Last Friday morning I experienced a really satisfying positive transference.
With a Sears dishwasher repair man. Who, even though he issued the death warrant for my 4-year-old dishwasher and declared my recently recalcitrant oven permanently disabled, shared with me a portion of cosmic wisdom that was well worth the $75 I had to pay to hear that I have two shot kitchen appliances. I'll remember what he told me and I'll pass it on to others from now until the day when I reach the same fate as my dishwasher did last Friday. What this sage repairman, grey-haired and bearing the physical indications of his many years on this planet - what I mean is that he was kind of an old guy - told me as he kneeled on the floor and screwed back together my machine's too-soon defunct electrical panel was this: Never buy high end. He said that no matter what you pay for a dishwasher, every dishwasher does the same thing: it fills with water. It throws water around. It drains the water. It dries the dishes. "That's all any dishwasher does," he said. "Believe me." Then he went on to point out that it was the same with an oven. Every oven does two things. It bakes and it broils. No matter what you pay for it. This advice was so simple, so logical, so obvious, and yet so earth-shaking. But there was more to come. "This Maytag you've got here?" he said, flicking his finger against the door of my deceased dishwasher, "Exact same parts as a Whirlpool. Most of 'em use the same parts as Whirlpool. Even the high end dishwashers. Me, I always buy Whirlpool." "Wow," was the only response I could come up with. I wondered what people thought they were getting with a more expensive brand. His answer was that people who who buy top-of the line dishwashers generally buy them because they're so quiet. He said that quiet is what people tend to value most in a dishwasher, and that people will pay top-dollar for the quietest dishwasher they can get. "But," he said, "you know how they get those dishwashers so quiet? They put little tiny motors in them. So they get a real weak water spray that doesn't make much noise. But it also doesn't clean the dishes very well, which is why these real quiet expensive dishwashers take two hours to run their cycle." I thought of the several people I know who have quiet dishwashers that run for hours and who complain that their dishwashers don't clean very well. "Oh, wow," I said. He continued, "They think the dishwasher's running so long because it's sanitizing their dishes." He made a sound of distain. "None of those dishwashers sanitize! Dishes are sanitized at 212 degrees! No home has a water temperature of 212 degrees! Only commercial dishwashers in restaurants sanitize dishes." "But what about the "sanitize" button on the dishwasher?" I asked him. "Means nothing. The water in your dishwasher only gets as hot as what you've got your home water heater set at. The hotter you keep your water, the better your dishwasher will work." I asked him about the importance of the soap. "It's really all in the water," he replied. "You could run dishes all day long in cold water and they wouldn't get clean no matter how much soap you put in. The soap doesn't do all that much. Do you think restaurants use soap in their machines?" "No?" I guessed. "At 212 degrees they don't need any. He patted my dishwasher. "These don't even need much soap." I asked him if he was saying, then, that I should buy the cheapest dishwasher out there. "No, not the cheapest." He opened my dishwasher's door, reached in, and spun around the sprayer attached to the top of the machine. "The cheapest machines don't have this top sprayer so the dishes on your top rack won't get as clean. Your mid-line machines have the top sprayer. Always buy mid-line." "With everything?" I asked. "Look, he said, you spend $1,000 dollars each for a top-of-the line washer and dryer you'll get fifteen buttons on each machine and you'll only use one or two. You'll spend $1,000 dollars for 13 buttons you don't need, and the more buttons you have, that's just more parts that can break. Oven's the same thing. So's the dishwasher. Buy mid-line and you'll do fine." But I had one more question for him: Don't more expensive appliances last longer? "When I first started fixing 'em, appliances lasted 30 years," he huffed. "Now none of 'em last more than 8 years, whatever you pay for them. So after 8 years you'll feel a lot worse throwing out a $2,000 appliance than one you paid $500 for." "Wow," I said yet again. "But," he sighed, "people don't want to hear it." But I did. And the next day when I went back to Sears (with a coupon that he gave me for $65 off a dishwasher) I felt confident, empowered, and in possession of the keys to the dishwasher-buying kingdom. But alas, it turned out that there was one piece of critical dishwasher advice that my dishwasher guru neglected to give me. And so I could not have possibly known, as I strode into the Sears appliance department, that I was on the brink of making a disastrous dishwasher decision. To be continued...
