did. Her extraordinarily good death is one reason her story is so inspiring.

But what if a person does not have that time?

Last month an old friend from high school, John Osnes, stepped off the curb in Los Angeles one night, and within minutes he was lying on the pavement, having been beaten up and then run over in a road rage incident.

How could his death ever be considered a good death? That is was quick? That he didn’t linger in pain? Those aren’t very satisfactory answers. I don’t know that there are any.

A sudden death may be hardest on the loved ones, such as John’s beloved sister, Kris. How could this have happened? How can one go on when everything is changed?

Quickly come all the arrangements, the phone calls, the obituary, the finances, the notifications, the reality within the unreal situation. In a way, the tasks help loved ones get through the first few days and through the shock, but not through the grief. That will last a long, long time.

I am grateful to John Osnes for a friendship of long ago that was more important to me than I realized at the time. In our small rural Midwestern town, he was a gay teenager. He bravely wore his hair longer than any other guy in Madelia, sang beautifully, played the piano brilliantly, but was harassed by his schoolmates. I was a lesbian teenager, in love for the first time-- with his sister Kris. For a couple of years, John and I formed an unspoken bond in our isolation. Once, over pizza in the nearby “city” of Mankato, we confided our sexuality and our heartaches openly to each other.

Thank you, John, for who you were . . . and for being a light on my path.

Becky

P.S. For more information about John Osnes, visit http://www.johnosnes.com/.

Yucatan Travels--Campeche

2008-12-21T09:05:00.000-08:00

In Campeche, the capital of the state of Campeche, Mexico, we stayed two nights in the Francis Drake, a slightly worn but very comfortable hotel within the walls of the old city.

In 1999 UNESCO named Campeche a world heritage site and so its gorgeous Colonial buildings are preserved. No two buildings in a row can be the same color, and the city provides the beautiful multi-hued pastel paint from UNESCO funds. The buildings are one or two-stories with no electrical lines swaying overhead. It is delightful to be in the middle of a city and have such an unobstructed view of the sky.

We thought that there must be a financial/business center elsewhere, but no, the banks and government buildings are right there on either side the stone walls that ring the old city. A couple of blocks to the west a lovely seaside walk (El Malacon) stretches for miles along the Gulf of Mexico.

Campeche is a relaxed and friendly city known for its fabulous seafood. We had plenty of it, too! Thanks to the recommendations of Zora O'Neill's Rough Guide to the Yucatan and Kristine at the Flycatcher Inn (see previous blog entry), we visited a row of small, brightly colored restaurants perched on the shore, where fishermen bring their fresh catch. The food is so good that we ate there twice and packed their ceviche (fresh raw fish "cooked" in lime juice with onions, tomatoes, and cilantro) in the cooler for our 8-hour drive back across the peninsula from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean Sea.

Campeche deserves a lot more time. Nature preserves abound in the area, and many Mayan ruins are within easy driving distance. Someday we’ll be back.

Becky

NanBec's Yucatan Travels--The Ruta Puuc

2008-12-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

Last week Nancy and I spent a few days exploring the Yucatan Peninsula. In Santa Elena, a Mayan village south of Merida poised on the Ruta Puuc (Route of the Hills), we stayed at the sweet little Flycatcher Inn, which has its own trail through several acres of forest. It made for a pleasant hike and good birdwatching after five hours in the car. Although the town is normally quiet, we heard firecrackers throughout the night as townspeople warmed up for the annual celebration of the Virgin of Guadeloupe.

The next morning we drove ten minutes to see the spectacular Mayan ruins of Uxmal, which fell into decline around 1000 CE. The site is impressive with its huge buildings and the wide expanses of well-tended lawns and shade trees. The view from the top of the palace is spectacular with ruins poking out of the surrounding forest.

One building that especially caught my attention was the Magician’s Temple. Its base is oval rather than the usual rectangle, as shown in the picture above.

After Uxmal we took the Ruta Puuc to four other Mayan ruins, all of them amazing in their own way and quiet as few tourists visit them. Puuc architecture is a special Mayan style. One of its distinguishing characteristics is the rows of segmented columns that resemble bamboo poles.
At Kabah, Nancy and I ate a picnic lunch in the shadow of a tenth century arch that marked the beginning of the stone road that led to Uxmal 30 kilometers away. We gazed down the raised causeway that ended abruptly at the forest edge, where archeologists had stopped their work. What an impressive entrance to a city—it must have been like entering Oz. [The arch pictured is the one at nearby Labna.]

At all of these sites, stone carvings of Chac, the rain god, are in abundance. Since rain is the only source of water in this area, it is not surprising to find this god in such prominence. The Mayans built large cisterns to collect and hold rain water to see them through the dry season.

