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January 24, 2009

It's Dry Here, But Not THAT Kind of Dry

The 25th Sundance Film Festival is going on right now, which doesn't make much difference in my life except that I had an INCREDIBLY long wait yesterday when I met someone for tea at the very cool Beehive Tea Room. But it means a lot to Utah, apparently: it brings in a lot of tourism money, and things like that are one reason Utah claimed for a long time to be "recession-proof."

And I'm guessing that this article in the NY Times on Utah's awarding-winning brew pubs is an attempt to help Sundance-attendees and other visitors figure out where to spend their tourist dollars.

The article is telling the truth: there's good beer to be had here--and it has great names like Polygamy Porter and Provo Girl Pilsner. This is one more reason I like Salt Lake City, and one more reason you should come visit me.

Posted by holly at 9:10 AM | Comments (4)

July 30, 2008

Once More Into the Falls

Yeah, selling a house and moving takes a lot of time, but not so much time that if a friend flies into the area, you can't drop everything and head to a nearby natural wonder, particularly if it's something as awesome as Niagara Falls. Having already written about why I dig the falls, I'll simply post these awesome pictures of me and Saviour Onassis on our recent trip to them, without going through all that again.

SO shows you the view.

Here I am on the border.

I look sweaty and slightly uncomfortable here--I was--but I like this photo because I have a rainbow coming out of my head. Cool!

Here's a nice big rainbow to make you smile (because who doesn't love rainbows almost as much as they love pretty unicorns with flowing manes?).

And there's the rainbow's end.

Posted by holly at 7:55 AM | Comments (3)

June 5, 2008

I Completely Agree with Gorbachev Right Now

One of the weirdest tourist attractions I've ever seen in my life is Lenin's body, and one of the scariest military rituals I've ever witnessed is the changing of the guard at his tomb. It was totally creepy to see these grim young men carrying rifles goose-stepping towards me--it was probably the first thing that gave me any inkling of what it would be like to live under military occupation.

Anyway, after the guard changed, we all got to file through the tomb and see the body. I got in trouble because my coat wasn't closed--the zipper was broken and I couldn't close it--and that upset one of the guards (actually more of a docent kind of dude; as I remember, the ones with the guns were outside the entrance); apparently you have to keep your coat closed so you are less likely to reach inside it and pull out a weapon. I showed the guard/docent that my zipper wouldn't work--which sucked, because it was February in Moscow, and I would have liked to be able to zip up my coat--and I guess he decided a 20-year-old American tourist wasn't that much of a security risk, because he let me trundle past the body with everyone else.

And I remember that I thought it looked waxy and green, and thought the innumerable statues and paintings and so forth EVERYWHERE YOU WENT were enough to let you know what the guy looked like--I certainly can identify him now. I didn't see why you needed to see his actual dead body, which, at the point I saw it, had been dead for sixty years.

I'm going to state the obvious: people deal with death in different ways. The Apaches used get rid of every last thing a person owned (including livestock), and bury the body out in the middle of nowhere (there are plenty of middles of plenty of nowheres out in the desert), or throw it off a cliff or something, so that the ghost would be less likely to return, drawn by a connection to the things s/he used in life. When the person who named you died, you had to get a new name. The dead person was erased from present life.

I'll continue to tell everyone what they already know and state that in general, we participants of Western culture prefer to remember our dead, but we still have to do something with the dead bodies of those we love, because (let me remind you, in case you somehow forgot) they decompose, and they stink, and they get all maggoty and moldy and gross. Completely respectable and legitimate ways of disposing of bodies include cremating them or embalming and then burying them (I think embalming is mandatory for burial, which I find too bad, because I think embalming is gross, and don't see why you need it if you're encased in an air-tight vault), or throwing them off the side of a boat if they die at sea. (I wanted to make sure that burial at sea still happens--turns out if you served in the navy, it will allow you that time honored method of being laid to rest, and there's also a company called Nature's Passage that will arrange for the rest of us to be returned to the earth that way, should we so desire.) As far as burying goes, you can stick someone in an unmarked grave, give them a fancy headstone, put them in a tomb, or build them a shrine.

But keeping their bodies on display? It's expensive, unhygienic, and weird. Lenin looks BIZARRE, and the bizarreness of his appearance has led some people to claim that he was buried long ago and a wax copy substituted. The state, of course, denies this. People started arguing in 1991, after the fall of communism, that he should be buried. But enough people objected that he stayed where he was.