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Last Saturday in Kroger's I had a vision of how I want to be 25 years from now (If I should be so lucky). I was pushing my cart down the soup aisle when I clumsily got into the space of another shopper, a little bent-over old-lady. When I apologized for getting in her way she turned to me and what I saw was the face of a very old woman, probably in her mid-to-late 80's sporting a pair of stylish black-rimmed glasses with long grey-white hair pulled back in a black hairband and a ponytail down her back. But when she spoke her voice didn't match the years in her face. Instead of the high-pitched, crinkly voice you'd expect, hers was more the smooth alto reminiscent of the voice of a newscaster or a college professor. What she said in response to my apology was, "Well, I'll give you my stock answer in this situation: 'Someone as charming as you could never be in my way.'" Now, I know that kind of sounds like a little-old-ladyish thing to say, but the way she said it made her seem more like someone who just happens to be adept at engaging other people. And she no longer appeared to be an little old lady bent over with osteoporosis, but a witty, intelligent, woman. Which caused me to answer her not in that condescending tone we sometimes use to jolly cute little old ladies (which tone I'm starting to find myself on the receiving end of more and more these days) but to enter into an exchange of wit. "Well," I replied, "I'd say that's a pretty charming reply you keep in stock." To which her repartee was, "To which the stock come-back is usually, 'careful not to choke on that chunk of blarney." I laughed, she smiled, and that was the end of our exchange. But it was only after she'd passed me down the aisle that I took in this woman's outfit: an over-sized buttoned-down shirt with a red and white print, loose-fitting mom jeans, hiking boots. And I thought, Wow, that whole look really works for her. It was a look that evoked an image of an outdoorsey woman, a woman who back in her day had hiked the Appalacian Trail or the Pacific Crest Highway or both, who'd bought an old house and fixed it up, who knew how to hammer and saw and paint and fix a leaky pipe, a woman who had dogs and a horse and a big garden and who canned her own tomatoes and peaches, a well-traveled and well-read woman, maybe a teacher, maybe an environmentalist, maybe a writer, a strong, natural capable woman who is comfortable in her own skin - and clothes. I wanted to hurry down the aisle after her and engage her in a conversation. I wanted to get her life story and take her picture. But I didn't. It would have been intrusive. And maybe a little weird. Or maybe she wouldn't have minded and would have agreed to let me interview her for my blog and use her picture. Maybe I'll run into her again some time in Kroger's and we'll get into another conversation, a longer one. Maybe she'll turn out to be nothing like I imagined her from our first short encounter. But I enjoyed that one-minute encounter in Krogers. And I came away from it knowing that hers is the style I want if and when I make it to her age. No salon-colored perm, no pearls and polyester, no support hose and therafit mary janes for me. I'll be sporting a ponytail, loose buttoned-down shirt and over-sized jeans. Though I think instead of the hiking boots I'll stick with my tennis shoes.
Here's my suggestion for what America can do to stop the flood of children who are arriving at our borders to escape the drug violence in their countries:
We can give up our drugs. Quit feeding our gargantuan, all-American appetite for getting high. If every American today took the pledge to never hand over another dollar for cocaine, marijuana* or heroine for the sake of the children who'll end up being killed over that dollar, then by tomorrow every narco in Central America would be out of business. *Yes, I know we produce lots of marijuana here in the US but a lot of it also comes from Mexico and is trafficked through Central America. The drugs we consume in the United States (Unlike the drugs consumed by, say, Europeans) come from Central America. (The Economist, April 14, 2011). And, according to today's edition of The Latin American Tribune, the drug cartels make $64 billion a year from the US. That's a lot of drugs we're doing. And a lot of money we're handing over to the drug gangs who are destroying the lives of the children of Central America. When my children were young I used to tell them that before they decided to smoke a little pot with their friends they should remember that some young Mexican policeman with a wife and several small children would end up being murdered by a drug gang so that affluent American teenagers could get buzzed at a party. I told them to think of the little girl living