A Saab Story, Part One: Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Once upon a time, my husband, Eric, owned an electric-blue sports car called a Saab Sonett. It was a rare car, one of only 640 built in 1969, his model year. The car was unusual in other ways as well. Its body was made of fiberglass and it had something called a freewheeling clutch, which sounded alluring until I tried using it while descending from a mountain pass in the Sierras.

When I first dated Eric, in the winter of 1969, the Sonett had just been shipped to him from Sweden. On our first date, we drove to a movie theater on Route 9 in Amherst, Massachusetts, where we saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. With the Sonett's aerodynamic design and spaceship-like interior, it was the perfect vehicle to transport us into the futuristic world of HAL. Afterward, as Eric explained the meaning of the film to me, I marveled that I'd found a guy with brains as well as a snazzy car. Despite Eric's attractions, though, I broke up with him the following summer. At that stage of my life, I was too masochistic to settle for such a great guy.

I didn't encounter the Sonett again until January, 1972, during a visit to Amherst College. Eric, having taken a semester off, had just finished his senior year. I had recently gotten back in touch with him. I now regretted our earlier breakup and was trying to figure out how to rekindle the romance.

Enter Wendy Wasserstein. The future playwright and I had graduated the prior spring, she from Mt. Holyoke College, I from Smith, but we had both spent our junior year at Amherst, where we'd become friends. After graduation, we both moved to New York City and saw one another occasionally. The trip up to Amherst was her idea. A friend of ours was giving a French horn recital at the college and Wendy wanted to attend. She asked if I'd like to come along. This gave me the perfect excuse to visit Eric and crash on his couch.

Wendy and I arrived by bus on a bitterly cold evening. Icy snow coated everything and crunched underfoot. Wendy soon departed with our horn-player friend. After they left, I stood shivering outside the fraternity house where the bus had let me off, waiting for Eric. Five minutes passed. Ten. Eric's low-slung car finally roared around the corner and up to where I stood. Eric leaned over to open the door for me. He didn't look happy. Uh oh, I thought, this isn't starting well.

"Sorry, I'm late," he said. "I had a little accident." It turned out that, in his haste to meet me on time, he had backed the Sonett into his friend Rick's VW bug, barely denting Rick's car, but damaging the Sonnet's fiberglass rear end. On impact, fiberglass doesn't dent, but instead fractures. So, Eric's car now had a jagged scar. At the time, I worried that the mishap would spoil our weekend together. It didn't occur to me that Eric's momentary loss of motor control might have been due to his nervousness about seeing me.

Despite starting with such an unfortunate bang, the weekend went well. Eric played hard to get, which only heightened my interest. While I attended the French horn recital with Wendy, Eric stayed behind at the Hadley farmhouse he rented with friends, reading Plato, or so he claimed. When I returned, I found him in bed with The Republic, whereupon I persuaded him to abandon metaphysics for the purely physical. This seemed to help him transcend the trauma of the car mishap. In any event, by summer we were married and heading west to California in our blue Saab Sonett.

Fortunately, we had few possessions, so we were able to cram them all into the Sonett's hatchback. Included was a tent, which we used as we car-camped our way from Massachusetts to California. During our trip, Eric never tired of extolling the car's many virtues—its innovative roll bar, which he assured me would protect us even in the event of a head-on collision with a Mack truck; a windshield designed so that snow and even rain would glide right off, providing clear visibility without the use of wipers; a ventilation system that circulated fresh air, creating a delightfully cool and comfortable environment despite the lack of air conditioning; and, finally, that fantastic freewheeling clutch, which enabled the car to revert to neutral when the driver's foot was removed from the gas pedal, eliminating the normal braking action of the clutch and resulting in an extraordinary sense of freedom.

Thankfully, we didn't encounter a Mack truck along the way, so we were unable to test out the roll bar's effectiveness. As for the car's other supposed attributes, Eric's love for his Sonett was blind, or at least near-sighted. Regarding the vaunted windshield, for example, during the first few moments of a rain shower, the windshield did remain notably clear. However, any significant rain quickly made visibility impossible. To my dismay, though, Eric usually insisted that he could see just fine and often delayed activating the wipers until the rain was coming down in sheets. On the plus side, the windshield wipers functioned just fine once turned on, at least until a fateful day in Marin County (more on that in Part Two).

As for the ventilation system, a day traversing the Nevada desert wilted even Eric's conviction that the Saab's fresh-air flow would keep us cool no matter what. With the windows open and bugs of unusual size splatting against our windshield, we sweated our way through Nevada and began climbing the Sierras. By then, though, I had something else to focus on, for it was in the Sierras that I experienced the full impact of the much-touted freewheeling clutch.

Eric had done most of the driving during our cross-country trip. To be honest, he'd done virtually all of it. Back in Massachusetts, he'd taught me to drive the Sonett's manual shift and I'd taken a spin or two around the block, but I'd never driven on a highway, let alone on steep terrain. Now, he encouraged me to get behind the wheel. We were newlyweds and his faith in my driving ability touched me, so I complied, though not without some trepidation. Once in the driver's seat, I managed to put the car in gear and merge onto the freeway without killing us. We continued climbing, heading toward the pass. I began to relax. This was easy. I'd always been a good driver, after all, even an aggressive one. As we arrived at the summit, I stepped on the gas and the car zoomed downhill, picking up speed until we were approaching 85 miles per hour. I lifted my foot off the gas pedal. Although Eric had explained the freewheeling concept, I instinctively expected the car to slow down due to the braking action of the clutch. Instead, we hurtled down the highway at breakneck speed. What Eric experienced as extraordinary freedom felt like a total loss of control to me. I applied the brake pretty much all the way down from the summit into the San Joaquin Valley, until I finally found a place to pull over and hand the keys to Eric. I didn't drive the Sonett on the freeway again for the next two years.

Despite its quirks, though, I grew to love the Sonett. It had speed and maneuverability. Its black seats, though vinyl rather than leather, were sporty and comfortable. The car featured three-point seatbelts, which were far safer than the lap belts then standard in American cars. It had a simple, elegant dashboard and a powerful engine for its size, which gave it tremendous acceleration. It was even possible to switch that challenging clutch into regular mode rather than using freewheeling, though once I got used to freewheeling, I actually came to like it. Perhaps most important, the Sonett was a great-looking piece of machinery, a really cool car. We drew stares of appreciation wherever we went. In it, I felt instantly transformed from a staid, uptight kind of girl to the hip, laid-back woman I'd always wanted to be. By marrying Eric, I'd gained not only a husband, but a car and the image that went along with it. It remained to be seen if I could live up to that image.

Books & Books & NASCAR, Too

It's not an exaggeration to say that my husband, Eric, and I moved to Miami because of a bookstore. Once we discovered Books & Books in Coral Gables, it was only a matter of time before we decided to decamp from Massachusetts to Florida for the winter. When we began looking for real estate in earnest, we narrowed our search to the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, only a ten-minute drive from Coral Gables and the bookstore of our dreams.

We had already been drawn to the area because our son, Aaron, spent his college years at the University of Miami, in Coral Gables. Although my parents had lived for over twenty years in Boca Raton, only an hour north of Miami, during our visits there we had rarely ventured to Miami. We thought of it as a high-crime city without much to offer culturally. I did, however, have fond memories of Coral Gables, having spent an idyllic week there in 1969, visiting my college roommate. Her parents' glamorous home featured a "Florida room," a sun-drenched enclosed patio filled with potted palms and other exotic flora, where we dawdled over breakfast before heading to the country club to swim and sunbathe the days away.

Eric and I had been yearning for a respite from New England winters, but we could never picture ourselves living in Boca, with its early-bird specials, homogeneous (read old) population, and its suburban feel, strip malls and all. When we visited Aaron, though, we found Miami to be a city transformed from its gritty past, boasting a dazzling skyline, almost blindingly white compared to the dark brick and stone of Boston. And then there was South Beach, its charming art deco architecture awash in pastels, and Coral Gables, as lovely as ever, with its Spanish tiled roofs and lush foliage. We promised ourselves that in the fall of 2003, after our younger son, Alex, had left for college, we'd spend some time in the Miami area and check out the real estate. We still weren't sure we could actually live there, though. With Miami's reputation for glitz, we wondered if it would suit our more literary tastes.

In November of that year, we flew down to Miami and started looking at apartments. In the evenings, we checked out the vast array of local restaurants. One night, we chose Cafe Abbracci in downtown Coral Gables. We found a parking space about a block away. As we got out of our car, Eric said, "Look. A bookstore." The sign read "Books & Books" and the store appeared to be arranged around an attractive open courtyard. We were already late for our reservation, so we decided to see whether they would still be open when we were through with dinner. To our astonishment, the sales clerk said they closed at the late hour of 11 pm. We surmised that some people in the neighborhood must care about books to justify such long hours.

After a delicious meal at Abbracci, we hightailed it back to Books & Books, which exceeded our expectations. The courtyard was still lively at 8:30 pm, its tables filled with people speaking English and Spanish, enjoying dishes prepared at a small cafe located inside the bookstore. We entered the store through a doorway off the right side of the courtyard. We could see a book group in progress at a table in a small room adjacent to the paperback book area. On the other side of the courtyard, we found not only hardbacks, but a reading in progress in a large back room which housed an impressive-looking collection of art books. From a listing on the bulletin board, we could see that such readings were frequent. Virtually everyday, sometimes twice a day, authors came to talk about their books. We were sold—any community that supported a bookstore as vibrant as this one was a place we could feel at home.