Now, according to a story in the Independent, Mikhail Gorbachev has said, "My view is [that] we should not be occupied right now with grave-digging. But we will necessarily come to a time when the mausoleum will have lost its meaning and we will bury [Lenin], give him up to the earth as his family had wanted. I think the time will come."

The story also reports that

Mr Gorbachev also called for the creation of a memorial museum to remember the millions of people killed or sent to prison under Josef Stalin, whose embalmed body lay beside Lenin's for eight years until 1961. Historians estimate that up to 27 million people in the Soviet Union suffered from Stalin's repression but he is revered by many Russians for defeating Nazi Germany and building the USSR into a superpower.

Personally, I think Mr. Gorbachev is onto something, on both counts.

Posted by holly at 9:37 AM | Comments (5)

December 27, 2007

One More Way Global Warming Screws Everything Up

Yesterday I tried to go somewhere--Chicago, to be exact. I have this really great trip planned that includes visiting an old friend I haven't seen in years, going to dinner with a few new friends I haven't seen in months, hanging with Saviour Onassis and his new man, hitting some museums, etc.

But I was denied, and the weather was the problem. Oh, it was lovely where I was and it was lovely in Chicago. The problem was Detroit. And Detroit was not, as you might suspect if you don't live in this part of the globe, hit by a blizzard. No, it was hit by warm weather, and that led to fog.

It had snowed recently, you see, and then it warmed way up, and all that snow started to melt, and turned into dense vapor over night, and left a thick fog the next morning. It took forever to burn off, and countless flights in and out of Detroit were canceled.

I don't know if that's the same phenomenon that triggered the dense fogs around London that all caused so many flights to be canceled, but it's something that's going to happen more often. And everyone--almost everyone--can see in their own lives negative consequences of global warming. Even my family full of Mormon Republicans, those exemplars of denial, those trained from birth to make choices with devastating long-term consequences, can see that we've really screwed things up and have to make some changes--or rather, someone else has to make some changes. China, India--what do those people need cars for? They do so well with bikes and rickshaws! Who told them they could desire, manufacture, sell, buy and drive cars? It's THEIR fault.

I realize, of course, there's a little irony in complaining about the effects of global warming on air travel, and one of the few consolations I found was that there were that many fewer airplanes flying around the sky yesterday, that people got squeezed onto already full flights so that every last seat was taken. I don't expect anyone--including me--to stop living their lives in the world that exists and go build a cabin on the bank of some pond, because for one thing, there aren't ponds enough to accommodate all of us. But doing what you can to minimize or offset your production of CO2 and other gross gases on a day-to-day basis; voting (it's almost 2008!) for leaders (as opposed to the spawn of satan currently in the white house) who really will do something about global warming; these are things we MUST do so that we can, from time to time as necessary, get on a plane, and have reasonable expectations that we'll get where we want to go.

I'm headed back to the airport later today, and I am trying to be hopeful that I'll get where I'm going. DTW is open and flights are moving in and out of it, but I use a small regional airport and flights in and out of here are still backed up. So we'll see.

Posted by holly at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

November 2, 2007

Greetings from Iowa, Again

I'm currently in the library of my second favorite alma mater (I only have two), the University of Iowa. I'm here for a conference called NonfictioNow, which I attended two years ago. I can't believe how hip Iowa City has become! The university and the city are clearly awash in money, in ways they just weren't in the 90s. There is lots of new construction and the whole place reeks of affluence (which of course smells much better than poverty). In addition to the Java House, there are other coffee houses everywhere.

I'm not as excited about the conference this year--it hasn't been quite as magical as it was last year, perhaps because the amazing Pico Iyer isn't here there year. Not that it has been bad, by any means.... The first conference just had so much energy, was such a pleasure to attend. I'm enjoying myself and have heard some great panels, but it's not, well, magical like I said. And I am a little freaked out by how much Iowa City has changed. I lived in the most wonderful house when I was here, a marvelous arts and crafts home on the edge of downtown, and while it's still there, three houses on the block have been torn down to make way for a parking lot, and the garden I so lovingly planted is a hideous mess of weeds.