in a tenement in New York or Chicago or any city in America who'd be shot in the cross fire between two drug gangs because a bunch of bored suburban kids felt like getting high with their friends. (I told them this so often that whenever I'd call them in for a family meeting one of them would ask, "Is this about the Mexican policeman with the five kids and the little girl?") Anyway, today if I had adolescent children I'd be telling them about the 52,000 children (Global Post, July 7, 2014) who've fled to this country alone in the last 9 months so that Americans can have their drugs. In truth, I believe that the recreational drugs that everybody's using anyway should be legalized in this country; legalized, regulated, and taxed to high heaven. That way we'd decapitate the drug cartels, mitigate the child refugee crisis, and we could use the $64 billion for ourselves to repair our country's crumbling infrastructure (Am I the only one who worries about our beleaguered infrastructure?). But it doesn't look like the drug laws in this country are going to be reformed any time soon. Which leaves it up to the consumers of drugs to look into their souls. I think there should be a campaign for Americans to give up theirs drugs - not the same as the old failed War On Drugs that's gone nowhere in the last 40 years - but as a humanitarian campaign. Celebrities and movie stars known for their human rights efforts could take up the cause and lead the way by the example of publicly giving up their own drug use. In schools the old D.A.R.E. and "Just Say No" programs could be replaced with new anti-drug programs with a "Save The Children" theme. There could be a grass-roots movement to turn around the perception of drug-use as something cool and hip to something low-life and exploitative. If everyone would give up their drugs then maybe the children would be able to go home. But that's never going to happen, is it? References: 1. "Drug Cartels Make $64 billion a year from US", The Latin American Tribune, July 14, 2014. 2. "The Drug War Hits Central America", The Economist, April 14, 2011 3. "Drug Trafficking Plagues Honduras", Infosur Hoy, July 3, 2014 4. "A Refugee Crisis, Not And Immigration Crisis", Sonia Nazario, the New York Times, July 13, 2014 5. "White House Says Most Children At Border To Be Sent Home", Global Post, July 7, 2014 In yesterday’s New York Times there was an editorial entitled “The Children Of The Drug Wars” written by Sonia Nazario, a journalist who traveled to Honduras last month to investigate the wave of children fleeing that country to our borders.
She ended up uncovering the terrible plight of the children of Honduras, who are victims of the drug crime ravaging their country. Ms. Nazario writes that “a vast majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but violence.” She maintains that “what the United States is seeing on its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee crisis.” Ms. Nazario talks about the children she met in Honduras and their stories. There was an 11-year-old boy named Christian desperate to get out of Honduras. His father was murdered by gang members and his mother fled to the U.S. but has not yet sent for him. He lives in fear. An 11-year-old girl who he knew had her throat cut by two men. According to Ms. Nazario, the narcos have “started putting serious pressure on kids to work for them. At Cristian’s school, older students working with the cartels push drugs on the younger ones — some as young as 6… Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men. Teachers at Cristian’s school described a 12-year-old who demanded that the school release three students one day to help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him.” Ms. Nazario also tells of a high school where, “until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-year-old “student” controlled the school. Each day, he was checked by security at the door, then had someone sneak his gun to him over the school wall. Five students, mostly 12- and 13-year-olds, tearfully told (their teacher) that the man had ordered them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill their parents. Teachers must pay a “war tax” to teach in certain neighborhoods, and students must pay to attend.” Ms. Nazario met a 14-year-old boy who lives in “a shack made of corrugated tin…and usually doesn’t have anything to eat one out of three days." Since he was 7 he worked in a dump picking out metal pieces to recycle but “bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul. Now he sells scrap wood. When he was 9, he barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him, while terrified neighbors looked on. He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling down the street, coated in blood. ” Ms. Nazario talks of the plight of young