 Who wouldn't adopt this cute little guy? Photo: Reuters There’s a famous urban legend about a woman vacationing in Tijuana who adopts a stray chihuahua puppy. She takes it home and discovers — surprise! — it’s actually a sewer rat. (Why she doesn’t notice this until she gets home is never quite explained. Maybe she’d forgotten to pack her eyeglasses.) National Geographic reported an even stranger puppy adoption story from China. Su Yun had always wanted one of those big, fluffy Tibetan mastiffs, and while she was on vacation she met a guy selling a purebred puppy by the side of the road — for a really good price. (Because that’s not suspicious at all.) She took her puppy home and soon noticed he had an enormous appetite, wolfing down a carton of fruit and two buckets of noodles a day. He grew incredibly fast; within two years he weighed a hefty 250 pounds. When he started walking around on his hind legs, Su could no longer ignore the truth: her pet dog was actually an Asian Black Bear.  Can you guess which one is the Asian Black Bear and which is the Tibetan Mastiff? Admitting she was “a little scared of bears,” Su turned him over to a wildlife rescue center. Good call, Su. As countless lurid online videos attest, sewer rats, bears, and other wild animals rarely make safe or comfortable companions. And yet, we humans can’t seem to resist trying to befriend all manner of furred, feathered, and scaled critters. We have a deep-seated need for pets that remind us we’re part of the vast web of life on this planet. Scientists call it biophilia, the profound love of every living thing. It reassures us that we’re not alone.  On days when human society seems to be running particularly amok, I find it soothing to take a little vacation in the animal kingdom. This week I did it via a visit to WildCare, a nearby rescue center, so I could hang out with some of the residents. It's a busy place; life in the great outdoors is hazardous, especially now with climate change upping natural disasters and disrupting habitats. About 30 staff and 200+ volunteers care for ill, injured, and orphaned creatures from 200 species. Every year 3500 clients arrive, and some, unable to survive on their own, make WildCare their forever home. A kindly human volunteer, Dianne, introduced me to this 74-year-old tortoise named Mohave — Mo for short. Mo was found wandering around Mendicino’s wine country, far from his native desert habitat. I like to think he’d just enjoyed a weekend of the kind of riotous excess we saw in movies like Sideways and Hangover, but chances are he was an abandoned pet. He couldn’t be released into the wild because captive tortoises can carry harmful diseases and pathogens into the wild population, which are an endangered species. Mo looks like something from the age of dinosaurs, with enormous foreclaws designed for digging desert burrows. Because cool, dark burrows are prime real estate in the Mojave desert, uninvited roommates are always sneaking in. Tortoises like Mo often find themselves sleeping with rattlesnakes (yikes) as well as woodrats, burrowing owls, and other desert dwellers. To retain moisture in the harsh, hot, arid climate, the Mojave tortoise has a body that’s 40% bladder, with a complicated fluid recycling system; Mo could go a year without peeing. Imagine the convenience!  Huh? I found this on Etsy, with the description: "Give your tortoise a fresh and fruity upgrade with this adorable Crocheted Watermelon Tortoise Cozy!" I feel the poor creature is cringing with embarrassment. As Dianne introduced me to a dozen other creatures, I soon learned that every one of them had a weird and colorful backstory. Take the Virginia opossum, the only marsupial native to North America. They're born the size of a honey bee and immediately climb into their mother’s pouch, where each one latches on to one of 13 teats and stays fixed there for 2 ½ months. They then crawl onto their mother’s back, where they ride around for much of the next month or so before falling off and heading out on their own. These moms should be nominated for sainthood!  A mother Virginia opossum carrying her litter. How does she do it? Almost as soon as she'd gained her independence, the opossum Didi got mauled by a cat. While treating her wounds, vets discovered the young opossum has hip dysplasia, poorly fitted joints that would slow her down fatally in the wild. Like Mo, she’s now a permanent resident of WildCare.  Didi is nocturnal, so she was happiest napping during our encounter. Didi, Mo, and all the other residents owe their lives to the kindness of strangers who found them and brought them in for treatment. However it’s not always easy to tell if a baby animal truly needs to be rescued. I once accidentally kidnapped a puppy I found wandering through our Ohio neighborhood. After I took him home with me and phoned the number on the collar, I learned it had just been adopted by my neighbor three doors down, and I’d “rescued” the puppy from its own front yard! Oops. Every spring, well-meaning people “kidnap” healthy young fawns, jackrabbits, baby birds and others, taking them to rescue centers. WildCare’s 5 Cs checklist offers guidelines for determining if help is required. 1. Is he Crying? 2. Is he Cold? 3. Is he Coming toward you (approaching people)? 4. Is he Covered in fluff (for baby birds) or Crawling with blood or insects? 5. Has he been Caught by a cat or a dog? Reptiles, especially snakes, are harder to evaluate; when in doubt, leave them alone. But I don’t need to tell you that; humans are hardwired to avoid serpents. Rich once bought an inflatable snake that was supposed to be the humane way to frighten vermin away from our garden. I alerted various visitors and workmen in advance, but for the next two days everyone arrived at my door white-faced and trembling with fright. We soon deflated that snake and banished it to a back shelf in the garage. Humans have always struggled to figure out how to live in harmony with nature. Right now, with the US government poised to rescind nearly all environmental protections, it’s clear the responsibility for that effort is falling upon the citizens. Luckily, compassion cannot be eliminated with the stroke of a legislator’s pen. There will always be Good Samaritans who stop by the roadside to assist a lost tortoise, a wounded opossum, or something that might be a puppy, a bear, or even a rat. Fortunately, too, there are volunteers and professionals around the country, ready to treat the critters’ illnesses, bandage their wounds, and find them a safe haven where they can heal.  WildCare med staff give this orphaned grey fox cub dextrose syrup to perk him up. He spent time in care and when he was old enough, he was successfully released back into the wild. Photo: Alison Hermance We all need that kind of healing at times, and according to the Japanese, one of the best remedies is forest bathing (shinrin-yoku). After soaking up the atmosphere of the natural world, we find ourselves shaking off our headline worries and tech-boom burnout, restored in body and soul, our eyes once again open to the beauty around us. Or as this ancient Hebrew wisdom puts it: “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” Kind of like this: Got a story about encounters with the wild kingdom? Please share it in the comments below. Please note I am now going to publish my posts on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. FINDING HOPE This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. See all the posts in this series. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. You can purchase the paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA Already read this book? I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.
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A teenager taking a selfie with a squirrel in the woods. What could possibly go wrong? "I approached it making a clicking noise with my tongue, phone drawn," Brian Genest, 17, told Buzzfeed. "When I got close enough, the squirrel actually tried grabbing my phone. I shook it off, then snapped this photo."  The squirrel was not amused. Photo: Brian Genest It was the flash that drove the beast completely bonkers. "Next thing I knew, the squirrel was on my shoulder, then under my shirt, and then hanging off my back," Brian recalled. "This photo is courtesy of my mom, who collapsed laughing shortly after."  "I think he got a little lesson," said Brian's mom, Paula Wright. It's pretty clear who emerged the victor in that encounter! Being bested by a squirrel is just one of the many indignities involved in being a teenager. Others include your parents turning into embarrassingly clueless numbskulls, teachers becoming sadistic fiends, and the refrigerator never holding anything worth eating, even after your mom comes home with bags and bags of groceries. It’s a tough life. The high school years are challenging for everyone, and few of us get through them unscathed. No, I’m not sharing stories of my misspent youth right now; even the highlight reel would take way too much time. Suffice to say that against all odds I managed to survive coming of age in the sixties, and I figure the current crop of teens will likely prove equally foolish and equally resilient now that it’s their turn.  