 Rich and I give a little love to Uni, a seven-year-old German Shepherd whose owner lost his housing and couldn't keep the dog any more. No, we didn't adopt Uni, we just had the pleasure of hanging out with him awhile. “It was like being hit over the head with a baseball bat: This is what you’re going to do,” says Alice Mayn. Naturally this staggering epiphany came when she least expected it. “I had retired. I was living in a house that I had remodeled and was going to live in the rest of my life. My young grandchildren were right down the road from me. I was never going to move again. Then Lily comes into my life.” Lily just wanted a little peace and comfort in her old age (don’t we all?). Instead, she was found wandering the streets of Santa Rosa, California with no place to call home. As a golden retriever, Lily couldn’t share details of her backstory, but she had a host of pesky health problems that suggested she’d been alone for a while. She went to a shelter but was still at risk; sadly, senior dogs are often the first casualties of an overburdened system. When Alice fell for Lily’s sweet charm and took her home, no doubt the dog could hardly believe her luck.  Lily's favorite retreat was always a siesta in the tub. Lily enjoyed four contented months before succumbing to a fatal blood disorder. But according to Alice, Lily’s work wasn’t finished. “She had an agenda for me.” That agenda — Alice’s new mission in life — was establishing a sanctuary for other hard-to adopt, at-risk, large, senior dogs. Fifteen years later, thanks to generous donors and a team of 75 selfless volunteers, Lily’s Legacy sits on a five-acre ranch with room to run, a canine swimming pool, and a barn where old dogs get a daily cuddle, letting them know they are not forgotten, marginalized, or invisible. They are loved. I was in Seville when I first read about this “Cuddle Club” just before Christmas of 2019. When I realized it was located in Petaluma, just half an hour from our cottage in California, I printed their flier and gave it to Rich, with the words “We are doing this!” scrawled across the top. But before we could act on the plan, the world was upended by the pandemic. It wasn’t until last Sunday — three and a half years later — that we finally made it to Lily’s, sat on those comfy sofas, and scratched some of those sweet old dogs behind the ears. They are all great dogs, carefully vetted to make sure their personalities and temperaments will mesh comfortably with the rest of the pack. There are typically ten to twelve dogs in residence and a few fostered; all are larger animals (50+ pounds) older than 7 years. After some vet care and TLC, around 85% of them get adopted to a “furever” home, and the rest live out their days at Lily’s. Alice’s mission keeps expanding; she launched Saving Senior Dogs Week USA and the Lifetime Care Program that guarantees your dog will have a home at Lily’s after your demise. I know, estate planning for dogs; who knew? I explained to Alice this visit marked the final chapter in this summer’s Nutters’ Tour of California. “I don’t mean to imply you’re a nutter,” I added hastily. “Rich and I are very clear that we’re the nutters, exploring the world in our own eccentric way.” She laughed. “Oh, I’m a nutter all right.” Glancing around her office, filled with dog beds, canine memorabilia, and the large, lovable Uni, she grinned. It was clear she wouldn’t have it any other way.  Alice in her office at Lily's Legacy Rich and I are leaving California next week, and my view of life here is already taking on a warm, nostalgic glow. Rich keeps reminding me of all the stuff I won’t miss. The chaos caused by two water main breaks this month, causing flooding and endless repairs on our street. The recent energy blackouts disrupting our lives. The neighborhood firebug who has twice started towering blazes in the middle of the night on a property adjacent to ours.  The first fire took out part of the fence, the second melted trash bins and scorched the branches of trees. Well, yes, there’s all of that. But most of the time it’s been a great, fun-filled summer. I’ll miss our CA companions — human, furred, and feathered. Every morning Rich and I sit in the garden and have breakfast with the birds. They are messy eaters, and we keep a birdbath underneath the feeder to catch the inevitable spilled sunflower seeds. This spring, the squirrel we call Peanut discovered this treasure trove of easy eats, and for months he’s been gorging himself. In fact, he’s grown so stout I began worrying about his mobility and his cholesterol. When he disappeared for a while, I wondered if he was off having his stomach stapled or visiting a health spa, but he recently returned, hefty as ever, to resume his favorite position.  