At the eastern end of the Ruta Puuc are the caves of Loltun. On the hour-long tour we saw huge caverns with many stalagmites and stalactites. The cave, used for millennia, has the outline of prehistoric hands similar to those in caves in France. Mammoth bones have been found in the Loltun cave, as well as human bones.

That night we were tired and missed the big celebration in front of the Santa Elena church (built at the top of what look like steps of a Mayan temple). Plenty of firecrackers went off during the night, though, so we didn’t entirely miss the party. The next morning as we walked around town we saw Mexican teenagers sleeping outside the public buildings, kids who had run or bicycled for days from other villages, carrying a torch to fulfill their pledge to the Virgin.

We stopped at a traditional Mayan home with palm fronds for a roof. A man came from the side of the house and told us that he teaches Mayan. Every year groups of students arrive from the States to learn the language which is spoken throughout the area and is still the first language of the town residents, Spanish being the second. We learned from our B&B host that Martha Steward filmed Don Feliciano and his wife last month as they taught her about Mayan cooking with traditional herbs from their garden.

Becky

My Wife, My Mistress

2008-11-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

Leave it to California to spice up our romantic life.

On September 3, 2008, Nancy and I were married in the rotunda of the City Hall of San Francisco. The occasion was thrilling, solemn, and very emotional. After 14 years together, our commitment was suddenly being celebrated by everyone from the county clerk who issued our marriage license and the deputy commissioner who pronounced us "spouses for life," to family and friends who gave cards, gifts, tributes, and hugs. We floated on a wave of happiness for two-months and one day.

Then, on November 4, California voters passed Proposition 8. It restricts marriage to a man and a woman. Same-sex marriages are prohibited. Thankfully, according to CA Attorney General Jerry Brown, the 18,000 couples who wed between June and election day will continue to have a valid marriage. Even this ruling, though, is under siege by right-wing forces.

What this means personally is that, given the patchwork of marriage rights and non-rights across the nation, Nancy is my wife in California and in the states that recognize same-sex marriages: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island. Since I have a wife in those states, I guess that makes Nancy my mistress in the other 45 states, including our home state of Minnesota! You'd think that would be enough to make fundamentalist blood really boil.

In addition to having fun being married AND having an affair, we feel patient and hopeful about what we'd prefer: being legally married wherever we are. Every year the forces of tolerance eclipse the forces of bigotry inch by inch. I look at Obama's victory as a sparkling testament to what is possible. It will take a while longer, but Nancy and I believe that eventually the whole of the United States will support the right of everyone to marry regardless of their mate's gender.

Until then, I will have a wife in California and a mistress in Minnesota. Lucky me!

Becky

Yes, Readers, We Married

2008-10-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, readers, we married.

September 3, 2008, on the 14th anniversary of Nancy moving into my home, we exchanged marriage vows in the enormous rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. We thank all the Californians who made it possible, including my sister Vicki and her husband Ric, our official witnesses.

Even before saying “I do,” we felt an unexpected, delightful consequence of marriage: people’s happiness for us. From the young San Francisco car rental agent to the middle-aged couple from Ohio behind us on the bus, from waiters to Bay Area friends and family members, people shared in our joy. Of course, we were beaming so much that they may not have been able to help themselves…but still, it was is amazing how such deep affection bubbles up from people when someone gets married.

Another impact is that we are now part of an official social structure. We are in-laws in each other’s families. Our relatives know what to call us when making introductions. Ric coaches Nancy on strategies for coping with the Bohan clan (don’t mention peaches!). The legal binds make for stronger familial ties.

Now that we’re back in Minnesota, a state that does not recognize our marriage, a bit of the glow is off. Yet, when we tell people we recently got married in California, they break into grins and congratulate us. Maybe some of the folks we tell don’t approve of same-sex marriage, but good manners—and perhaps a deep-in-the-bone response to such a basic social institution—win out.

I find that I want to share the news of our nuptials with everyone. Not only are we showered with good wishes, questions about the wedding, and requests to see our rings. Coming-out-as-married also helps raise consciousness. We are part of a sea-change, and bit by bit, the power of prejudice is evaporating before our eyes—and before the reality of the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples getting married every place we’re allowed to -- in California, Massachusetts, Canada, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and hopefully, soon, even in Minnesota.

In that case, perhaps Nancy and I will do it all over again!

Becky

Stripping on Deadline

2008-08-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

Now that I have your attention … I’m talking about stripping woodwork. Twenty-eight years ago I bought a 1925 Spanish bungalow in south Minneapolis. The combination living room/dining room has wonderful woodwork, but some previous owner applied a muddy, greenish finish that was so thick the grain was barely visible.