I don't have many photos of myself from the sixties; "leave no evidence" was my motto. Here photographer Nacio Brown captured the attitude, hair, and glasses we all adopted at the time. “Adolescents are not monsters,” insists “the Mother of Family Therapy,” Virginia Satir. “They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.” Lots of teens make it a point of pride to avoid conversing with adults, while wily parents dream up ever more elaborate strategies for getting them to interact with the human race. Here’s how one mom succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. “On a lovely June day in 2006,” Cathryn Couch recalls, ”my cell phone rang. Sue Curry, my riding instructor, wondered if I could give her daughter a job over the summer and perhaps teach her to cook at the same time.” Impossible! Cathryn couldn’t babysit a teenager at her job as a chef at a Sonoma County retreat center. “But Sue was persistent and I have always been more inclined to say ‘yes’ than ‘no’ when the universe comes calling.”  Cathryn Couch. Photo: CNN Then Cathryn heard about friends of friends who were too ill to cook for themselves. “Sue offered to pay for the food, I donated my time, and Megan and I began meeting one afternoon a week to prepare meals for two single people and a family of four.” When the father of that family stopped by to collect the food on his way home from work, the relief on his face made it clear this was a bright spot in a very dark time. “I witnessed Megan’s pride in the contribution she was making in their life, “ Cathryn recalled. “And his deep gratitude for the simple gift of the meals. Something about that moment took hold in me.” The idea kept growing until it became the Ceres Community Project, which now operates two kitchens and two organic gardens in Sonoma and Marin Counties, just north of San Francisco. Each year, 300 teenage volunteers create organic, medically tailored meals for those who are ill and need extra help putting nutritious food on the table. Yes, of course there’s adult supervision. Nobody is going to just hand kids knives and turn them loose in a kitchen!  Meal plans and custom recipes are created by professional chefs and dietitians. At the start of each shift, the cook labels plastic containers with the type and volume of produce, how it needs to be prepped, and where it’s heading next. The volunteers are responsible for following precise instructions and soon learn the difference between chopping, dicing, slicing, and mincing. “The kids are learning good food habits,” explained my friend Rayne, a longtime adult volunteer at Ceres. “They learn about nutrition, they learn about responsibility, they learn about commitment.”  Rayne stands beside prepped veggies at Ceres' Novato kitchen. The kids also learn the joy of doing something useful that earns the sincere gratitude of strangers. “A couple of times a year we bring in clients to talk with the teens,” says Deborah Ramelli, Director of Development and Community Affairs. “The client will look at the teens and say, ‘You've saved my life. I couldn't do this without you.’” That sort of comment is thrilling for anyone to hear, and doubly so for teens, who tend to view all conversations with adults as the human equivalent of this classic Gary Larson cartoon.  “My hours in the community kitchen,” commented teen volunteer Alexis Weiss, “have taught me to make healthy homegrown meals, package them with care, and send them off with love… Volunteering at Ceres helped me realize how important community is and that we all need to be cared for sometimes.” Ceres has helped affiliates launch in cities across America and in Denmark; next month the staff is training a group from New Zealand. Funding comes from donors, corporate partners, government grants, and contracts for studies measuring the impact of wholesome food on medical outcomes. “We’ve built a body of evidence that shows healthcare outcomes improve, healthcare spending goes down, quality of life goes up,” says Deborah.  Owen Moynihan (left) and Ezra Thaler package meals in a Ceres kitchen. Quality of life goes up for the teen volunteers, too. They develop skills that will prove considerably more useful than taking selfies with squirrels. While learning to cook, they discover the value of community and resilience and interdependence — qualities essential for any era, and more vital than ever in light of the uncertain and deeply worrying future unfolding before our eyes. Most of all, these youngsters are learning that life is all about taking care of one another. As American guru Ram Das put it: Whether this is the first day of the Apocalypse, or the first day of the Golden Age, the work remains the same: to love each other and ease as much suffering as possible  “We're all just walking each other home.” — Ram Dass Got a story about teens you know — or your own teenage years? Please share it in the comments below. FINDING HOPE This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. See all the posts in this series. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. You can purchase the paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA Already read this book? I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Jan retired to a shack on a Portuguese beach and wore nothing but a swimsuit all day. We met while I was taking a portrait painting class, and he kindly agreed to sit for me. My grandmother Nini was a flapper and silent film star; at 90 she could still charm the socks off anyone. “If she was around when a date of mine showed up,” my sister Melissa recalls of our long-ago teenage years, “my date would be mesmerized. I’d be like, ‘Come on, let’s get going,’ and he’d say, ‘What’s the rush?’ Then he'd keep hanging on her every word.” My older relatives didn’t tell us kids much about Nini’s past, but I suspect she was pretty frisky in heir youth — and possibly during her widowhood, too. “I remember her flying up to visit us once,” Melissa says. “And when I asked how her journey was, Nini said, ‘Terrible. Not one single man tried to pick me up all day.’ She was seventy at the time.”  Ramona Langley, 1893 - 1983, giving her trademark innocent look In my family, we tend to ignore aging as something that happens to other people. But I agree with Fred Astaire, who said, “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.” It’s only practical to take an early interest in how you’re going to stay comfortable, safe, and happily engaged in the world when you reach what the Spanish call “the Third Age.” I live in a county where a quarter of the population are Third Agers attracted by the great weather, laid-back lifestyle, and access to city, beach, and mountains. The area abounds with senior services, most of which I fervently hope I never have to use. But this week I learned about one I’m ready to embrace right now: the Villages, an informal network of neighbors helping neighbors with daily life, so we can all keep on aging gracefully at home.  You have been warned. Photo: Etsy “It started in Boston, in Beacon Hill,” I was told by Sara, 75, a long-time volunteer with the Villages in nearby Mill Valley. “The story I heard was about an older couple in winter who had some kind of blockage in the roof, probably an ice dam. And they found themselves at night, one of them belaying the other off the roof with a rope tied around this chimney, trying to chip away the ice dam. After they got down safe they said, ‘You know, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. We want to stay in our house, but let's see if there's something we can do about that.’ So they started organizing.”  "So the whole idea," says Sara, "was to help older people stay in their homes for as long as possible by doing neighborly things for them. This is not Meals on Wheels. This is not medical help. This is the kind of stuff that in the old days, the neighbor would do for you." “When we initially started Beacon Hill Village,” co-founder Susan McWhinney-Morse told PBS in 2013, “there were 11 of us who got together one cold November day with this abstract determination that we’re not going anywhere. But we wanted to be responsible by not going anywhere. We didn’t want to have to depend upon our children who might live in the next community, or might live across the country. And so after two years we formed this organization that seemed to fit our needs. And it was at that point we began to understand that maybe we had tapped into a whole movement.”  Never disrespect a warrior queen. Photo: Etsy Since 2001, the community-based, nonprofit, grassroots Village Movement has grown to include hundreds of American towns, where volunteers help members with everything from errands to gardening to cozy chats. Many volunteers later become members; lots of people are both at the same time. The Village to Village Network provides tools, advice, and encouragement to communities wanting to create their own Village, so more of their Third Agers can continue living in their homes, giving and getting support with daily life, avoiding isolation and boredom. As a side benefit, relatives become less inclined to freak out and pressure older folks about trading their independence for a sedentary half-life in a facility. “How did I not know about this?” I said to Rich. “It’s been happening in our town for fifteen years, and nobody mentioned it? Let’s find somebody who can fill us in.”  I got the inside scoop from Suellen, who has lived in my town for more than half a century and is a long-time Villages volunteer. Suellen, an 82-year-old volunteer who serves on the steering committee for San Anselmo Village, met us at a nearby coffee house. “Mostly people hear about us by word of mouth,” she told us. “In addition to driving people to doctor’s visits and grocery shopping, we do companionship visits, phone calls, pet walking, tech help. There are people with low vision who want information read to them…” The list goes on and on. I wanted to dig into the numbers, so Suellen told me San Anselmo Village has 69 volunteers. There are about the same number of paying members whose fees cover the cost of a small support staff to organize member activities, such as book clubs and hiking groups, and arrange service visits from volunteers. “What happens if a member can’t afford the fees after a while?” I asked. “We have scholarships; that’s handled quietly. We get grants and donations. Occasionally people will buy a membership for their parent because they live far away.”  