Peanut and his appetite are back! When I told my sister-in-law we were glad he’d come to no harm, she gave me an incredulous look. “You’re feeling nostalgic about Peanut?” she asked. “Squirrels are just rats with better PR.” “I won’t tell him you said that,” I replied. Right now my main preoccupation is packing for the five-week Nutters’ Tour of Sicily we're taking before returning to Seville. Rich has devoted the last month researching ever-smaller suitcases. As a packing minimalist, his preference would be to hop on every plane or train carrying nothing but a toothbrush and a passport.  It took Rich 20 years to convince me to try luggage-free travel. It's great fun for short trips, but for anything over a week I require a few more creature comforts than I can stuff in my pockets and purse. Rich is not the only one with a “less is more” attitude toward luggage these days. To promote more sustainable travel, Japan Airlines is testing a clothing-sharing program called “Any Wear, Anywhere.” You pack the bare necessities and find pre-worn (but clean!) rental clothing waiting at your hotel. European ski resorts are pioneering similar programs. To be honest, I’m having a hard time warming to the idea. Will these rented clothes fit comfortably, let alone express my personality and tastes? Somehow I doubt it.  As we’re not heading to Japan or an Alpine ski lodge, we couldn't rent a travel wardrobe even if we wanted to. So two weeks ago we bought trim new four-wheel suitcases, just 22 x 14 x 9 inches. I’m happy to report I’ve done a successful test pack, fitting in everything shown below. (I always get questions about brands and details, so I’ve linked to some new discoveries for those who are interested. As my regular readers know, there are no paid promotions on this blog.) My Minimalist Packing List for Sicily Suitcase: 4.6 pounds, 22 x 14 x 9 inches Featherweight travel vest 2 pairs trousers 2 short-sleeved t-shirts 1 sleeveless t-shirt Button-down no-iron dress shirt Sweater Light rain jacket, detachable hood Yoga pants for PJs and exercise Sundress Socks & underwear Espadrilles Slippers Toiletry kit Kindle  Another reason I never check bags. Meanwhile, I’m busy researching Sicily. My friends, this is one nutty island. Rich was ecstatic to learn they serve ice cream with brioche for breakfast. I’m fine with the ice cream but a bit worried about the brioche. Turns out the Sicilians say, “If you drop even a single crumb, there is a place reserved in purgatory where you are doomed to pick up breadcrumbs with your eyelashes for hundreds of years.” Yikes! Here’s hoping I don’t find myself in God’s doghouse, collecting crumbs for eternity. “Buckle up,” I told Rich. “It’s going to be a wild ride.”  "Ice cream for breakfast?" said Rich. "I think we owe it to your readers to try it." Watch this blog for more on this topic! I'll be On the Road, So No Posts for a Week or Two After that, my schedule may be erratic, by I promise to keep you informed of all the oddball things I find Palermo and the rest of Sicily. JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR SO FAR SUMMER 2023: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF CALIFORNIA At Last! We Finally Visit the Cuddle Barn (Senior Dog Rescue) The Accordion Is Hip Again. Yes, It Is! (Cotati) Boonville: A Town So Remote It Has Its Own Language (Anderson Valley) Can't Stop the Madness, But Let's Slow It Down a Bit (Thrift Shops) It's Only a Movie. Or Is It? (Bodega Bay) Why I Spray-Painted My Shoes (Theme Weddings) Please, Please, Please Don't Ask Me to Sing Karaoke (San Anselmo) Keeping It Strange & Wonderful for Future Generations (Fairfax Festival) Why Isn't Anyone Banning My Books? (Alameda) When Pigs Fly (Yes, They Can!) (Sacramento Pig Races) Do You Believe in Magic? (Macabre Market) My Close Encounter with the Skeptic Society (Outer Space) The Nutters' Guide to Modern Comfort Food (My Kitchen) Relationships: Do Humans Stand a Ghost of a Chance? (Hangtown) For Nutters, There's No Place Like California (Petaluma Chicken & Egg Day) Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me Plan the Next Nutters Tour? SPRING 2023: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? 