Lori Hein: Ribbons of Highway

More bites of the Big Apple

2012-02-10T12:46:00.000-05:00

New York is, hands down, my favorite city in the world. I was born in Brooklyn, so I feel the city in my bones, but even without roots and history New York would top my great cities list. I can't get enough of it, and I'm overdue for a visit.

Having visited New York scores of times I've seen the obvious must-sees and done the obvious must-dos, many of them many times, each visit revealing new facets and aspects. (Your first visit to the Empire State Building might involve standing in the long line to take the elevator to the observation deck and taking in the mind-blowing view. Your second might be a slow perambulation and examination of the Art Deco lobby.)

I've also seen hundreds of more obscure, lesser known and less heralded spots around the five boroughs. The beauty of returning again and again to a place is once you've seen the Top Tens, the must-sees (I'll never call them cliched; if you haven't seen it, it's not cliche to you), then you're free, if you choose, to start digging through the rest of the place's rich layers.

There are things I do almost every time I go to New York: hang out in Central Park; people watch in Midtown; walk or run the Brooklyn Bridge; take in a Broadway show and the pulse of Times Square at night.

But I try to experience something new on each visit, too. Some still-to-dos include:

1. The High Line
2. An Off Broadway play
3. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade
4. Coney Island in summer
5. An afternoon in Harlem
6. Governor's Island
7. Walk the Williamsburg Bridge
8. The Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan's oldest house
9. The Frick Collection
10. The Tenement Museum

www.LoriHein.com

My travel bucket list (and lots of links)

2012-01-24T14:46:00.028-05:00

I feel blessed to have seen much of the world. My store of travel memories is so rich that if my traveling days ended today I'd be content with what I've been allowed to experience. Every moment, every sight, sound, taste, smell and sensation, was a gift.

But I hope, once Mike and I have paid the kids' way through college and wrested our finances from the clutches of heart-stopping tuition bills, that we'll be able to resume jetsetting. There was a time when we always had at least two sets of plane tickets paid for: tickets for an imminent trip and tickets for one a few months after that. I do miss those days, but putting two great kids through a great university is also a rewarding trip, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

But it'll be good to hit the tarmac again, traveling light and on the cheap, to amazing places we've still to see. Sometimes, when I consider where I have been, and what I have seen, I'm amazed. I really did that? I really went there?

So where in the world would I still like to go? Given health, time and resources, here are 30 places (I could think of more) I want to visit, in no particular order:

1. The kingdom of Bhutan
2. Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
3. The rock churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia
4. Egypt (click on Egypt in the sidebar to read about our two thwarted visit attempts)
5. Rideau Canal Skateway, Ottawa, Canada
6. Cape Town and Kruger National Park, South Africa
7. Namibia
8. The Great Mosque of Djenne, Mali, the world's largest mud structure
9. Sydney and Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock), Australia. (No, I will not climb it.)
10. Angkor Wat, Cambodia
11. Mt. Fuji, Japan
12. The Amalfi Coast, Italy
13. Goa, India
14. Shanghai, China
15. Cartagena, Colombia
16. Poland
17. Vietnam
18. Stockholm, Sweden
19. Angel Falls, Venezuela
20. Cappadocia, Turkey
21. Victoria Falls, Zambia
22. Botswana
23. Darjeeling, India
24. Puglia, Italy
25. Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian Coast, Croatia
26. Pagan, Burma
27. The Pitons, Saint Lucia
28. Denali, Alaska
29. Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland
30. The Milford Track, New Zealand

Feel like packing.

www.LoriHein.com

Travel List Challenge challenged, or, how'd Anne Pippy Longstockin Lewis get into Mecca?

2012-01-19T16:44:00.036-05:00

Maybe you've seen the Travel List Challenge app on Facebook: 100 places deemed by the app's marketing team to be cool, important or impressive enough to merit must-see status. I ticked off 65; according to the app's "Compare Results" tab, Average User clocks in at 23. It's a good list, and I agree with most of the destinations, but two things about the list bother me.

First, whoever wrote the list and was presumably paid for it misspelled a number of entries. There's no easier writing assignment than making a list, so an error-filled one causes this writer to shake her head at the appalling quality of so much that's published online. With a few keystrokes to check his or her work the list writer could have caught such gaffes as Colloseum, Devil's Tower, Macchu Picchu and Sistene Chapel. The Web's awash in bad writing and bad information. Gives me pain. Caveat lector.

My other beef with the Travel Challenge is that the challengers lie. The aforementioned "Compare Results" tab shows you where you stand in relation to other challengers/globetrotters, but, unless lots of people pulled a Sir-Richard-Burton-in-1853, the "results" are, for some if not all of 162 of the challengers as of today's date, fabrications.

Why do I suspect that 162 people, give or take, lied? Because 162 people claim to have been to 100 of the 100 destinations, and one of those is the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Non-Muslims aren't allowed in Mecca. We can all go to Saudi Arabia, but a special exit sign on the highway to the sacred city directs non-Muslims where to get off before they reach it. Potential penalty for slipping into Mecca, trying to pass oneself off as Muslim, and getting caught runs the spectrum from deportation to decapitation.

So, Jake Scott, Lance Harvey, Mark Frazer, Ian Merry and Elaine Menini, are you still attached to your heads? Did you really visit Mecca's Grand Mosque? Maybe you made it to the Mecca bus station, outside city limits and open to all, but did you stand before the Grand Mosque with its sacred Kaaba, site of the hajj? You saw that? Anne Pippy Longstockin Lewis, how about you? And the chick named Siobhan? Blarney.

Maybe you're documented converts to Islam. If so, let me know, and I'll write an I-was-wrong post. (Christian Duffield, you'll never convince me.)

www.LoriHein.com

Happy 2012, Ribbons of Highway

2012-01-05T20:54:00.006-05:00

Hard to believe I've been blogging here since 2004. Five hundred and fifty-two posts: hundreds of travel stories about scores of countries and thousands of photos and links. When I wrote my first post, "Birth of a Blog," in 2004, I never imagined I'd still be at it eight years later.

There's lots of fun stuff in the archives. Click on a country in the right sidebar, and enjoy.

www.LoriHein.com

The annual Jose Feliciano post

2011-12-22T20:19:00.012-05:00

Longtime readers, you've seen this one before.