Maggie Kuhn, who founded the Gray Panthers in 1970, said, "We who are old have nothing to lose! We have everything to gain by living dangerously! We can initiate change without jeopardizing jobs or family. We can be the risk-takers." I asked about Suellen's own experiences as a volunteer. “So my first time I'm going out, I'm meeting this woman who's blind, and I'm taking her for a walk.” She pantomimed panic. “Oh, my God, she lives upstairs. And she uses a walker, which is way down there. I ask, ‘How do we get there?’ And she tells me, ‘I usually put my arm on the person's shoulder. Okay, you walk in front of me. And I'm gonna hold on to the handrail.’ And so we go walking around her neighborhood. That was a nice day.”  The League of Women Voters has been fighting for the rights of all eligible voters since 1920, the year my grandmother voted for the first time. As my brother Mike always says, “Old age is not for wimps.” Sooner or later you will need every shred of physical courage, moral resilience, and capacity for kindness and self-compassion that you possess. Our bodies will surprise us in ways we never thought possible. Our minds will struggle with … wait, what was I saying? Frankly, it can be pretty annoying. And depressing. But it can also be exhilarating. The Buddhists speak of this phase of life as the culmination of all the years of hard work we have put into learning what it means to be human. Now is the time to ask myself whether I turned out to be the kind of person my childhood self hoped I’d become. Am I a good friend, reliable neighbor, responsible citizen? Along with losses (I can’t stay up all night dancing any more or eat jalapeños) what have I gained? A little wisdom? Some perspective? The transcendent joy of feeling connected with the vast web of life in the universe?  In honor of the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday, his people have declared 2025 "The Year of Peace." Let's hope the Universe makes that happen. Photo: Ven Tenzin Jamphel My grandmother stopped going to Sunday mass at 65, claiming the priest gave her permission. “If you haven’t stored up enough merit in heaven by now,” he allegedly said, “you never will.” But Rich and I were told you can’t have too many good deeds to show St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, so we’ve decided to sign up as volunteers with our town’s Village project. We’re joining the thousands of neighbors living the words of St. Basil: “A good deed is never lost. Those who sow courtesy reap friendship, and those who plant kindness gather love.” Amen to that!  "Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional.” Attributed to Walt Disney, Charles Theodore “Chili” Davis, and Robin Williams, among others. Got a story about aging gracefully? Please share it in the comments below. FINDING HOPE This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. See all the posts in this series. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. You can purchase the paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore, 1611 4th St, San Rafael, CA 94901 Already read it? I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  These days, we all have to pitch in to keep each other safe and sane. Here, longtime amigos Pete and Kathi drop by with homemade pizza and humor therapy to boost our spirits. So this pheasant flies into a pub, smacks headfirst into the wall, stuns itself silly, and falls onto the floor. As Good Samaritan r/CasualUK explained on Reddit, “My husband decided we should try and take it to a more ‘pheasant appropriate’ place in the car ... The plan was to wrap the pheasant up in his jacket and I was to have the pheasant on my lap.” All went well until her husband’s next kindly impulse: turning on the car’s heating system. The sudden blast of air drove the pheasant berserk. “It was flying around the car, I was screaming and my husband was still trying to drive. It was flapping all over the car … pooping as it went. My husband pulled over … and we opened the door to get the pheasant out ... well, that was another 20 minute job.” I can only imagine the pheasant’s side of the story: assaulted by the pub wall, kidnapped by giants, escaped by the skin of its beak. It’s always a matter of perspective.  "It was a nightmare, I tell you," the pheasant keeps saying to its mates down at the pub. On the same Reddit thread, biscuitboy89 told about sitting on a train and having a baby seagull wander in and settle on his feet. The conductor suggested the guard at the next station would “take care of it,” but that sounded ominous to biscuitboy89 (and doubtless to the baby seagull as well). So he took the youngster home, where he discovered it loved hot dogs, baked beans, and Cheerios. (Who doesn't?) Eventually he took the bird to a rescue center run by “a pretty kind but very eccentric lady. Amongst all the cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, pigs, llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs and god knows what else, this lady had about 15 baby seagulls in a barn. They had a big safe area full of straw, with a heat lamp and loads of cat food to eat. She said she just feeds them and when they want to leave, they make their own way and fly off.”  A baby sea gull finds comfort and safety in a Minnesota rescue center. I love the randomness of this rescue story, and the selflessness of bisciutboy89 and the eccentric lady. They remind us that we never know when or where we’re likely to have a chance to do something kind for a fellow creature. These are moments of grace, offering us the opportunity to be our best selves, to rise to the occasion with generosity and Cheerios. I have the good fortune to have one such opportunity 24/7 in my California neighborhood: a community fridge.  San Anselomo's community fridge displays a poster by local school children with the motto, "Take what you need, leave what you can." Tucked away in a hidden corner of a church’s side porch, the refrigerator holds donated fruits, vegetables, milk, and other fresh food; next to it is a metal locker full of pantry goods: rice, beans, pasta, hamburger buns. Everyone’s invited to contribute. Anyone can help themselves to anything they need. No strings attached, no questions asked. Ever. “If you see your neighbor taking five cartons of eggs,” said Sabrina Socorro, one of the founders of Marin Community Fridges, “you don’t ask why. There is no hierarchy and no policing of each other.” The concept of community foodsharing sites took off about ten years ago in Germany then Spain. The first one I saw was the Kindness Wall in Kalamata, Greece in 2019. A Kalamata woman told me, “The important thing is that it’s anonymous, so neighbors in need aren’t shamed in front of the community.” Sometimes called “freedges,” or “(N)ICE Boxes,” hundreds of community fridges popped up across America during the pandemic, mostly on private property. The Love Fridge Chicago — launched in 2020 using the slogan, “We all gotta eat, we’re all gonna eat” — now maintains 23 fridges throughout the city. New York has over 100. LA and San Francisco each have 16. My county, Marin, hosts a handful; my town, San Anselmo, is home to one.  Tatiana Smith organizes the community fridge outside her house in Jersey City during the pandemic. Photo: Ismail Ferdous/The Guardian Because my town is not poor or urban, early on people questioned whether a fridge was even needed here. But constant usage demonstrates that these days hunger can happen anywhere, to anyone. Food insecurity — not having the financial resources to put three square meals on the table every day — affects 47 million Americans, including 14 million kids. “To truly address hunger at this scale,” wrote MIT Urban Studies professor Ezra Glenn, “would require food banks the size of supermarkets and a distribution network comparable to Amazon’s.” Instead, there’s a patchwork of charities and government food programs, many of which are on the chopping block right now. Beyond that, it’s up to us.  Lisa (left) and Sue explain how they organize the community fridge and pantry. For overflow, there's extra storage in the church kitchen. Supplies rarely get depleted, but if they do, donated funds are available to restock. This week I met with Lisa and Sue, who lead the handful of volunteers keeping San Anselmo’s refrigerator and pantry clean and tidy, weeding out the stuff they can’t accept, such as expired canned goods and opened packages. Both women are members of First Presbyterian Church, which bought the refrigerator, provides space for it on the porch, and covers the cost of electricity, about $30 a month. An electrician from the congregation helped with the wiring. Neighbors, businesses, and community organizations donate groceries. “How many people take food every week?” I inquired. “We get asked that a lot,” said Lisa. “We have no idea. We don’t keep track of anything like that.” What? No controls? No CCTV? That’s a shockingly loosey-goosey attitude! And yet it works, benefitting those who give as much as those who receive. Nowadays when I shop, I often pick up extra rice or olive oil to donate, and this week the unopened portion of my latest Costco impulse buy — a massive supply of Quaker Oats — is heading over there. Stepping onto that porch is always a feel-good moment for me. I have learned that when madness roams the earth and threatens to overwhelm my soul, the surest way to dispel the gloom is doing something for others. Our acts of kindness are how we maintain “islands of sanity,” according to poet Margaret J. Wheatly. “It is now too late to solve global issues globally to try to save the world,” she says. “We can only work locally to create islands of sanity that will preserve the best of the human spirit.” I thought about the Irish monks who spent the Dark Ages copying books, so the collective wisdom acquired over thousands of years would not be wholly lost. Today Wayback Machine archivists are copying endangered digital material; they've saved 835 billion webpages so far. The rest of us are entrusted with an equally vital task: preserving such intangibles as human decency and compassion.  