In 2005 I began to refinish this woodwork. I started with two radiator covers (pictured left) and beautiful red oak emerged. The results were exciting, but stripping, sanding, staining, and applying polyurethane is hard and tedious work, and I realized this would be a multi-year project. After taking 2006 off to finish writing our book, last summer I tackled the two ceiling beams, the fireplace mantel, and the stained glass window.

This summer Nancy & I decided to buy a new chair for the living room, a wedding present to ourselves. For all our years together, our hand-me-downs have served us well, but my dad’s old chair with the broken spring and dangling bottom cloth really needed to be replaced despite my sentimental attachment.

Well, the cascade began.

We found a chair we loved (they’ve gotten big over the years!) and as Nancy & I took turns sitting in it at the store, we thought maybe we should get two because our old swivel rocker would look pretty crummy next to it. From there it was a small leap to buying the matching sofa.

A few days after we ordered the furniture, we realized that the sofa would not fit through our narrow doors. So we called our handyman, who said he could remove two adjoining dining room windows, and bring the sofa in through them.

But what would happen when we needed to replace our 16-year-old carpet? We’d have to take the windows out again to remove the furniture. Might as well get rid of the carpet now and go to bare wood.

We called a neighborhood business, Earl’s Floor Sanding, for an estimate. Earl said that if we intended to refinish more trim, especially the base boards, we should do it before they began working on the floor. No way, I told him. It’s too much work for one summer.

Then I reconsidered. Refinishing creates such a mess. I didn’t want Ready Strip or Spanish Oak stain to drip on our new floor.

So for the last three weeks my helpers Nancy and Bill (Nancy’s brother who lives with us) and I have stripped, sanded, stained, and polyurethaned the living room/dining room baseboards, doorways, window frames, and built-in buffet. We put on two coats of poly before Earl and crew arrived on Monday. Now I’m in the garage refinishing the built-in buffet drawers and the door and window frame strips we pried off.

As the final coat of poly on the floor cures, I am sitting at the computer nursing sore arms, wrists, thumbs, fingers, elbows, back, you name it. But the living room glows with the natural beauty of rich red oak. It’s amazing what can be done under deadline.

Next summer, I’ll tackle the remaining removeables—three heavy doors, four paned buffet doors, and five casement windows. It will be my last summer of refinishing. After all the sawdust, sweat, fumes, and aches, my family will have a rich Northwoods lodge living room that will bring us much pleasure…and an occasional moment of marvel at how we did it all!

I Get Marriage

2008-06-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Marriage has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Two people have a ceremony, file some legal papers, celebrate wildly, and move in together. Sometimes they already share a residence. Admittedly, there are benefits that follow—joint tax filing, spousal coverage of health benefits, inheritance, hospital visitation rights, and so forth. In fact, there are some 800 rights ranging from puny to huge that marriage bestows. But none of this seemed relevant to me. I never missed those benefits, don’t enjoy ceremonies or parties, and already live with the love of my life.

But now thanks to last month’s decision by the California Supreme Court, Nancy and I have decided to get married, and suddenly my former indifference has vanished.

Marriage is more than the sum of rights. It is a powerful social and legal recognition and celebration of a relationship. It is an affirmation of my basic worth as a human being. Having California rule that I have the same right to marry the person I love as my sister had to marry the person she loves brings tears to my eyes and joy to my heart.

I imagine an American woman before 1920 thinking how nice it would be to vote. She could talk herself out of its importance, though, supposing that her vote wouldn’t change anything, and besides, she had enough to do without making time to go vote in every election. But once she could legally enter the polling place, she’d realize that voting is so much more than casting a ballet. It means participation in the democratic process and being part of the greater community. It confers the responsibilities of citizenship and, tacitly, those of adulthood. Marriage is similar.

After our decision, I began to think about how our no-frills ceremony would unfold. I will be 56 years old and Nancy 62 when we exchange vows on September 3. We don’t need anyone “giving” us away, a concept that has always grated on me—that passing a woman from her father to her husband as though “the weaker sex” couldn’t stand on their own. But when I imagined my sister giving me away and Nancy’s sister giving her away (not the way it’s going to be, by the way), suddenly the tears came. It meant leaving our families to start a new family.

Well, duh. But what is obvious for young heterosexual couples who will be starting a family is not so clear for same-sex couples, especially those without children. How many times over the past decades have I been asked about my family and I’ll talk about my parents and my sister. That Nancy is my family has not sunk into my bones. Now with marriage vows and the legal sanction of our love, I feel in a way that has never been real that SHE is my family.

I’ve also had to get over downplaying the importance of celebrating our wedding. Although our elation at the legal support of our relationship has been amplified by the many calls and emails congratulating us, when my sister offered to host a reception, we said we didn’t want any sort of party. “It’s a big deal,” she protested shocked we would even consider such a thing. “People want to celebrate with you!”