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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 "If I had been sitting on a chair, wearing black pants, some old shoes, a white shirt, and an uncovered accordion just playing polkas, I wouldn’t have lasted," said The Great Morgani (aka Frank Lima), shown here at the Cotati Accordion Festival. "People want to see the spectacle.” I once got into a hot dispute with an accordionist, and it didn’t end well. Around the time of our tenth anniversary, Rich and I often went dancing in a small club in Cleveland’s Little Italy, where local bands played ballads made popular by Rat Pack crooners. On a whim, we hired their best band — accordion and all — to play at our anniversary party. A few weeks before the festivities, we dropped in to listen to the band only to discover, to our horror, that the accordion player had made his new girlfriend lead vocalist, and her screechy voice had caused the rest of the band to walk out. We couldn’t inflict the girlfriend’s ghastly voice on our guests, but the accordion player refused to take “You’re fired” seriously, insisting he’d show up and play, refusing to return our hefty deposit. What to do? A Sicilian-American friend said, “What you need is a fifty-dollar man.” “What’s that?” asked Rich. “What instrument does he play?” “The accordion.” “Well, he’s going to have a hard time playing the accordion with ten broken fingers.” Yikes! “For five dollars,” asked Rich, “will he just break the keys of the accordion?”  Accordions are hand-made instruments ranging from $600 to $6000 and up. Not to keep you in suspense, we didn’t hire a fifty-dollar man to harm man nor instrument. We let the musician keep the deposit, figuring that having to perform with his no-talent girlfriend was punishment enough for his sins. To my surprise, few of my guests seemed sorry to hear there would be no accordion music at the festivities. It seems the instrument isn’t universally held in high esteem. “A gentleman,” remarked Tom Waits, “is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.” Ambrose Bierce called it “an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.” My brother Mike, a jazz musician, says, “In heaven they play harps. In Hell they play accordions.” General Norman Schwarzkopf weighed in with the remark, “Going to war without France is like hunting without an accordion.” Huh?  But the world didn’t always sneer at the box-shaped, bellows-driven instrument. In fact, when it burst on the scene in 1822 Berlin, it was quickly embraced with rapture in just about every nation and musical genre, finding its way into folk tunes, music hall numbers, classical compositions, and later jazz and pop. In America, its popularity peaked in the 1950s, in large part thanks to Dick “the Legend” Contino, the “Rudolph Valentino of the accordion.” Think the accordion can’t be sexy? I saw Dick Contino play one night at that club in Little Italy, and let me tell you, it was steamy stuff. He sported thick, wavy silver hair and a satin shirt which, as the first tune really began heating up, he suddenly ripped off and flung aside. This revealed a form-fitting sleeveless t-shirt and an abundance of chest hair; everyone leaned forward with baited breath, sure that he’d catch that hair in the accordion’s bellows. Of course, he never did, and pretty soon we forgot all about it as we lost ourselves in his passionate music. By the time he got to “Flight of the Bumblebee” his fingers were moving so fast they became a blur.  Dick "the Legend" Contino in performance, after ripping off his tear-away shirt It was rock ‘n roll that killed the accordion’s popularity. Suddenly the guitar was king, and the accordion was downgraded from cool to quaint. Oh sure, it cropped up in a few hit songs by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan, but mostly it languished as a novelty, kept alive by old-school music venues and celebrations such as the Cotati Accordion Festival, which I attended this weekend. “I go every year,” said a women who’d danced at the festival despite a dislocated shoulder and mild concussion. “I always tell people how much fun it is. I say, ‘It’s really great. You should come too.” And they always say —” Here she imitated their condescending tone. “‘Uh, you go. And, uh, enjoy yourself.’” We both laughed. Because the Cotati Accordion Festival is a total hoot and her friends and family (like mine) had no idea how much fun they were missing. This was its 32nd year, and the festival has never been more popular, drawing