girls in Honduras, which she says accounts for the reason that “around 40 percent of children who arrived in the United States this year were girls.” Even the youngest girls are in danger of being kidnapped and raped. “Some parents no longer let their girls go to school for fear of their being kidnapped,” writes Ms. Nazario. Narcos help themselves to any girl they want. “I hope God protects me. I am afraid to step outside,” said a 19-year-old girl who has been told by narcos that “she would be theirs.” The same girl told Ms. Nazario that 6 youngsters were killed in her neighborhood last year. The children in Honduras have no advocate there because, as Ms. Nazario writes, “narcos have bought off police officers, politicians, and judges.” Ms. Nazario concludes that children trying to escape drug violence in Central America should be treated as refugees since “these children are facing threats similar to the forceful conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during the civil war in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos is no different from being forced into military service.” She suggests that refugee camps run by international relief groups should be set up along our borders. Immigrant Children who arrive at our borders from Central America should be held until it can be determined whether they’ve migrated for economic reasons – in which case they should be deported – or because their lives are in danger – in which case they should be granted asylum. Ms. Nazario also states that “We should also make it easier for children to apply as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we have done for people in Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who showed a well-founded fear of persecution wouldn’t have to make the perilous journey north alone.” If you’d like to read the whole article, you can find it at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/opinion/sunday/a-refugee-crisis-not-an-immigration-crisis.html?ref=todayspaper I have an idea for stopping the child immigrant/refugee problem from drug war-torn countries. It would work immediately. I’ll share it with you tomorrow. Last weekend Tom and I drove to Rochester, New York for the wedding of our niece Tracy to her fiance Chris. It was a beautiful wedding in a beautiful old urban Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament, built in 1911 and located in a neighborhood of ornate Victorian houses well on the way to gentrification. But what made this wedding so beautiful wasn't: The breath-taking stained-glass window that dwarfed the organist: Or the wood and gold-leaf altar flanked on either side by two side-altars: Or the antique leaded-glass windows between the main body of the church and the narthax: What made the wedding so beautiful was: Chris and Tracy, who walked down the aisle hand-in-hand. Which was sweet. And who couldn't let go of each other's hand or stop smiling for a moment during the ceremony. Which was also sweet. We weren't permitted to take photos during the mass, and so no one was able to capture the image of them sitting next to each other on the altar with their hands entwined. But they looked so happy and natural together that it almost seemed as if they were unaware that their hands were entwined. The sermon of the mass was, appropriately, on joy. At one point the priest gave Tracy and Chris the commission to spread the joy they take in each other to the community around them. It occurred to me that they were doing that today. The joy carried over to the reception, which was at the beautiful Webster Golf Club: The food was delicious, a balsamic vinaigrette salad followed by a buffet of roast beef, chicken in a creamy sauce, roast beef, tortellini with marinara or garlic cream sauce, oven roasted potatoes and vegetables. After dinner there was a coffee, tea, and hot chocolate bar, complete with flavored coffees and whipped cream for topping. The hot drinks were were served in fancy tall glass cups. Instead of a wedding cake there was a wedding sundae bar with assorted ice-creams and toppings, which was wonderfully refreshing and when you think about it, doesn't a wedding ice-cream bar as an alternative to cake make sense since everybody's really in the mood for something cool with all the dancing going on? And dance we did! And I even got to do something I always wanted to do at a wedding: form a conga line! (I think I was on an ice-cream-sundae high). Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next wedding I'm invited to so I can get another conga-line going. Though I guess to pull off a conga-line the ambiance has to be just right. Which it was at this wedding. So we ate and drank and danced and celebrated Chris and Tracy. Who only had eyes for each other. Which was what really made it a beautiful wedding.