The whole concept of marriage has been so alien to me, a person who could not participate in it, that I have never really understood it. Now I am beginning to comprehend that on so many levels, it is a big deal. So not only do I get to have a marriage, I am finally starting to GET marriage.

Becky Bohan

Twelve Tips for Coffee Lovers

2008-05-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

Life is too short and java too expensive to waste time on inferior products. Here are my totally subjective tips for a good cup of coffee, gleaned from my six winters in Costa Rica.

1. Buy the highest quality coffee you can afford.

2. Choose organic shade-grown coffee. Who wants to be sipping herbicides and pesticides with your brew?

3. Buy fair-trade coffee. It feels better slipping down the throat when you know that the small farmers are getting a better shake.

4. Buy hand-picked coffee. In Costa Rica, the fields are handpicked three times, catching each coffee berry at its ruby ripest. Machine-picking (as is done in countries with larger coffee plantations) strips everything from the plant, including red ripe berries, immature green berries, and overripe black berries, plus leaves, stems, and insects.

5. Buy vacuum-packed coffee. Even better, look for a valve lock attached to the bag. These one-way valves prevent outside air from entering the bag but allow gasses emitted by the fresh-roasted beans to escape. According to the experts at Costa Rica’s Cafe Britt, a bag will keep up to a year unopened and six months in the freezer after opening.

6. Choose whole beans, and grind them fresh. Coffee’s freshness depends not on when it was harvested, but rather on when it was roasted and ground. As soon as roasted coffee is exposed to air, the flavor begins to deteriorate.

7. Make sure your coffee maker is clean. Wash it after each use, especially the part that holds the grounds.

8. Use pure water – unless you want chlorine- or other chemically-flavored coffee!

9. To avoid bitterness, let boiling water come to a rest before pouring it over the coffee grounds.

10 . Avoid percolated coffee. The boiling water keeps circulating, degrading the taste with every bursting bubble.

11. Resort to instant coffee only in an emergency. It is made from the lowest grade beans.

12. If you enjoy iced coffee, pour cooled fresh coffee into an ice cube tray and freeze overnight. The next day, place 2 or 3 of these frozen cubes in your coffee. As they melt, your beverage, instead of becoming watery, will retain its full, satisfying flavor.

After a three-hour Costa Rican coffee tour, which included raking beans as they dried in the sun and practicing making espressos and cappuccinos under the strict guidance of the barista, Antonio, I felt almost ready to apply for a part-time job at our neighborhood coffee shop. But my cappuccino makes it clear that I have much to learn about the fine art of coffee. The top cup shows my muddled attempt at decorating the foam. In the bottom cups are Antonio’s graceful and whimsical creations. But all three cappuccinos tasted stupendous!

The Sound of Trees Weeping

2008-04-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

Last month, during the dry season here in Costa Rica, Nancy was on her stomach on a massage table when she heard a familiar yet slightly odd stir from the garden: a rustling in the trees and what sounded like raindrops plunking on leaves.

“Is it sprinkling?” she asked.

“No, the trees are weeping,” replied our local massage therapist. “They are so thirsty they are asking the rains to come soon.”

Apparently, it worked. The rainy season started early this year. We’ve had some thunder and lightning storms worthy of Thor, himself.

Likewise, the Costa Rican national bird, the clay-colored robin, starts singing a loud wandering tune two weeks before the rains come. The robins were spot on again this year, and now they continue with their melodious call for rain (and for a mate), often starting at 4 a.m.

Before living in Costa Rica, Nancy and I assumed that the rainy season, usually from May through November, meant day after day of rain. Not so. The days usually dawn clear, with temperatures in the 70s. By late morning, it’s in the high 80s, and the sun feels brutal. Then, while we are having lunch on the veranda while the clay-colored robins pour out their song, the temperature suddenly drops, and clouds fill the sky. Soft thunder gradually rolls toward us until great booms shake the earth and the first fat drops splat on our metal roof.

The storms are thrilling, and we are both excited to experience a bit of Costa Rica’s winter or “green season” (as the travel agencies like to call it) before we leave. Bare trees are sprouting leaves, dry brown lawns are turning a lush emerald, and just today the nearby college campus sported a fresh mow job.

One warm afternoon last week, Nancy went out in the downpour to see water streaming through the maze of drainage trenches. She splashed under waterfalls sluicing off the palm trees and down our flooded driveway to the road. Just beyond the entrance to our apartment complex, two-foot-deep drains had already over-flowed, and a river was rushing down the road. A couple hours later, when we went for a walk in shorts and T-shirts, the sun was already drying the driveway.