I'm writing this after ditching out on a panel that turned out to be a disappointing and boring account of stuff I already knew. But lunch is coming up, so I will head off for that.

Posted by holly at 11:45 AM | Comments (1)

September 4, 2007

Naked Guys at the Johnson Museum

A couple weeks ago I took my last trip of the summer: I went to Ithaca, NY, to visit dear friends.

Ithaca, in case you didn't know, is in a singularly beautiful part of the world. It's part of the finger lakes region of New York and has both rolling hills and steep valleys. At the Wegman's in Ithaca you can buy t-shirts proclaiming that it's "gorges." It's worth going just to survey the scenery, but there's also stuff to do. There are state parks, for hiking and swimming and boating. It's the home of the Moosewood Restaurant. The downtown is decent for hanging out. There's also the art gallery at Cornell university: the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

Admission is free, and the top floor of the museum (which houses a decent collection of Asian art) is a great place to get a panoramic view of the entire city, including Ithaca's own personal lake (the name of which I forget). But what will really stick with me are the statues of two naked guys that are the first piece of art you encounter when you walk in the door.

They're these life-sized bronze figures arranged to illustrate the name of the sculpture, which is "Conflict." To be frank, it's not an especially remarkable piece of art, but for some (OK, well, a fairly obvious) reason it has become the mascot of the museum, and the coffee cart and pastry case in the lobby of the museum have been dignified by the name of "2 Naked Guys Cafe," because they're only feet away from the naked guys.

The museum sells t-shirts for the cafe, and of course I bought one--I owed a birthday present to a gay man, and what gay man wouldn't want to walk around West Hollywood in a t-shirt like this?

Posted by holly at 9:23 AM | Comments (1)

August 20, 2007

Lots and Lots and Lots of Water

I live near a great lake, and it doesn't do much for me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a lot of cold, placid water, sitting in one place. I don't find it particularly dramatic or calming to watch; it doesn't soothe or inspire me to be near it. I mean, I don't pitch a fit if someone wants to go stroll along the beach; it's a perfectly nice way to pass the time. But I like strolling in other locations, too. Flat, calm water doesn't speak to my soul like a view of the Catalinas, the craggy, ragged mountains sheltering Tucson to the north, on a crystalline blue day as the shadows shift over the peaks and rocks.

But there's one part of the great lakes system I totally dig, and that's the part where Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario, or in other words, Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls is awesome. I don't care who says otherwise, including Oscar Wilde, who was right about so many things, but rarely wise or insightful about what was really going on with women or landscape; he dismissed the falls as "simply a vast amount of water going the wrong way over some unnecessary rocks." The falls are dramatic and majestic and awe-inspiring and just really cool. I think they're one of the better international border crossings in the world--Rainbow Bridge, which is, I'm guessing, half a mile downstream from the falls, sure beats Nogales, Arizona's major crossing point on the US/Mexico border. It's also cool that you get to use your passport and visit another country for a couple of hours, that you can go to Canada for dinner. (Though it did irritate me that while entering Canada is free, you have to drop 50 cents--quarters only--into a vending machine in order to get back into the US.) The view is much better from the Canadian side--the falls face Canada--but on the US side you can walk around these islands that jut out into the falls. I mean, that's cool.

I've been to the Falls at least once a year since I moved to this part of the country. Most recently--as in a few weeks ago--I went with my friend C, who had never been, despite the fact that for the past year she'd driven past Buffalo (gateway to the falls or some such thing) every few weeks on her way to visit her significant other in Massachusetts. I couldn't bear that she hadn't seen this natural wonder, and insisted she go with me. We had a great time, though the weather really sucked: it was cold and rainy and gray.

Here's a photo of me standing before Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side.

View image

I like this photo because down at the bottom you can see one end of one of the Maid of the Mist boats, which take you right up under the falls so that you have to wear a big plastic poncho if you don't want to get thoroughly soaked. (We rode the MotM with a bunch boys who were part of some religious summer camp and were not well chaperoned; some were too cool to wear the ponchos and none of the men who were there to supervise them told them to wear the damn ponchos anyway, so the boys were drenched, miserable, cold and even more poorly behaved on the boat ride back.)