Not all our efforts have ideal endings. I suspect r/CasualUK won’t be relocating another dazed pheasant any time soon. But often the results exceed our expectations. Think of all the cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, pigs, llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs, and baby seagulls that owe their lives to that eccentric woman at the rescue barn. It's comforting to know our small acts of kindness are not just helping those around us, they’re contributing to the preservation of the human spirit through dark and perilous times, as so many have done before us, keeping alive hopes of seeing brighter days ahead.  A young volunteer inspects a community fridge in the UK. Photo: Lucy Young Learn more and find a community fridge near you. Curious about what it takes to start one? Got a story about a community fridge or other acts of kindness? Let me know in the comments below. FINDING HOPE This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. If you have read it, I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Joel Eis in his Rebound Bookstore, reading from Fahrenheit 451 during Banned Books Week 2024. This morning a podcast host sent me a list of questions we’ll be discussing next week, starting with this one about my move to Seville: “What were some of the most surprising challenges you faced — and what helped you adapt successfully?” My mind instantly filled with a montage of memories — early attempts to order tea in a bar, Spanish lessons with condescending 20-somethings, the intervention about my hair… I recalled with a shudder one of the biggest shockers: getting banished from Seville’s public library.  Seville's main public library, Biblioteca Infanta Elena, scene of my banishment Early on I’d discovered the library’s tiny collection of English-language books: dog-eared Agatha Christies I’d already read, popular novels several generations out of date, and fawning biographies. I began slowly working my way through this underwhelming assortment until one day I returned a book late. And instead of being fined (something with which I am abundantly familiar) I was banned from the library for three weeks. Oh, the horror! It felt like hearing they were cutting off my oxygen supply for three weeks. I slunk away in disgrace and soon afterwards bought my first e-reader.  My first e-reader was this 2012 Kindle with a keyboard and a miniature lamp you pulled from the spine. No backlighting, no touch screen. You turned the page via a button. Positively primitive! Of course, I will always love print editions, and whenever I’m in California, I haunt local booksellers. My favorite is the cozy second-hand Rebound Bookstore — aka "the Biggest Little Bookstore in the Universe" — in the nearby city of San Rafael. Owners Toni and Joel Eis are my kind of book people: passionate, quirky, and dedicated to sharing ideas. “Community is everything,” said Joel, when I sat down with him this week. “That’s why we’re here.” He and Toni host poetry readings, jazz nights, stand-up comedy, occasional pot luck gatherings, and book clubs — including the newly formed Outlaw Bookworms devoted to reading banned books. (Yes, I've joined it. )  I'm re-reading this for the first time since high school to prep for the inaugural meeting of Outlaw Bookworms. Right now I'm in the middle of the big courtroom scene. The story has lost none of its punch. Joel fell in love with the bookshop twenty years ago, when he came out from Colorado because he’d heard the owner was ready to sell. “As I came into the store, this young girl, probably a high school kid, came out. I can see her now. She was wearing a lovely summer dress and she had a book in her arms and she spun around out in front of the store, like ‘Oh, boy, I’ve got something really cool.’ And I said, ‘You know, that’s what I want to do. I want to make people feel like that.’” Unfortunately, not all American teenagers are dancing in the streets for the sheer love of reading. In fact, 33% of eighth graders and 40% of fourth graders fail to meet basic literacy benchmarks in school. “A fourth grader who is below basic cannot grasp the sequence of events in a story. An eighth grader can’t grasp the main idea of an essay or identify the different sides of a debate,” wrote David Brooks in the NY Times. “Literacy is the backbone of reasoning ability, the source of the background knowledge you need to make good decisions in a complicated world.”  Without the ability to figure out what’s going on, weigh options, and calculate consequences, it’s tough to make smart moves in life. It’s no coincidence that 75% of those who wind up in prison are illiterate. In the general population “thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child,” Andreas Schleicher, head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times. “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.” Actually, that explains a lot. Have you seen the headlines lately? It’s pretty clear that current events are more like knuckleheaded bullying on a fourth-grade playground than decisions based on evidence, reason, or wisdom — let alone compassion. Let's face it, making sense of the world is never easy; that’s why books were invented.  Americans typically read about 12 books a year. The average adult spends 19 minutes a day reading, usually before bed. Reading a book takes about eight to twelve hours, and spending that much time inside someone else’s mindscape broadens our experience and enriches our perspective — sometimes in ways that transform us forever. Here are a couple of wonderful examples from Tobias Carroll’s 28 Authors on the Books that Changed Their Lives. “The first massive Rock My World book,” wrote Maria Dahvana Headley, author of Magonia, “was Beloved, which I read when I was 17. Not only was I clueless about race in America at that point, coming from where I came from, I was also clueless about living female genius writers. I didn’t know there were any. Up to that point, I’d read almost entirely white men. KA-BAM. I got blasted out of the universe of dead white boys, and into something much more magnificent. Toni Morrison’s way of flawlessly entwining her haunting with her history left me dazzled, sobbing, and bewildered.”  “Although I read Far From the Tree about two and a half years ago,” wrote Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Eligible, “I still think of it all the time — its exploration of a wide range of disabilities, its examination of what a disability is, its extraordinary compassion. I truly feel that if our civilization was destroyed and Far From the Tree was the only book that survived, it could convey to future alien races nearly everything there is to know about 21st-century earthlings.” Wow. You don’t hear that kind of praise for posts on Facebook or TikTok. You can see why Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, once said, “I can’t pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.”  We need all kinds of bookstores: retailers with new releases from what’s-happening-now authors and little independent shops like Rebound that carry hard-to-find second-hand editions, the ones that are loved enough to be kept around long past their sell-by dates. Having a wide range of books is vital to our civilization. Because as Haruki Murakami, author of Norwegian Wood, pointed out, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” And if there was ever a time to up our thinking game, it’s now. We’re watching a new world order being carved out in real time; life as we know it is being upended. We’re all feeling much as I did in my early days in Seville, as if we’ve woken up in a foreign land with unknown rules and no guarantees about how it’s all going to work out. But others have gone down similar paths before us, and they have left us plenty of guideposts to help us find our way. Since Gutenberg’s time, we humans have written hundreds of millions of books, and while not all of them are life-changing works of profound genius, there are plenty offering us fresh ideas and new avenues of hope and comfort. So how about it? Can we really get through these dark times? As Nelson Mandela wrote, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” I take those encouraging words as a resounding yes.  