The trees no longer make their special sound. All the weeping now takes place from the skies . . . . and from our eyes as we prepare to leave tomorrow. Nancy squeezes a last bag of Costa Rican coffee into our suitcase, and we take a final moonlit walk, our skin caressed by the tropics. We will go to bed early, knowing that the clay-colored robins will wake us at 4 a.m., plenty early to walk into the dawn of another spectacular day in Costa Rica.

Becky

Farewell, Costa Rica

2008-04-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

After three months in Costa Rica, Becky and I return to Minnesota next week, leaving friends, the exquisite climate, and incredible beauty and bounty. In Minneapolis, there are no clusters of magenta bougainvillea blooming at our door. Royal palm trees don’t line the driveway. Pyramids of tree-ripened mangos, papayas, and bananas aren’t at our farmers’ markets. Nor does Cub Foods sell large pineapples for a dollar—what I paid this morning at the produce stand down the road. The owner skinned and sliced my golden pineapple with a few deft strokes of her machete.

I’ll also miss the Costa Ricans.

Not only are they amazingly friendly; they are also extraordinarily helpful. Two weeks ago our neighbors, retired community college teachers like me, got hung up on a rough mountain road. Within minutes, two farmers were on the scene with shovels to help Monica and Dick dig out their Nissan Xterra. When that didn’t work, one of the men drove into town, returned with two tow ropes, hitched the big Nissan to his pint-sized Suzuki Samurai, and was able to position the SUV so its wheels could get traction. When Dick tried to pay him, the guy wouldn’t hear of it. When Monica tried to reimburse him for his purchase, the man insisted he needed those ropes anyway.

Becky and I had a similar experience bicycling in the Osa Peninsula near Corcovado National Park, one of the largest remaining tracts of original tropical rain forest in the Americas. When my bike chain slipped, I tried to reset it, but the chain was jammed tight in the crankshaft. We were in the middle of nowhere an hour before sunset. We hadn’t seen a human being for two hours. Just then, some locals drove by, stopped, and analyzed the problem. The driver pulled out a wrench from his trunk and loosened the crankshaft enough to release the chain. Becky and I pedaled back to our hotel in time for a sunset margarita.

That evening, I ran into the same folks crossing a street in town. They greeted me warmly and invited us to join them at their house by the sea. The next morning the Garcias picked me up (Becky preferred to read under our ceiling fan and avoid the midday heat), and off we went for the day. Getting into the vehicle of complete strangers in a foreign country may sound crazy, but not in Costa Rica. I had a great time with the family, eating juicy red “water apples” from the tree in their yard and joining in their laughter at my Spanish pronunciation.

Now, when I see water apples at the farmers’ market, I remember the Garcias and the many other angels who have blessed our time here. Since Becky and I plan to explore other places in the coming winters, we may not return until 2011. We bid a grateful farewell to this tropical paradise, which has blessed us for six winters.

Nancy

Sol Medicine

2008-03-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

The sun is my friend once again.

I’ve spurned Helios for many years, heeding the warnings about skin cancer. Thanks to my Irish and Norwegian heritage, my skin is particularly vulnerable to burning. I’ve faithfully applied 25-45 SPF sunblock, worn protective clothing, and donned a wide-brimmed hat. I have stayed inside between 10 and 2. If I ventured onto a beach, I was covered from head to foot.

No more.

“You need sun,” Dr. Kim, my acupuncturist said recently. “Fifteen minutes a day. Go outside in the morning in shorts and a sleeveless shirt.”

“But…but…”

“You need Vitamin D from the sun. Not pills.”

For the past week here in Costa Rica, I have been soaking up rays for the prescribed fifteen minutes. I’m rediscovering the dreamy sensation of Old Sol warming my skin and the meditative lull of being held in its full embrace. It is a feeling from long ago.

As a child I would sometimes stretch out in the grass at noon under the summer sun and feel waves of heat wash through me. I could see pink though my closed eyelids. The earth would practically hum.

I’ve been pondering how really it is the sun that gives us life. Most of what we eat is converted sunlight. Think of the fields of wheat and beans, apple orchards and olive trees stretching to the horizon. All in the full glory of the sun, using photosynthesis to grow and ripen. It seems like a miracle.

While still cautious about mid-day exposure, I have released my fear of Helios. Excuse me, while I put on a tank top and go sit with my old friend.

Becky

Sharing Field and Food

2008-03-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

“Where are the fields?” I innocently ask Steven Farrell, the tall, bearded manager of Luna Nueva, an organic, biodynamic farm/lodge near Costa Rica’s Arenal volcano.

“You’re looking at them,” Steven replies with a smile, sweeping his arm toward the forest. “We don’t plant in rows. We mix the species.”

Nancy and I look again, jaws dropped. We’ve been walking a good fifteen minutes on a tour of the farm, expecting to come upon fields like those in the Midwest—lines of beans and corns stretching up and down the hills. But not here. What looks like another rain forest scene—a riot of plants—is where Steven’s workers plant and harvest herbs and salad greens, fruits and tubers.