Our faith was not misplaced. Five years later, Books & Books is still one of our favorite spots. We've attended book groups that meet regularly at the store and we've heard authors as varied as Madeleine Albright, Jared Diamond, Dave Barry, Andrea Mitchell, Carl Hiaasen, and Angelo Dundee. These author appearances are not mere book signings. They're full-blown lectures, during which the author talks about the subject of his or her book, perhaps reads a bit from it, and then takes questions. The Dundee event was preceded by a boxing exhibition in the courtyard. Mr. Dundee turned out to be a delightful gentleman, who shared many wonderful anecdotes about his years as Muhammad Ali's trainer. After Mr. Dundee's talk, we were treated to a few words by the "Fight Doctor," Ferdie Pacheco, who became so emotional about appearing with his old friend that he actually cried.

Not long ago, NPR's Scott Simon came by to discuss his recently-published novel, Windy City, and next week, Jhumpa Lahiri will be visiting the bookstore to talk about her new book, Unaccustomed Earth. Some events are held at local churches, synagogues, and hotel ballrooms, to accommodate the enormous crowds well-known authors draw. Dave Barry rated the ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel and Madeleine Albright filled Temple Judea, which seats a thousand.

A recent Books & Books highlight was a performance by the Florida Grand Opera Young Artists, an event which was held at the bookstore. The performers sang selections from The Pearl Fishers, by Georges Bizet. Maestro Stewart Robertson, the Grand Opera's musical director, provided fascinating commentary about Bizet and his work. When the artists began to sing, the power of their voices in that intimate setting was simply breathtaking. Eric and I saw the entire opera a short time afterward at Miami's spectacular new Ziff Ballet Opera House. While I enjoyed the full production, I felt I had really understood the appeal of opera for the first time when I heard the music performed up close and personal at Books & Books.

Eric and I have learned it can be rewarding to attend events featuring authors whose subjects may not be of particular interest to us. A few weeks ago, we decided to take a chance on Liz Clarke, who was speaking about her new book: One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation. At best, I had an anthropologist's interest in what makes NASCAR fans tick. I expected Ms. Clarke to be a brassy, hard-edged type, with maybe with a tattoo or two. Instead, I encountered a refined, articulate woman, a sportswriter at the Washington Post and a graduate of Barnard, who lyrically described the personalities of the drivers and the dedication of their fans. Eric and I were so inspired, we bought the book. We even persuaded some friends to drive down to Homestead-Miami Raceway the other day to watch some qualifying heats. Unfortunately, NASCAR wasn't in town, so we were forced to settle for Formula One and Grand Am heats this time. But NASCAR, here we come!

All of this cornucopia of book-related activity owes its existence to one man, Mitchell Kaplan. In addition to starting Books & Books, which now has branches in Bal Harbor, Miami Beach, and the Cayman Islands, Mr. Kaplan also co-founded the Miami Book Fair International, an event that attracts book aficionados and speakers from all over the country. He provides living proof that a single individual can make a huge difference in the cultural life of a community. In fact, I can't think of a better motivation to write a book than the opportunity to talk about it at Books & Books.

Ode to Miami

Ah, Miami in summer. Warm, tropical breezes, mosquitoes buzzing, frigate birds wafting gracefully on air currents, swarms of gnats, mojitos under the stars. Did I mention mosquitoes?

Miami in summer is paradise, almost. The hot, humid air is cleansed daily by rains that arrive in the late afternoon. The showers cool things off and make for delightful evenings. And lots of mosquitoes. Plus quite a few gnats. Did I mention ants?

For a northerner like me, there's something wonderfully predictable about Miami's summer weather pattern, so unlike Boston's ever-changing climate. After the cooling rains, as the sun sets, there couldn't be a more perfect place than Miami for eating dinner al fresco. But remember to wear long pants, long sleeves, and socks. Probably a good idea to bring along bug spray, too.

Even in the heat, South Beach beckons. So what if the sun on the sand glares so brightly I feel like I'm going snow blind? No bugs on the beach. BIG advantage. And the water is nice and warm. Especially if you like hot baths. Seriously, it's gorgeous. And that lightheaded feeling just before heat exhaustion sets in is kind of special. I haven't felt so spacey since the Woodstock era.

One evening, my husband, Eric, and I decide to try a hot (no pun intended) new restaurant in Miami's Design District. Our son, Aaron, a University of Miami grad, is visiting and we want to show him how hip we've become since we began spending time in Miami. We arrive at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink just as the rain is letting up, a few minutes early for our reservation. All the tables inside are occupied. But outside the air smells fresh and the wood tables under black umbrellas look inviting, so we decide to go for it.

My black mesh chair is comfortable and only a little wet. It's still drizzling lightly but the umbrella protects us, for the most part. Aaron fits right into the scene, with his tee shirt, shorts, and flip flops. I feel edgy in my fitted black tee with the word "courage" lettered in gold across the front. I have on capris and a cute pair of sandals. Eric is sensibly dressed in long pants and socks.

Maybe it's the cosmo that dulls my senses, maybe the fabulous salmon dish, or perhaps just the heady feeling of being in trendy Miami. I don't really notice anything until, just as we're finishing our main course, Aaron complains he's being bitten. Really? In the middle of the Design District? I realize I'm itching a bit around the ankles myself. Eric claims to be fine. Nevertheless, we decide to skip dessert and ask for our check. Aaron insists we stop at Walgreen's for some Benadryl. Still, I refuse to be concerned. Even when I see the massive swelling on my wrist and the nest of bites under my arm. Not to mention the numerous welts around my ankles. After all, that West Nile Virus thing is way overblown, isn't it?

Ah, Miami in summer. The perfect place to be. Especially if you love mosquitoes.

Riding the LIRR

During a recent trip to Manhattan, I took a taxi from my hotel in the trendy Meatpacking District to Penn Station. I was planning to ride the Long Island Railroad to my old hometown, Rockville Centre. It was pouring and I appreciated the luxury of hopping a cab right outside my hotel door.

Thirty-five years ago, the last time I traveled on the Long Island Railroad, I couldn't afford a taxi. I was working as a file clerk at Columbia University and earning the grand sum of five thousand dollars a year. Back then, I lived not far from my hotel's locale, on 7th Avenue and 14th Street, and Columbia was a straight shot uptown on the IRT subway, just outside my apartment door. But on weekends, I frequently took the LIRR out to Rockville Centre to get away from the city and visit my parents and sister, who still lived there. I had no idea at the time that in less than a year they'd be moving to Illinois and I'd be married and living in California.

The cabby let me off at the 8th Avenue entrance to Penn Station. I felt sure that as soon as I walked inside, I'd easily find my way onto the train and back into my past. My high school friend, Anthea, was visiting her family in Rockville Centre and we'd agreed to meet there. She said she'd pick me up at the Rockville Centre depot and we'd take a trip down memory lane, driving by my old house on Dorchester Road, past South Side High School, the Fantasy Theatre, and all our other haunts.

When I entered Penn Station, I was bombarded by signs for Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, various subway lines, Hudson Books, sushi, deli, even Starbucks. Nothing looked familiar, but what I did recognize was the sharp, bitter smell of the underground tunnels, that universe of train and subway tracks snaking under Manhattan. To me, it was a sweet scent, reminding me of childhood, of holding tight to my father's hand when he took me with him to spend a day in his office downtown, or later, when I was in high school, riding the train and subway to Greenwich Village on weekends in search of Fred Braun shoes and coffee at the Cafe Wha.

Eventually, I found signs for the LIRR and presently arrived at the ticket/information area. Automatic kiosks had replaced ticket sellers in glass-enclosed booths and the space seemed smaller, but the dirty white tiled walls were the same and the benches in the waiting room looked as if they hadn't been replaced since the days I last sat on them. I bought a round trip ticket and headed down to Track 19. I wasn't alone. Although it was noon on a workday, people hurried alongside me, intent on reaching a particular car. In New York, even non-rush hour was crowded.

The old, dark railroad cars, with stuck windows and no air conditioning, had been replaced by silver models. The air was cool as I stepped inside and the leatherette seats were pale gray and blue, instead of the ancient cracked black leather. As I child, I loved the old convertible bench seats, whose direction could be reversed with a huge heave of their brass handles. Commuters would move the seats so one bench faced another, perfect for a daily bridge game or arguing about baseball. Now most of the seats faced in one direction or the other. But in each car, there were a couple of seats facing one another, a nice vestige of the old cars. Since I was traveling alone, I chose what I thought was a regular forward-facing seat, only to find myself facing backward when the train started. I hadn't remembered which way led out of the station toward Long Island.

Memories flooded back, though, when the train started up and the conductor entered the car, shouting "Tickets!". Much as I recalled, he wore a uniform of dark blue pants and light blue shirt, complete with a hard round hat, and he carried a hole puncher, just like in the old days. After he punched my ticket, he inserted it in a little slot on the back of the seat in front of me. Again, a carryover from the old-fashioned cars. But most evocative of all was the conductor's intonation of the train stops—This is the Babylon line, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Lynbrook, Rockville Centre . . . Massapequa, Massapequa Park—in a sing-song cadence that's part of my hardwiring. By the time the train reached Rockville Centre, I had fully arrived, almost as if I'd never left. And of course, as I stepped off the train, the rain stopped.

Miss Cobb's Bookstore

In the fall of 1976, I had just quit an editing job and was busy applying to law school. I needed some kind of work to tide me over until the following fall. I'd always thought it would be fun to work at a bookstore and I knew the perfect place—the Shirley Cobb Bookstore in Palo Alto, California, where I was already a regular customer. Shirley Cobb still owned the store. She was none other than the daughter of Ty Cobb, the legendary baseball player.