Although it's kind of cool to stay and watch the light show on the lake, seeing that doesn't compensate for the fact that hotels in Niagara Falls are way overpriced and rather shabby. On my way home from the falls the next day, I stopped at Roycroft, an arts and crafts community started in the 19th century that I only recently heard about, in a town just outside of Buffalo. It's not especially big or elaborate, but it's interesting, and boasts an inn that is really beautiful, reasonably priced, serves very nice food and is staffed by some of the nicest people I've ever encountered. Next time I visit the falls, if I plan to spend the night, I'll drive 30 minutes to Roycroft and stay there.

Posted by holly at 7:50 AM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2007

Itty Bitty Shoes

Long, long ago, when I went to Toronto and saw We Will Rock You with Dale and stayed in the room with the giant blue bathtub, I also visited the Bata Shoe Museum where, I bought these spiffy souvenirs:

The one in the middle is, as you can tell, a key chain pendant. The one on the top is, as you probably can't tell, a hammer: the heel is weighted so you can use it to pound nails, though the friend who visited the museum with me bought one too and said it broke almost as soon as he got it home, when his toddler dropped in on the carpet, so it probably won't work well for hammering nails. The one on the bottom has no function at all; it's just a pretty thing I admired, which, after all, is what Oscar Wilde said is what art really is.

Posted by holly at 9:46 AM | Comments (4)

July 16, 2007

Mr. Bowditch Carried On without Me

One thing I didn't see in Salem, Massachusetts (I started an entry about going to Salem but haven't finished it because it's depressing) because I didn't know it was there but would have visited had I known about it is the Nathaniel Bowditch House.

Who, you are probably asking, is Nathaniel Bowditch?

Nathaniel Bowditch was a very important self-taught navigator who found some important way of determining one's location while at sea. His work The American Practical Navigator, published in 1802, is still in print (seriously--you can get it from Amazon) and is carried on all commissioned US Naval vessels.

That's not a very complete explanation, but the two sites I link to--both Wikipedia and some Salem history thing--give a more thorough, learned explanation than I could provide even if I cribbed from them extensively.

But I was able to give you a bare-bones answer in part because as I child I read, and earlier this summer I reread, the absolutely marvelous Newbery medal-winning Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham. I reread it in part because back when Anonymous Blog Friend visited me, ABF and I visited the Flagship Niagara, which was very cool* but made both of us wonder why we have this fascination with maritime history. (Aside, of course, from the fact that Ioan Gruffudd, who plays Horatio Hornblower, is so HOT!--which actually still doesn't answer the question, because not everyone wants to watch even a hottie like Ioan portray an early 19th-century British sea captian.) And then I noticed Latham's book in the gift shop, and said, "Reading this in fourth grade or so probably has something to do with my interest in tall ships. Have you read it? It's really good."

Rereading it this summer, I still thought it was pretty good. If you want a quick intro to 18th-century navigation, try this! It's a fun little historical novel and unless you already know a lot about naval history, you'll be smarter when you finish it than you were when you started.

Bowditch grew up in Salem; I'd forgotten that connection until I saw the headstone of his first wife, Elizabeth, in the old graveyard. She died when she was only 18. I searched the Bowditch plot of Nathaniel's grave, but it wasn't there; turns out he's buried in Cambridge, which I visited the next day, but I didn't go looking for cemeteries while I was there--just Indian food and universities, all of which I found.

*One thing I just LOVE, in that "this horrifies, revolts and fascinates me" kind of way, is a video about the damage cannon fire does to a ship. When they were building the replica of the original brig, they also built an extra ship side, then took it out to the middle of nowhere, and fired cannons at it. I find the video so compelling because it makes me realize what I hadn't known before: I hadn't known about shrapnel. I mean, I knew there was this thing called shrapnel, but I didn't realize that when a cannon ball hit some great big old boat, it would cause the timber the ship was constructed from to splinter into sharp, jagged chunks of wood often bigger than baseball bats, which were hurled about with great force, and could do a lot of damage to human bodies in their path. Even an itty bitty piece of shrapnel--say, six inches long--could really freaking HURT if it went right through your lower abdomen or shoulder or face at 60 miles an hour.

Posted by holly at 9:34 AM | Comments (5)

July 14, 2007

Where I've Been Lately

Sixteen months ago, I included a map of the states I'd visited, and it looked like this:

But as of last week, the map of states I've visited looks like this:

create your own personalized map of the USA

That's right--I've done some traveling, and added three more states to the list of those I've visited, bringing the total to 41. A year ago I went to Alaska on a cruise with my family; and I spent most of the first half of July in Massachusetts, which I had never visited before, and made a day trip to Connecticut, which was another state I'd never seen.