What monoculture (one-crop-per-field industrialized agriculture) sacrifices for efficiency is the nutrient-rich, chemical-free plants that sprout every-which-way at Luna Nueva. The farm is a living example of the sustainable agriculture that Michael Pollan praises in his books In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The sharing of land with a variety of species goes further. Steven says that they expect animals to eat part of the crop. He doesn’t mind. Every creature has its niche. Some get a little greedy, though. In the grove of 700 cocoa trees (already mature when Steven bought the farm for New Chapter, a Vermont-based herbal supplements company) the squirrels eat every one of the pods. Steven is devising a way to let squirrels have 90% of the crop and keep 70 trees for human harvest.

Some domesticated animals even work the land. Goats and pigs put in a good day of labor on resting fields by eating down the nitrogen-fixing vegetation and spreading their manure. Pigs love to root around for grubs and by the time they are through turning the soil, the field is ready for planting.

At various places on the farm, workers have hung up stalks of bananas. Birds are free to swoop in and feast. So are the guests staying in the scrupulously clean wooden cabins. Neighborhood children run up barefooted to snap off a treat. Even the baby pigs snort with pleasure when Steven tosses them a yellow delicacy. And nobody has to worry about the kids, guests, or pigs ingesting pesticides and fungicides with the bananas.

There is no sense of hoarding either land or food at Luna Nueva. The delicious meals were ample, and when Nancy and I left after our week-long stay, Steven filled a bag with just-harvested passion fruit, sweet potatoes, plantain, and papaya. He topped it off with the farm’s signature crop: the organic ginger and turmeric grown for New Chapter and used liberally in the hotel restaurant.

Steven Farrell, New Chapter, and the other people involved in Luna Nueva are impressive models of individuals contributing to the health of the planet and its inhabitants consciously and gracefully. They have even createad sacred Seeds, a sanctuary of endangered medicinal plants for future generations. Nancy and I spend two hours strolling its paths, learning about herbs, bushes, and trees that have been healing people for millennia.

There isn't a row in sight.

Becky

With much pleasure, Becky

2008-03-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

One day here in Costa Rica, I was listening to a conversation Nancy was having with a repairman. I speak little Spanish, and Luis’s side of the conversation sounded like this:

Blah blah blah blahblahblahblah Nancy blahblahblahblahblahblahblah Nancy blahblahblahblah blah blah Nancy.

That wasn’t the first time I had noticed how much Costa Ricans use a person’s name. Clerks in the store, tellers in the bank, neighbors, friends, and family tend to say a person’s name in a friendly, even loving way, during a conversation. Even a simple “Gracias” often merits a response of “Con much gusto, Becky” (With much pleasure, Becky) rather than the typical Spanish “No problema.” We had dinner with two Costa Rica couples recently, and I bet they said the names of each person at least a dozen times during the meal.

A person’s name is an important part of his or her identity. Using that name in a pleasant, caring way infuses an exchange with warmth and acknowledges that person’s place in the world.

Nancy and I love this custom. We’ve started saying each other’s names more often as well as the names of those we meet. This is one of many Costa Rican customs that seems to make for a friendlier world.

Becky

Green Funerals: Old Peruvian Style versus New Mayo Clinic Style

2008-02-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

We are spending a week in Lima, Peru visiting Nancy's brother Jim Manahan, who is on assignment here for four months. (More on that in another blog.)

We’ve made the rounds of several museums and historic sites including the Church of San Francisco built in 1674. This church is famous for its vast underground catacombs containing the bones of 75,000 people.

In this first cemetery of colonial Lima, bodies were laid in pits and covered with quicklime to hasten decomposition. We walked past boxes with femurs organized in herringbone patterns and deep pits with thousands of bones and skulls artistically arranged. Hundreds of skulls are stacked on shelves cut into the earthen walls.

Another museum in Lima contains twenty-five-hundred-year-old mummies from the pre-Inca era. Given the arid Peruvian climate, it was a perfect way to preserve bodies. Both the catacombs and the mummies are precursors to the modern concept of green funerals. (See below for our earlier blog, "Green Funerals 101.")

All this put us in a receptive frame of mind for an article we discovered in London’s prestigious newspaper, The Guardian. “What Really Happens When You Die?” features interviews with six professionals who handle corpses. They detail the procedures of autopsying, embalming, burying, and cremating a body--the modern ways of death.