dozens of top performers from around the world, a crowd of several thousand a day, and vendors selling everything from kettle corn to kitsch figurines. There was an ongoing musical jam session in one tent, a polka dance hall in another, a zydeco dance party at a nearby bar, and two stages filling the air with music guaranteed to make everyone smile and tap their feet. Are accordions finally making a comeback? Absolutely, says Canadian Martin Hergt, owner of Tempo Trend in Victoria, British Columbia. And it’s all thanks to a phenomena some are calling “the accordivirus,” a sudden outbreak of accordion fever that became highly contagious during the pandemic lockdown. “People were home,” he told me. “They pulled out their old accordions and started playing again. They ended up wanting lighter ones, or something different. Their kids started taking lessons. We got emails from all over the world. We’d never shipped so many accordions. And it’s still going strong.”  Martin Hergt says the pandemic may be over but "the accordivirus" (a sudden outbreak of accordion fever) is still going strong. In the early afternoon, all the female accordionists were invited onto the main stage to play “Lady of Spain,” the song that launched Dick Contino’s career, became a signature tune on the Lawrence Welk Show, and has been sung by everyone from Bing Crosby to the Muppets. The audience, sitting on hay bales, folding chairs, and the grass, cheered them on, and when they followed up with "Beer Barrel Polka," we all sang along. Yes, even Rich and I joined in; with a crowd that large, I figured no one would notice how off-tune we were. “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is,” said Rich. As the musicians packed away their instruments, an announcer from an adjacent stage said, “And now, presenting the annual Dick and Judy Contino Accordion Scholarship, we welcome Judy Contino.” My head whipped around. And there she was — the widow of “the Legend,” who passed on to the Great Music Stage in the Sky in 2017. Later I introduced myself and told her how much I loved her husband’s music. We agreed the festival was a great way to help keep accordion music, and his memory, fresh.  I was lucky enough to meet Judy Contino at the Cotati Accordion Festival 2023. So OK, I’ll admit the accordion may never again be mega-hip. It won’t garner lavish praise from music critics at Rolling Stone, Billboard, or Mojo. Fashionistas won’t have themselves photographed holding one in an amusingly provocative manner. And even if they read this post, my family and friends will not speak in awe and envy of my good fortune in attending this year's Cotati Accordion Festival. But I know what it’s like to sit on the grass, belt out an old favorite tune with thousands of other voices raised with mine, and embrace the whimsical, cheerful world of accordion music. And that’s hip enough for me.  In the end, it's all about how the music makes you feel. JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR SO FAR IN PROGRESS: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF CALIFORNIA The Accordion Is Hip Again. Yes, It Is! (Cotati) Boonville: A Town So Remote It Has Its Own Language (Anderson Valley) Can't Stop the Madness, But Let's Slow It Down a Bit (Thrift Shops) It's Only a Movie. Or Is It? (Bodega Bay) Why I Spray-Painted My Shoes (Theme Weddings) Please, Please, Please Don't Ask Me to Sing Karaoke (San Anselmo) Keeping It Strange & Wonderful for Future Generations (Fairfax Festival) Why Isn't Anyone Banning My Books? (Alameda) When Pigs Fly (Yes, They Can!) (Sacramento Pig Races) Do You Believe in Magic? (Macabre Market) My Close Encounter with the Skeptic Society (Outer Space) The Nutters' Guide to Modern Comfort Food (My Kitchen) Relationships: Do Humans Stand a Ghost of a Chance? (Hangtown) For Nutters, There's No Place Like California (Petaluma Chicken & Egg Day) Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me Plan the Next Nutters Tour? SPRING 2023: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? 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.  