Continued from Friday... So there I was, 20 years old, decades before the age of cell phones and GPS's, lost in Rome at night and scared to death. Now granted, if I'd been a little older and a little savvier and a little less hung up on every dollar (or franc or lira) I spent I'd have thought to look for a taxi. However the thought of a taxi never even occured to me. In fact I was so worried about myself that it wasn't until much later that I stopped to wonder about how my new friend Tina got back to her hotel. But in retrospect, I'll bet she just found herself a taxi. I know she was a much smarter cookie than I. So I did the only thing I could think of to do, which was to stand under a street light and stare at my map and try not to cry. Then a nice-looking woman holding the hand of a little girl came up to me. I couldn't understand what she was asking me but I figured from her concerned look that she must be offering me help. I tried telling her in English then in French that I was lost, though I'm sure that much must have been obvious from the map in my hand and the distress on my face. I pointed to the location on my map of the hostel where I was staying and said, "autobus", one of my few Italian words. She knew what I meant, and so thankful was I that she did that I started using my two other Italian words, molte grazie. ("Thank you very much") Soon there were a few more people standing around me looking at my map discussing with the woman which bus I should take to get back to my hostel, while I interjected the conversation once in a while with a molte grazie. A couple of men seemed to know where I needed to go so the woman who'd first helped me indicated that I should follow them. Of course I had no idea whether they were taking me to a bus stop or an opium den, but I followed and molte grazie'd them until we did, in fact, arrive at a bus stop, much to my relief. There were a few other people waiting at the stop and, bucket-brigade fashion, the two men next passed me on to that group and handed them my map and showed them where on the map I needed to end up. "Molte grazie," said I. When the bus arrived they showed me and my map to the bus driver, who studied the map and nodded yes. My heart rejoiced. You know what I said. Finally my map was returned to me by the bus driver but as soon as I sat down the passengers sitting across from me who'd witnessed the commotion of my entrance wanted to see my map and know where I was going. I gladly handed them my map and pointed to the hostel, said "molte grazie" then sat down while they looked over my map and discussed whatever it was they were discussing. Finally they handed me back my map and nodded with a smile, which I returned, overflowing as I was with gratitude, relief, and molte grazie’s all aroun. Though earlier I was as frightened as I'd ever been in my life, now I was as relieved as I'd ever been. When we reached my stop the driver kept going and instead stopped the bus right in front of the hostel, I suppose to keep me from getting lost again. And though it wasn't a scheduled stop nobody seemed to mind. Now I felt like crying from thankfulness to this bus full of kind strangers. I no longer recall if during this trip every single exchange I had with an Italian was a positive one. In fact, now that I think of it, there was that time in Florence when a waiter in a restaurant tried to scam me on a bill and our tour bus driver, Michel, caused a commotion over it and physically threatened the dishonest waiter. I was scared a fight would break out and someone would call the police but instead the waiter fixed the bill and afterwards Michel laughed and said, “J’adore faire chier.” (“I love to make people s**t themselves”). I’m sure if I really tried I might even be able to dredge up a few more inauspicious moments from that trip, or maybe from my second visit to that country a few years later. But in truth, when I think of Italy and the Italians my first, clearest and dearest memory is of the time when I was a frightened young stranger in a strange land and of the kindness of the people who rescued me. [Though I also still remember how much fun I had on that low-budget student bus tour forty-three years ago ;) ]. A photo of our tour group celebrating New Year's Eve, 1971, in Venice. That's me in the middle of the photo in the red plaid skirt and blue sweater dancing with our fearless bus driver, Michel.
Continued from yesterday...
Though Christmas day was a holiday in Rome, it wasn't an all-the-stores-and-museums-and-tourist-attractions-closed kind of holiday. And so that morning all the members of the UNICLAM bus tour left our hostel (we had to be out by 9:00 am when the hostel closed for cleaning and we couldn't get back in until it re-opened around 4:00 pm), hopped a city bus and went our respective ways for the day. I guess I didn't actually explain yesterday how our bus tour of Italy worked. It was an economy special. The price we paid included transportation by bus and a bed in a youth hostel. When we arrived at our destination city the driver parked the bus for the duration and hung out with us and we were all free to go our separate ways. No organized tours, or anything, everyone was on their own. Which was why we all broke up into casual fluid groups each day, which over the course of the day would often subdivide, meet up with other groups, and sometimes trade off members, as in my case. We all watched out for each other in a general way, though. There were a few people on our trip, mostly older folks who probably weren't even students anymore - there was one woman who appeared to be in her forties and was with a much younger man whom she said was her son but everybody thought was really her sweetie - who