For years, Joel and Toni have been talking about selling the bookstore and retiring. But for now, they remain stalwart guardians of our civilization's intellectual treasures. Thanks for your service, guys! WHAT BOOK CHANGED YOUR LIFE? Let me know in the comments section below! FINDING HOPE This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. If you have read it, I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Humor isn't in AI's repertoire. When a journalist asked artificial intelligence to create a New Yorker-style cartoon, this was the result. Drawing: 10 points. Caption: Huh? Ya gotta love AI. Its brainpower is (I checked) 6 billion times as large as mine, and yet this morning, when I was searching for a quote about surprising outcomes, this was the best it could come up with: “The unexpected is the only thing that can surprise you.” Well, duh! My modest human brain was looking for a nifty way to describe the way small stuff can bloom into extraordinary experiences. Like the woman I knew in Ohio who couldn’t resist adopting a stray dog. And a second. Then more. When she found my future puppy, Eskimo Pie, by the side of the road, she was tempted to keep her, too. At nine weeks, Pie had that extra dollop of adorability that made even the most hardened cynic coo, “Awww, look at that little face!”  Pie was a tiny, adorable puppy — and she milked it for all it was worth. “I love her already,” the woman said. “But I don’t really need another dog.” “How many do you have now?” I asked. “Twenty-seven.” Gadzooks! “Where do you keep them all?” I imagined some rambling country farm with dogs gamboling about the hayfields. “We live in a little house with a small yard. But my husband built an extra room for the dogs.” I pictured a heaving mass of bored canines draped over shabby furniture, stained rugs, and one another. When I took the puppy home I very nearly named her “Lucky” because she had clearly dodged a bullet.  This is how I imagined that woman's house. And speaking of projects taking on a life of their own, there was the time that Rich had his Brilliant Idea about the dead oak in our front yard. “I was going to hire someone to haul it away, but instead I’m going to get that Amish guy to help me cut it into planks we can use in home improvement projects. It’ll pay for itself!” You see where this is going? The ancient tree produced ten 15-foot logs, each weighing 2000 pounds. An Amish miller arrived with a complicated system of claws, pulleys, and terrifying blades to saw the logs into rough planks. After shifting the planks to the barn for a year of drying, Rich hired haulers to take them to a kiln, and 90 days later hired another crew to transport them to a craftsman who produced finished tongue-in groove boards.  The tree on the left is the century-old red oak that Rich turned into useful (but not inexpensive) flooring. “How much do you figure that tree cost us?” I asked Rich this morning at breakfast. He shrugged and changed the subject. But for simple jobs that grow beyond our wildest expectations, I have to hand it to our friend Joe Kinsella. One day he heard about a Marine fresh from Afghanistan named Adrian Kinsella (no relation, but it caught Joe's attention) who was trying to help his former field interpreter and family resettle in the US. The translator was 18 when he began serving with the military. “The troops nicknamed him Yoda, like the Star Wars character, because he didn’t say very much,” Joe told me. “His mother and seven younger siblings did not know what he did when he disappeared during the day. It was kind of ‘loose lips sink ships.’ But he did ask for permission from his father.” “My dad, he was glad,” Yoda recalled in a 2014 interview with John Oliver on Last Week Tonight. “He was really excited, he was like ‘This is a great opportunity, you’re going to be helping your country and supporting the US troops; they are here for your country, to rebuild your country.’”  John Oliver interviews Yoda in November 2014. The Taliban took a dimmer view; they saw collaboration as a death penalty offense for the whole family. First, they kidnapped and killed Yoda’s father. Next they abducted Yoda’s youngest brother, a toddler. Then they thought, “Hey, why not turn a profit?” They told Yoda, “Your brother will be laid on the grave of your father unless you give us all your money.” “They got hurt because of me, because of my job,” said Yoda. He paid every penny the family had — almost $35,000 — to get his brother back, then they all fled to Pakistan. As fugitives with dubious legal standing, they spent five years rarely leaving the house, foregoing school and medical care to stay out of sight. Luckily, the USA takes care of those who have risked their lives for us; a Special Interest Visa was available for the whole family. Unfortunately, the red tape involved was insane. After three and a half years, Yoda got his visa but his family remained stuck in Pakistan. Then John Oliver did a show called Translators, holding up stacks of paperwork and sharing some of its many absurdities.  Oliver shows an actual question from the US State Department's DS260 Form. "To which I'm guessing your answer is, 'To be honest, my main plan was to not get killed by the Taliban. I haven't really worked out a plan of attack for my sex life yet." “By now the ghost of Franz Kafka is thinking ‘Don’t you dare call this Kafkaesque, I don’t want my name anywhere near this,’” Oliver said. “‘Compared to this, waking up as a cockroach is normal.’” He showed a stray donkey befriended by American troops that was transported to America in just eight months while Yoda’s family spent half a decade in hiding. How embarrassed was the State Department? It brought Yoda’s family to America the month after Oliver’s show aired. And Joe — in one of those small impulses that change your life — offered to help them find housing. He soon found himself in charge of “Team Yoda,” volunteers from the NextDoor community and a nearby Catholic congregation who helped the family get settled.  (From left) Joe, Yoda, and Adrian Meanwhile Adrian Kinsella did paperwork to pave the way for their green card applications. This was complicated by the fact that on all legal documents, Yoda, whose first name is Mohammed, was erroneously listed as Mohammed, FNU (first name unknown), so he became embedded in the American system as Fnu Mohammed. Then there were the cultural issues. The Afghans were astounded when Joe explained you don’t bargain with the cashiers at American supermarkets, and that dentist appointments are for a precise time, not whenever you show up. Over the years he has become “Uncle Joe” to Yoda’s family, celebrating with them as the older kids graduated from college and started careers, when Yoda became a biomedical engineer, the day green cards were finally granted in 2023, the announcement that youngest, the toddler kidnapped by the Taliban, made the high school track team.  Joe and his wife, Susan, recently joined the family for iftar, the meal after sunset that breaks the Ramadan fast. Joe’s story made me think about all the people — from close kin to total strangers — who must have assisted my relatives when they first immigrated to America. Why do we help people we don’t even know? Because we understand, deep in our ancestral brains, that cooperation has always been the key to survival. That was true when we were spindly little newcomers on the African savannas, surrounded by larger creatures with ferocious teeth and claws, and it’s equally certain now, as we turn more and more of our lives over to machines with 6 billion times our data capacity, but none of our hard-earned wisdom or compassion. Looking out for one another is how we Homo Sapiens have paid it forward for 200,000 years. Given current realities, who is to say that we might not end up as refugees in a foreign land someday? If so, we can only hope that we are lucky enough to have an Uncle Joe around to welcome us to our new home.  Much to learn we still have FINDING HOPE This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. If you have read it, I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Ohio, 1988. We had to drag Buck out from under the deck for this family snapshot. Can you tell he's not really into it? Right after we married, Rich and I moved to Ohio, bought an old stone house, and adopted Buck. He was a fine figure of a dog but (and I say this lovingly) not an intellectual giant. He was perpetually baffled by half-open doors, never realizing he could push one all the way open with his nose and walk through. Everything terrified him: loud noises, people he didn’t know, people he did know, his food bowl, and mice, to name but a few. His favorite activity was cowering under our back deck. Occasionally we would drive him into the nearby village of Chagrin Falls to stroll through the park by the river in a vain attempt to interest him in the world. He would shuffle morosely along, looking like he was on his way to the gallows, until we gave up and took him home. And then, one snowy winter day in the park, he spotted ducks landing on the river’s frozen surface. A hitherto unsuspected killer instinct kicked in. He tore his leash free from human hands and galloped across the ice toward his prey. Unfortunately, there had been some thawing, so ten yards out the ice crumbled beneath him. As the ducks flapped slowly away (I swear they were snickering), Buck dropped like a stone into the freezing water, just above the falls.  Chagrin Falls in winter. Photo: David Petkiewicz Rich dashed into the nearby hardware store shouting, “Dog through the ice. I need a rope!” The owner flung him one. Rich raced back, tied the rope around his waist, handed me the end, and crawled forward on his belly like a reptile to distribute his weight across the fragile surface. Buck was pawing at the crumbling ice, his wild-eyed look clearly saying, “See? The world really is a terrible, horrible place!” Slowly Rich inched across the frozen surface, grabbed hold, and hauled Buck out of the water to safety. And it did not lessen the heroism of that moment one iota when we learned that the river was less than two feet deep in that section, and Rich could have easily kicked through the ice and waded to the rescue. But then, I wouldn’t be re-telling this story decades later, would I?  "Well, I think you're wonderful!" Afterwards, while Buck wallowed in PTSD, Rich basked in the satisfied glow that accompanies acts of kindness. In these cynical times, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the survival of sentient beings over the last four billion years is largely due to cooperation, the simple act of lending a helping hand — or paw — when it is needed most. Scientists and philosophers once defined altruism as uniquely human, but they’ve had to eat their words as experiment after experiment has demonstrated the surprising amount of selflessness in the animal kingdom. Classic trials with rats show they’ll work to free a trapped companion and refrain from pressing a bar to get food for themselves it if means one of their own will get an electric shock.  A mouse petforms a kind of rodent CPR on a friend. A recent University of Southern California report “shows that mice tend to help other mice they know are unconscious. Their response ranges from gentle sniffing and grooming to more forceful actions such as mouth or tongue biting, before finally escalating to pulling the tongue out of the unconscious mouse.” (I'm hoping this means extending the tongue past the lips, not ripping it out altogether.) The study’s author, Wenjian Sun, commented, “The behavior was especially unique due to its similarity to how humans behave in emergency responses.” (OK, yes, whew! I think that means the tongue thing is what I said.) “A pawsitively endearing behavioral study on dogs,” reported Huffington Post, “has discovered our four-legged friends exhibit human-like levels of empathy and giving toward each other — but with special preference for ones they know.” In the experiment, dogs literally pulled strings to obtain treats for their friends.  Doggone good behavior from donor on the right, who tugged the cord to give his friend a treat. Photo: University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna “Chimpanzees,” noted Live Science, “have now shown they can help strangers at personal cost without apparent expectation of personal gain, a level of selfless behavior often claimed as unique to humans.” Are humans really selfless? Not all the time, obviously. But we sometimes manage to rise to the occasion with breathtaking acts of compassionate courage. Take the evacuation of Dunkirk, for example. For younger readers, this was early in WWII, when the Nazis overwhelmed the Allied Forces and trapped them on the northern tip of France with their backs to the sea. Their only hope for survival was evacuation, but the beaches were too shallow for ships, the harbor was heavily mined, and the Luftwaffe kept circling overhead, strafing and shelling. A call went out, and 850 British volunteers set forth in their own small boats — skiffs, fishing trawlers, pleasure yachts, lifeboats, barges — anything that could stay afloat long enough to get those soldiers off the beach. The organizers prayed they could save 40,000 men. They rescued 338,226.  A flotilla of "Little Ships" rescued soldiers trapped on the beach at Dunkirk.  It took nine days to get them off the beaches. It seems to me that we are in a Dunkirk moment right now. Our world feels more chaotic and dangerous than ever before in my lifetime. The ultimate outcome is far from certain. Many of us are afraid. And I ask myself, if they were in my shoes, what would all those altruistic mice, dogs, and chimpanzees do? They would look after each other.  Lowland gorillas Jamila and Suwedi comfort each other in a German zoo. Photo: Roland Weihrauch/DPA/AFP via Getty Images I’m proud to say many humans are stepping up to meet the animal kingdom’s standard of compassion. In the two weeks I’ve been back in California, I’ve been impressed and inspired by all the ways, large and small, my friends and neighbors are helping those around them. Their acts of kindness recall the seven Corporal Works of Mercy I was taught in my Catholic schooldays: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, tending the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead. OK, I’m leaving that last one to the professionals, but the others are as important today as they were in Biblical times. Not to second-guess Divine Wisdom, but I would add more stuff, like helping newcomers, the illiterate, and the technologically challenged. However you define them, works of mercy and compassion matter in this world. And if the nuns were right, in the next as well.  As my regular readers know, I spent the last six months in Seville answering questions from anxious friends about how to escape the US and move abroad if necessary. Now that I’m back in California, I want to explore how folks in America are finding ways to stand firm, build connections, and watch out for one another. Like that ragtag flotilla of little boats heading to Dunkirk, we must endeavor to save as many as we can. And who knows? Maybe our small acts of kindness will add up to something that changes the course of history. I’m still debating what to call my new theme — Dunkirk Moments? Ordinary Heroes? The Kindness of Mice? Whatever I settle on, the posts I write this spring and summer will highlight compassion in action, reminding us that the world isn't always, as Buck thought, a terrible, horrible place. Somehow, in spite of everything, life still offers hope, love, laughter, and on a good day, evidence that humans can be as decent as mice. THE KINDNESS OF MICE This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring ways we help each other when we need it most. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco  If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. If you have read it, I invite you to leave a review HERE. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Getting ready to hit the road again! One of the great things about being married to Rich is that even after forty years, the man constantly surprises me. A few days ago, he turned to me out of the blue and said, “I just read an interesting article about how to fold feta cheese.” My jaw dropped in astonishment. “How is that even a thing? Why would you want to? What’s the point?” He looked at me oddly. “Weren’t you complaining just this morning about how impossible it is to fold our fitted sheets?” Oh, fitted sheets. Now it all made sense. Yes, our fitted sheets have a tendency to look as if they’ve been dragged off the blades of a propeller and shoved into the closet by a blindfolded toddler. No matter what Rich had read, making them look any tidier seemed as improbable as folding crumbly white Greek cheese into origami swans. I’ve learned to live with it and suggested he do the same.  My sheets are among the countless domestic elements I am trying to corral into some kind of order at the moment, because at the end of this week we’re leaving for a six-month stay in America. (Do I have mixed feelings about that? Don’t get me started.) As I putter around the apartment, reshelving books and collecting stray paintbrushes and candle stubs, I’m thinking about all the fun I’ve had over the past six months, especially with the Amigos Project. As my regular readers know, I’ve spent a great deal of time over the fall and winter months interviewing expat friends to help me answer readers’ questions. People keep asking about the feasibility of escaping America if things get exponentially crazier. (And yes, never doubt that could happen. Probably will, in fact.)  I’ve done my best to reassure you all that moving abroad is quite feasible. (Here’s my starter checklist.) You’ll probably want to begin as a part-time expat (as these success stories demonstrate). If you’re retired or work online (see tips for remote working overseas), living in Europe can be a very affordable option, depending on your choice of location. As for feeling lonely, you’ll likely find it easier (as many of us have) to make friends in a sociable city like Seville than you ever did back home. Of course, there are downsides. Yesterday Rich and I got to talking about all the things we’ve learned to do without here in Spain. A car. A clothes dryer. A dishwasher. An automatic ice maker. Central heating. Amazon. While those things are obtainable in Seville, for us they’re so impractical we don’t bother. In winter I keep individual rooms toasty with space heaters and view my rapid dashes through the arctic zone (formerly known as the hallway) much as younger friends speak of their ice baths: useful for shocking the system into a state of heightened mental acuity but not a place you'd linger long.  Somehow I just can't warm to the idea of ice baths. While my apartment may lack a few modern conveniences, my Seville lifestyle is easier and more relaxed. My days unfold at a more civilized pace, giving me time to absorb some of this community’s age-old wisdom. For a start, nobody here is invisible. I am never just a number on a credit card or a pile of groceries on a conveyor belt. I make eye contact wherever I go and kiss more people in a week than I do during six months in the US. In fact, while in California I have to keep a tight rein on my impulse to cheek-kiss everyone I meet, because often it is misconstrued in disturbing ways. Here in Spain I have learned that the word nosotros — us — means everybody, not just those who are rich, lucky, white, and/or politically connected. Every Spaniard has access to education, health care, and an old age pension sufficient to keep them off the street. Amigos argue fiercely over government policies (and everything else) but agree that disagreements don’t make the other person a spawn of Satan.  