This time of year, some folks retell Dickens's A Christmas Carol or Moore's "T'was The Night Before Christmas." I retell the Jose Feliciano airport story.

And so, apparently, do my kids. Adam was in the dentist's chair yesterday when Jose's signature holiday tune came on. While the doc arranged instruments and measured out novocaine, Adam told her our Jose story. I love that he shared the story, but I also secretly imagined her being extra careful on his teeth because she was handling someone who'd met a famous person.

Jose, if Adam's filling holds for the rest of his life, we have dental medicine and you to thank.

Enjoy, and feliz Navidad:

We were at the airport in Lisbon waiting to board our plane home from a Christmas-week family trip to Albufeira, a seafront town in the Algarve. The gate area was packed with travelers, and all seats were taken. Dana was two, Adam five, both seasoned travel vets. They sat in the plastic chairs we'd managed to snag, swinging their legs and sipping juice.

A group of tall men milled around, looking for a seat for a smaller, blind companion. Mike offered his chair, and the blind man sat down next to me.

We'd overheard the men, musicians, talking about the bad flights and lousy hotels they'd endured on their current tour. I leaned over and asked the quiet, blind man, "What kind of music do you play?" All the men looked worn and tired, a littled rumpled and disheveled. I figured they played low to middle-tier clubs and bars. The Zildjian cymbals they kept at closer than arm's length were the only hint of the possibility of something bigger.

"All kinds," he said. "Maybe you've heard me on the radio at this time of year singing a song I wrote..."

"!You're Jose Feliciano!?!" I launched into "Feliz Navidad" and called Adam over between notes. "Adam! This man wrote the Christmas song that mommy sings all the time!" I sang some more. Adam joined me on the "prospero ano y felicidad" and let loose on the "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas." Jose was pleased.

We talked with Jose for a half hour. His big, serious, but very gracious manager hovered protectively. The band was on its way home from a sold-out New Year's Eve concert in Estoril, and Jose was eager to get home to Connecticut to his pregnant wife and two young children. A loving, involved dad, he talked about his kids. "I try not to spoil them," he said.

Although he couldn't see them, Jose was keenly aware of Adam and Dana. He sensed their movements. He used their names when he spoke to them. He told Adam to "enjoy being a kid, because it goes by so fast." He told Adam jokes: "Adam, why did the turtle cross the road? He wanted to get to a Shell station." And, "Why did the chicken cross the road, Adam? To get away from Colonel Sanders." Dana was cranky, and Jose gve me parenting tips: "Change her diaper before you get on the plane, and give her a lot to drink so her ears won't hurt from the change in cabin pressure."

We boarded. Jose crossed the Atlantic in first class, and we sat in steerage, narrowly escaping the flood of red wine that burst from the overhead bin when a Portuguese woman's straw-bound jug of homemade vinho de mesa popped its cork. A nearly eight-hour flight. Adam and Dana handled the marathon transit like pros. They played with Legos, colored, ate stuff, and scanned the headset stations. Henry the Navigator would have been proud of their endurance.

When we landed in Newark, I noticed Jose sitting alone on a windowsill in a corner, waiting for his men to pull the luggage from the carousel. I told Adam he could go over and say good-bye.

Thousands of miles, eight hours, two movies, two meals and one ocean had passed since we'd shared polite conversation with Jose Feliciano back in Lisbon, which seemed a lifetime away. As Adam walked toward the tired man, I realized Jose might not remember Adam. And Adam didn't know Jose was blind. We hadn't mentioned it, and Jose wasn't wearing dark glasses. Jose wouldn't see Adam coming. He wouldn't see Adam at all. He might not be able to put a name to this little person he'd never seen, only heard. Adam was a voice from another time zone, another continent, another reality. Would Adam's five-year-old feelings be hurt? Should I have left well enough alone?

I stood nearby and listened. "Bye, Jose," whispered Adam.

Jose looked up and smiled. "Take care, Adam."

www.LoriHein.com

Red Bull revisited

2011-12-09T22:02:00.023-05:00

Adam's about to finish his penultimate college semester. Finals are underway, and campus angst and sleep deprivation levels are high. Adam took his final today in a course he's found challenging and sent me this email before the test:

"I read this while studying for the last test...http://ribbonsofhighway.blogspot.com/2008/01/red-bull-little-extra-kick.html "

It took me a second, but when I recognized the link as the URL from a 2008 blog post I wrote when Adam was a college freshman pulling all-nighters to study for his first-ever college finals, I laughed. Then I sighed. For the time gone by so fast. So fast.

Here's the original 2008 post. I hope you enjoy it, and thanks to Adam for resuscitating it from my blog's archives:

Adam sent me these emails during college finals week:

“so I’ve been at the library for the last 7 and a half
hours and 6 hours yesterday and I’ll probably be here
until my test tomorrow and I need a break from
studying, so I’m sending you this email”

and

“hey, I’m a little hyper, I’ve had a coffee and a few
energy drinks, I’m still studying, going strong,
tomorrow will be a loooong day,
love adam”

I opened these at nine in the morning and coughed up a heartbeat when I saw that Adam had sent the first message at 11:22 PM – and the second at 3:44 AM.

It was one of those watershed moments in the adventure we call parenting: My kid, who probably hadn’t eaten a real meal in days, was pulling an all-nighter in the campus library and would, one hour from the time I sat reading these “hey mom” emails, take a crucial macroeconomics final using a body and brain that had, assuming he'd gotten up yesterday at the not-unusual-for-college-students time of two in the afternoon, been up for some 20 straight hours.

And there was nothing I could do about it. This was his life, his deal, his way of making his way through his first tough semester, and all I could do was sit at the kitchen table, toss a “Please God” heavenward, shoot Adam a “Good luck!” email, and hope for the best.

I found myself putting some portion of my faith that this would all work out in those “few energy drinks” he’d been using to sustain himself. I guessed Red Bull, the jolt of choice among young people around here, indeed around the world.

The acid taurine is allegedly what gives the energy drink made by the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH its kick.

But not all the world’s Red Bull gets its kick from taurine. Beware the Bull that gets its kick from vodka.