Every year during our family reunion, Rich and I visit the stump of a 280-foot, 1244-year-old giant sequoia, so large the top was once used as a dance floor. “If you write about this on your blog,” my sister said, “be sure to tell them your family thinks you’re nuts.” Over the phone, I could practically hear her eyes rolling. “Oh, I’m pretty sure my readers have already worked that out for themselves,” I replied. I’d answered the call during my visit to the Haggin Museum in downtown Stockton, one of California’s least popular cities. Oh sure, it had enjoyed some glory years, when its San Joaquin River served as a major inland seaport for the Gold Rush and later when Benjamin Holt invented the Caterpillar tractor there. But in modern times, the city has distinguished itself by spectacularly high rates of crime, illiteracy, and obesity, fiscal mismanagement sparking a notorious bankruptcy, and consistently being ranked as one of the most dangerous and miserable cities in America. “So you’re exploring Stockton’s museum scene.” This was my brother-in-law; apparently they were on speakerphone. “Only you two…” But Rich and I were having a blast. The visit started out as an excuse to stretch our legs and grab some lunch halfway along the three-hour journey from our cottage near San Francisco to the family reunion in the Sierra mountains. Rich claims he thought we were going to the Haggis Museum to view prime examples of Scotland's famous dish made of offal (animal guts, heart, liver, and lungs) mixed with suet and oatmeal then cooked inside a sheep’s stomach. Yes, I’ve had it, and it’s just as yummy as it sounds.  In January of 2013, Rich was invited to preside over a Burns dinner, reciting a traditional poem by Robert Burns that concludes with stabbing the haggis, which you see on the table before him. You can imagine how relieved Rich was to learn we were visiting an art and local history museum named for a long-ago big-wig. Arriving at the Haggin Museum, it didn’t take us long to realize we’d stumbled on something extraordinary. The art was spectacular — one painting had hung in the White House — and the lively history section included the ghoulish exhibit of a wooden trunk in which a woman had stashed the body of an inconvenient third husband. An unusual and quirky touch was provided by signs and pamphlets inviting us to consider life’s Big Questions — not hard to do after looking at the blood-soaked trunk of a murderess. (More about that later.)  Ronald Reagan borrowed this work, Albert Bierstadt's."Looking Up Yosemite Valley," to hang in the White House press room. Stockton’s early good fortune included acquiring art during the nineteenth century, when artists devoted whole careers to capturing the majesty and romance of America’s vast landscapes and demonstrating how well man and nature were co-existing. Their style, known as the Hudson River School, soon carried them from the East Coast to the Golden State, where each new painting seemed to shout, “Think the Hudson Valley is cool? Wait till you see Yosemite!” Ronald Reagan borrowed the Haggin’s “Looking up Yosemite Valley” for the White House press room to glamorize his California roots. You can’t really view these landscapes without hearing a glorious swell of symphony music in your head. But the Haggin curators didn’t stop there. Next to Ralph Albert Blakelock’s “The Canoe,” a small sign asked, “What does being alone feel like to you?” Beside Albert Bierstadt’s “Moose” I read, “What do you remember about the first time you saw a wild animal?” Pamphlets invited us to continue our inner journey via self-guided tours with themes such as “Joy” and “Calm.” The one on “Empowerment” advises you to try “walking through this world confident in your strength as well as your vulnerabilities. It is, after all, the sum of the two that renders us human.” Grand philosophical thoughts, indeed. Every museum is designed to tell us something about what it means to be human, and the Haggin offers many perspectives, from fresh-faced kids shown in early Kellogg ads to Mississippi blues legends to Stockton’s entrepreneurs. Museums also remind us how attitudes change over time. In 1911, the main concern about J. C. Leyendecker’s Cooper Underwear ad was showing the clinging garment while avoiding any hint of the male anatomy beneath. Apparently the homoerotic pose of the artist’s long-time partner/model, shown slipping out of a gorgeous robe, didn’t raise any eyebrows.  The model for this 1911 Cooper Underwear ad was Charles Beach. He and the artist J.C. Leyendecker were a couple for almost 50 years. And then, of course, there was the famous trunk of bigamist and murderess Emma LeDoux. It seems that in 1905 Emma found herself with an embarrassing excess of husbands. Her first marriage had ended in divorce, her second husband died of a suspicious “gastroenteritis,” and after separating from her third, she married Number 4. Growing concerned Number 3 might make things awkward, she poisoned him and stuffed him, still living, into a trunk which she paid someone to deliver to the train depot for shipment to another town. Unfortunately for the plan, she forgot to affix the address label (oops!), and the trunk sat around until the smell alerted authorities something dodgy was going on.  