There will be more about my trip in the future, but I wanted to explain why my posts have been uncharacteristically brief.

Posted by holly at 1:54 PM | Comments (3)

July 5, 2007

The Big Blue Bathtub

During my recent visit to Toronto (the one that afforded the opportunity to meet Dale), I stayed at a really lovely b&b near High Park. The hostess had agreed to give me a room with a private bathroom, and when I arrived, she said she had two rooms available, one with a shower and one with a bathtub, and asked if I had a preference for baths or showers. I said, "Actually, I prefer baths," because I do. So she showed me to a room that included this, immediately to your left upon entirely the main room:

It was huge! It dominated the room. If you liked bathing with an audience, it could be cool, because there were two ways you could be seen: someone could just lie in bed and watch you take a bath, or someone could stand in the hall and have quite a good view.

That door you see a bit of to the left is the door out into the hall. There were no locks on the doors, and the latches weren't entirely tight--the door sometimes blew open if another door in the house was shut forcibly. So I had to prop a chair against the door to ensure that it wouldn't blow open while I was sitting in the tub.

If I ever stay there again--and it really was a lovely place, so I wouldn't rule that out--I'll take the room with the shower.

Posted by holly at 9:38 AM | Comments (3)

April 17, 2007

Where I've Been Lately

In "Dead Man's Party," episode 2 of Season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we get this exchange between Buffy and Xander about where, exactly, Buffy might have gone after running away from Sunnydale:

X: So where were you? Did you go to Belgium?

B: Why would I go to Belgium?

X: I think the relevant question is, why wouldn’t you? Belgium!

So, I haven't been away from Sunnydale (aka the blogosphere) quite as long as Buffy was absent from Sunnydale that summer, but I did go to Belgium, as I sometimes do. In particular, I went here, the Chateau du Lac at Genval, for a wedding. If you live in Belgium and are wondering where to have your reception, let me heartily recommend Chateau du Lac.

I could now spend some time apologizing for being such a crappy, undisciplined blogger, but I've done that in almost everything I've posted lately, so I think I'll just provide some pictures instead, but I'm going to make you click on the "continue reading" button to see them.

I hope to post more soon.

Here's a view from the front steps of the chateau:

Here's a view of the chateau from across the lake:

Here's another view of the chateau from across the lake:

Here's the end of the hotel:

Here's a closer photo of the end of the hotel:

Posted by holly at 5:30 PM | Comments (7)

August 21, 2006

As They Say about Acid

Yeah, I'm back.

I got home Wednesday night. The journey home was, as they say about acid from time to time, a bad trip. Flight patterns were screwed up at the Salt Lake airport for some reason no one ever bothered explaining to me so although we boarded on time and shut the door on time and pulled away from the gate on time, we then sat on the tarmac for 55 minutes (the captain specified that it was 55 minutes) waiting for our turn to take off, waiting and waiting and then waiting some more as if waiting were a perfectly normal thing to do in an airplane. Fortunately I have a gift, a very fortunate gift indeed, and even a strange one, in light of the fact that in a bed I am prone to insomnia, and my gift is this: I always fall asleep on planes. I am so disposed to falling asleep on planes that I get sleepy just waiting to board one. So I slept while we waited for our plane to take off, even though I had slept a lot the night before and it was only ten a.m., too early really to be sleepy.

My plane and I should have landed before 3 p.m. eastern daylight saving time but we did not land until after 4 p.m. I had not flown in or out of my local airport because it was too expensive; instead I flew out of a bigger spiffier airport two hours away because it was cheap AND a direct flight to SLC, but that meant I had to pay seven bucks a day to park my car at some godforsaken parking lot. And after I picked up my luggage and took a shuttle back to my car in that godforsaken lot I discovered that my battery was dead; it was dead because I had left my lights on for an entire week, a terrible mistake and one I have not made since automakers started including that little bell that goes off when you leave your lights on. I don't know how I missed it but I did somehow last week when the shuttle driver was waiting impatiently for me to get my stuff together and get out of my car and get on the shuttle and go to the airport.