A few summers ago we were in Zurich airport with two hours and a handful of Swiss francs to burn before our flight home. Adam wanted “some snacks” for the plane, so I gave him a pile of coins, and off he went to a nearby news and sundries shop.

He came back with a Toblerone bar the size of a baseball bat and a bag of vials filled with red liquid.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Red Bull.”

“Oh. The containers are cute. They look like test tubes.”

Dana took one of the vials, looked at it, then turned to Adam and said, “How come you get to drink alcohol?”

The Red Bull Adam had innocently bought in the airport newstand was not the Red Bull he knew and loved. This bull in the vials was made by Lateltin, a Swiss liquor company.

In most of Europe the drinking age is 16 for beer and wine and 18 for spirits. In Switzerland, the beer-wine drinking age is 14.

Adam, who was over 14 but definitely and unmistakably under 18, had walked out of that airport shop with a sackful of 20-milliliter tubes of Red Bull “Kick80 Vodka Aperitif.” Alcohol content? 80 per cent. I found a photo on the Lateltin website of a retail display box for Kick80, and it carries these words: “Don’t drink pure. For MixDrinks (sic) only!”

I get the willies when I think what might have happened had Dana not inspected her brother’s purchase.

Picture it: We’re barreling through inner space in a sealed aircraft cabin at 40,000 feet in close quarters with 300 strangers from assorted lands. The lights are low. People are sleeping, chilling with their music or watching a movie. And the teenager in 26B has just finished a snack of two pounds of Toblerone and a couple of vodka Red Bulls...

Now, add turbulence...

(In case you're wondering: success on the macro final, dean's list for the semester. Must've been the Red Bull.)

www.LoriHein.com

Dreams and weavers

2011-11-17T15:14:00.013-05:00

Driving to our New Hampshire place recently, I passed a gift shop near Fitzwilliam, NH that sold Native American crafts and spiritual items. Several giant dreamcatchers were attached to the shop's front porch beams. Less than an hour later I pulled onto our property and saw a stunning spider web, nearly three feet in diameter, attached to our cottage's front porch beams.

The Ojibwa made the first dreamcatchers, fashioned to resemble spider webs, from willow hoops and dyed yarn or plant fiber, and hung them above their babies' cradles. Like a spider web, made to catch and hold, the manmade webs caught harm or evil that might float above an infant's bed and also captured the child's good dreams, letting bad ones slip through the net and into the night.

www.LoriHein.com

Cathedral of Trees

2011-11-12T13:15:00.013-05:00

I'm blessed to live in a town with an abundance of green space where people walk, hike, relax, reflect or, in my case, run. I took advantage of a recent near-70-degree day to run to and through the Clifford G. Grant Management Area, 320 wooded acres that include a parcel we call Town Forest. Most of Town Forest's trails are narrow, winding and strewn with rocks, roots and other natural hazards (plus intermittent beer cans tossed by town teens) that require runners to look down and assess the ground before planting a footfall. (Indeed, I relaxed my concentration for a second last spring, caught a root, and earned an ankle sprain and broken foot that kept me out of the forest -- and my running shoes -- for five months.)

But there's one stretch of forest path that's wide, straight and blanketed not in boulders and beer cans but in springy pine needles that caress the feet and cushion the quads. And it's a stretch that makes you look up, up to the tops of the magnificent pine trees that line this magical alley. I call this place the Cathedral of Trees, and every time I come to it I stop running for a minute or two to take in its quiet beauty, breathtaking in any weather, season or time of day.

On my recent 70-degree-day run, after I'd entered the Cathedral of Trees and paused to contemplate shafts of sunlight piercing the pine canopy and illuminating the forest floor, I resumed running atop the soft carpet of needles. Suddenly my bounce was mirrored by a deer that leaped out of the forest onto the path in front of me. The buck had an adolescent rack that caught the sun as the animal sprang into the growth on the other side of the path. I stopped and watched him weave through the woods, come to a standstill about 50 feet from me, and turn his head to stare at me. He kept his body pointed away from me, in escape-ready mode, but moved his head to keep me in his sights as I slowly ran past him.

Thick streams of sun, transformed into color by the forest's fall foliage, washed over him, turning his gray-beige skin and antlers still covered in a young buck's velvet to a soothing shade of slate blue.

I was struck by the hue because it was so similar to that of a photograph of the Cathedral of Trees (above) my friend George had recently sent me. It was as if the deer had stopped in that light-drenched spot knowing he'd be turned that color. The blue made him part of the forest and the forest part of him, but his staying still to let me gaze at him made me part of the forest, too. We can both worship here in our cathedral was the message I ran away with.

Photo credit: George Farrell

www.LoriHein.com

Talk about a captive audience

2011-11-01T15:38:00.011-05:00

I was dismayed to find, on a recent US Airways flight across the United States, that all the tray tables in economy had been turned into flying advertisements.

For six hours I ate, drank, read and played with my iPod while staring at a sprawling message touting the speed of Verizon's 4G network. Since the same advertisement was affixed to every table in the cabin, it was literally in my face wherever I turned. I saw it 108 times on my 18-row walk to and from the bathroom.

Soon pilots will announce final approach with "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. We've begun our descent into Podunk Airport. To prepare for landing, please secure your seatbelts and return your billboards to the upright and locked position. Thank you."

www.LoriHein.com

Makes me wonder how well the planes are maintained...