If Emma LeDoux poisoned Albert McVickar, what caused all the grisly bloodstains? Apparently as he was dying of poison in the trunk, the poor guy got a nosebleed from the rough handling during transport to the train station. Anyway, my point — and you suspected I’d get around to one eventually, didn’t you? — is that fascinating museums lurk in the most unlikely places. Here in California I’ve spent many happy hours exploring such offbeat gems as the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, the Museum of International Propaganda, and the tribute to Rosie the Riveter. Every year during the family reunion, I visit the 6,500-acre Calaveras Big Trees State Park, a living museum preserving some of the world’s biggest, oldest trees. It was discovered during the Gold Rush, when a hunter, hired to keep prospectors fed, was chasing a wounded grizzly (some say the bear was chasing him) when he stumbled upon a grove of giant sequoias. The grandest was 280 feet tall and 1,244 years old, and once word got out, it wasn’t long before men decided to destroy it. They peeled off the bark to be reassembled as a cash-generating public spectacle. This killed the tree, so they cut it down and made a dance floor on the stump and a bowling alley inside the trunk. The wanton destruction became a rallying cry for conservation, resulting in the park. I’ve found there are offbeat gems everywhere, often the work of some fanatical collector, mad genius, or quirk of history. Kaunas, Lithuania, for instance, has both the Devil’s Museum and the Atomic Bunker Museum. Prague offers the suitably gloomy and paranoid KGB Museum, the surprisingly charming Museum of Communism, the surreal Kafka Museum, and the 46 outfits worn by the famous Infant Jesus of Prague statue upstairs in the Church of Our Lady Victorious. Zagreb, Croatia is home to the unforgettable Museum of Broken Relationships. The list goes on and on. So if you like unusual entertainment, take a look around wherever you live as well as anyplace you may travel. I’ve discovered ChatGPT literally doesn’t know how to search for quirky stuff, so use Google to burrow down past the “top five museums everyone must see” to more obscure offerings. You’ll soon discover the peculiar charms of something wholly original. Be curious and persistent. And above all, ignore the snarky remarks from family and friends who have not yet embraced the idea of traveling like a nutter. I can't believe those Hudson River School painters never captured a heartwarming nature scene like this! At our family reunion, a mother bear and three cubs took matters into their own paws and broke into the "bearproof" garbage box to enjoy a picnic of leftovers. JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR SO FAR IN PROGRESS: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF CALIFORNIA Boonville: A Town So Remote It Has Its Own Language (Anderson Valley) Can't Stop the Madness, But Let's Slow It Down a Bit (Thrift Shops) It's Only a Movie. Or Is It? (Bodega Bay) Why I Spray-Painted My Shoes (Theme Weddings) Please, Please, Please Don't Ask Me to Sing Karaoke (San Anselmo) Keeping It Strange & Wonderful for Future Generations (Fairfax Festival) Why Isn't Anyone Banning My Books? (Alameda) When Pigs Fly (Yes, They Can!) (Sacramento Pig Races) Do You Believe in Magic? (Alameda's Macabre Market) My Close Encounter with the Skeptic Society (Outer Space) The Nutters' Guide to Modern Comfort Food (My Kitchen) Relationships: Do Humans Stand a Ghost of a Chance? (Hangtown) For Nutters, There's No Place Like California (Petaluma Chicken & Egg Day) Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me Plan the Next Nutters Tour? SPRING 2023: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? 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.  