Our Spanish neighbors love to gather, drink beer, argue fiercely, laugh, order another round, argue some more, laugh harder, and remain lifelong friends. Over the millennia, Sevillanos have weathered just about everything history can throw at a population: war, disease, invasion, dictators, tourists. During the pandemic, I could almost hear my neighbors thinking, “You call this pestilence? The Great Plague of 1647, when we lost a quarter of our population, now that was something!” These days it’s more like, “Oligarchs? We were invaded by Julius Caesar! Religious fanatics? We survived the Spanish Inquisition!” Even in its darkest hours, Seville is confident that the community will endure, and I am hopeful America will, too. As I toss out the ragged leftovers from my refrigerator and check the expiration dates to see if my canned goods will last into next autumn, my mind is already roaming ahead to California and our Apocalypse Chow Food Locker.  In the summer of 2020, Rich built our Apocalypse Chow Food Locker, which serves as an outdoor pantry and survival gear storage shed. Before leaving California last fall, I stuffed the locker with rice, beans, coffee, oatmeal, artichoke hearts, olive oil, and canned tuna. Unfortunately, the bargain brand of tuna I chose is being recalled because there is a slight but worrying chance that it could kill us. So I guess I have more discarding and restocking to do when I get back. Naturally, everyone is suggesting I pack my suitcase full of fresh eggs, which around here cost just 2.06€ ($2.25) a dozen. If only I could! At current US prices, they’d sell for enough to finance my tuna needs for the rest of the decade.  My next task is reviewing California’s latest emergency preparation warnings to see if I have to update anything else when I return to my San Anselmo home. Luckily the town managed to survive winter’s flood season without a major inundation. Now all I have to do is get ready for instant evacuation during an earthquake — with headlamps for night flight and digging through rubble — and check the current boundaries of the official wildfire zone, which creeps closer to us every year. In my spare time, I'm hoping to learn whether they ever caught the neighborhood pyromaniac I heard so much about last fall. All in all, I ‘m expecting a pretty exciting summer in California. Whatever happens, I will rely on my Amigos Project wisdom for guidance. I will remember that us means everyone, and that everyone matters. Even people I disagree with. As I go about my day, I will make eye contact whenever possible, although I will refrain from kissing anybody unless I actually know them. Being aware that disaster could strike at any moment, from any direction, I will keep my heart, mind, and home in a state of readiness. As for my fitted sheets, I will accept that, like my country, they are always going to be a disheveled mess, but they are mine and I love them. Just as they are.  IN SEVILLE THIS WEEK? COME HEAR ME SPEAK! I'm appearing at a free, English-language author event on Wednesday.  I'M TAKING A SHORT BREAK FROM POSTING I'll be in transit, then trying to absorb all the changes taking place in America. Could take a while. In April I'll be back with all new snarky commentary and helpful survival tips. THIS IS THE LAST AMIGOS PROJECT POST See the complete Amigos Project series here. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE MY NEW BOOK A SUCCESS!    If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. If you have read it, I invite you to leave a review HERE. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. Pop quiz: What creature do you see below?  OK, now what other creature can you see? Originally printed in a German humor magazine in 1892, this sketch has become a litmus test of mental flexibility. By now you’ve probably noticed it can be viewed as either a rabbit or a duck. (If you’ve identified any other creature, such as a flesh-eating zombie, we need to talk.) A Swiss study showed that around Eastertime most people see a rabbit and in October they spot the duck first, reminding us that what we see is deeply influenced by context. And that’s one of the reasons so many of us choose to live in another country. We get to view the land of our birth from another perspective, in a wholly different context — which can be incredibly refreshing.  The Latest Authorized Nearly Legal Map of the United States | The New Yorker You probably won’t be surprised to hear that these days millions of Americans are talking about packing up and going overseas. Last fall — starting Wednesday, November 6, to be precise — the number of Americans Googling information about moving abroad surged by 1514%. Not all of those queries landed in my email inbox (¡Gracias a Díos!), but these days I am fielding lots of questions from my friends, relatives, readers, and random strangers, all of whom seem anxious for a change of scene. “I’m gonna do it — sell the house, pack a bag, and jump on a plane,” they say, usually after the second martini. “Who’s with me?” I rarely consider myself the voice of reason, but in these cases I do caution people to cool their jets a little, taking time to consider their exit strategy and find a congenial place to land. For me it was Spain, but for two of my fellow bloggers — Lynn McBride, author of Southern Fried French, and Lori Cronwell, author of Bringing Europe Home — the allure of France was irrésistible.  After 140 years in the USA, Lady Liberty packs up and heads home to France. Courtesy of Southern Fried French  Lori Cronwell. Photo courtesy of Bringing Europe Home I caught up with Lynn and Lori this week and asked each of them how they navigated their move to France. In both cases, their successful transitions started with 90-day tourist visas and living as part-time expats in rental apartments. Both women still own property in the US and consider real estate a key factor. Lori Cronwell, a travel writer and digital nomad in her sixties, found herself traveling back and forth to Brittany on a regular basis. She decided to rent out her 1800-square-foot home in Portland, Oregon, so she built a 700-square-foot accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on the property. She lives there while she’s in the US, and the rest of the time it’s an Airbnb managed by her renters. “To create this lifestyle of having a beautiful and comfortable homebase — in two countries — coupled with the freedom to travel, didn't require a ton of money," she said. "It did require a shift in my priorities, a drastic downsizing, and a few innovative ideas. Renting out the main house gave me the freedom to travel. Living in a smaller home is liberating. There’s less to maintain, less to clean, and more time for travel and fun.”  Lori's Airbnb serves as her pied-à-terre when she's in Portland, Oregon. Photo courtesy of Bringing Europe Home Two months ago, Lori decided to become a full-time resident of France. “Living in another country part-time or full-time means taking a big leap out of your comfort zone,” she says. “You may have to learn a new language and a whole new bureaucratic system. But that’s part of the grand adventure: experiencing a new culture, stepping up to new challenges and meeting new people. All of which will keep your mind sharp and your spirit young. And you won’t be alone. You’ll make new friends; you’ll find your support group; and you’ll be living your dream.” For more, read Lori’s posts: The Perks of Being a Part-Time Expat The Pitfalls of Being a Part-Time Expat  It's easy to fall in love with France, as magazine editor Lynn McBride, now 75, discovered over many vacations there with her husband, Ron. When they wrapped up their careers 22 years ago, they realized they were ready to leave Charleston, South Carolina. “We decided to have a retirement adventure. We sold everything we owned — our house, our car — and went to France. We just serendipitously found this apartment in a chateau.”  When Nicole and Pierre began renovations, the Château de Balleure in southern Burgundy didn't even have a bathroom. Owners Nicole and Pierre Balvay had spent 30 years renovating the crumbling 14th century Château de Balleure, which had been in Pierre’s family since the end of the French Revolution. Lynn and Ron lived there while rehabilitating a nearby farmhouse, where they lived for 13 years before moving to an apartment in the town of Beaune. The cost of living is generally cheaper in France, Lynn says, especially when it comes to real estate. “If you are set on living in central Paris or on the Côte d’Azur, or in one of the uber-trendy perched Provençal villages popularized by Peter Mayle, then be prepared to spend big. But once you get out of these areas, real estate is quite reasonable and can be amazingly cheap, especially if you are interested in living in the countryside or in a village.”  