Sylvia's Journal

Archive Page 44

No more highways!

Published July 26, 2016 vacation Leave a Comment
Tags: Eugene, Portland

In Eugene we were hosted by another friend and his sister next door who teaches about sustainable agriculture at the university. She and Axel visited the lands and came back with a bounty which we ate. At dinner Faro had his before last melt down and it was time to go home. The length of our trip, which seemed short at first, turned out to be 2 days too long for our four year old. We should have known when Faro started to protest when he heard the word ‘highway.’

But before we got on our planes we split up three-ways. I went ahead to Portland with my fellow grandma. We overnighted on the outskirts of Portland in a lovely AirBNB. An enormous redwood rose at least a hundred feet right through the deck, a statement of the tree that it was there long before the deck and of the owners that they accepted that fact.

I dropped grandma off at the airport and visited a young colleague who had recently followed her husband to Portland, sadly leaving MSH. For lunch I joined another colleague, of Dutch stock, who retired from MSH several years ago. We caught up in a fluid mixture of English and Dutch.

Sita and Jim did their last sightseeing and nature walking on their way to Portland and Axel had lunch with the daughter of a dear friend from where he bussed to Portland. We met up at a fountain made for kids to Faro’s great delight – maybe it was the highlight of his trip – no more highways!

He had his last meltdown, regrettably, over a spectacular sushi dinner. I had booked a hotel room to serve as a pied a terre before we would all head out to the airport for our respective red eye flights. But Sita and Jim got delayed by another hour every hour until it was time to rebook for the next day. Delta was on time and took us quickly home via Detroit.

Crisscross CA

Published July 23, 2016 vacation Leave a Comment
Tags: Bend, Brassfield Estate Winery, Mount Shasta, Weed

After Sea ranch we split up. Sita and her family went up north to admire the redwoods and stay in Crescent City. Axel and I meandered over several mountain ranges towards Mount Shasta. Along the road we experienced many more of the diverse facets of the state of California, not all as pleasing as what we had experienced so far.

We did stop at a vineyard – how could we leave Sonoma County and not do so, and purchased the best of the wines we had tasted – made from grapes that thrived on the rich lava soil. We were to see much more of these lava soils for the next two days.

From there it was straight north along the Anderson valley through some cowboy and honky-tonk towns. We made a brief pit stop at a dusty café where we found, to our great surprise, the stuffed front part of a large giraffe. The giraffe could not have imagined in its wildest dreams where it would spent its afterlife. It was kind of sad to see it reduced to decorate such a depressing place, in between old farm equipment and white animal skulls. The donors were locals, a hunting family according to the framed newspaper article, who had taken their kids on a hunting trip to South Africa a few years ago where the doomed giraffe found itself in their visor. They gave the meat to the locals and had the skin shipped home and stuffed someplace.

We got some strudel and the worst coffee of our entire trip, and made it to our next AirBnB, having covered more than 350 miles. We checked into our AirBNB in Weed, had a superb Indian meal in Mount Shasta and then tumbled into bed, too tired to drink the welcome bottle of wine offered by our host.

The next morning we entered Southern Oregon and drove along Klamath Lake towards Crater Lake where we stopped for a picnic overlooking the deep blue waters that had filled the caldera, eons ago.

Our destination that day was Bend, where an old-time friend of Axel awaited us for a 24 hour visit. I am still digesting the experience of Bend which reminded me of Utopia and the Stepford Wives all at once, with mostly beautiful lily white people, in excellent shape because of all their outdoor activities. I asked our friend who couldn’t stop singing the praise of Bend if there was anything wrong with the place but he couldn’t think of anything – and so there it was again, a Stepfordian Utopia. After lunch we set out straight West through endless pine forests, some blackened from fires, towards Eugene.

Toddling up the coast

Published July 20, 2016 vacation Leave a Comment
Tags: Bolinas, Oakland, San Francisco, Sea Ranch, SFMOMA

With the conference behind us, a last morning of discussions about what next, we got into our respective cars and made our way to Oakland where our next lodging was arranged, in an old music recording studio, stuck to the side of a mountain in the Oakland Hills above Montclair. It wasn’t a child-friendly place although our host was. When we left he gave us several bottles of beer, the business he was in.

As for the child-appropriateness of the place, he could (and should) have mentioned that there was a deck over a 50+ feet drop with a bannister not up to code – Saffi could easily slide in between the slats and tumble into the depths. Thus we kept the door to the deck locked. Inside there were wires everywhere, requiring us to say no a lot. The sitting room of this AirBNB is essentially the deck, which I enjoyed in the quiet early morning hours with a cup of coffee, watching the mist rise out of the valley, but which was off limits after the kids awoke.