2011-10-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

I flew out of Boston's Logan Airport last weekend. The trip got off to an inauspicious start when I got into an elevator in Terminal B and noticed this "FAIL" certificate posted on the elevator wall. The word "FAIL" staring at me as I made my vertical journey was scary enough, but my anxiety heightened when I realized I was enclosed in this mechanically compromised box on October 21, eight days after the expiration of the 90 Day Temporary Certificate, issued on July 13.

www.LoriHein.com

Adam Belanger: He's going places

2011-10-25T15:36:00.004-05:00

My son Adam will graduate from college in May, and he's already begun his job search -- no flies on this kid. Allow me to hijack my blog in order to post his resume. Adam's looking for a professional entry-level position in sales/marketing/promotion/business development/customer service/sales support. Feel free to share this post with anyone who might be looking to add a smart, hard-working, entrepreneurial people person to their team:

Adam Belanger

Belanger.ad@gmail.com; 508-269-5347; 278 Parker Hill Ave., Boston, MA 02120

EDUCATION

Northeastern University, Boston, MA expected May 2012

Candidate for Bachelor of Science in Music Industry, Business Administration minor

• Courses in marketing, organizational behavior, accounting, financial management, business law

• Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity: mentored new members as Sigma Coordinator; delegate to North American Inter-Fraternity Leadership Academy and Carlson Leadership Academy; organize and execute semi-annual retreats, Coach, Mission Hill Little League Cardinals; do fundraising/community service

WORK EXPERIENCE

Huntington Wine and Spirits/K & R Concessions, Boston, MA March 2009 – present

Sales Associate/part-time Manager

• Assist in all phases of operation for family-owned liquor store and catering enterprise

• Interact with and serve hundreds of customers, vendors and distributors on weekly basis

• Handle cash and credit transactions; make bank deposits; monitor/ensure ID compliance

• Secure and close store; handle supplier and distributor deliveries, inventory and stocking

• Recruit, train and supervise new employees; represent company at vendor events

Impact Relations Music Promotion, Boston, MA May 2009 - present

Founder, Director, Entrepreneur

• Own and run company promoting album releases and tours

• Have executed publicity campaigns for over 30 shows, resulting in capacity turnout

• Secured repeat business from satisfied clients and new business through client referrals

• Write and distribute hundreds of press releases to online, print and radio media, resulting in interviews and reviews for clients

• Write and publish artist promotion blog: received work from and promoted over 300 artists

• Use social media extensively to discover, promote and communicate with artists, press and public

Nimbit, Inc., Framingham, MA January - June 2011

Marketing Intern at company providing promotional services to musicians

• Maintained marketing databases and executed direct marketing campaigns

• Tracked website performance, updated web pages, improved SEO, wrote HTML newsletters

• Contributed to company’s social media and blog

• Researched competitors and potential new business models and services

Victaulic Company, Mansfield, MA May - August 2008 & Jan. - July 2010

Office and Warehouse Intern at New England distribution center of world's leading manufacturer of mechanical pipe-joining products

• Managed high volume, time-sensitive distribution of materials between branch, corporate office, customers and sales staff

• Handled inventory control, database management, billing and sales support

• Worked in warehouse on shipping and delivery; earned forklift operator certification

Planetary Group, Boston, MA January - July 2009

Press Department Intern at music marketing company

• Assisted with publicity campaigns for artists' albums and tours, wrote press releases, managed press clips.

• Interviewed artists and wrote posts for company blog and interacted with media writers and editors

Other: Employed since age 13 at retail stores, marina, restaurants, band manager; world travel - have visited over 25 countries and 27 U.S. states; basic Spanish skills; licensed boat operator, enjoy basketball, snowboarding, golf; hard-working, responsible, reliable, self-starter, entrepreneurial, people and results-oriented

www.LoriHein.com

Park it

2011-09-28T09:00:00.006-05:00

Wherever I travel, I seek out parks. They're places to rest between sightseeing sorties, eat the lunch food in your backpack, and, especially, people watch. Because parks are open to all and because all people need places to relax, reflect, recreate and regroup, parks are truly windows onto a place's diversity. There are few better ways to sense the depth, richness and variety of a place's inhabitants than to spend an hour in one of its parks. Here, some people I enjoyed watching one sunny afternoon in Paris's Parc des Buttes Chaumont, a gorgeous green space whose centerpiece is a lookout belvedere atop a rocky, 100-foot-high hillock (click the images to enlarge) :

www.LoriHein.com

Remembering where we were

2011-09-11T07:00:00.001-05:00

On this 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks many of us will reflect on where we were as the horror of that day unfolded.

In this excerpt from my book, "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America," I share how my family took that terrible day and transformed it into an enriching odyssey:

Although my kids and I didn't climb into the van and drive off until nine months later, our 12,000-mile American road odyssey began on September 11, 2001.

Where I was and what I was doing when the planes ripped through New York are part of my life's fabric. I was outside painting the fence brown, telling my neighbor Donna that I had plenty of time now to do the job my 13-year-old son was supposed to have finished because I'd just been laid off. We groused about the economy's sorry state and mused over whether things could get any worse.

In the next instant, they did. The kitchen phone rang. It was my husband calling from the car to tell me one of the Twin Towers had been hit. Mike was on the road, making sales calls, and hadn't seen any pictures yet. He'd only heard the radio reports.

The paintbrush hardened outside in the sun, pieces of cut grass sticking up like spikes in the brown mess.

When Adam and Dana came home from school we gathered around the table on the deck and began, as a family, to sort through facts and feelings and fears. The kids' teachers had done a good job dispensing comfort and assurance before sending them home. By the time they got to us, we'd decided we had three things to communicate: they were safe and loved; America was strong; the world's people were good.

To our family, this last point was as important as the others, because our kids have been traveling the world since they were babies. Respect for the world's people is part of their upbringing. This is a gift, and we'd allow no senseless act, however brutal, nor any retaliatory distrust or intolerance, to steal it.

My mind's eye called up images: two Turkish teenagers kicking a soccer ball with a five-year-old Adam on the grounds of Topkapi Palace; Adam joining a group of Bolivian boys in tabletop foosball during recess at Copacabana's school, Lake Titicaca shining at the end of the street; the kids building sand castles with Javier and Daniel, two Belizean brothers who'd pass our hotel each day on their way to class; Dana setting off for a bird walk, in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, with Mike and Masai chief Zapati. These experiences enrich life and must continue.

As the painful, numbing slowness of the weeks immediately following September 11 yielded to something approximating normalcy, I regained enough focus to give the future some thought. That future had us traveling again, but this time, we'd get to know our America.

www.LoriHein.com

Milkin' it

2011-09-06T19:58:00.002-05:00

I know I've been milking this summer vacation thing. Gonna milk it a bit longer. Will be back with travel stories mid-September. The weather turned cool in New England the day the calendar turned to September 1, so I'll be blogging in long-sleeved, long-legged cold weather clothes. Damn. Hate the thought of it.

