 Breakfast at the Pancake House in Maywood, NJ, Rich's hometown. Best buttermilk flapjacks ever. Just before leaving Seville, I awoke to find the sky yellow and the city coated with muddy sand blowing up from the Sahara desert. Spain was in the grip of a sirocco, the gritty wind that can last weeks and is said to make everyone irritable and drive some to madness and mayhem. In olden times, if you murdered someone during a sirocco, you’d plead for a lesser sentence due to extenuating circumstances. So far I hadn’t noticed any homicidal impulses in Rich or myself but made a mental note to be on the alert. Online, the air quality was listed as HORRIBLE in bold red caps, followed by hair-raising warnings about dangers to your nose and lungs. I made another mental note to avoid breathing, especially outdoors.  During the sirocco, when sandy wind turned the sky yellow, Sevillanos started wearing masks again as protection against the hazardous air. Not to keep you in suspense, Rich and I managed to finish packing, walk to the train station, and arrive in Madrid without killing each other or anyone else. Whew! I didn’t even feel unusually irritated, although the same cannot be said of my respiratory system; I spent the entire flight from Madrid to JFK sneezing, coughing, and blowing my nose. As you can imagine, this was delightful for our fellow passengers and the crew, and I think it’s a tremendous credit to all of them that I wasn’t fitted with a parachute and shoved out over the Atlantic. We spent the next few days with Rich’s family in New Jersey and Connecticut, mostly telling old stories. Like the one about Rich’s sister Jane, who somewhere around third grade made an ill-advised foray into forgery. Apparently she’d gotten a poor mark on an assignment, and the teacher told her to take it home and get a parent’s signature to prove they’d seen it. Instead, Jane craftily signed it herself — only she signed it “Mother.” In crayon. Her crime was instantly detected, and after the ensuing uproar, the story became enshrined in family lore.  Rich, Jane, Charlie, and Cathrine, not long after Jane tried the forgery. The taller kids' heads were accidentally chopped off by the photographer, in the manner of so many family snapshots. The nostalgia train rolled on into my first-ever visit to Rich’s hometown: Maywood, New Jersey. To my absolute astonishment, it was exactly as I’d pictured it. Built just after WWII, the modest homes were within easy walking distance of the school, the shops, and the railway station where Rich’s father caught a commuter train into New York City seven miles away. When that train line was discontinued in the 1970s, the awkwardness of the commute kept Maywood isolated and preserved as if in a time warp. Over breakfast at Maywood’s Pancake House, his brother gave Rich a fat envelope. Inside we found family photos, a lock of Rich’s baby hair, and a letter Rich sent home while serving in Vietnam, the kind you write just in case. That letter took my breath away and made me count my blessings. Speaking of near-death experiences, a few days later we were in Tucson, Arizona having a close encounter with a snake. We'd been hiking in the Sonoran desert for over an hour, and despite signs warning us to watch for rattlers, Gila monsters, and other wildlife, so far all we’d seen was a small gecko. Then a six-foot snake slid across the path right in front of us, so close Rich would have stepped on it if I hadn’t grabbed his arm. “Saved your life,” I told him. “Possibly the snake’s, too.” “Wasn’t that just a big gartersnake?” he said skeptically. Later, one of the friends we were visiting asked, “What color was it?” “Black with a yellow stripe.” “There’s a saying about the snakes around here: ‘Black and yellow is a dangerous fellow.’ It was probably quite poisonous.” Yikes! Maybe I really had saved Rich’s life. On the other hand, looking at online photos later, I noticed the one most resembling ours had a caption reading, “Gartersnake. Harmless.” So who knows?  Arizona is a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to tangle with a snake there. As we got ready to leave Arizona, temperatures were soaring towards the 90s, scorching the landscape. Our friends had rented a condo in a gated community for retirees, hundreds of identical, low, adobe-style bungalows the color of sand: as near invisible as housing can get. My theory is the residents figure this way when their time’s up, the Angel of Death won’t be able to find them.  