obviously expected the trip to be a little more luxe than it actually was and who complained about everything and made life heck for Cato, the trip organizer, and sometimes even muddied the waters somewhat for the rest of us young happy campers. But, anyway, that's the kind of trip that it was. So, then, I was out and about with my group on Christmas day, and as I recall we were meandering around the ruins of the Colosseum when I caught sight of a girl whom I recognized as a fellow University of Dayton student, though I didn't know her. She recognized my face, as well, and we both smiled and hurried towards each other as if we were old friends. We introduced ourselves, but she failed to introduce the two guys who were with her. "Oh, them?" she laughed, "I don't know who they are. They just keep following me." Now she was a beautiful girl with long dark hair walking alone on Rome, so I'm not surprised the Italian guys were following her, considering that they bothered all the unattached girls, even big rabbits like me. [See yesterday's blog 8) ]. Anyway the UD girl, who I'll call Tina as I can't remember her name any more, was studying in Spain and had decided to travel to Rome - by herself - for the Christmas holiday. We decided to hang together for the day. So I told my group that I'd catch up with them later then Tina and I took off to explore Rome together. Not surprisingly, at one point we realized we were being followed by, then walking beside, a couple of young men in uniform. As they spoke no English and we spoke no Italian, I'm not sure how we came to know that they were Italian soldiers on Christmas leave who, like us, were visiting Rome for the holiday. They seemed friendly and harmless and were certainly no older than we were and they didn't know Rome any better than we did, so the four of us spent the afternoon walking around Rome seeing the sights together. I remember that we visited Saint Peter's and climbed to the highest point of the cupola then looked out over the beautiful panorama of the city. I don't specifically remember where else we went, except that we ended up somewhere along the bank of the Tiber River. That's when I realized that it was getting late, past five o'clock, and would soon be dark and I needed to figure out a way to get back to the hostel on my own. Tina, on the other hand, wanted to go shopping for a coat while in Rome so she took off back towards the town to look for a coat with the soldiers still in tow while I pulled out my map of Rome and tried to figure out where I was. I located the hostel, which was on the outskirts of town and far from where I was. I'd come into the city on a bus with the others but hadn't bothered to check which bus it was or remember exactly where it had let us off. I looked around me but didn't see any bus stops. I looked again at my map and realized that the river eventually ran right by the hostel. It looked to be a few miles, but I figured that walking along the Tiber in the direction of the hostel was my best bet. After I'd walked for a good long while without coming to any of the cross streets indicated on my map I got a sinking feeling that I'd been walking in the wrong direction, away from the hostel rather than towards it. So I started walking, then running, in the opposite direction. It was almost dark and I was getting afraid. By the time I reached the point I'd started at I was breathless and sweaty. I walked a few more blocks in the opposite direction and when I still couldn't get the streets to match up with my map it hit me in the pit of my stomach that I could be looking at the map upside down! I turned the map one way then the other and realized that I had no idea which direction I should be walking in. By now it was dark and I was alone on the river bank. My heart was pounding and I was shaking from nerves and chill from the sweat that had cooled and dampened my shirt under my coat. I was lost in a big city where I didn't speak the language. Even if I could find a phone booth somewhere I didn't know how to make a phone call. And even if I did know how to make a phone call I didn't know the number of the hostel. And even if I did know the number I wouldn't know how to communicate to whoever answered the phone that I was lost somewhere in the heart of Rome. I hurried away from the river back towards the city until I reached a busy commercial area full of shops and restaurants and streets full of people out walking on Christmas night. The streets were hung with garlands of Christmas lights and between the lights, shops and streets full of people, it was a lovely festive, story-book scene. And I was as terrified as I'd ever been in my life. To be continued.... My brother's blog comment the other day on his experience in Italy called to mind a different kind of experience I once had in that country. Back in 1971 I was 20 years old and spending my junior year of college studying French language and culture at the Institut Catholique in Paris. There was at that time in Paris a Latin American Student organization, UNICLAM, (where I would later become one of a number of regular hanger-outers at their office/hang-out) run by a couple of fun Peruvian guys named Cato and Lalo. I'd heard that this UNICLAM was organizing a 2-week bus tour to Italy over Christmas break to visit Rome, Florence, and Venice. I decided to go. Though most of my fellow travellers were from Central and South America there was a pretty good representation on that bus from all over. There were kids from France, Cambodia, Spain, Israel, Jamaica, and about half a dozen Americans, a couple of whom I knew, though not well, from my classes at the Institut. Everyone on the bus was friendly, and I found myself sitting next to a