The North End: Where the streets wear crowns

2011-07-19T14:57:00.026-05:00

I haven't posted in a while. I actually haven't written much of anything in a while. I keep staring at the four calls for submission for upcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul book titles that are sitting in my inbox, but as the submission deadlines creep closer, I continue to surrender to the lazy days of summer, procrastinate, and produce nothing worth sending. Good thing Mike makes a steady paycheck because I'm not even earning grocery money right now.

I guess this writing hiatus is my summer vacation. Any money we could have spent on travel went toward Dana's Peru experience. (She's back and had a brilliant time - except for her camera having been stolen. Thank goodness for Facebook, from which she pilfered friends' pics and patched together a terrific album of photographic memories.)

In lieu of travel to a foreign place this summer, Mike and I have developed a pleasing routine of traveling into Boston's North End every few weeks to soak up the Italian ambience and eat some of the best food on the planet. What I love about the North End is that it's simultaneously touristy and authentic. Daytrippers share the narrow streets, church gardens, pastry shops and restaurants with locals and with students from nearby Suffolk University, many of whom rent North End apartments.

The North End is a dense, bustling neighborhood where festive decorations arc over streets and alleys to announce the next in summer's lineup of saints' feast days and festivals (or harken back to last Christmas when they were put up and never taken down); where some of the wrought iron fire escapes climbing the red-brick sides of apartment buildings lead to killer roof decks; where Boston Harbor glistens at the end of tiny, downhill-sloping passageways; and where it's impossible to get a bad meal. The gastronomic bar is set high in the North End, and, with lots of outrageously competent competition, any establishment serving mediocre fare will be panned in the press and shuttered in short order. Many North End restaurants are decades-old institutions.

On our most recent North End excursion we lucked out and snagged two bar stools at the Cafe Florentine on Hanover Street at dinnertime. The bartenders were gracious and professional, the food flawless. Mike's chicken parm was as good as he's had, and my boneless duck breast in tomato sauce over fat, fluted-edge pappardelle was a succulent treat.

On our way back to the car, we cut through North Square. As we stood on a corner checking out the menus at the square's excellent restaurants, I commented to Mike that only in Boston can you enjoy a superb meal while looking out the window at Paul Revere's house.

"Paul Revere's house?!" exclaimed a woman walking by with her friend. "Where is it?"

"Right there," I said, pointing to the low, steep-roofed wooden structure tucked between brick buildings plenty old but centuries newer than the revolutionary silversmith's.

"Wow!" she exclaimed, "I'm so glad we heard you say that! We would have missed it!" as the friends darted off to take in the historical gem. I told her the house might be closed for the day and that I hoped they could at least get a peek into the side garden.

As they rushed off over North Square's cobbles, cameras already lifted to capture the old brown clapboard abode, I felt like calling out, "Have you seen the streets wearing crowns?"

www.LoriHein.com

Machu Picchu: Baksheesh works here, too

2011-06-20T19:12:00.015-05:00

Today, a guest blogger: Dana, who just had an amazing four-day, off-the-grid expedition out of Cusco with about a dozen others from her group. The $100 trip involved some mountain biking on Day One, then hours-long mountain hikes on Days Two and Three. The end of Day Three put Dana's splinter group in Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu, and the terminus for the Cusco to Machu Picchu train. On Day Four the entire group visited Machu Picchu -- but only an early-rising, adventurous subgroup got tickets to climb Huayna Picchu, which is the peak you see in most Machu Picchu photographs. The ruins sit on a flat area between two peaks, Machu, which is never photographed (you stand on it to photograph the famous gumdrop peak), and that gumdrop peak, Huayna, seen here.

Dana and I Facebook chatted for an hour today, and I'm just going to copy and paste her excited, uncapitalized, typo-ridden, run-on entries here. I could feel the wonder of her journey through the keyboard:

"hellllloooooooo. omg the past four days were amazing. o can't believe what i did mom. it was incredible and i cannot imagine not having done the trek and feeling the same way about the trip.

it was insane. very hard. but amazing.

and machu picchu was amazing.

and we climbed huayna picchu. we left our hotel at 330 am to do it. we bribed the guard with money to open the gate an hour early to hike up to machu picchu and get to the opening before everyone else. and we were the first one there. first 400 can do huayna.

and then when we got in to macchu picchu we were so lucky because it was deserted and really special, because we saw it empty for like 15 minutes before all the tourists came in. when i saw the first ruin on machu picchu i lost my breath and my eyes teared

and then three day trek before it was so crazy ahhhhhh

i wish you could have seen what we did

and the trail was crazy.

it made the whole trip worth it

i didnt shower for 5 days

It was amazing. And Machu Picchu was so perfect. I spent almost an hour just sitting on a ledge by myself and I watched Huayanapicchu go from dark to completely illuminated in the sunrise. It was magical. I'm currently gearing up to spend 11 hours through the night on a bus to go to Arequipa. SEE YOU SOON. I LOVE YOU."

www.LoriHein.com

Global Voices: Bookmark this

2011-06-12T13:48:00.009-05:00

Dana's heading into the final weeks of her summer semester in Peru, and the group is scheduled to head to Puno for a few days of Lake Titicaca exploration. Whether they'll be able to go -- or get out if they get in -- is in doubt, as Aymara miners have been protesting a mining concession granted to a Canadian company. The protests, put on hold for a week to allow Puno residents to vote in Peru's June 5 presidential election, which placed socialist Ollanta Humala in power, were at times violent, and had effectively shut down and cut off Puno. Hundreds of tourists were stranded but did manage to get out. The road between Cusco and Puno, the road Dana's group will travel on, was blocked. Two days ago, the protesters resumed their demonstrations.

Dana's university isn't giving the students much information, so I've been trying to find current, reliable reports. A lot of what I've found are old stories reposted with new dates -- very confusing when you're trying to figure out what's happening right now. I've been reading Peruvian newspapers online, but my Spanish isn't honed enough to pick up tone and nuance, and nuance counts here, along with fact.

A few minutes ago I stumbled upon Global Voices, and I recommend that anyone with an interest in knowing what's going on in places large and small, known and obscure, all over the world, bookmark this site. I'll be visiting at least weekly.