Her bookstore was located on University Avenue, Palo Alto's main street. In those pre-Silicone Valley days, Palo Alto was a funky college town. Just down the road from Stanford, it boasted a holistic health center, a health food restaurant, and several movie theaters, including The Festival Cinema, which showed vintage films, and the Varsity Cinema, where Bunuel and Kirosawa were among the featured directors. Shirley Cobb’s was right next door to the Varsity. On the bookstore’s other side, Swenson's Ice Cream parlor had recently opened, featuring enormous helpings—ice cream cones were measured by the pound there rather than the scoop.

Across the street was Celia's, my favorite Mexican restaurant, and Swain's Music, where my husband, who grew up nearby, had purchased his first sheet music. There was also a sewing store in the neighborhood, something of an anachronism even back then. It carried Elna sewing machines from Sweden, along with American Singers. I know that because I had actually purchased an Elna there myself, with the old-fashioned idea that all wives should (and could) learn how to sew.

Shirley Cobb’s was something of an anachronism itself—it sold only hardcover books. They were arranged along the walls of a tall, narrow room, about thirty feet wide and two stories high, as well as on freestanding shelves running down the center of the store. It didn't seem like a great place to be in the event of an earthquake, given the possibility of all those books crashing down in that small space. I credited myself with living dangerously just by being there.

The room was quite deep, about fifty feet. Suspended over its back half was a mezzanine where one of the employees did the bookkeeping at an ornate dark-stained oak table. Behind the main room was a smaller one. There, employees wrapped books, both as gifts and for shipping. Also in the back room, at a small table, book reps met with the manager, Bern Ann.

In addition to selling only hardbacks, Shirley Cobb’s had another peculiarity—it employed only women. Shirley Cobb herself was by then elderly and only rarely came to the store, but she had created the women-only policy. Moreover, she required that her employees wear skirts, an almost unheard of rule anywhere, let alone in laid-back California after the cultural revolution. Miss Cobb also mandated that employees greet each customer and offer assistance, a highly unusual practice for a bookstore, where people are generally left to browse on their own.

Having been apprised of these rules when hired by Bern Ann, I arrived for my first day of work wearing my only skirt. I was introduced to Janice, who was about my age and very pretty, with curly blond hair. Rhoda, short, brunette, and closer to my mother's age, told me about the biggest job perk—we were allowed to borrow books and read them at home. Despite the skirt requirement, this seemed like a job I could enjoy.

I immediately liked Janice and felt comfortable asking her help, which I often needed. I'd been an English major in college and thought I knew something about books, but found myself feeling clueless when customers asked me to recommend a mystery, or a biography, or perhaps a dessert cookbook. I turned to Janice for suggestions and also for help with more mundane tasks, like ringing up sales or taking orders.

While many customers came to Shirley Cobb's because they counted on a knowledgeable staff, some didn't appreciate our offers of help. After I'd worked at the store for a while, I could usually tell who wanted help and who didn't and vary my greeting accordingly, telling people who looked wary of me to “let me know if you need any help.”

Wrapping books provided a welcome break from all that helpfulness. There were almost always books to be wrapped and shipped, since Shirley Cobb’s received orders from all over the world and had regular customers from as far away as Australia. Book wrapping provided unexpected satisfaction for a perfectionist like me. With their solid rectangular shapes, books were easy to wrap perfectly in our signature green and white striped paper. Wrapping books was the kind of mindless work that freed my mind for daydreaming, conversation, or eavesdropping. Sometimes I'd listen in on a session between Bern Ann and a book representative. The rep (they were always men) would pitch book after book, and Bern Ann, invariably polite but no pushover, chose with a clear sense of her customers' tastes.

I was in the back room wrapping books the first time Miss Cobb came to the store. Dressed in a skirt and sensible shoes, she'd driven down with a female companion from her home in Portola Valley. She had a flinty manner, a deep voice, short pale hair, and a weathered, freckled face. She barely glanced in my direction, instead peppering Bern Ann with sharp questions about book orders and sales. She had a powerful presence, even in old age. Perhaps the mystique of being Ty Cobb's daughter contributed to that aura.

Though Miss Cobb was no longer actively involved in running the business, she'd found a marvelous successor in Bern Ann. Plain in appearance, with a long narrow face and prominent nose, Bern Ann favored straight cotton skirts and never wore makeup. Though often brusque, I soon realized her demeanor hid a kind heart. She was single and, as far as I could tell, the bookstore was her life. While she never expected such devotion from her employees, her dedication did affect the rest of us.

After I'd worked at the store for several weeks, I answered the phone one Friday afternoon. It was the New York Times calling. It was then I learned that Shirley Cobb's was one of a handful of bookstores across the country whose weekly book sales were used to compile the Times Bestseller List. Eventually, I participated in tabulating our list of the top fiction and non-fiction bestsellers (all hardcover, of course) and sometimes I handled the weekly call from the Times. Our contribution to the list made us all feel at the center of the book world far from our California outpost.

During my off hours, I hunkered down with such volumes as The Thorn Birds, The Coming Ice Age, and The Vegetarian Epicure, as well as more literary fare. Our customers ran the gamut from Stanford professors to suburban housewives to aging hippies. We had one regular visitor who frightened me at first, a vacant-looking man in a moth-eaten crewneck sweater. He browsed incessantly but never purchased anything. I was afraid to ask if he needed help, lest he fixate on me in some threatening way. But I noticed that Bern Ann always greeted him with a smile and left him alone. I followed her example, and once I got over my anxiety, realized that Shirley Cobb's provided a safe haven for him, a place where he could hang out undisturbed for a little while each day.

Anne was a part-time employee. Tall and athletic, with short blond hair, she breezed in three times a week like the scent of eucalyptus. She had three teenage sons and a wood-paneled station wagon and was accomplished in the domestic arts—gardening, cooking, sewing. I eventually sold her my Elna sewing machine, having melted my first sewing attempt, a polyester dress, with my iron. Anne was good at taking charge and had become Bern Ann's second-in-command, giving Bern Ann the chance for an occasional day off.

During my first few months at Shirley Cobb’s, I kept my law school plans secret, but this became increasing uncomfortable as my attachment to the people at the store grew. Finally, I confided to Janice, who suggested that I wait until I had definite news before telling Bern Ann.

By mid-spring, I had decided on the University of Chicago, which meant moving as well as leaving Shirley Cobb's. I was in for quite a surprise when I finally got up the courage to tell Bern Ann—she revealed that she herself had gone to law school back in the Fifties. She'd never told anyone at the bookstore, not even those who’d worked there for years.

It turned out that Bern Ann had been one of only two women in her class at Stanford Law School. After one year, she had quit. It had been too difficult, she said—not the academics, but the treatment from male students and professors. I no longer faced the same obstacles. Fully thirty percent of the students in my law school class would be women. Still, I regarded Bern Ann as a tough, confident woman, the type who would thrive in challenging circumstances. If she couldn’t hack it, what was in store for me?

As it turned out, much the same fate—sheer stubborness made me persevere through graduation and admission to the bar, but I never practiced law. Unlike Bern Ann, I wasn’t worn down by male chauvinism; I’d simply chosen the wrong profession. I sometimes wished I’d saved myself a lot of trouble and stayed right where I was, in the hospitable world of the bookstore. Sadly, that wouldn't have been possible for long. A few years after I departed for Chicago, Miss Cobb died. Not long after that, the Shirley Cobb Bookstore closed. But while it survived, it was a haven for book lovers and an oasis of civility. Perhaps that was Miss Cobb's antidote to her father's brilliant but brutal career.

The Dream Engine Remembered

One evening during the spring of 1969, my boyfriend, Eric, picked me up at Smith College and we drove over to Amherst. He wanted me to see a student production, a musical that had been written and scored by his friend, Jim Steinman, who also had the starring role. I vaguely knew Steinman, as everyone called him. I'd seen him at fraternity parties, sitting in a corner plunking the keys on an old upright piano. With long black hair and a closed-lip smile, he acted awkward and shy around me and other women. His friends seemed to expect great things of him.

The musical, Eric told me, was called The Dream Engine. The sold-out performance had already started, but he thought we might manage to get standing room in the back of the theater and at least see the second act. I would find the show pretty shocking, he warned me, along the lines of Hair. Think full-frontal nudity. I felt a shiver of excitement. I would be part of a genuine happening.

No one paid any attention to us as we entered the theater. We stood just behind the back row of the orchestra. The music was hard rock, melodic and catchy. And the actors on stage were naked. I had no idea what the plot might be, I only knew that suddenly the entire cast was coming off the stage, down the aisles, dancing between the seats, even on seat-backs, giving everyone an eyeful, gyrating to this amazing, pounding music. I was dazzled, convinced that I was in the presence of a creative genius.

Theatrical impresario Joseph Papp thought so, too. He optioned The Dream Engine, intending to put it on at New York's Public Theater. The following fall, Steinman asked Eric to play keyboards in the stage band. By then, Eric and I had broken up, at least for the time being. Eric, who was then a junior at Amherst, took the spring semester off and moved to Stamford, Connecticut, where he shared a house with other band members. Rehearsals began. Steinman proved difficult for Papp to work with, though, and after numerous arguments over creative control, the project was shelved.

But the music for The Dream Engine didn't disappear forever. By the time it re-emerged, in 1977, Eric and I had gotten back together, married, and moved to California, then relocated to Chicago for graduate school. Eric, in his first year of an MBA program at the University of Chicago, thought he might want to work in the record industry, although he found himself increasingly drawn to the new field of strategy consulting. I was almost through my first year of law school at the U. of C. and didn't know what the hell I was doing there. I'd applied to law school in a fit of feminist defiance—if Eric was going to business school, then I'd damn well attend law school! For me, as it turned out, trying to master contracts and civil procedure was like trying to fit a round peg into a very square hole.