The most interesting part of the article is a description of an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional burial or cremation: resomation. According to Dean Fisher, the Director of the Mayo Clinic’s Body Donation Program, this new technique uses “water, potassium hydroxide and steam heat to dissolve the body.” What’s left at the end of the process is “nitrogen, phosphate, proteins, amino acids, salts and sugars,” the basic elements that comprise our bodies. Fisher says that this “innocuous fluid” can be “safely disposed of or used on land as a fertiliser”! The remaining bones are pulverized, as in cremation. There are no toxic emissions like mercury released into the atmosphere.

According to Fisher “there are only a few resomation chambers in operation in the world, all of them in the US” including one at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

This environmentally-friendly method of dealing with our bodies may be the wave of the future. For more information about this greener alternative to cremation and burial, visit Resomation Ltd. (For the full Guardian article, see http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/.)

Hundreds of years from now, North and South American tourists may pay to tour museums formerly known as cemeteries!

Locks and Illumination

2008-02-12T07:09:00.000-08:00

Self-reliance coupled with ingenuity makes for creative repair work in Costa Rica. Last year, for example, the lock on our car door broke. We could have driven to the Nissan dealership in San Jose, an unwelcome 2- hour round trip. We didn’t know if a part was even available for our 1991 Pathfinder.

We had noticed a locksmith sign down the road from our apartment. The young locksmith, whose open air shop is in his driveway, examined the door and said, “No problema!”

Jose disassembled the door, took the broken rod over to his work bench, rummaged around for a piece of metal, and bent it in three places. He slipped it into place and turned the key in the door, locking and unlocking it several times to make sure it worked. It’s been fine ever since.

In the States, we would have ordered a new part, waited for several days, and paid for the part plus a minimum labor charge. In Costa Rica, our door was repaired in ten minutes. The cost? $8.50.

I thought of Jose the other night when we put new batteries in our flashlight. We got a beam of light only if we pressed on the battery cover. Obviously the connection needed to be tighter. I remembered seeing a shiny little washer in the driveway the day before. Nancy slipped it into the cover plate, and viola: Light!

We avoided sending the flashlight to a landfill, and making a trip to the store to buy a new one. We appreciate that Costa Rican culture encourages us to be creative, to make do, and to slow down—all ways of living more simply and, we suspect, more fully.

Becky

Lunch in Eden

2008-01-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

This weekend Nancy and I visited an organic farm near Arenal Volcano. It supplies herbs for the New Chapter product line. Our friend Beverly, an herbalist in New Mexico, is planning a field trip for her students this spring, and she wanted to check out the operation.

Nueva Luna, tucked back off the main road, is an Eden. Everything from the landscaping to the open air dining room exudes tranquility. For lunch we ate delicious organic greens picked that morning, with an organic chicken and yucca casserole plus the Costa Rica staple, rice and beans. We could hear and see a toucan (the big-billed Fruit-Loop bird) calling in a nearby tree.

It is amazing what one person with a vision can do. Steven, the manager of Nueva Luna, has been farming organically for 30 years. New Chapter used him as a source for their herbs and eventually had him buy a farm and run the operation. The demand for organic products has grown so much that Steven, who used to supply 100% of New Chapter's turmeric and ginger, now provides only 4%, as other farms worldwide join the list of suppliers.

We will be returning to Nueva Luna in March for a 4-night stay. I’m sure I’ll have more to report then. Meanwhile, Nancy and I will continue to search out organic produce—not always the easiest thing to do in Costa Rica even at the marvelous local farmers’ markets.

As the medical intuitive Jamie Champion once told us, “Fresh trumps organic.” And fresh is what we have in abundance here-- mangoes, pineapples, papayas, bananas, and many other fruits and vegetables. We eat with gratitude for the earth that provides and for the many farmers like Steven of Nueva Luna, Karen & Jacqueline of the Women’s Environmental Institute in Minnesota, and our brother-in-law, Steve Anderson, whose passion brings us nature’s best.

Becky

From the Arctic to the Tropics

2008-01-24T06:21:00.000-08:00

For Nancy & me, part of what makes our life so enjoyable is being physically comfortable. Luckily we have similar comfort zones—temperatures in the 80s are perfect during the day and temperatures in the 70s are ideal at night.

Minnesota is currently in a deep freeze. We left Minneapolis January 19, when the thermometer huddled at a bone-chilling minus 13 degrees. The pilot announced that it was 80 degrees in Costa Rica. By the time we landed, the evening had cooled down to a balmy 72.

We don’t think of our preference for the tropics as escaping winter as much as it is choosing comfort. While we enjoy winter, especially when a fresh blanket of snow covers the earth, month after month of it is too much for us—and stressful for Nancy’s lungs. We also love the simplicity of warm weather—light-weight clothes, no heating (and, for us, no air conditioning), and local fresh fruits & vegetables. Having our first juicy mango, papaya, and cantaloupe felt like a sacrament!