There was a small indoor sitting room off the deck but it was turned into a bedroom for Sita and Jim. As a result, with the deck unusable, there was no safe living space or place to sit for a meal or cereal (the dining room table also being on the deck). It was essentially an expensive crash pad, which is how we used it: bagels and coffee in the village below, then the whole day in San Francisco (SFMOM, also not that child-friendly) and a walk at Land’s End towards the Golden Gate Bridge which was repeated the next morning when Jim’s mom arrived. We had picked Oakland to be close to Axel’s cousin who had misread our dates and turned up on the east coast at exactly the same time – a big shame.

We visited Bolinas for a long walk on the beach and took our sweet time as one should during vacation, blissfully unware that we nearly missed getting the keys to our next AirBnB at Sea Ranch that night, several hours of meandering coastal road north. Sea Ranch is known by our architect friends. It is an extensive (vacation) development along a 10 mile stretch of the Sonoma County coast south of Mendocino. Here is what Wikipedia says about (The) Sea Ranch.

For us it was the highlight of our stay. In contrast to our Oakland abode it was wide, light, spacious and very child friendly, especially the neighborhood, populated by beaches, trails, seals and sea lions.

We spent a wonderful day and two nights at Sea Ranch, including a soak in the hot tub overlooking the Pacific.

Misty 2

Published July 17, 2016 vacation Leave a Comment
Tags: Big Sur, Dennis the Menace playground, Monterey Aquarium, Monterey Peninsula

The weather in California so far has been mostly cold and misty in the morning and evening. Micro climates abound. In one place I wear a warm fleece jacket and scarf, in another I peel off to my tanktop. In the morning clouds obscur the view, then lift for awhile in the afternoon to reveal blue sky. Then, towards the end of the afternoon enormous cloudbanks appear on the horizon and I look for my coat again.

We went on several expeditions while opa and mama were busy exploring how to change the world. First there was the famous Monterey aquarium. Despite the stickershock (120 dollars for Jim, Faro and myself, including a 10 dollar discount for my white hair), we entered the sprawling arrangement of buildings along cannery row, and enjoyed the various displays, not so much the screaming children. Saffi couldn’t care less and slept through it all. Faro was less inerested in the displays and more in the countless hands on activities, perfectly geared to his age.

We drove to Big Sur and hiked up to the Pfeiffer waterfalls, a steep hike for a 4 year old. He fell twice over roots and stones and now has an eggsize bump on his head and two scraped elbows to show for it. After the initial shock and tears, and four arms to hold him, he forgot about it in about 5 minutes. Dad was more concerned. I recognized my own mother’s nonchalance in my response: not a big deal – kids are not as fragile as parents often think. Grandparents know this.

Monterey has built an enormous playground for kids of all ages, it is called the Dennis the Menace playground. Jm would keep an eye on excited Faro and I would look after Saffi, usually asleep in her baby carrier. I observed Californian parents hovering and praising their kids. It brought back memories of my days as a student of child psychology, observing how kids moved in a playroom. I saw little signs of cooperation, or even contact, unless it was about territory. Everyone, including Faro, were busy experiencing the various playground activities as if they were isolated pieces on a chessboard, only making contact when they were in competition. This is the downstream of what Sita and Axel were trying to remedy.

Spoiled

Published July 16, 2016 vacation Leave a Comment
Tags: Asilomar, Julia Morgan, Monterey Peninsula

First Axel and I got spoiled, on our way to California. An upgrade to first class on the short hop to New York, then a personal pick up at the jetway by Delta Customer Experience rep Carol who whisked us away in a Delta Porsche across the runways to a far off terminal from where our San Fransisco flight would leave one hour later. The only thing missing from our total delight was an upgrade on the second leg of our trip. But we are not complaining, as the car rental agency also upgraded the smallest car we had rented to a more comfortable size.

Although Sita and family had arrived two hours earlier on a direct flight from Boston, we pulled up at the same time at the Asilomar Conference grounds and state park on the Monterey Peninsula, in Pacific Grove.

While Sita and Axel were busy networking with nearly hundred people who had streamed in from all corners of the world to basically change the way we do business and interact with one another, Jim and I explored the peninsula and the things it had to offer to a four year and a one year old. We met each other ar mealtimes.

The conference center consist of various large standalone halls, built in the Arts and Crafts style in between the world wars, designed by architect Julia Morgan for the YWCA. The houses, the rooms, and even the designs of carpets, curtains and furniture are spectacukar in their simplicity and charm. The sticker price of our three days there was also spectacular and gave us a hint of how Califrnia keeps itself running with about six lines of taxes and fees slapped onto what was already a significant bill for food and lodging.