funny, outgoing Jamaican girl named Janine and across from a Parisian girl, Guenaele, and her Chinese-Cambodian boyfriend, Sin. We became a travel-buddy group during the bus ride, though it seemed that when we arrived in our youth hostel in Rome the groups sort of reconfigurated, as groups will do on trips. Janine, Guenaele and Sin joined up with Cato, his French girlfriend Dominique, two cute little American twin sisters from California named Jean and Joan, and Michel, our bus driver, who, when he wasn't driving, was a lively, funny member the group, sort of the life of the party. I, on the the other hand, somehow defaulted to the official American group, three kids who'd come to Paris together on the same junior year abroad program (I'd come over by myself and wasn't with any college program) and who stuck to themselves, spoke English all the time, were jokey and cynical and by the end of the first day kind of boring. I remember our first day touring around Rome my group ran into Janine, Sin, and Guenaele’s group a couple of times and, though I was having a good enough time with my little group, their group always looked like they were having a better time. Plus, being of a variety of nationalities, they all communicated in French, which was what I wanted to be doing. I really wanted to jump ship but wasn’t sure of the correct procedural for ditching one’s group and latching on to another. I didn’t know if the others, already a good-sized group, had room for one more tag-along. On our second day in Rome I plotted my defection, which I vowed to attempt as soon as the next opportunity presented itself. And it did late in the morning that same day when we were in a museum and I saw the other group again. I didn’t rush right over to them, but kept an eye on them and hoped for a natural-seeming segue to materialze. And by luck one did. It turned out that my compatriots were ready to leave the museum while the other group was still looking around. I seized the moment and with razor-quick-thinking told my group that I wanted to stay and look around a while longer. They didn’t respond as if they were going to miss me. So I stayed in the museum and sort of trailed my target group at a plausible distance for a while, then gradually lessened the distance between us until I was next to Dominique. She said hello and I said hello then without any addtional conversational hors d'oeuvre I meekly asked, "Est-ce que je peux etre avec vous?" (Can I be with you all?) Dominique's expression turned serious and she replied. "Non, tu ne peux pas etre avec nous." (No, you can't be with us). Then she broke into a big laugh and said, "Bien sur, tu peux etre avec nous!" (Of course you can be with us!). Sin and Guenaele, who'd watched the scene, came over smiling and stood on either side of me, each putting an arm around my shoulder. "You looked so cute just now, like a little rabbit," said Guenaele. Though I think she meant to a big rabbit, since this is how I looked back then: So now I was part of the fun group of three French, three of us Americans, one Peruvian, one Jamaican, and one Chinese-Cambodian, and I did, in fact, start having a lot of fun in Rome. Maybe a little too much fun, as tomorrow's blog will recount.
Continued from yesterday...
You sometimes hear Americans complain about the unfriendliness of the French -or the Italians or some other nationality - towards Americans. Having lived for a year in Paris 43 years ago I must concede that at that time there was some validity to that assessment of the French. (Of course I haven't been back to France in almost 40 years, so maybe attitudes have changed since then). But anyway, what I learned at that time about the French and about the people in every country I've since visited is that if, as a foreigner, you try to communicate with the local people and let them know that you're interested in learning their language, culture and customs then they'll open up and blossom with friendliness. Except it seems to me that the the opposite is true of the Amish; that if you attempt any kind of exchange with them except for one of a monetary nature, they'll respond by adding another layer of permafrost, as did the pretty Amish teenager with the stoney expression who waited on us at Grandma's, the plain but homey little restaurant outside Berlin where, at the recommendation of our tour guide, we had lunch. I'm guessing that at the beginning of each new shift the manger of Grandma's must line up the waitresses to remind each of them to straighten their bonnet and skirt, put on a clean apron, give quick and efficient service, don't greet the customers or say hello or tell them your name or ask them how they're doing today, don't say one more word to the customer than is absolutely necessary for the exchange of the business at hand, do not exhibit the least suggestion of friendliness in either word or gesture, and any waitress caught smiling will be immediately fired. The food we had at Grandma's was really good, delicious and plentiful, and we enjoyed it as much as one can enjoy a meal generously seasoned with loathing. We left our hostile little Amish waitress a decent tip anyway. It was the opinion of our ex-Amish guide that if the Amish allowed their members to drive cars then their way of life would be extinct in one generation. I'd add that the unfriendliness of the Amish to outsiders is likewise a defense against extinction. Because a smile can lead to a friendship and a friendship can lead to love and, as the song says, love changes everything. And there would go all the Amish stuff. But don't worry, I don't think there's much danger of that happening any time soon. So, which, from my experience, is the unfriendliest country on the planet?