Lynn (left) and her husband, Ron, enjoy le déjeuner with friends in the French countryside. Lynn learned to cook the rich stews the region is famous for, such as Beef Bourguignonne and Coq au Vin. She continues to study French (“A lifelong occupation,” she admits ruefully) and to write about her expat lifestyle. In her most recent post she introduced me to my new favorite word: epoustouflant, which means flabbergasting. For more, see Lynn’s post: Moving to France: A Cheaper Retirement Option? And her book: How to Learn a New Language with a Used Brain  Lynn likes to gather a few friends and hold French pastry tastings. I'm angling for an invitation to the next one! Photo: Southern Fried French For most people, expat life sensibly starts with 90-day tourist visas. Longer stays usually require getting a residency visa (bonjour paperwork!). In Spain and elsewhere, staying more than 183 days a year or buying property can define you as a tax resident; see how this affected my amigos in my post Five Things We’ve Learned About Living Abroad. Like the duck-rabbit illusion, my life has two different faces: the six months I spend in Spain and the six months I spend in California. And while I mostly write about the joys of my Seville life, there are plenty of downsides, too. Don’t get me started on Spanish bureaucracy or the appalling lack of decent chocolate chip cookies. And there are days when just trying to discuss a modest purchase at a hardware store tests my vocabulary and nerves to the limit. But living abroad isn’t all residency visas and replacement door handles. It’s about those wonderful mornings when we open our eyes and realize we are actually living in a place we once barely had the courage to dream about. That's when we feel the rapture of living in a world that is so vast, so precious, so exhilarating — so, as the French would say, epoustouflant — that it takes our breath away. Knowing that we are invited to take our place in that larger world is worth every bit of expense and fuss it took to get there. And then some.  Rich walks on a beach in Corsica, thinking profound thoughts about where to go for dinner. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how to enrich our lives while living or traveling abroad, finding new ways of avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE MY NEW BOOK A SUCCESS! If you haven't read it yet, you can find it on Amazon worldwide. If you have read it, I invite you to leave a review HERE.  DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  One of the joys of friendship is laughing together over goofy greeting cards. I love this greeting card but have to admit I’m puzzled; who are you supposed to send it to? A friend or relative who identifies as a psychopath? Your barista, with a note thanking her for not shooting your companion when he actually did order a quad shot, non fat, vanilla soy, extra foam light whip with caramel drizzle? Even as I pondered this mystery, I knew exactly what to do with the photo of this card when a friend sent it to me. I printed it out and taped it up in my kitchen, on the cupboard door where I keep a motley collection of cartoons, memes, and sayings. It sits just above this one.  “Laughter is an instant vacation,” said comedian Milton Berle. And couldn’t we all use a little time off from the world right now? “Happiness is laughter that’s shared,” observed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. And that’s why our friendships are so precious. I no longer remember the details of the flamingo-covered moment shown below, but I vividly recall collapsing into helpless laughter with our friend Pete.  Karen, Rich, Pete, and a flock of feathered friends make merry. . Sharing loony moments with pals is one of life’s great pleasures. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows you are slightly cracked,” said radio host Bernard Meltzer. Or as Groucho Marx put it, “When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun.'” But how do you form that kind of closeness in a foreign country, when you arrive alone, knowing nobody? It’s all about reaching out to those you find around you. Eleven years ago, Donna Wolski was a 62-year-old widow living alone in Florida. When a vacation brought her to Seville for three days, she suddenly saw a way to build a new life and realized she was ready to make a bold change. “On my flight home, I said to myself, ‘I think I’ll move to Seville,’” she told me.  It's not hard to see why Donna fell in love with Seville. Friends urged her to make a second visit to the city before doing anything rash. “I came back in September; it was hot as holy hell, and I was staying in an apartment with no air conditioning. And despite that, I went home, put my house on the market, and sold or gave away everything. I was back in a couple of months with two big suitcases and that’s all. I came intending to be here the rest of my life.” “Did your family and friends think you were nuts?” I asked. “They were happy that I was doing something with my life. My really good friend said to me, the last day I was there, ‘Go to Spain and live Donna 2.0. Leave the rest behind you.’ And that’s what I’ve done.” To connect with people in the community, she joined the American Women’s Club of Seville, a lively social group open to all English-speaking women. (Similar clubs exist in 45 cities around the world.) Donna became the AWC’s Membership Coordinator, helping people sign up and pay the modest annual fee. “For me it was great, because it meant I met everybody. Being alone, I would always say, ‘You want to meet for coffee?’”   Donna dressed for Seville's Feria de Abril (April Fair) Social friends soon became a lifesaving support network. “At the end of my first year here, I had spine surgery,” Donna said. That’s terrifying under any circumstances, let alone when you don’t speak the language or have experience navigating the medical system. Her AWC friend Christie stepped up, saying, “I'm going to put together a group of people who will help.” She reached out to bi-lingual members of the AWC and began organizing a timetable. Throughout her five-day stay, “these incredible women would just show up in my hospital room; five of them volunteered to spend the night," said Donna. "In the US you’d be lucky to get a family member to do that, let alone strangers.” In the decade that followed, Donna became an integral part of the community, serving four years as AWC president and creating a strong, active friendship circle. Last December, while she was on vacation in Morocco, a dog ran out of nowhere, tangled in Donna’s feet, and sent her tumbling hard onto stone paving, breaking her knee in three places. For the past two months her friends have been showing up daily, bringing groceries, translating medical advice, taking her out for coffee, keeping her involved and cheerful. “My brother said to me tonight, ‘Donna, what would you do if you were in the States and you were laid out for twelve weeks with a broken knee? Your friends are still going to work, they live in different suburbs. You wouldn't get that kind of daily support.’”  I always tell newcomers, and snowbirds who winter in Seville, about the AWC. And they nearly always draw back, saying, “I’m not a joiner.” Neither was Donna, I point out. Neither was I. But you’re here now. This is You 2.0, capable of great changes. Isn’t that why we travel? When I’m on the road, one way I like to connect with people is via EatWith, an organization often called “the Airbnb of dining.” Local (carefully vetted) chefs invite you to their home for a meal; an app shows the menu, cost, and setting. My hosts have always provided great food and conversation; some have become friends.  Paolo and Carlotta, our EatWith hosts in Turin, Italy, later visited us in Seville. Traveling through Greece a few years ago, I met two sisters (siblings, not nuns) who had just spent a day working in a soup kitchen in Athens. I asked how they’d arranged it. “We found them online,” one explained, “and just wrote and told them we wanted to come by and make a small donation. And while we were there, we’d like to volunteer for a day.” Rich and I did the same and were welcomed with open arms. My post Breaking Bread with Strangers in Athens describes that experience, an unforgettable mix of comfort, heartbreak, good food, and hard work. It not only reminded me to count my blessings, it gave me the deep satisfaction of knowing I was doing a (tiny) bit of good in the world. It was the kind of day, as Rich put it, “that lets you know that you are useful, that you matter, that your actions count for something.”  At the Athens soup kitchen, my main job was scrubbing trays for reuse. Not exactly glamorous, but hey, somebody had to do it. We live in an age of isolation and loneliness, so any chance to connect is heartening — and can be a lifesaver. “A new study suggests that lifestyle and living conditions affect aging significantly more than genetics,” reported Nice News, quoting a major Oxford University study of the “architecture of aging.” Life operates on the buddy system. We all need convivial companions to help us navigate traumas, celebrate joys, and send us silly greeting cards that spark laughter. Fortunately, we can build a friendship circle at any age, wherever we are. “If I can do it,” said Donna, “so can others.” And the effort is richly rewarded. As Salman Rushdie so wisely observed, “In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.”  Monday, August 4 is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. It's not too soon to start training for it! THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how to enrich our lives while living or traveling abroad, finding new ways of avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. GOOD NEWS! YOU ASKED FOR A PAPERBACK EDITION OF MY NEW BOOK AND IT'S HERE! FIND IT ON AMAZON WORLDWIDE  DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. 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I'm an American travel writer dividing my time between California and Seville, Spain. I travel the world seeking intriguing people, quirky places, and outrageously delicious food so I can have the fun of writing about them here.
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