And so I also spoiled Faro, with constant attention and an occasional icecream, lots of hugs and bedtime stories. I spoiled Sita by being a free babysitter, and Jim by being a companion.

Misty

Published July 6, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Another week is racing by bringing me closer to the start of our family vacation in California next Thursday. It seemed so far away (as did the summer enveloping us now) when I made the arrangements back in December and January. I am going to have unfettered access to our two grandkids. I am excited. It is the kind of excitement I remember from grade school, when the summer school trip to the zoo or the beach came into view.

In the meantime headquarter work is getting my attention. I get up early (now it is dark again at 4:30 AM) to beat the traffic and arrive at a dark office – springing to light automatically when I enter. I am the only one this early but a few people follow quickly. Around 6:30 there are a handful of us. It is quiet in our open space. I get much done.

I have a lot of desk work to complete before my travel will pick up again, later in the summer. It is the kind of work that keeps me billable through stretches of time when there is no travel. I design events on the horizon. I review what others have written. I revise what I have written before based on feedback or pilots. I check a French translation of something I wrote many years ago. Sometimes I am surprised about what I wrote years ago, impressed with myself (“I wrote that? Wow!”). And sometimes I write new stuff or turn something I read into a short training session. Some of the work is creative and some is not but overall it is fine.

I am turning 65 this year. Some people, especially in Holland, are asking, “are you retiring?” Our CEO, who is from the same vintage, is stepping down as the chief. I don’t have retirement plans yet. By and large I enjoy my work, a privilege I am very conscious of.

My official workday is 8 hours, although I am often putting in more than that. Because I start early I also leave early which gets me home in the afternoon, with hours left before nightfall. Last year at this time I would change into my bathing suit, put my goggles on and swim across the cove and back. This year I haven’t been in the water yet. It is very cold (52F or 11C). If it hurts my ankles when I step in the water I turn around.

This summer’s weather has been funny – from very warm (hot even) on some days to spring temperatures on others. Last night it was like winter in the southern hemisphere – I needed to wear a cardigan in the evening. The warm afternoons, the unseasonably cold water makes for thick mists drifting in from the ocean at the end of the day, lowering visibility to as little as 30 meters.

On my commute home I am listening to a fabulous novel about Malaysia, the Garden of Evening Mists. When I pull up to the house and the mist pushes in from the sea I have my own misty garden.

The rest of the good-bad-good sandwich

Published July 3, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: Bridge of Spies, Dhaka, Gulshan, La Taverna Kabul, Lebanon, Mark Rylance

On the other side of the world, in faraway Bangladesh, another illusion of safety got shattered. I know Gulshan, where the hostage standoff and then massacre occurred, a bit. I have spent many days and nights there, going back decades. We have a project in Dhaka and friends from long ago. The tape that plays through my head is familiar. It played through my head when La Taverna in Lebanon got blown up, only three days after I ate there. The contrast between the quiet and genteel ‘before’ and the violent ‘after’ is hard to accept.

Sometimes people ask me, “Aren’t you afraid? The places you go could be targets!” Yes, they could, and in the moment I do have this sense of vulnerability, and the thought ‘I could have been there,’ crosses my mind. But I also have a statistician in my head who says (in Dutch): ‘kullekoek,” which means something like ‘nonsense.’

When things like this happen and we are once again reminded that ours is a dangerous world, I have to remember that today it is not more dangerous than any time in the past, probably even less so. People who want to go back to the olden days do not know what they are asking for. The olden days may have been good for some but for most people they were not good, only old.

When Axel and I lived in Lebanon during those turbulent times, we had a Palestinian friend who was an official in the Palestinian resistance. He gave me a keychain with a small wooden vase dangling on it, “from an old Palestinian olive tree,” he told me; although I don’t know where the physical object is anymore, the image is engraved in my memory and reminds me of him.

His people were being targeted and blown up regularly. I asked him once, “Aren’t you afraid you will be next?” I will never forget his answer: “as long as I live it is not my time yet and I have work to do. When my task in this world is completed, not for me to know, then I will go.” It’s a kind of comforting philosophy and I have adopted it. I have combined it with a Nigerian saying, a colleague taught me decades ago: “When you worry you go die. When you don’t worry you go die. Why worry?” And, as Mark Rylance playing Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies says, “if I worry, would it make any difference?” I am not done yet with my task and see no point in worrying.

And finally, to complete the good-bad-good sandwich, something wonderful happened in between the other side of the world and this side of the world, not so faraway Tilburg: my niece brought a hefty little boy into the world, promoting my youngest brother to being a grandfather (opa), which is of course the best possible role one could ever aspire to play.