As final exams approached, I was a nervous wreck, vacillating between periods of feverish study and complete collapse, during which I'd lie on the living room couch in a state of total exhaustion. Right at this juncture, a college friend told us that Steinman had come out with an album, Bat Out of Hell, featuring Meatloaf, an enormous and enormously talented recording artist. We immediately went and bought it.

Virtually every cut on the album, we soon realized, was inspired by The Dream Engine music. I couldn't get enough of it. From then on, I spent my sessions on the couch listening endlessly to "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad," "Heaven Can Wait," and all the other overwrought songs. I loved them. Steinman, like me, had grown up on Long Island, and the steamy lyrics about beaches and cars reminded me of my own Saturday nights as a teenager when I'd been "All Revved Up With No Place to Go." The music evoked nostalgia for my college years as well, when I'd felt strong, beautiful, and on my way to doing great things. Though still collapsed on the couch, I now luxuriated in my depression.

Somehow, the music helped me plow through exams. I even worked at a downtown law firm that summer, the round peg of my being only slightly whittled down and re-shaped by the experience. Though I finished law school, I eventually abandoned law for more fulfilling, if not greater, things. But even now, thirty years later, when I listen to Bat Out of Hell, I'm back there on the couch, the musty smell of law books mixing with the soft air of a melancholy Chicago spring.

My Vicarious Trip to Poland

When my 21-year-old son, Alex, told me he hoped to spend his spring break in Poland, I immediately felt squeamish. I knew full well why such a trip interested him. He was in the midst of writing his senior thesis play about the Lodz Ghetto and wanted to see it firsthand. But for me, the idea of such a journey conjured up frightening images—bleak Soviet-style architecture under gray skies, a plodding, unfriendly populace who resented American wealth and power, rabid anti-Semites just waiting to pounce on a nice Jewish boy like Alex.

"Why not Cancun?" I said, in a feeble attempt to make light of my concerns. Alex didn't bother to answer, instead offering the merest smile.

"I'm free that week," I ventured, taking another tack. "I could go with you."

Alex acknowledged that gambit with a baleful look before he replied, "I really want to do this trip on my own, Mom."

Though fearful, I admired Alex for his willingness to venture on his own to a such a foreign place. We agreed the trip would make a nice graduation gift, so I offered to let my travel agent handle the arrangements. To my relief, Alex acquiesced and the planning began. Nancy, though a first-class travel agent, didn't really know anything about Poland, let alone Lodz. She'd sent "a few people" to Warsaw, but no one further afield. She said she'd make some calls and get back to me.

While I waited to hear from her, I tried to reassure myself that the trip really was a good idea. After all, I told myself, this was 2007, not 1939. Poland was now part of the European Union. How backward could it be? It was a democracy now, I recalled, and one of the only countries that had actually supported the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq. In retrospect, a big mistake, but given that Poland had even sent some troops to Iraq, how anti-American could the Polish people be?

I was in the midst of this pep talk to myself when Nancy called back. She'd arranged hotels in Warsaw, Lodz, and Krakow, which she promised were well-located (code for safe), decent, and surprisingly inexpensive. So at least Poland would be a bargain. She also had set up tours for Alex in Warsaw and Lodz, plus a driver to take him from Krakow to Auschwitz, which he was determined to visit.

So there it was, we had a plan. Nancy emailed Alex and me the tentative itinerary. As soon as we okayed the schedule, which included train transfers from Warsaw to Lodz and then from Lodz to Krakow via Warsaw, Nancy would use my credit card to reserve everything.

Only the train connections gave me pause. The itinerary called for Alex to take a train from Lodz which would arrive in Warsaw in the late afternoon. He would have only thirty-five minutes from his scheduled arrival in Warsaw to make the connection to another train leaving Warsaw for Krakow. This seemed like precious little time between trains in a country I still pictured as hopelessly retrograde. If the Italians couldn't get their trains to run on time (a fact which I knew from unfortunate personal experience), how could I possibly expect Polish trains to function at all?

I allowed my imagination to run riot. If Alex missed the train to Krakow, he would be forced to take a later train, which would get him to the Krakow railroad station in the middle of the night, rather than the civilized eight pm arrival anticipated by the itinerary. And everyone knows that railroad stations are dangerous places. If my daytime visions of Poland were bad, my late-night fantasies were a thousand times worse. And what if there were no later train? Then Alex would have to wait until morning, meaning he would miss his already-arranged trip to Auschwitz. Needless to say, I immediately emailed Nancy and expressed my doubts about the close timing of the train connections.

Her reply was to the point: "The trains are very efficient there and these times between trains are standard—off one train and onto another!" I had no idea how Nancy had educated herself so quickly about the nature of Polish trains, and the notion of efficient service certainly didn't comport with my idea of Poland as a third-world country, but with her reassurance, I signed off on the itinerary. Little did I know that, although Alex's trip was still a couple of months away, my own vicarious journey was about to begin.

***

Alex had told me that Lodz is pronounced Woodj in Polish, something he'd learned in the course of doing research about the Lodz Ghetto. That unlikely pronunciation was pretty much all I knew about Lodz, or about the rest of Poland, for that matter. So when I mentioned Alex's trip to my sister, Janet, I was amazed to learn that she'd actually been in Poland during a mostly-Scandinavian cruise that included a stop in the port city of Gdansk.

"What was it like?" I asked, picturing, of course, a gray tableau of abandoned shipyards and cinder block buildings.

"It was pretty," Janet said. Pretty? "The city was basically destroyed during the war," she went on, "and afterwards was rebuilt in the old style. It was quite charming."

Charming? I knew Gdansk was the birthplace of Poland's Solidarity movement but I'd never imagined charming.

Soon after, I was talking to my friend, Barbara, whose daughter Eve has known Alex most of her life. When I told Barbara Alex was going to Poland, she said she herself had been to Krakow many years ago. She described it as a beautiful city, whose old town had been preserved. Even more surprising, she said Eve had a college friend, Marcel, whose family was Polish and who had spent summers between semesters working in Warsaw.

"Marcel told Eve that Warsaw is his his favorite city in the world," Barbara said. Really? In my mind's eye, Poland began to look a bit different, lighter, spots of color brightening the drab mental picture with which I'd begun. Barbara said maybe Eve could ask Marcel to give Alex some tips. I was delighted by the idea of a contact who had spent time in Poland, who liked Poland, who could tell Alex where to go and what to avoid.

I felt glad to have found two people I knew who had links to Poland, however tenuous. Their favorable descriptions made me wonder whether time, democracy, and capitalism had transformed the country into a more tolerant land. After all, Pope John Paul II, himself Polish, had denounced anti-Semitism and had even recognized the State of Israel. Since he was adored by his fellow Poles, his example must have had a profound impact in his native land. At least I hoped so.

As I struggled to come to terms with my nervousness about Alex's impending journey, one thing was clear. My fears were more about me than about Alex. He'd already spent a semester in London and during that time he'd traveled all over Western Europe, staying in hostels and other somewhat seedy locales. I knew he was smart and resourceful. But he'd always traveled with at least one friend. This time, he would be in Eastern Europe and he'd be alone. What if I didn't hear from him? How would I know whether or not he was okay?

Ironically, I myself had traveled alone in Europe when I was Alex's age. During the summer after my junior year of college, I flew to England with only a rucksack and explored the U.K. and the Continent on my own. Though I met up with friends at various stops along the way, I had no set itinerary and often wound up in out-of-the-way places all by myself. There were no cell phones back then and it was far too expensive to call long-distance on a land line. I think I sent my parents a few postcards.

During my travels that summer, I met some terrific people and did some pretty dumb things, like hitching a ride and then staying overnight with total strangers in Leeds, camping near Lake Como in Italy with two guys I'd just met, and visiting the Parisian garret of a Scottish playright who chain smoked Gauloises, coughed consumptively, and said he wanted to show me his manuscript. He did in fact show me his manuscript and I lived to tell the tale. But taking such risks myself was one thing. Regarding Alex, motherhood had turned me into an entirely different kind of animal—a fiercely protective one.

I knew Alex would understandably bristle if I pressured him to call me every day or, worse, to get the kind of cell phone that would enable me to call him. I suspected that this trip represented a rite of passage for him—a journey of self-discovery as well as an exploration of the destruction of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. I hoped his trip would be a rite of passage for me as well. I needed to let go and let my son live his own life.

Meanwhile, Polish connections kept popping up. Over dinner with my friends, Gail and Jeremy, Jeremy mentioned that his brother, Adam, an alternative energy investor, lived in a suburb of Warsaw. According to Jeremy, Adam and his wife and son loved living there and, better yet, they loved visitors! A flurry of emails followed and soon Alex had been invited to spend an afternoon in Konstancin, which he later discovered is known as the Beverly Hills of Warsaw.

I was pleased about this development. The visit would offer Alex a close-up glimpse of life in Poland, ex-patriot style. Alex was as excited as I about this opportunity. He agreed with me that the more people he could meet in Poland, the more he'd learn about the place. Although he chafed at my over-protectiveness, he clearly appreciated my efforts on his behalf.

Belatedly, I remembered that another friend, Jeanie, had actually visited Poland two summers earlier on a quest to see property owned by her family before the war. So the next time I saw her, I excitedly broached the subject of Alex's trip.

"You might be interested to know that Alex is going to Poland," I said.

"Really? To Warsaw?"