The award-winning Harvey Milk Terminal in San Francisco Airport I realize I’m not the first to say this, but arriving in San Francisco was like landing on a different planet. We walked off the plane into the colorful new terminal named for Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. Back when Milk moved from New York to San Francisco in 1972, LGBTQ sex was criminalized in most of the country and under attack from anti-gay-rights activists. “If homosexuals are allowed their civil rights, then so would prostitutes or thieves or anyone else,” said Anita Bryant. A smart, funny guy with a genius for organization, Milk mobilized his Castro Street neighbors, then Americans everywhere. “If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities... the expression of love... then life itself loses its meaning,” he said. “All men are created equal. No matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.”  Harvey Milk at a gay pride parade in San Francisco in 1978, Ten months after being elected city supervisor, Milk was assassinated by disgruntled ex-supervisor Dan White. As the city mourned, White claimed diminished capacity due to depression involving binging on sugary junk food, famously known as the “Twinkie defense.” Milk remains a national hero. In 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and today his name appears on public buildings, schools, parks, a US Navy ship, and now an airport terminal. Time called him one of the “100 most important people of the 20th century.” Would Milk have achieved as much elsewhere? "The great thing about the Bay Area is that people don't accept the status quo here," says SF Chronicle editor John Diaz.  At 100, Betty Soskin still works as a park ranger, giving talks at the Rosie the Riveter museum. Her experience as an African American shipyard worker was radically different from the portrayal of Rosie in the popular press. Betty Soskin, now a lively 100, recalls how her boss built WWII Liberty Ships on high-speed assembly lines, hiring people of all colors to work together as never before in this country. “They accelerated the rate of social change, so that to this day it still radiates out of the Bay Area into the rest of the nation. It’s where the visionaries come to find constituents for their wildest dreams.” San Franciscans are often said to live in a bubble, but I believe it’s actually an incubator for hatching the next generation of change. Our anything-goes incubator culture enabled Levi Strauss to create blue jeans, Steve Jobs to develop personal computers, and Harvey Milk to dream of freedoms that are now a reality. And there are countless others. We don’t always get it right (see my previous remarks about the Twinkie defense, which semi-worked) but we keep trying. It’s fun to be back in my home state, where Rich and I will stay until the end of summer. We’re busy prepping for fire season, restocking our earthquake emergency kits and the Apocalypse Chow food locker, and trying to keep the garden alive during the worst drought in 1200 years. I’m bracing myself for whatever comes to this catastrophe-prone state. So far, California's never had a sirocco, but with today’s changing climate, who knows? Stay tuned for updates. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  Will Spain's Ensalada Rusa (Russian Salad) be re-named Ukrainian Freedom Potatoes? “I saw a bank that said ‘24-Hour Banking,’ but I don’t have that much time,” comedian Steven Wright once joked. Ha! To hardened veterans of the Spanish banking system like us, 24 hours sounds laughably swift. Rich and I have been trying to untangle an issue with our Seville bank for over a year, and last week was our final showdown. The trouble started in January of 2021, when Rich and I were in the US and our residency cards were on the verge of expiring. Knowing this would cause our Spanish bank to freeze our account, we transferred all our money to an international bank, leaving 10€ in our checking account, and somehow just a single centimo (one cent) in savings. Last week, thinking we ought to tidy up our affairs by closing those frozen accounts for good, we made the 45-minute trek to the only local branch of our bank. There I explained that if they’d give us ten euros, we’d sign the closing papers and be on our way. The clerk looked at me as if I’d asked him to hand over his wristwatch — or possibly his firstborn child — to settle the account. “Cash? We don’t handle cash. Transfer only.” No cash? In a bank? Apparently it all happens online now. Don’t get me started.  Carlos San Juan, head of "I'm old, NOT an idiot," collected 600,000 signatures on a petition to make banking more human and less reliant on internet technology. I am ready to make it 600,001. Photo: Spain in English Unfortunately we didn’t have our international bank’s transfer details handy, and a sort of discreet pandemonium ensued. After fifteen minutes of furious keyboard activity, the clerk announced he could transfer the money to UNICEF. Fine with us! I naively supposed the charity would also wind up receiving the savings account’s final penny, but no. The clerk explained in order to do that we would, inexplicably, have to reopen our account, a process which would involve a second visit to the bank within 48 hours. At the look of horror on my face, he took pity and offered this wise advice: “Just walk away.” And so we did, leaving our