Using a team of volunteer bloggers and translators, Global Voices aggregates news and blogs from citizen journalists worldwide. The number of countries covered is staggering, and the posts are translated into many languages, increasing the accessibility of the information. I spent an illuminating half-hour cruising the site and decided to use it as a trusted news source after I clicked on the "Sponsors" tab and saw the many respected organizations that help keep Global Voices going.

I sent Dana the Global Voices link to share with her trip leaders, as I think the site's Peruvian bloggers have their ears closer to the ground than Dana's college officials.

www.LoriHein.com

Fearless in Switzerland

2011-06-03T11:04:00.017-05:00

A few days ago Dana and 15 of her friends had planned to jump off a cliff and paraglide over the Pacific Ocean in Miraflores, the upscale Lima suburb where she and fellow students are living for a few weeks of their six-week Peruvian edu-adventure, but Lima's crappy winter weather took the wind out of their sails. Which made momma happy.

But my relief was short-lived, as I've been informed via Facebook that the group has scouted a paragliding venue near Cusco, their next destination. Instead of jumping from a cliff and sailing over an angry, gunmetal ocean, Dana and company, when they can find a few hours off from language and culture classes, will be leaping off a mountain and sailing over Andean foothills and brown valleys dotted with Inca ruins made of really hard stone. Oh, I feel better now.

Dana's fearless. She's been a sassy ball of chutzpah since she was born and has often demonstrated this trait while traveling. Like the time she jumped off a bridge in Switzerland.

We were in Bern, a medieval idyll built astride the fast-moving, glacial-blue Aare River. The Bernese use the Aare as a natural waterpark and a big patch of grass near downtown as Mazili Beach.

People hike from Mazili up a trail to a bridge in the woods, jump off the bridge, then float down the Aare, grabbing onto metal bars at intermittent concrete exit ramps, where they pull themselves out.

The water was too swift-moving for my liking, and I told Mike and the kids I didn't think body-surfing it was a great idea. They looked at me, stripped down to their bathing suits, left me holding everybody's clothes, and followed the population of Bern up the trail to the bridge. I followed and planted myself a bit downstream from the bridge.

There were a few dozen people on the bridge when Mike, Adam and Dana marched onto it. Mike and Adam stood by the railing, looked over the edge, then backed away. Dana looked at them like they were wusses, climbed over the railing to the narrow ledge on the bridge's outer side, and jumped off. I screamed at Mike, "Get in there with her!" Mike and Adam duly ejected themselves from the bridge and were whisked away by the current. Happily, they were able to steer their bodies in Dana's direction, and I soon saw my family's bobbing heads rush by me.
I ran to the nearest exit station and jumped up and down, pointing to the grab-bar. I was petrified they'd miss it -- and succeeding off-ramps -- and get carried over the waterfall that lay downstream. When they saw me, they aimed for the ramp, joined hands, and Mike grabbed the bar. They emerged from the Aare dripping, laughing hysterically, and primed for more. Off they went up the trail and back to the bridge.

For the next hour, I sat on a rock on the riverbank and watched my family float repeatedly by. Sometimes it was hard for me to pick them out from the rest of the river-surfing crowd. Hundreds of people were in the water at any given time. Most used their bodies as their craft, but others whooshed by riding on tubes, boogy boards and rubber rafts. One family zoomed by atop a giant, inflatable plastic zebra-striped couch.

www.LoriHein.com

Chihuly: From Brockton to Boston

2011-05-18T10:00:00.009-05:00

If you live in the Boston area or plan to visit this spring or summer, put the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) on your don't-miss list. You'll see the soaring, new, half-billion dollar Art of the Americas Wing, and you can take in mindblowing glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, a Living National Treasure. The MFA has mounted a major Chihuly exhibit, which runs through August 7, 2011.

Before she left her Boston campus for the semester, Dana flashed her college ID and got into the MFA and the Chihuly exhibition for free and texted me the photo above. We're Chihuly fans from way back.

Eleven years ago, when Adam was 11 and Dana 8, I took them to the Fuller, a small museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, to see some blown glass by a guy named Dale Chihuly. I'd read about him in magazines and thought it cool that his work was on display in the town next to ours. The kids brought Cheerios, Transformers and stuffed animals but didn't need them to stay occupied. They, and I, were totally entranced by Chihuly's exquisite, wildly colorful glass creations. (Chihuly actually has a staff who blow for him. He designs and directs, and he blows a bit, but others do lots of the big lung work.) We three wandered around a few darkened rooms at the Fuller, entranced by the magic of Chihuly's Seaforms collection, ocean life rendered powerfully in delicate glass.

Then, several years later on a family trip to Las Vegas, we marveled at the Chihuly ceiling in the lobby of the Bellagio. The suspended ceiling panel, a rich-hued rendering of flowers called Fiore di Como, runs the length of the lobby and makes it nearly impossible to look anywhere but up. Even if you're not staying at the Bellagio, if you're in Vegas, see the Chihuly.

I doubt our little neighborhood Fuller will be mounting any Chihuly shows in the future; he's too big now. But I'm glad the kids and I were introduced to his work on that Fuller visit so many years ago. I'm looking forward to sitting in the MFA this summer and taking in his latest work.

www.LoriHein.com

Phone home? LOL IDTS

2011-04-25T17:18:00.004-05:00

Dana's heading to Peru soon for six weeks of intensive Spanish language study. I've been trying to zero in on the best ways for us to stay in touch while she's away and, after many hours of research, here's where I'm at: Facebook gets a like; cellphone gets an unlike. The phone stays home.

I've heard so many horror stories about people getting monstrous cell bills after using (or not using; more on that in a moment) their phones abroad that I wanted to find a foolproof usage method that, if Dana stuck to it, would guarantee that our bills would be merely high, but not heart-attack-inducingly high. I can't find one. With international calls and texts there are many potential layers of cost because multiple steps, carriers and middlemen are involved, and all of them add their charges to your bill.

Even if we disable the data capability on Dana's phone, and make a pact to text rather than call, I realized that just bringing the phone to Peru with international mode enabled invited big bill trouble. Even if you don't read the texts -- or emails, if you stay data-enabled, or listen to the messages in your voice mailbox -- you get charged for them being delivered to your handset. And turning your phone off is not the answer. If international-enabled, the phone still receives and stores emails, texts and voicemails, and you're charged for their transmission.