At least the shuttle/parking people had jumper cables and they were able to start my car. But everything had been timed just right to ensure that I hit rush hour traffic and there was a lot of it. And there was also a lot of construction on the highway between the airport two hours away and my house. And when I got home from this bad trip I was so cranky that for the next four days I could scarcely do ANYTHING except think about how much I hated flying, notice that my house really needed cleaning (eventually I talked myself into cleaning it), read Pride and Prejudice for the 18th time (because it is the best book in the whole world), and knit.

Yeah, knit. I have been knitting a lot. I am in love with knitting. I am currently making a green cardigan/jacket thingy and a pair of red fingerless gloves. I will write more about this soon. I sort of even plan to post pictures.

Sunday morning at about 4:30 I finished Pride and Prejudice for the 18th time because I was in my bed and not on a plane and that meant I couldn't sleep even though I had two shots of a vodka and a Benadryl and then that meant that when I went to bed Sunday night I had to read something else, so I picked up The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein because that is what I had chosen as the book to read on the airplane when I wasn't sleeping.

tAoABT was the last of the big important books I had to read to prepare for teaching this semester and I saved it for last because I suspected strongly that I wouldn't like it but lo and behold I was wrong, very wrong. Once after a movie we really liked (though I don't remember what it was) Saviour Onassis and I observed that we could tell when a movie was really good because when we walked out of it, we couldn't help talking like the characters in it. As opposed to a movie that was really bad: then we would choose to talk like the characters but we would do it as mocking, as a deliberate invocation of the accidental artifice we had never ceased to be annoyed by, as in the case of Shakespeare in Love which we saw together and HATED, how we HATED that movie, the script was lame and obvious and contradictory and the characterization lame and obvious and unconvincing and Gwyneth Paltrow just plain sucks.

Using that same reasoning and logic I am attempting to convey how much I to my surprise loved tAoABT because I find myself totally captivated and affected by Gertrude Stein's sentences, they are very moving and effective sentences, and I want to copy them. Trudy (as I prefer to call her, not Gertie; Gertie rhymes with "dirty" but Trudy rhymes with "beauty") has completely captured my thinking heart and despite my fervent loyalty to conventional punctuation I feel a shitload of run-on sentences and comma splices piling up inside me and needing to spill forth. I not only want to write like her, I want to read everything else she has ever written, or at least look all the titles up in the library catalogue and order the books so they can sit on the shelf in my office and make me feel hopeful.

We'll see where this heads.

So you've just read an entry that's not about Mormons or Mormonism or how fucked up and fucked-upping Utah is. Enjoy it while it lasts! I might try to postpone the diatribe against the weirdness that my annual pilgrimage to "Zion" always unleashes in my life, since I wrote about precisely that before I left, but it will occur sooner or later, I can guarantee it.

In the meantime, before posting again, I am going to try to get caught up on YOUR blogs, which I have shamefully neglected. Pardon me. I really was too cranky to leave comments much worth reading, and I knew I wouldn't respond properly to much that I read.

But really, Trudy has cheered me up and I will try to read everything with the same delighted surprise and gossipy happiness (the woman knew everyone! Everyone wanted to know her!) her sentences aroused in me.

Posted by holly at 12:44 AM | Comments (9)

June 28, 2006

I Wasn't Even Wasted

I've never been the kind of person to sit around a hotel room. I'm perfectly happy to sit around private homes, even in really amazing cities--it's not like I have to see all the sights when I go someplace, and of course one thing I want to see when I visit friends is the friends themselves. But even in the least remarkable of cities, if I'm staying at a hotel, I want to spend as little time there as possible. I'm not sure why.... Perhaps it's because hotel rooms somehow strike me as boring, impersonal, and a tad claustrophobic. Go figure.... The same goes for a cruise ship stateroom.

My unwillingness to sit in my room watching television meant I had to find stuff to do on the cruise. It helped that meals lasted a very long time: it took two full hours for all eleven people at our table to finish all five courses at dinner. It helped that I am fond of walking and enjoyed strolling around and around the promenade deck. (Though I admit I realized just how solitary my tendencies truly are when I found it a bit irritating to encounter anyone else who was also strolling around and around the same promenade.) It helped that my sister Lisa twice competed in a trivia contest and won both times, so we all turned out to support her. It helped that my siblings wanted to attend disco night.