How remote is this valley? Legends say a colony of antlered bears make it their home. So far I haven't seen one in the wild. but I keep looking. “And that’s when my Uncle Leo shot the man who killed my grandpa,” Linda concluded. And I thought, “Wow, now that’s what I call a story!” My own kinsfolk have a remarkable flair for melodrama, and I was raised on rip-roaring family tales, many of which may even be true. A few of the more plausible and respectable anecdotes have found their way into this blog, but most can’t be made public until the statute of limitations runs out and/or the main protagonists have passed over to the Great Beyond. My point is: it’s not often I find someone with family stories that blow mine out of the water. My hat was off to Linda. Big time. “It’s a story known throughout the valley,” Linda added, and there are 100 years of newspaper accounts to back her up. The valley in question is Anderson Valley, a sparsely populated rural area of Mendocino County about 100 miles north of San Francisco. Linda was staffing the Anderson Valley Historical Museum on Saturday when Rich and I stopped by, and it didn’t take much coaxing to get her to reminisce about the old days, when this really was the Wild West.  Sheep rancher Kate Mailliard. Photo: Anderson Valley Historical Museum “My grandfather was murdered in 1922," said Linda. "For generations my family, the Crispins, had held a right of way through the Haines land; it was the only way we could get down off the mountain to the main road. John Haines objected, and he and my grandfather fought over it for years.” The cantankerous Haines installed log gates so heavy they required two people and considerable time to open. Ike Crispin received legal advice that he had the right to replace the gates with something more standard and manageable, and he started doing so, assisted by his wife and her brother. “Haines rode up on his horse with a rifle and shot my grandpa,” Linda told me. “The bullet went right through his watch pocket. He was waving his rifle around, and my aunt Hazel, who was just a tiny little woman, jumped up and grabbed it.” Hazel and Haines struggled over the weapon until he knocked her to the ground. “And that’s when my Uncle Leo shot the man who killed my grandpa.” Two men lay dead but no arrests were made. Everyone had seen this coming for years. The coroner (a Crispin) was never called. The sheriff agreed Leo Batt had acted to defend himself and his sister from the enraged Haines. Case closed. But not forgotten. “Haines-crispin” came to mean a blood feud or shootout in the peculiar local “language” of Boontling, the linguistic curiosity that had drawn me to Anderson Valley in the first place.  A beer mat from Anderson Valley Brewing Company written in Boontling. Back in the nineteenth century, the thousand people living in this isolated valley amused themselves by developing a slang that enriched their everyday talk and baffled outsiders. Here’s a conversation NPR recorded in 2015, between Wes Smoot and David Knight. Smoot: "You've been boshin'?" Knight: "Just a slib." Smoot: "You get a granny hatchet?" Knight: "Nope. ... Mostly just gormin' and horse shoes." Translation: Have you been deer hunting? Yes, but only a little. Bagged one yet? Nope … mostly I’ve just been eating barbecue and playing horse shoes. Smoot told NPR, "Strangers come in on the weekends, you know, metropolitan people, and they'd sit down. And we'd sit there and talk about them, things that would normally get your face slapped pretty bad. And they were just grinning at you, and they had no idea what we was talking about, you know. And that, to me, is a lot of fun."  Linda (right) and her daughter Melanie are fifth and sixth generation Anderson Valley residents and descendants of Ike Crispin. I asked Linda if she spoke Boontling. “No, my mother was a schoolteacher and she thought it was a bunch of hogwash. My husband spoke it; he was a year ahead of me in school, and they taught a class in it back then.” Technically, Boontling isn’t a language, just 1600 slang words woven into English. The name is derived from Boonville, the southernmost town in the valley, named for W.W. Boone, second cousin to Daniel Boone. Just about everyone in Anderson Valley was fluent in Boontling from 1890 to the 1920s. They say locals who joined the service during WWI could barely understand English. Boontling's popularity began to wane, then in the 1960s, scholars and the media got wind of it, attracting international and local interest. Today, only a handful of greybs (greybeards, old men) still harp a slib of the ling (speak a little of the language). I love the Boontling story and was charmed to discover that the legacy lives on, if largely in the museum, a raft of books, news clips, and the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. Brewmaster