When I began to explain about Lodz, she stopped me, exclaiming "Lodz! That's where my family's property is." She even pronounced Lodz in the correct Polish manner.

Jeanie was even more thrilled than I about this link and was anxious for Alex to meet some of the Polish people she knew in Lodz and Warsaw. Again, a flurry of emails ensued, and tentative plans were made. In the process, I saw Jeanie's photographs of both Lodz and Warsaw. People in the photos looked normal, the sky was blue, and there were modern cars on the street. I began to feel less nervous and more enthusiastic about Alex's upcoming voyage, and hopeful he'd have the chance experience Poland from a Polish perspective.

Around this time, Alex told me he had heard from Eve's college buddy, Marcel.

"Great!" I said, "Did he give you some suggestions for things to do in Warsaw, and maybe some restaurants?"

"Nope, just a list of bars and clubs to check out."

Strike one for connections. I paused, my head filled once again with visions of Alex alone, this time staggering out of some club in an alley at three am.

"Do you plan to . . .?"

Alex didn't even let me finish the question. "No, Mom," he said, in a long-suffering tone, "I'm not planning to spend my time in bars and clubs."


* * *

Alex's fourth day in Poland found my husband, Eric, and me, along with our friends, Susan and David, on Florida's Tamiami Trail. After driving about an hour South of Miami, we turned onto the Loop Road, an unpaved twenty-mile circuit carved through the Everglades, about as far from Poland as I could imagine being. We drove slowly, stopping often to get out of the car and take a closer look. In natural canals next to the dirt road, alligators rested on fallen logs, others lolled languidly in the surprisingly-clear water, cormorants fished, and anhingas dried their wings.

Eric raised his camera to take a picture of a huge alligator, at least twelve feet long, resting on the opposite bank. As he did so, the reptile slithered off the bank into the water with a speed that astonished and terrified us. No fences protected us here, no theme park simulated the real environment. We were up close and personal, separated only by ten feet of water.

We hightailed it back to the car, laughing, panting, exhilarated. Further along, we came to the Sweetwater bird overlook, an amazing natural habitat filled with blue and white herons, anhingas, ibises, cormorants, even a rare wood stork. I glanced at my watch. Alex would be arriving in Lodz just about now. He had promised to call when he got to his hotel. I checked my cell phone. No signal. I was as unreachable to Alex as he was to me.

A while later, we exited the Loop Road and merged back onto the Tamiami Trail, continuing south toward Everglades City, where we planned to have lunch at the venerable Rod and Gun Club. I checked my cell again, hoping for a message. Still no signal. I endeavored to stay in the here and now of the sun-drenched river of grass stretching endlessly on either side of the highway, but part of me waited in the lobby of a run-down hotel on the main street of a once-thriving Polish textile-manufacturing city, watching for a slim, curly-haired American youth to walk through the door.

I gave up on the signal and put my cell back in my purse, resigned. A moment later, I heard its muffled ring.

"Hello."

"Hi, Mom." As if he were in the next room. "I'm at the hotel. Everything is great. I'm meeting Jeanie's friend Agata in the lobby in about an hour."

We talked a little more. What we said didn't matter. Across the great divide of two continents, Alex had reached me. The connection had been made.

Alex has written a fascinating e-book about his experiences in Poland. If you're interested, you can access it here.

Shaggy Dog Story

Cosmo needs a grooming. Cosmo, as some of you may know, is my seven-pound apricot toy poodle, apricot being an accepted American Kennel Club color, as opposed to peach, plum, or papaya. Cosmo comes from a long line of champion poodles. Never mind that his father is also his grandfather (what's a little inbreeding among family?). Or that his mother weighed eleven pounds while his father/grandfather only tipped the scales at five. I try not to picture that union. But I love the result to pieces.

Cosmo will never be a father or a grandfather, having been neutered at nine months. While this may have stopped his reproductive abilities in their tracks, it did nothing to stop his copious, curly, fruit-colored locks from growing at an alarming rate. Cosmo is like me in that he has hair, lots of it, as opposed to fur. So, like me, he needs frequent grooming appointments. Cosmo's haircuts cost more than I would dream of spending on my own, especially now that I've found the Vidal Sassoon of dog groomers. Every few weeks, I bring Cosmo to The Dog from Ipanema, where Jarbas, the gushing Brazilian owner, takes my "baby" from my arms and, cooing all the way, delivers him to Annette for the full spa treatment.

This is not a mere bath, not a mere haircut. For starters, the bather puts special little goggles over Cosmo's big brown doggie eyes. One of the caveats about bathing dogs is never, ever to get soapy water in their eyes. This is one of the reasons why I never, ever give Cosmo a bath, not counting the time when one of my kids accidentally spilled a full pitcher of pineapple juice on top of him. He nearly drowned in the sticky liquid and a bath was the only solution. But normally, I entrust bathing to Jarbas' crew, which does an admirable job. Recently, my poor little pooch had a double ear infection, so Jarbas made sure cotton balls were carefully placed in his ears before bathing was begun.

The signature of a great groomer is the cut and the comb-out. Annette gives Cosmo a regal, yet adorable cut and her comb-out is a work of art, producing a result more impressive than an eight-hundred-dollar Japanese hair straightening job, not that I've had one (but I'm thinking about it). Cosmo's coiled curls become silky, lustrous, and straight. And his nails—well, I could opt for polish, but I draw the line at pet pedicures. After all, Cosmo is a male. Ditto for ribbons around his neck or fancy rhinestone collars. Not for my manly little canine. Still, when Annette is through with him, he looks like a million bucks, as well he should, considering I'm paying almost that much.

Cosmo, ever the aristocrat, appears unfazed by all the groomer's ministrations. When I pick him up, he makes a beeline for the door, anxious, as always to get back to the important things in life—sniffing, peeing, pooping, and above all, eating.

My Life in Bugs, Part Two: Older, But Not Much Wiser

One sunny spring morning in Los Gatos, California, I was sitting in the tiny kitchen of my garden apartment, enjoying a bowl of granola and a cup of coffee. The year was 1975. I was reading the New Yorker magazine while I ate, but something made me lift my head—perhaps an intimation of darkness on the white wall next to the window. There it was, black as soot, black as night, black as a black hole—a black widow spider. Even from a distance I knew immediately it was a black widow. It remained motionless on the white background. I stepped gingerly toward it. Although I was afraid it would leap from the wall and bite me, I had to investigate. As I inched closer, I could see the telltale red hourglass on its abdomen.

I felt a frisson of delight. I was face to face with the spider of legend, a spider that seemed too mythic to die, at least by my hand. Yet, I knew we couldn't coexist. It had to go. So I did the logical thing—I called my husband, Eric, and entreated him to kill it. Eric reluctantly grabbed a newspaper, but that seemed too flimsy a weapon for the task. I handed him the New Yorker. While perhaps no more hefty than the newspaper, at least it had the force of intellect behind it. Eric approached the spider, still motionless on the white wall. As it perceived the shadow of the rolled magazine, it began a rapid crawl upward. Eric took aim and brought the magazine hard against the wall. To our surprise, the fearsome black widow expired as readily as a common house spider.

The black widow wasn't our only uninvited guest during the year we lived in Los Gatos. A few months after that episode, Eric and I returned from a week's vacation. The apartment was stuffy, having been closed up during our trip. I hurried to open the sliding glass door which led from the living room to a tiny patio. As I opened the slider I was met with a sight that could have inspired the insect scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom--earwigs, thousands of them, filling the entire track of the door. A few intrepid ones had managed to get off the track onto the orange shag carpet and were advancing into the apartment. Once again, I did the logical thing—I screamed. Eric came running. During the next hour, he engaged in a truly heroic removal effort. With no more than a broom, he swept the earwigs away, back to their natural habitat. A few survived the onslaught intact, but many were severely injured, and most died. Not having the saintliness of an Albert Schweitzer, I felt no remorse at their demise. And I still can't open a sliding glass door without a shiver of anxiety.

Apparently, I hadn't learned much from my childhood experiences with bugs. I still dreaded most varieties and behaved like a distinctly unliberated woman when I came across them. For better or worse, though, Eric wasn't always around to rescue me. During the late seventies, he was often away on business and my only companions in our Boston waterfront apartment were the cockroaches that freaked me out when I turned on the bathroom light. After we moved to the suburbs in the early eighties, Eric still traveled frequently, so I had to learn the ways of carpenter ants, ground bees, and gypsy moths.

Considering that we lived in a manicured enclave not far from the city, we were visited by a surprising number of bizarre and alarming insects. One year, our screened-in porch was invaded by small, winged creatures. I feared the worst—a termite swarm. I was reassured by my exterminator, Danny, that they were not termites but citronella ants, winged ants which emit a citronella odor when threatened.

Ironically, for someone as averse to bugs as me, I'm even more averse to the use of pesticides. Fortunately, Danny, whose kids went to school with mine, didn't push pesticides on me. Rather, he was a genuine bug enthusiast. Once, when a cicada found its way into my living room, where it died on the windowsill, Danny excitedly asked if he could have it to show his son. He promised me that the citronella ants were harmless and would soon disappear from the porch on their own. When they did, I called a contractor and had the foundation rebuilt in the hope of preventing a return visit.

Once my children were old enough to notice my reaction to bugs, I felt it imperative to display courage and calm in the face of even the scariest invader. Some of my worst moments came when bees got into the house. Nothing seemed more threatening than a frenzied bee in an enclosed space. Many was the time I simply closed off the room with the bee in it until Eric arrived home and worked his magic with a folded newspaper. Usually by then the bee was so exhausted it died easily.