Dana's a typical 19-year-old with scores of contacts programmed into her phone, and texting is right up there with breathing. I told Dana to tell people not to call or text her while she's in Peru, but that isn't a secure enough plan: she will forget to tell some people; she will tell people by texting them as she's leaving, opening the door for dozens of "hav a gd trip" texts that she'll read in Peru; people who don't know she's gone will call or text her; people will call or text her a week before she comes home to ask when she's coming home; and on and on and on. The possibilities for hundreds of costly messages to make it to Dana's phone during its six weeks in Peru are endless. And the temptation to respond - expensively - is high.

So, no phone. It stays in a drawer in Boston until Dana gets home.

I've come up with a master communication plan that uses the Web and landlines in Peru. Here's how we'll stay in touch:

Dana can access the Web at her host families' homes, her school and at Internet cafes. We'll email, but we'll also do some real time text, audio and video chatting via iChat (we both have Macs), Skype and IM. Whenever we're online we'll set our computers to "available" in all those applications. Dana got an International Student Identity Card (ISIC) to take advantage of discounted airfare to Peru, and one of the bonuses is 60 free minutes of Skype voice credit, so in addition to Skyping online, she can spend up to an hour on talk time to my mobile or landline. In addition to her Mac, she has an iPod Touch, which she can keep in her purse all the time, even when she goes out at night, and if she happens to find herself in a hotspot, can get online to chat or send/read email. All free.

I'm also getting Dana an AT&T Virtual Prepaid Calling Card. You order online, AT&T sends access codes and dialing instructions immediately via email, and you're good to call. To enable Dana to speak with a US-based, English-speaking operator when she makes a call, I looked up AT&T's USADirect Peru access codes. From a local line in Peru, she dials that code and gets an operator who then takes her calling card info and puts the call through. She can use the AT&T approach from any landline, even her host families' home phones, and we pay the bill. (Before you buy, read the AT&T website carefully. The prepaid cards' minutes and costs are based on the cost for "state-to-state" calls; international calls ding the card at much higher rates, so delve into the details to understand how many calls/minutes you'll get when the cardholder is calling from a foreign country.)

To enable Dana to use the AT&T prepaid card from a Peruvian payphone, I'll give her money for a local, Peruvian phone card, available at shops and kiosks all over the country. Those cards "turn on" a payphone or a phone at a Telefonica del Peru outlet, then she punches in her AT&T info, the call goes through, and the card gets dinged.

Finally, we're gonna be Facebook friends. We're not Facebook friends on our existing accounts and don't want to be, but we're going to create second Facebook accounts under variants of our names, and we will be each others' only friend. We can chat freely, for free, and nobody except Facebook will know we're there. We can post and message and "talk," and we'll delete the accounts when Dana gets home. Mark Zuckerberg, I love you.

I shared my masterful, mostly free communication plan with Dana over sushi the other day. She was clearly impressed. "Wow," she said, "you've really been thinking about this."

Yup, AAMOF.

And kiddo, you can always send a postcard.

LoriHein.com

Drums and guns

2011-04-10T19:27:00.021-05:00

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the start of America's Civil War, and the media is milking that for all it's worth: books, magazines, radio, TV and the Web chock-full of Civil War stories, analysis, photographs, biography, much of it content people started working on years ago knowing that 2011 would be the sesquicentennial of something really big, something that would sell, and the rest of it content from bandwagon jumpers who don't research anything in depth themselves but put a quick, shallow spin on trendy topics and spit them out to buyers and perusers of shallow content. I expect pieces on Civil War recipes, music and fashion to appear anytime now. I'm a cynic, being in the writing biz, and I know how this works. The Civil War is a product, one that has potential for brisk sales this year, so everyone with a keyboard, camera or microphone is manufacturing content.

America's overtly at war in three places right now, and we're hearing more about a 150-year-old conflict than we are about our daily death toll, about the number of American limbs blown off weekly. While Americans die and war rages today, the Civil War is all the rage. It sells; Afghanistan doesn't.

Both the lack of focus on our current dying and the hyperfocus on our past dying because a media-pretty anniversary date has rolled around bother me.

But I do know a bit about the heavy drape of the Civil War, the way the Civil War can feel, even after and through 150 years. An excerpt from my book, Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America:

As part of its “Hour of Classical Music,” Memphis public radio played the Kansas City Chorale singing “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye,” an Irish war lament whose haunting melody echoes the Civil War song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” The doleful notes, the chants of “drums and guns and drums and guns,” and the long, hushed “hurroos” hung in the air like spirits unable to sleep.

Since Tennessee, the war whose ghosts walked the landscape had changed. Farther north, we’d passed fieldstone taverns where the Continental Army had planned attacks on redcoats.

Now, we passed silent fields where hundreds or thousands of boys in gray and blue died. The weight of war felt heavier in the south than I feel it up north. Back home, buildings and monuments of the Revolution are the stuff of school field trips to clapboard places like Paul Revere’s house. Its fighters are valiant figures with rousing collective names- Sons of Liberty, Founding Fathers, Green Mountain Boys.

But those men were over two hundred years away from us, known through writings and artists’ renderings. I thought of them as icons, not as somebody’s son, brother, father or friend.

Here, it was closer, more intimate. The boys who lie under this grass were not so far in time from us. There were photographs to show who they really were. We could study their eyes and hands and the buttons on their shirts. They were men and boys somebody loved and cried for.

When we passed the sign for Shiloh, Adam and I exchanged a glance. Shiloh. The word had a powerful sadness. We had left behind places where Americans created the nation and now looked on places where they almost took it apart.

The hush of these southern knolls and grasses intensified the ability to imagine the death played out here. As if it happened yesterday. I’d never felt so palpably connected to war. www.LoriHein.com

Iguanarama

2011-03-28T06:53:00.004-05:00

Mike and I were at the High Tide restaurant overlooking Cruz Bay on St. John enjoying a Virgin Islands Summer Ale (concocted by two University of Vermont grads and brewed in Portland, Maine) when a lizard lounging in the tree next to our table sprang to life and started scurrying up, down and across the tree's limbs and branches. I thought he might leap onto our table and topple our beers (and bite us). After much darting about and flashing of scary teeth, spikes, claws and whip-like tail, the two-foot-plus long iguana decided we were less interesting than the view over Cruz Bay. He turned his scaly back to us, and, in true island style, settled onto a limb with a view and chilled, watching boats bob in the bay and letting a cool Caribbean breeze waft over his dinosaur skin. We tipped our beers to him and sat back to enjoy the view. www.LoriHein.com

St. Barts field trip

2011-03-21T18:41:00.014-05:00

We're back from our Sea Dream cruise and, despite my fear of water, I had an excellent time.