Amish country. Specifically, Ohio Amish country. Now here in Central Ohio, especially when you get outside of Columbus, it's not uncommon to see Amish people out and about. And though their unique mode of dress and transport and of traveling strictly in groups of their own can make the Amish appear almost as strangers in a strange land, when you're in on their turf you're definitely the foreigner. In fact the Amish refer to non-Amish as "The English". So if we're the English that would make us foreigners, right? And in Amish country they don't like foreigners, as I found out a couple years ago when Tom and I spent a weekend in the town of Berlin in Holmes country, the heart of Ohio Amish country. Not that the unfriendliness of the Amish to outsiders really matters. To them or to us. Because the population of Ohio loves Amish Country. Or at least half the population does. The female half. The weekend we were in Amish country the sidewalks of the main street were impassable with tourists and I'd say the tourist demographic was about 4 women to every man. And women don't flock to Berlin, Ohio because they love the Amish; it's because they love - nay, adore - the stuff the Amish make and sell to them. We are so hopelessly love-struck by hand-made Amish stuff that we don't care how the Amish treat us while they're selling us their stuff. And the Amish sure as shingles don't care whether we care how they treat us while they're selling us their stuff. So everybody's happy. Everybody except me, that is. Because, as I learned on our trip, there's really only one reason to visit Berlin, and that's to buy Amish stuff; and, as fate would have it, I happen to have the unique genetic mutation of being the only woman in Ohio - maybe on the planet - who doesn't have the hots for Amish stuff. Subsequently I arrived in the town with no particular desire to acquire an Amish quilt, candle, table, rocker, bed, bonnet, basket, pie, bolt of fabric, jar of jam or wheel of cheese. Which meant I was in this town for the wrong reason. As soon as I got an eyeful of the main street lined with hand-made-Amish-stuff stores jammed with women this became exceedingly clear to me. As well as to the Amish clerk in the first store I entered whose This-English-Isn't-Going-to-Buy-Anything-dar must have gone off as soon I walked through the door. The expression on her face as she stalked me through the store suggested that I was giving off the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril. She didn't say, "Bye, have a nice day" when I left. Which kind of turned me off to visiting any of the other shops full of Amish stuff I didn't want. It turned out, however, that there was an Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center outside the town where we saw a very interesting and enjoyable pictorial presentation of Amish history painted on a 265-foot mural in the round accompanied by a 30-minte lecture by a very hospitable historian. There was only one other couple besides us at the lecture. I figured everybody else was back in town shopping. Anyway, along with the lecture one could purchase a ticket for a bus tour of Amish country. As the other couple didn't opt for the tour Tom and I were the only ones on the bus, which was really more like a long van. Turned out it was meant to be a tour of the Amish crafts shops outside the town, which I thought was kind of funny. When we said we didn't want to go shopping the driver offered to drive us around the countryside instead and show us some of the local farms. It turned out that the driver was an ex-Amish man who'd been born, raised, and even married in the Amish community and he was very willing to answer any questions we had about the Amish, which we had quite a few. So we learned a lot about the Amish from him. He said that the movie "The Witness" was a very realistic portrayal of the Amish - except for the part where the beautiful young Amish woman sleeps with Harrison Ford (no spoiler; even I knew that was going to happen from the first scene; Anyway, it was a really good movie and, according to our guide, a realistic one). The one question I really wanted to ask our guide was why he left the Amish community - he seemed well disposed towards the Amish - after all it was his job to bring people around to their stores - but I didn't want to overstep so I didn't. At one point he drove past a leather shop and I recalled that Tom in fact needed a new belt, so I did ask our driver to stop there. Tom did buy two beautiful, sturdy belts perfectly sized for him by a sour-faced young Amish leather-craftsman who looked to be in his mid-twenties. As Tom handed the young man the money for the belts he made some little pleasantry to which the man responded with a sneer. But the guy did make great belts. Our tour ended in the parking lot of - where else? - a little shopping mall back in town. What we really wanted to do at that point was eat lunch, but the two restaurants on the main street had lines snaking out the doors. Our accommodating driver then told us that we shouldn't go to those restaurants anyway, and gave us directions to Grandma's, the real Amish restaurant that the locals go to located a few miles outside the town. To Be Continued... |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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March 2024
I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
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