But one summer afternoon, I saw the light. A friend was sitting in the kitchen with me when a buzzing sound alerted us that a bee had somehow gotten in. Heading toward the light, it had found its way to a closed window where it buzzed angrily. I suggested we leave the kitchen immediately. My friend pooh-poohed that idea and instead picked up a glass and a thin piece of cardboard. She put the glass over the bee as it came to rest on the window, trapping it, then slipped the cardboard between the window and the top of the glass. Holding the cardboard over the glass, she carried the imprisoned bee outside, where she set it free. It was a moment of revelation and exhilaration for me. I didn't have to kill the bee! I didn't have to wait for Eric to kill the bee! Better for me and certainly better for the bee! Since learning this amazing technique, I've saved numerous bees, an occasional wasp, and not a few flies.

My biggest challenge bug-wise came when a cicada killer wasp decided to build its burrow beneath our brick patio. The cicada killer is an admirable creature, industrious and protective of its nest. It's also gigantic—nearly two inches long. I first encountered one on a lovely mid-summer day when I stepped onto my patio and it dive bombed me from seemingly out of nowhere. I retreated into the house from where I watched it enter a small opening in the stone dust between two bricks on the patio. In short order, little piles of dust formed around the hole. The cicada killer was building its nest by dislodging soil with its mouth and kicking the loose particles back much as a dog would dig a hole.

From that moment on, I only ventured onto the patio in a state of extreme vigilance. Even then, it was hard to predict when the enormous wasp would emerge, zooming straight toward me. I didn't know then that males, though particularly aggressive, have no stinger. Females will sting but only when provoked. Normally, their stingers are used to kill cicadas, which they then bring back to their nests. Even had I known these fascinating facts, my conclusion would have been the same—the cicada killer had to be evicted. We couldn't share the same patio. I was about to call Danny, thinking this problem might actually require a dose of chemicals, when I happened to mention the situation to my children's babysitter, a feisty older woman who knew many old-fashioned remedies.

"You don't need pesticides," she said. "Just wait until the wasp goes into its nest and pour boiling water on it." Eureka! I'd found a solution to the problem, albeit a cruel one. That very day, I boiled a kettleful of water and waited. When the wasp entered the opening to its nest, I went outside with my kettle and poured the entire contents down the opening. I never saw the cicada killer again. I did feel a twinge of guilt, but mostly I exulted in my newfound resourcefulness. For the next decade, every summer brought another cicada killer to our backyard. Sadly for the unsuspecting creature, I made quick work of it each time.

I could go on and on—the mysterious blistering bites that turned out to be from fleas infesting our East Palo Alto apartment; the palmetto bug that terrorized the kids and me in an Orlando hotel; the humongous, though harmless, millipedes that hung out in our basement and occasionally showed up in our bedroom. You get the picture. Bugs are everywhere. They continue to fascinate, repulse, and sometimes scare me. But I've adopted a laissez-faire approach. Live and let live, unless they invade my personal space. Then I do the logical thing—I call Eric.

Now for Something Completely Different—Poetry

I’ve been writing poetry on and off for my entire adult life. While I’ve had some individual poems published, I've never put together a volume of my work until now.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of Full Circle: Selected Poems, 1980-2005. The book is available in PDF format from Fair Isle Press, an online publisher of electronic books. Full Circle, like all Fair Isle books, can be downloaded for FREE.

You can access the book by clicking the following link: Full Circle . Then click the Free download option on the lefthand side.

The poems in Full Circle feature a variety of subjects, moods, and styles. Below, I offer a sampling of poems from among those selected for the book. I hope they inspire you to download the complete collection.


I Wasn’t There
For Eric Clapton, on the death of his five-year-old son

Over and over in my mind’s eye
I see him leaning out the window
smiling, captivated by something
on the street far below, perhaps,

or reaching to touch an imaginary
butterfly, extending his small
eager body past its point of balance
on the sill’s meager fulcrum,

seesawing away from the heavy brick
and mortar of the world, falling
light as a butterfly, landing—
he must have landed—in heaven.

March, 1993


Swish

The new basketball pole gleams white
next to the blacktop driveway
and the graphite adjustable backboard
vibrates with every shot.

Three suntanned boys in tank tops and shorts,
one of them my son,
ask me to lower the hoop to seven feet
so they can slam dunk.

I watch them watching each other
to see who can jump highest
and I can see that girls
will be watching them soon

then talking about them,
which one is cutest,
girls putting all that energy into talk
while boys shoot baskets,

alive in their bodies,
speaking the pungent language
of sweat and contact,
each guarding the other,

all grinning
as the ball drops through the net
with a perfect swish.

September, 1993


September 13, 1993

I haven’t planted a tree in Israeli soil.
I haven’t floated on the salt waters of the Dead Sea
or pressed my lips against the Wailing Wall,

but today, when Rabin said,
“It’s not so easy”
to make peace with Arafat

his words resonated inside me, plumbing
that deep well from which Rachel drew water—
a reservoir of hope,

an unending source of tears,
the marriage of Jacob and Rachel barren
until finally Rachel gave birth to Joseph

who made his own peace with Eygpt
and forgave his brothers
though they sold him into slavery.

I wish we had Joseph with us now
to interpret this latest dream
of peace.


Midori Ito
A Pantoum

Rising suns flutter in the stands
as she slowly skates onto ice,
face of a Kabuki dancer,
modest, but without kimono.

She slowly skates onto ice,
eyes downcast, her muscular legs
immodest, without kimono.
She has come to skate for honor.

Eyes downcast, with muscular legs
she balances on two sharp blades.
She has come to skate for honor,
devoted as a samurai.

She balances on two sharp blades,
gliding gracefully to music,
devoted as a samurai
warrior facing certain death.

Gliding gracefully to music,
she attempts the triple axel
like a warrior facing death,
needing perfect concentration.

She attempts the triple axel,
leaps, knowing she cannot succeed
without perfect concentration,
and falls, shame etched on her features—

face of a Kabuki dancer
as all the rising suns flutter.

February, 1992


What Tim Wakefield Knows

The perfect knuckleball has no spin. It sails in
from the mound like a solitary ship on a still sea

and, like the mirage of a ship, it hovers before
the thirsty batter, who swings his bat to no avail,

the ball only real when it lands in the catcher’s mitt
with a soft thump. Hitters looking for the fastball

swing way out in front. They can’t uncoil their muscles
in slow motion as the ball floats into the strike zone.

The knuckleball hitter must learn the art of meditation.

October, 1992


Greatest Hits
For Alanna Jones

Waiting for his call,
she transfers CDs to an iPod,
patiently feeds the disc drive
with every CD he owns,
imports his favorite songs
into the small, sleek device
for export to Ramadi, Iraq.
The iPod will lie inside
his pocket, touching him,
maybe stopping a bullet,
crooning words of Top Forty
devotion while she soldiers
through her days at the health club,
trains middle-aged women
fighting nothing more lethal
than gravity and brittle bones
to lift weights, use the shoulder press.

After he calls her, he shoulders
his rifle, bearing the weight—
kevlar vest, helmet,
combat boots, her love.

2004

My Life in Bugs, Part One: The Early Years

Reckoning my life in terms of the insects I have known may seem strange, but does it make any more sense to explain myself by the colleges I attended, the graduate school, the law school? By whether I wear Manolo Blahniks or Easy Spirits? By how many marriages, how many children, the number of cars in my garage?

Right now, due to a close encounter with some drain flies, I have bugs on the brain. So herewith, a brief exploration of my world according to the insects that have creeped, crawled and flown into my life. Maybe it will evoke memories of your own bug stories.

It was a warm summer day in Wantagh, New York. The year was 1957 and I was eight years old, playing in the back yard with my younger sisters, all three of us running in and out of the wading pool, splashing, abandoning ourselves to the warm air and cold water. Life was joyful as I raced one more time through the cool, green, clover-laden grass. Then one innocent misstep, a piercing pain—my first bee sting. Not only my big toe, but my spontaneity suffered injury. Never again would I step so lightly through blades of grass.

I was a hypersensitive child, bothered by loud noises and strong smells, and keenly affected by slights, real or imagined. But I was also anxious to prove myself brave and resilient, so at age ten I persuaded my parents to send me to Camp Tamarac, an overnight camp in the Berkshires. After a few weeks of bunk living, my group embarked on a “camping” trip, which consisted of hiking past the mess hall, beyond the boys bunks, and over a hummock to our campground. There, we watched our counselors pitch tents, then played tag while waiting for them to cook our dinner over an open fire.

Enter the no-see-ums. The DDT that had been sprayed liberally over the entire camp during our first week had apparently not penetrated beyond the hummock. Swarms of gnats swirled around our heads. I felt a slight prick in one eyelid, then the other. Moments later, I couldn't see at all. My lids had reacted so strongly to the bites that they were swollen completely shut. I briefly enjoyed the notoriety my overly-sensitive skin had brought me, until discomfort and anxiety set in (would I ever see again?). And the longer-term lesson was not so pleasant, either—a measly little gnat had the power to ruin my day. This experience reinforced my already risk-averse nature. Even a pleasant walk in the woods of Massachusetts held unexpected dangers, I now realized. As I got older, I worried about all of them.

Still, during my pre-teen years I led a pretty bug-free existence. Sure, I enjoyed chasing the lightening bugs that were plentiful on Long Island during summer evenings. I had fun collecting the Japanese beetles that threatened to decimate the rose bushes in my neighborhood. And I thrilled to the ladybugs that occasionally landed on my shoulder. I even witnessed neighborhood boys torturing exquisite praying mantises and felt the helplessness of my gender—I never dared to protest, lest the boys torture me instead. But inside my house, I rarely saw spiders, mosquitos, flies, or even ants. It was only after I found my way to the tropics that I began to understand what I was up against when it came to insects.