I did sleep with my life jacket on the floor next to the bed, and I'd reach down periodically during the night to touch it for reassurance. We had some stomach-churning bumps and rolls the second night, but otherwise the waters were calm. The gallons of champagne I consumed during the voyage helped dull my fear. I was beginning to grow sea legs by the fifth day, but by then it was time to go home, so I'll have to grow new ones if I ever go out on the ocean again.

Almost all of the cruise's optional activities involved water, so I participated in none. Instead, I'd go ashore for some terra firma exploration in one of the tenders that were always available to ferry Sea Dream's guests to and from the ship.

I bumped into a lot of schoolkids on my shoreside forays. In Cruz Bay on St. John I watched kids file out of the elementary school at day's end, the older kids in purple and black uniforms, younger ones in black shorts and yellow t-shirts. They walked home in orderly pairs, a big brother or sister sometimes holding a younger sibling's hand. Down at the Cruz Bay ferry dock, uniformed teenagers disembarked from the boat that brought them home from their high school on nearby St. Thomas.

On St. Barts, a department of France where the currency is the euro, the language French and the license plates the blue and gold of the European Union, I watched kids at the Ecole Maternelle de Gustavia at recess and marveled that their school's backyard was gorgeous Shell Beach, a powdery strand in a Caribbean cove sheltered by high headlands. No asphalt jungle gyms. Just sun, sand, shells and seaglass.

I climbed a path up the headlands and came upon a class from the Ecole Maternelle on a field trip. A docent from St. Barts' nature conservancy was explaining the richness of the island's flora. "There are so many plants here that are useful, that are like medicines," she said in French to her intent audience, some of whom leaned in to hear every word. "It is like a pharmacy. But today people don't know about these plants. The knowledge is lost. To learn about what is here, go to the library. Or ask your grandparents. They know."

(And a shout-out here to the Sea Dream staff and crew: You guys rock.)

www.LoriHein.com

Sea Dream: Paradise with a life preserver

2011-03-11T11:00:00.005-05:00

(Warning: this post may make you jealous.)

This weekend Mike and I jet off to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where we'll board the Sea Dream I (photo, from Sea Dream promotional brochure), a 300-foot yacht Mike's company has chartered to celebrate a successful year. (Congrats to my Number One; Mike's hard work earned him the spot as top regional manager worldwide.)

We'll enjoy spa treatments, gourmet food, excellent wine, and visits to wonderful ports of call, most of which will be new destinations for me.

From St. Thomas we cruise to St. John, also in the US Virgin Islands, then to St. Barts in the French West Indies, then to the British Virgin Islands, where we'll anchor for a day each in Virgin Gorda and tiny Jost Van Dyke.

I'm sure I'll enjoy the trip, but I am a bit anxious. A near-drowning experience when I was 13 cured me of wanting to spend time in or on bodies of water larger than a swimming pool.

To keep my fear at bay while on the Sea Dream, I plan to self-medicate with liberal doses of the ship's fine wines and sleep with a life jacket as a pillow.

www.LoriHein.com

Orange world

2011-03-07T20:01:00.014-05:00

"Ladies and gentlemen, please keep the limbs of your children out of the aisles." Flight attendants working Orlando-bound routes include this admonishment in their airplane safety talks because planes bound for the Magic Kingdom have lots of antsy kids aboard.

Dana and I are back from the Orlando-as-substitute-for-Egypt spring break trip. Because we should have been doing relatively exotic things like navigating Cairo's labyrinthine Khan el-Khalili souk, contemplating the Sphinx and sailing the Nile on the deck of a felucca, I sought out Orlando activities with at least a whiff of adventure. Orlando is theme parks, kitschy retail strips and the sidewalk-less freeways that connect them, but we did manage to find some fun stuff that had nothing to do with big-eared mice, princesses, movie studios, killer whale performances or shops selling citrus and seashells.

We drove about 45 minutes southeast of Orlando to Forever Florida, a 4,700-acre wildlife ranch and conservation area with a menu of EcoSafaris designed to get you out into the Florida wild. You can hike, ride on horseback, travel in a safari vehicle or take a two-hour zipline safari through a varied ecosystem, which we opted for. Advance reservations are essential, as spaces are limited and fill fast.

The zipline safari was exhausting and exhilarating. And scary. I wanted to quit several times, like when we were in the staging area learning how to put on and control our gear and were told "DO NOT TOUCH THE CABLE. YOU ARE MOVING AT 15-20 MILES PER HOUR AND IF YOU PUT YOUR HAND UP THERE THE CABLE WILL SLICE THROUGH YOUR SKIN, MUSCLE AND BONE," and when we climbed the first tower we had to jump from, a tower three times higher than the fire ranger tower atop a mountain near our New Hampshire place, a tower I gave up climbing years ago because each step on those metal stairs with the huge, see-through gaps between them made me want to faint or vomit. But, hey! I'm on vacation! Keep climbing, baby!

Had I not kept going I would have missed zipping over a 12-foot gator who'd been relegated to this isolated outpost in a muddy bog in the woods because, according to our guide, "he kept swimming over to the kids' camp where the kids go kayaking."

At Horse World Stables, 12 miles down a quiet road from my parents' rental condo in Kissimmee, Dana spent two afternoons communing with the horses and went on a trail ride specifically geared to her intermediate/advanced level. Horse World is a beautiful, peaceful, family-run place that rescues unwanted and abused horses and and treats them well. "All our horses die here," said the owner, and he meant that as a good thing. There's a horse cemetery on the property.

While Dana rode, I sat on a dock over a pond and watched a long-necked, black bird swallow a live snake whole. The process took 25 minutes and was almost as exciting as the zipline.

www.LoriHein.com