This side

Published July 3, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

There are three sides to this world: this side, the other side and in between this side and the other side.

On this side something good happened as Tessa turned 31 during this year’s long holiday weekend. We started celebrating on Friday night just the three of us at a restaurant in Gloucester. In the morning I thought about that momentous event when Tessa made her way into the world, remembering it as yesterday. Tessa arrived while the remnant of burned croissants was still lingering in the air. Axel had put ‘heat-only’ croissants in the oven of the birth center. The oven thought it was getting cleaned, locked itself while the temperature increased to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. This activated the fire alarms and brought the firetruck out with screeching tires and probably a hefty bill for the hospital; it should have replaced the oven. Did tiny Tessa smell something was awry? Nothing in her life shows she did, unless it is her obsession that everything should be right.

The festivities of this 31th birthday continued in the morning with our birthday ritual – a festive table with all the tchotchkes we can find in the house standing to attention around the plate of the birthday girl, flowers on the chair, cards and presents. A brief interlude followed to prepare for the annual birthday bash at Lobster Cove: tents, a keg, fireworks, barbecue, potluck, fire on the beach, silent disco, late night fishing and eating it the next morning, cooked over the still burning fire with fresh eggs from Steve’s and Tessa’s Ladyland Farm chicks. Tessa counts among her friends a highly sought after DJ who reserves this event in his full appointment book year after year.

And then from 2Pm onwards people trickle in, accompanied by the gear they need: fishing rods, canoes, kayaks, tents, fireworks and booze. The latter two I don’t care that much about but I usually retire before they get activated.

That was on this side of the world

Eater’s digest

Published June 27, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: Amersfoort, Holland

My brief vacation in Holland was nearing its end. I drove back to the center of Holland to my professor brother and experienced typical Holland weather: sun, rain, hard rain, light rain, sun, endlessly repeating itself in short cycles. There is an app that many Dutch people have on their phones. It is called ‘’buienalarm’ which means ‘rain shower alert.’ It is a handy app when you live in the lowlands.

I managed to squeeze into my short Sunday afternoon: a visit (in the rain) to Amersfoort centre, eating a new haring by the tail, accompanied by a ‘zure bom’ (sour bomb, a large sweet pickle) and a large pancake at a traditional pancake restaurant. In Holland pancakes are eaten for dinner not breakfast, and come with just about any topping you can imagine. I had two halve pancakes (this for people who cannot make up their mind): one half was called ‘the shrieking pancake’ (chorizo, bacon, cheese, mushrooms and sambal oelek) and the other half was called the farmer’s hand and included apple, raisins, walnuts and brandy. The two halves made for a whole pancake that took me till next morning to digest.

I took my brother to Schiphol the next morning, both as good company during the crowded commute into western Holland where most of the jobs are, and as a guide through the unfamiliar network of highways. At Schiphol he took the train to his office in Amsterdam and I handed in my rental car and spent the next few hours waiting for the delayed flight back to Boston. I decided once more that an upgrade was worth the money and the miles and got seat 2A which made the return trip quite pleasant.

Nostalgia

Published June 26, 2016 On the road , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: Drente, Holland

On Sunday mornings most of not-church-going Holland is asleep. With a borrowed bike from a neighbor we biked into the quiet city of Emmen, hoping that the gate to the old abandoned zoo would be open, but it was not. Nothing was open. My friend called someone she works with as a volunteer and asked if she could come by for a visit. Unlike the rest of Emmen the couple was awake, and to my surprise, elderly. We had coffee and talked about religion, mostly or exactly because they have turned away from religion. And here I sat with a nice Muslim girl who volunteers through a Humanistic Society. In Holland everything is possible. I had a lovely time getting to know this active and activist couple in their 80s who had become friends of this young Afghan woman – they are part of a network that she had created around herself to help with a difficult transition. I was proud of my fellow Dutchmen and women.

We left to find the gates to the old zoo open. The new zoo is now a little outside the town, rechristened WildPark and based on the American model of a zoo with a whole lot else to do, hoping to attract crowds from all over Western Europe. This poor city, in economic decline, could use a few visitors with money to spend.

We peddled around the sad old zoo that was the destination of countless school trips in the 50s and 60s. I posed in front of a large photo of a class with their teachers made in 1957. It could have been my class. I have a picture just like that. Of course for us in the west the Northern Zoo was too far away – we went to Artis, Amsterdam’s city zoo, or maybe to Rotterdam’s zoo although that one was already too far away.

emmen-zoo

We biked along the meandering paths, past empty spaces that once housed monkeys, elephants, giraffes, bears, and other exotic beasts that are now, presumably, roaming more or less wild in the new park.

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