In 1963, when I was fourteen, my parents arranged for me to spend the summer with a family in El Salvador that my father knew through his job as a coffee buyer. The Bonillas, part of the small, wealthy elite of that country, lived in a lovely house in Los Planes, a suburb of San Salvador. The climate was delightful—temperatures in the seventies during the day, with rain falling predictably in the late afternoon. The Bonillas' home was beautiful and unusual, based on my limited experience. The house was perched on a hillside, open to the tropical breezes, with no glass in the windows, much less screens. So insects were free to enter and leave at will.

Antonio and his wife, Yolanda, were wonderful hosts, a loving and happy couple who made me feel quickly at home among their children, their live-in gardener, their cook, and several servants. Their daughters, Norma and Evelyn, took me under their wing and showed me the ropes. Fortunately, they spoke English, since my Spanish was still rudimentary.

First among my lessons was how to handle beetles. The beetles I encountered in El Salvador were nothing like the plentiful but small Japanese beetles or the even smaller lady bugs (also a species of beetle) with which I was familiar. These Salvadoran versions were giants—colorful, gorgeous, and fearsome. They probably would have been best left alone to proceed in their stately fashion across the tiled floors back to nature through the open windows. But there was always the risk that one would suddenly take flight, putting us right in the path of their hard exoskeletons. Not a fate to be desired, according to both sisters. I heartily agreed.

So, I watched attentively as Evelyn demonstrated the technique for killing a scarab beetle. Stepping on it wouldn't work, she said—its hard outer shell would compress and the insect would probably survive. Instead, shock treatment was called for. Evelyn carefully lifted the poor creature up with her thumb and index finger, its little legs flailing wildly, then threw it hard against the tile floor. I saw her do this again and again over the course of my stay and never saw a beetle walk away. I was loathe to try the technique myself, however. I wish I could say my reluctance came from sympathy for the plight of a living being that meant us no harm. But, in reality, I was too grossed out to even touch one of the beetles, let alone hurl it through the air.

Salvadoran beetles, huge though they were, were nothing compared to the spiders and insects that came out at night. The Bonillas' living room had a soffit around its perimeter from within which lights were directed at the ceiling. Given the open-air environment, that was a good plan. The bugs were attracted to the brightly-lit ceiling, where they congregated in alarming numbers, rather than to the seating area where we often sat. I've never seen such a collection of enormous long-legged spiders, moths, and creepy-crawly things. The Bonillas, adults and children alike, appeared totally oblivious, so I feigned nonchalance. I have no idea if there were poisonous spiders or lethal centipedes among the vast array, but thankfully, I lived to tell the tale.

I've always been fascinated by insects. I like seeing pictures of bugs and watching exotic species on nature programs. But polite distance is one thing, up close and personal is quite another. While I hoped that my experience in El Salvador would toughen me up for insect encounters to come, that didn't exactly come to pass. Rather, for me insects came to represent the ultimate example of otherness--mysterious, repulsive, gorgeous, and downright scary.

Mitt Romney's Inaugural Ball—A Partygoer's Guide to "Pop Outs" and Poor Dressing

The invitation to Governor Mitt Romney's inaugural ball read "black tie optional." My husband, Eric, owned an old tuxedo but said he'd much rather wear a suit, so I figured my black velvet pantsuit would be fancy enough for the occasion. On the morning of the inauguration, though, the Boston Globe ran a piece about past inaugural parties and described the dowdy Dukakis crowd of twenty years ago—"velvet-clad supporters rode the T to his inaugural ball." The article was accompanied by photos of women in the gowns they planned to wear that evening to the Romney affair—each one more gorgeous, glitzy, and low-cut than the next.

This was my first inkling that an old black velvet pantsuit might not be quite the thing for a twenty-first-century inaugural. Still, I'd never liked formal gatherings and had always refused to spend a fortune on a dress that I'd probably only wear once or twice. I wasn't about to start now, just to impress a bunch of Republican fashionistas.

But this party promised to be different than others I'd attended—Eric and I would be noticed. Eric was Romney's newly-appointed Secretary of Administration and Finance, a high-ranking Cabinet post. So this wouldn't be one of those gatherings where we could go off and hide in the corner. We would have to mingle.

Eric arrived home late in the afternoon with a surprise announcement—he'd decided to wear his tux after all. It turned out "everyone" was going in black tie, even the most outdoorsy member of the new administration, an environmentalist known for wearing blue jeans and biking twenty miles to work each day. Though normally not susceptible to peer pressure, Eric was persuaded that he'd stand out more if he were the only cabinet official without a tux than if he went along with the crowd. Despite my determination not to be self-conscious about my outdated outfit, I felt a rush of anxiety.

In a last-ditch effort to glamorize, I nearly asphyxiated myself with hairspray and painted on a coat of nail polish. Then off we went to Boston's World Trade Center, where we'd been invited to a pre-ball gala for family and friends of the new Governor, a VIP event that included an open bar and an elegant sit-down dinner. The women looked resplendent in long shimmering gowns. I hastily removed my velvet jacket—the velvet tank top underneath looked a bit more dressy—and fortified myself with a glass of white wine.

We had just started dinner when Eric was tapped on the shoulder by Rob, a member of Mitt's security crew.

"In a few minutes, the Governor would like you both to come downstairs with him to greet people. I'll come get you when it's time," he said.

Downstairs. That was where the main party was just getting underway. Sixty-five hundred supporters gathering to eat, drink, revel, and listen to the Boston Pops Orchestra. I allowed myself a small shiver of excitement. We were being singled out to accompany the Governor. I took a bite of filet mignon and waited for the call.

A few minutes later, Rob approached our table, gesturing urgently. "We need you now, Mr. Secretary," he said. I would be tagging along as Mr. Secretary's spouse. That was fine with me. Though fascinated by celebrities, I was far too shy to seek the limelight myself.

We followed Rob to the exit, where Mitt and his wife, Ann, waited with a few other Cabinet Secretaries, as well as Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and her husband, Sean. Rob and several other security types hovered next to Mitt and Ann, who wore a dazzling black beaded gown. At the signal, we followed them through a labyrinth of back hallways.

"It feels like we're rock stars," Eric whispered to me. Dowdy rock stars, I thought.

We all crammed into a large service elevator. Rob explained that we'd be taking part in several "pop outs" behind Mitt and Ann. I didn't have a clue what a "pop out" was—a dramatic entrance accomplished by jumping through flaming hoops? Nothing quite so exotic, it turned out. "Pop outs" referred to the several adjacent party venues on the main floor. Mitt and Ann would "pop out" and greet the guests in each locale and our job was to follow behind the couple and add our welcome to theirs.

Emerging from the elevator, we were led through a large coat-check area into a cavernous space filled with partygoers. Within seconds, Mitt and Ann were surrounded by bright lights and cameras. Not surprisingly, no one was interested in Eric, let alone me. Even though articles had been written about Eric’s appointment, it dawned on us that no one was likely to actually recognize him. We hovered at the edge of the press frenzy encircling the Governor, feeling a bit silly and very anonymous. On the other hand, the new Secretary of Transportation, also a member of the "pop out" entourage, was in his element greeting partygoers. He'd run for State Treasurer, albeit unsuccessfully, so people recognized him and wanted to say hello.

Eric was trying to work up the courage to shake an old lady's hand, when we realized that Mitt and Ann were moving at breakneck speed through the crowd and on to the next "pop out." We caught up with them just as they disappeared through a curtain, emerging on the other side to greet more glittery guests in yet another vast and drafty hall, a space far too chilly for all the décolletage in evidence. I was actually glad I had my velvet jacket with me. Eric and I paused so I could put it on, then we looked around and realized our entourage had vanished without a trace. Giving up, we slowly made our way through a claustrophobic crush of people back upstairs to what was left of our dinner. The entree had long since been cleared and almost everyone had proceeded to the main party. We sat down at our empty table to enjoy coffee and dessert before rejoining the crowd downstairs.

"Fame isn't all it's cracked up to be," Eric remarked.

Maybe not, but if I ever get another chance at my fifteen minutes, I vow to dress for the occasion.

Antonin Scalia and the Case of the Albemarle Pippins

In the fall of 1977, I entered the University of Chicago Law School. My first-year professors were an illustrious group. Among them was Richard Posner, one of the seminal thinkers in the field of law and economics and presently Judge of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He taught us Torts. Our Jurisprudence professor was Edward Levi, previously President of the University, who in the fall of 1977 had just returned from serving as Gerald Ford’s Attorney General.

For Contracts, we had a newcomer—Antonin Scalia. Professor Scalia had arrived at Chicago fresh from the U.S. Department of Justice, where he had been Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.

As a first-year law student, I was intimidated by almost everything about law school, particularly the Socratic method, but Scalia brought a sense of lightness and humor to the classroom—at first. In those early days, as my classmates and I struggled to master legal concepts and terminology, Scalia seemed intent on making Contracts fun, or at least comprehensible. He was an energetic teacher and anxious to succeed, just as we were, so we viewed him sympathetically.

He particularly won our hearts with his hypotheticals, the imagined situations he used to illuminate legal concepts or test our nascent legal reasoning skills. Hypotheticals are a mainstay of legal teaching, and during the first month or so of class, Scalia employed a series of hypotheticals concerning apples, Albemarle Pippin apples, to be exact. He wove hypothetical tales of agreements to buy and sell Pippins and used Pippins to illustrate fundamental ideas like “consideration” and “bargain.”