We are in the ear-to-ear-grin-stage, barely able to believe we are back in Costa Rica—for our sixth winter. Our eyes are feasting on the orange, pink, and magenta bougainvillea. After weeks of long underwear, wool socks, down jackets, stocking hats, and heavy boots, we walk out the front door of our apartment in shorts and a T-shirt. Nothing else.

Life is simple and full here. We love it!!!

Becky

Paco's World: Outstanding!

2008-01-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

“The Sea and Nature,” Paco said, his weathered face beaming joy. “That’s what I love. The Sea and Nature. And everyday I get to be on this boat. It’s what I was meant to do.”

We were snorkeling off Monkey Island in Puerto Rico over New Year’s with friends. We had run into Paco a few days earlier along the harbor in Naguabo. The old salt pointed to his blue and red wooden boat anchored nearby and encouraged us to join him on a tour.

“The weather Wednesday morning should be outstanding!”

Wednesday we drove through a rain storm to the harbor. By the time Paco strolled up with snorkeling equipment in hand, the rain had receded. Motoring us across the bay, Pace waved his arm toward the horizon roiling with dark clouds. “It’s a beautiful day to be out!” he exclaimed. “Look how calm the water is. And just past those clouds it’s clearing up.”

We snorkeled over the wreck of a sugar cane barge that went down in 1948. The years had turned it into a reef where hundreds of parrot fish, blue tangs, porcupine fish, and black and yellow sergeant majors congregated. Back on board, we watched rhesus monkeys cavorting on land.

“Oh, man, look at them monkeys monkeying around!” Paco laughed.

As he steered us back to the mainland, Paco waxed philosophical. “Do you know what’s the most important thing in the world to learn about?”

We waited.

“Yourself! You got to know who you really are!”

He thumped his chest. “You got to be true to what’s here. If you’re doing what pleases others instead of yourself, you got nothing.”

He tapped his heart again. “You can’t be afraid. Age doesn’t matter. Do what you love!”

Paco’s eyes crinkled at the rolling waters of the Atlantic as he seemed to drink in the energy that nourishes him.

“What a beautiful day! Isn’t Nature outstanding?”

Although Paco steers his boat over the same nautical mile toward the off-shore monkey reserve every day, the trip is a joy for him. He showed us a vivid example of living fully—loving what you do and doing what you love.

Outstanding.

Embracing Life

2007-12-18T15:57:00.000-08:00

A few years ago Nancy and I learned a lesson that speaks to the heart of Latin culture: It is more important to spend time with friends than to complete a task. A Costa Rican would never hesitate, as I did then, if a friend dropped by and said, "Come on, let's go see the new shop up the road!" The opportunity to be with a friend is precious and should be seized—not to avoid work, but to embrace life.

We were reminded of this lesson once again. We leave our home on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, tomorrow and we have a to-do list up to the ceiling. A friend is having a gathering at her house this afternoon and we have been saying for days “We’ll try to make it, but we have a lot of packing and last minute chores to do.” We have had workmen in and out for weeks, and just this morning we had the broken outside doorknob replaced.

As Nancy was readying an email with our regrets this morning, I said, “Wait. Remember what we learned in Costa Rica.” Nancy gave me a significant look, knowing just what I meant, and immediately changed the email to express our delight in attending.

Spending time with friends is more important than any to-do list. Chores will get done, and if not, the world goes on. No task is worth missing an afternoon deepening the connection with friends old and new.

Becky

Mystic Massage

2007-11-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

I was on the table yesterday under the hands of an extraordinary body worker. Nancy and I have gone to Maria Luisa Harmel of Isla Mujeres, Mexico, for years, and every massage is an adventure.

First Maria Luisa does away with the modesty sheet, so I am totally exposed. (She would use a sheet if I wanted one, but let me tell you, it is fabulous to do without!) Then she puts eucalyptus oil on her hands and holds them under my nose so I can breathe in the strong vapors of this medicinal plant. She rubs my scalp vigorously and then moves to the rest of my body.

For over an hour, Maria Luisa slathers on different oils for various areas of my body and rubs and kneads, vibrates and bends, stretches and pulls. As her hands fly from my shoulders to my ankles, I feel as if I were a piano and Maria Luisa the genius musician.

During her massages I almost always have a deep sense of my soul being just a resident in my body. My mind seems to zoom to the outer galaxies and I look back at this little speck of dust called Earth I feel so much love and joy for this home and for the physical form I am inhabiting for such a short time.

Not only do I walk (stagger) away from the massage totally relaxed, the knots rubbed out, the energy points revitalized, and my skin aglow, I also have a sense of profound spiritual wellbeing.

On that little rectangle of a table, my soul experiences a connection to the Infinite.

Becky

P.S. Maria Luisa's email address is mlydogs@hotmail.com.