penny behind to fend for itself. I love nearly all aspects of living in Seville, but I have to admit I’m glad to be done with the Spanish banking system. Rich and I will soon be heading to the US for the rest of the spring and summer, and as always in the run-up to departure, we’re reminding ourselves of the petty annoyances we’ll be happy to leave behind. These include line-dried towels that are stiff as boards no matter how much fabric softener I lavish on them; having to huddle over space heaters on chilly nights (yes, we get them here!); and the endless dust that comes from living in an old building in an ancient city filled with new construction projects. Seville is in a flurry of preparations for the floods of visitors expected soon for the spring festivals, Holy Week and Feria. Paint cans, tarps, and tools litter the sidewalks as hopeful owners spruce up store fronts, restaurants, and hotels, restoring them to their pre-pandemic glory. The atmosphere is one of cheerful bustle, and I often hear workmen singing as they push carts filled with beer barrels and grocery deliveries through the streets.  Every spring this Seville shop uses this little wooden contraption to spin special gold thread for Holy Week tassels and embroidery. In the midst of all this normality, it’s hard to believe that just 2500 miles away, another European country is at war with Russia. Sevillanos have been holding demonstrations of solidarity, chanting “Ucrania es Europa”(Ukraine is Europe). Measures large and small are being taken to poke the Russian bear in the nose. Zara’s parent company, Inditex, closed 502 Russian stores. Spain’s Royal Opera House canceled the Bolshoi Ballet. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona dropped the Russian pavilion. I expect any day now to hear that the Spanish are changing the name of Ensalada Rusa (the potato-based, mayonnaise-laden Russian Salad) to Ukrainian Freedom Potatoes. A few nights ago over dinner, a friend asked if I thought nuclear war was coming. No, I don’t (touch wood!). But it’s certainly less absolutely inconceivable than it was a month ago, and that’s making everyone justifiably jittery. Fortunately for my ability to sleep at night, military experts are saying it’s highly unlikely that nukes will be deployed. More selfishly, I’m reassured by the fact that Seville is 2500 miles away from the action. Rich and I don't feel any immediate need to brush up on the duck-and-cover skills we learned as kids, although I do find myself eyeing my Ikea desk and wondering how it would hold up in a bomb blast. Let’s hope we never have to put it to the test. This week I’d originally planned to write a lighthearted post about International Happiness Day, which is coming up March 20. But right now that doesn’t seem to strike the right note. I’m reminded of the words of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a woman who knew more than most about life’s joys and sorrows. “Don't wish me happiness,” she said. “I don't expect to be happy; it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor — I will need them all.” And so will every one of us in the days ahead. But if we’ve learned anything in the last two years, it’s that we can cope with challenges that five minutes ago were unthinkable.  Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an aviator, author, wife of the first man to fly nonstop from NY to Paris, and mother of the most famous kidnap/murder victim in US history. In other news, Rich and I depart for the US a week from Thursday. No, we are not fleeing Europe one step ahead of the Red Army; our tickets were purchased weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. As my regular readers know, Rich and I always spend part of the year in the US, and we arranged this trip to see family in New York and friends in Arizona, making up for visits too-long postponed due to the pandemic. We plan to spend the summer in California and return to Seville in September. We’ve renewed our Spanish residency cards and continue to cherish this city as our home. But there’s a lot of wisdom in the old Yiddish adage Mann tracht, un Gott lacht (Man plans, and God laughs). The last time I organized a short visit to the States, back in May of 2020, it was 16 months before I could return to Seville. I don’t presume to know the mind of God, but I can tell you one thing for sure: that old trickster has a few more surprises in store for all of us. And you can take that to the bank.  Whatever happens, let's try not to lose our heads. I'll be on the road for the next few weeks, so I won't be posting on this blog. Check out my Facebook page for updates on our travel adventures in NY, AZ & CA. And hey, stay safe out there, everybody! YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY |
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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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