His choice of the humble apple for his hypotheticals seemed a brilliant stroke. What better way to introduce students to legal complexities than through easily understood examples involving apples? As it happens, Albemarle Pippins are no ordinary apples. Brought to Virginia by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, they became favorites of Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps in choosing the Albemarle Pippin as his hypothetical apple, Scalia even then pictured himself among the shapers of American history.

We students, on the other hand, were hoping merely to make the grade. At the University of Chicago, as at other law schools, no exams were given until the end of the first term. Until then, no one really knew where they stood or even whether they would survive the first year. That made for a lot of tension, which students traditionally relieved by devising clever pranks to amuse their classmates. For a few of my fellow students, Scalia, along with his Albemarle Pippins, made an irresistible target.

As I sat in Contracts class one morning, hoping I wouldn't be called on to analyze the assigned case, there was a pounding on the door. One of the students sitting nearby jumped up and opened it. A tall young woman, whom I recognized as a second-year student, entered the room. Her blond hair was done in braids and she wore farmer's overalls and a red-checked shirt. To complete the outfit, she sported a hayseed between her teeth.

“Antonin Scalia?” she asked in a convincing down-home drawl. “We got yer shipment for ya. C’mon boys, bring’em in.” Scalia looked understandably confused.

In came apples, bushels of them, pushed, pulled, and carried by several upperclassmen also dressed as farmers. “These here are yer Albemarle Pippins,” one of them intoned, as the class exploded with laughter. Scalia smiled bemusedly. For a few minutes we enjoyed the pleasant delirium of group participation in a shared joke.

Then Scalia stopped to smiling. He didn’t merely stop—his entire demeanor changed. Perhaps he suddenly felt we were laughing at him, not with him. That perception couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it might explain the transformation that took place. One moment, Scalia was the jovial teacher, sure of his abilities and secure in the admiration of his students. In an instant, his entire affect changed. “That’s enough,” he said angrily, dismissing the farmer actors. Our laughter died down in a hurry as we returned to the case at hand.

Ironically, my classmates chose Scalia as the object of their prank (and persuaded several second-year students to take part) precisely because we all liked him so much. In the days and weeks that followed, however, Scalia never recovered his prior avuncular manner, preferring instead to grill students harshly about legal issues. No more cheerful repartee in class, and definitely no more hypotheticals involving Albemarle Pippins.

The following year, a friend of mine took an upper level course with Professor Scalia. She reported that he’d regained his equilibrium and once again displayed a spirited and brilliant teaching style. The succeeding years seem to have reinforced his renewed sense of confidence. Nowadays, whatever one may think of Justice Scalia’s legal philosophy, he certainly comes across as self-assured. But, reflecting on the thin-skinned response he had in the case of the Albemarle Pippins, I can’t help but wonder how that aspect of his personality influences the decisions he makes today.

Going Dutch

I recently returned from a week of walking in the Netherlands, where I breathed in the North Sea air, ate Dutch pancakes, viewed numerous canals, and saw many paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. The Dutch people I met were friendly and engaging and most spoke excellent English, thank goodness. Though I'm normally adept at languages, I found Dutch completely baffling.

My trip involved eight to ten miles of walking per day in the company of a small group of fellow Americans and two Dutch guides. We sauntered down city streets and hiked over sand dunes and through pristine Dutch farmland. The main object of my trip, as with all my travels, was to get a sense of the place, to see what the people care about, and how they live. Here are a few of my impressions.

Based on my experience, the Netherlands has the perfect climate--75 degrees and sunny every day (okay, our second day was a bit overcast). One of our guides, Arjen, stressed that this was not typical weather, but my memories of Holland will be of a warm and sunny locale. Apparently, things have gotten still warmer since I returned home, making July the Netherlands' hottest month in 300 years! The temperature has climbed as high as 37 degrees Celsius (around 98 degrees Fahrenheit). Normally, I'm told, the average temperature in July is 17.4 degrees Celsius (around 63 degrees Fahrenheit). Global warming strikes again.

Heat or no heat, it's windy in Holland. Now I see why all those windmills were so effective at grinding grain and reclaiming land. Arjen referred to the almost-constant stiff breeze as the "Dutch wind." Happily, the smell of sea air is often carried by that wind, which makes the air quality quite delightful.

The biggest surprise about the Netherlands? Bicycles--they're everywhere! Who knew? Perhaps I should have, Holland being so flat and gas prices so high. But I hadn't anticipated the Dutch reliance on bikes as a primary mode of transportation or the beautiful and efficient way bike lanes are incorporated into the traffic scheme of cities. Riders and bike racks are ubiquitous. For an American, it takes some getting used to.

My first encounter with a bike occured shortly after we arrived in Amsterdam, at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning. My husband, Eric, and I had left Boston at 7 p.m. the night before (there's a six hour time difference). We checked into our hotel and fortified ourselves with breakfast, in the process learning that "over easy" is a concept foreign to the Dutch, or perhaps merely lost in translation. After breakfast, we decided to take an exploratory walk before we collapsed of exhaustion. We left the hotel and I stepped onto the sidewalk, or so I thought. In fact, I had inadvertently entered a bike lane. I heard a softly ringing bell then a skidding of wheels as a bike ridden by a tall middle-aged man came to a stop inches from my derriere.

Only belatedly did I notice that the sidewalks, bike lanes, and roadways, while all made of brick, were carefully delineated by slightly different colors of brick, one red, one yellowish, another soft orange. It turns out that the bell I heard faintly ringing before my near-demise is the main mode of warning employed by Dutch cyclists. Very civilized and understated. (Car traffic is understated as well--I barely heard the sound of a horn during my entire visit.)

And the sheer number of bicycles! Thousands of serviceable bikes, not fancy racing bikes. People don't ride bent forward, as racers do. Instead, they sit impressively erect on their seats and zoom along. They may not be racing, but they really move. Another surprise--no one wears a helmet, not even small children. Arjen contended that few accidents occur. Indeed, the closest collision I witnessed was my own.

Dutch people, I discovered, are tall, very tall. Even the women towered over me and I'm almost 5'5", average height for an American female. In fact, many of the women seemed as tall as their male counterparts. It turns out that recent studies rank the Dutch as the tallest people on the planet. It must be all that bike riding, and a diet rich in dairy probably doesn't hurt.

I know there are poor people in the Netherlands, but I really didn't see them, despite walking all over Amsterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem, and the Dutch countryside. I also didn't see many Muslims during my trip (so far as I could tell, judging by women wearing head scarves), although Holland has a large Muslim population. Despite all the ground we covered while walking, I suspect our guides circumvented the poorest areas. Still, the Netherlands ranks as one of the wealthiest countries in the world. From what I saw, it's a healthy prosperity--most people seem to dress sensibly, have lovely but small apartments and houses, and plenty to eat. No Manolo Blahniks in sight. Not a lot of ostentation. I felt perfectly appropriate in my REI pants and L.L. Bean shirt.

I also felt right at home with the neatness and order evident wherever I travelled in the Netherlands, being something of a neatnik myself. The fact that many Dutch residences don't have curtains on the windows supposedly originated in a desire to show the world that their homes were tidy. Today, it also seems to reflect the quality of openness I experienced throughout Holland.

In accord with a penchant for order, the Netherlands is a country replete with rules. Arjen explained that the Dutch have a rule for everything. But he also described an outlook that saves people from coming off as prissy or sanctimonious--the Dutch are very tolerant of people who break the rules. It's an odd paradox, perhaps one that accounts for Holland's unusual status as both a financial center and a haven for drugs and prostitution.

The rule that most fascinated me was the one regarding squatters. In the Netherlands, if a building is unoccupied for a year, squatters have the right to move in. As I understand it, the building is still owned by the legal owner, who is also still liable for payment of taxes and even utilities. But the building may be occupied and renovated by the squatters. The object of the law is to make sure all available housing is used. Arjen pointed out several buildings currently occupied by squatters. Recently, there's been legislation proposed by conservatives to make it more difficult to squat, but it's met stiff opposition.

Which brings me to the most delightful part of our trip--lunch at the home of our two guides, Arjen and Karin. The two are just friends (Arjen is married), but both reside on a former country estate in Utrecht, once occupied by squatters after standing vacant for the required period, but since converted to sixteen separate apartments--with a catch. Each apartment contains living space but all bathrooms and kitchens are shared, commune-style. The setup resembles a very sedate commune. Arjen characterized two of his fellow residents as hippies from the sixties, whom he said were slobs and never cleaned at all. But having gotten a peek into Arjen's neat living room and having seen the lovely grounds of the estate, I take his word that those two are the exception.

Our lunch was courtesy of another couple who live on the estate with their young daughter. The two started a catering business and were permitted to build a professional kitchen in the estate's former stable. They are proponents of the "slow food" movement, which advocates the use of locally-grown ingredients cooked from scratch. We were treated to a fabulous vegetarian repast, complete with edible flowers. After lunch we took a walk through the beautiful parkland (now public) that surrounds the estate. Arjen, Karin, and the estate's other residents have managed to achieve an enviably gracious lifestyle on modest means.

A couple of final notes: Indonesian food--delicious! And a welcome contrast to the much blander, dairy-rich Dutch diet. Windmills--what an amazing example of Dutch ingenuity. We had the opportunity to climb to the top of a working windmill and see and feel the power of the wind in action. Lastly, Americans--they like us! We felt no hostility during our stay and no one seemed to resent the fact that we could only speak English.

As you can see, I don't have a single negative thing to say about the Netherlands. And I'm not even part-Dutch! If you go, one word of advice. If at all possible, find someone Dutch to show you around. It makes all the difference.