Fal Allenis gives his beer Boontling monikers such as Hop Ottin’. (Ot means hard-working; it’s derived from otto, a reference the mighty Scandinavian loggers of yore.) Here’s Fal harpin' tidrick (having a chat) with a customer in Boontling. Living in two languages myself, I’ve discovered how revealing words can be about a culture. For instance, the Spanish term la madrugada means the small hours of the morning, generally from midnight to dawn. One day I asked my Spanish teacher why I often saw older men in cafés knocking back a glass of anise liqueur at 9:00 am, and she said, “When a man has to get up in the madrugada to work, he must reanimate himself.” Apparently in the stay-up-all-night, late-rising city of Seville, madrugada extends until after 9:00. Possibly until 11:00. Or noon. Words can also conceal our thoughts from the rest of the world. Like Wes Smoot, Rich and I used to enjoy linguistic invisibility in Seville. But now that practically everyone around us is studying English to cope with the influx of tourists, we have to watch ourselves in public places. No more holding intensely personal conversations or making snarky remarks about others assuming no one will understand us.  In Seville, breakfast is typically served in a fully stocked bar, just in case you need to reanimate yourself with a morning liqueur. As the residents of Anderson Valley realized in the nineteenth century, all languages are constantly in flux. Many Boontling words came from people’s names, such as zeese, from Zachariah Clifton’s initials. ZC was the coffee brewer on hunting expeditions, creating coffee “strong enough to float an egg,” especially on the last day, when he’d use up his entire remaining supply. Yowser! And that’s no wess (exaggeration, named for a chronic fibber).  Only in Anderson Valley... There are 7,117 official languages on the planet, and 18 of them are down to a single speaker. On a somewhat more hopeful note, English dictionaries add hundreds of new words every year. Recent additions include cakeage (charging customers for bringing a cake into a restaurant), rage farming (making inflammatory political remarks), petfluencer (posting images of your animal companion to gain social media followers), and meatspace (the physical world, as opposed to cyberspace). (Yes, we need a term for that now.) The West may not be quite as wild as it once was, but our language gets more vivid every day. If you’ve discovered any intriguing or oddball words —new, old, Boontling, or otherwise — it would be bahl (great) if you'd share them in the comments below.  Boonville also has wineries, and as a service to my readers, I checked out the Navarro Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc. Delightful! On the Road Again; No Post Next Week I'm heading off to a family reunion in the mountains, in a cabin that's off the grid, without wifi, TV, or other devices. (Yes, don't worry, there's running water and a generator for basic electricity.) So I won't be posting next week, but I plan to be back after that with all sorts of new, fun stuff. JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR SO FAR IN PROGRESS: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF CALIFORNIA Can't Stop the Madness, But Let's Slow It Down a Bit (Thrift Shops) It's Only a Movie. Or Is It? (Bodega Bay) Why I Spray-Painted My Shoes (Theme Weddings) Please, Please, Please Don't Ask Me to Sing Karaoke (San Anselmo) Keeping It Strange & Wonderful for Future Generations (Fairfax Festival) Why Isn't Anyone Banning My Books? (Alameda) When Pigs Fly (Yes, They Can!) (Sacramento Pig Races) Do You Believe in Magic? (Alameda's Macabre Market) My Close Encounter with the Skeptic Society (Outer Space) The Nutters' Guide to Modern Comfort Food (My Kitchen) Relationships: Do Humans Stand a Ghost of a Chance? (Hangtown) For Nutters, There's No Place Like California (Petaluma Chicken & Egg Day) Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me Plan the Next Nutters Tour? SPRING 2023: THE NUTTERS' TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? 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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Karen McCann
I'm an American travel writer based in Seville, Spain and my home state of California. Right now I'm on a Nutters' World Tour seeking eccentric people, quirky places, and wacky food so I can have the fun of writing about them here.
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