Yeah, disco night. Lisa and I were persuaded to don feather boas and lip sync to "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor as part of a skit, while my brother and brother-in-law ended up dancing to "Saturday Night Fever." It was fun and we were all worked up and wanted to keep dancing, so we all headed to the night club, for "dance though the decades," which the DJ (who was really lame but thought otherwise) explained meant he'd start with disco (which no one in my family likes), then work his way through all subsequent decades of dance music. He swore he'd move on to 80s music (which we all love) within an hour, then promptly headed off somewhere, turning his duties over to a replacement, who was even lamer.

My sibs went to bed before long, but I stuck around because I'm used to doing things I want to do by myself and I still felt like dancing, which I love. But the replacement DJ was both inept and cursed with dreadful taste. He played "Beat It" by Michael Jackson and the floor entirely emptied, and although he apologized for starting up a song no one was willing to dance to, he let the song run through to its end. He then committed the unforgivable sin of cutting short "Vogue" by Madonna when people were actually dancing in order to play "Celebration" by Cool and the Gang, even though we'd already heard it earlier in the evening.

And let me just state, for the record, that I HATE "Celebration" by Cool and the Gang.

Then the guy played, back to back, "Born on the Bayou" and "Proud Mary" by Credence Clearwater Revival. I have nothing again CCR but I don't exactly consider them part of either the disco movement or any decade since disco.

And it got weirder: he played "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. No one danced, in case you wondered. And then, for some reason, he played "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. And in case you wondered, one person danced to that song: me.

I was both frustrated and about ready to head to bed, and one option would have been to do it then. But I love that song, and OK, you can't easily dance to it, but it was the first decent song he'd played in a long time, so I stood up and did an interpretive dance to it: all slow and thoughtful at the beginning and then when it rocked out I pretended I was in my own private mosh pit--the long hair helps with that--or channeling my inner Wayne and Garth or something. It was kind of great, but the next morning when I woke up, I sort of couldn't believe I'd done it. I didn't even have the excuse of being completely wasted at the time: no, I was thoroughly sober--I generally prefer to drink only water when I go dancing. I just for some reason decided to perform an impromptu, solitary and excessively theatrical dance to an audience of strangers.

It was even weirder and more revealing than blogging, but elicited fewer comments. I guess no one knew what to say.

Posted by holly at 12:08 PM | Comments (10)

June 18, 2006

Butchart Gardens

Victoria, British Columbia is pretty damn close to Seattle--near the southern tip of Vancouver Island, at the mouth of Puget South--and thus was our last stop. We docked at 6 p.m. Friday night and had to be back on board by 11:30 p.m. because we were sailing at midnight, for a 7 a.m. arrival in Seattle. It's an odd time to arrive someplace and many tourist attractions were closed, but one that was open was Butchart Gardens, which my mother was all gaga to see. I tend to like fancy gardens and botanical museums myself, so I wasn't at all disappointed when she bought me and everyone else in our family a ticket to the place.

She insisted it was a world famous garden, and the fact that I had somehow managed never to hear of it seemed to little reason to contradict her. Getting there involved a 40-minute bus ride with an annoyingly chatty bus driver, but it was worth it. In fact, Butchart Gardens are amazing.

I can tell you now that while their website isn't all that impressive, the gardens themselves are. I don't feel equal to the task of trying to express how stunningly gorgeous this place is, and I'm also not going to paste in a photo, because none of them capture the place, either. (Also I'm too lazy, and if you really want to look at photos, you can visit the website.) It's not like some wild natural wonder--the Grand Canyon, for instance--because it's a carefully cultivated setting, an attempt to reclaim and beautify something human beings made ugly (in this case, an exhausted limestone quarry). It's the most beautiful human-made place I've ever been, and I've been lots of places, visited lots of palaces and fine houses with fancy grounds. None of them compare to this.

The place is aptly named Butchart Gardens, since it is not one garden but many. The excavated limestone quarry is now the site of an overwhelmingly beautiful sunken garden complete with a pond and fancy fountains, as well as a strange little mound (inferior limestone they didn't bother to excavate) in the center with a staircase you can climb for a spectacular view. There's a Japanese garden. There's a rose garden. There's a pretty house and a breathtaking view of Saanich Inlet. Then there are the plants themselves: really lovely specimens of flowers and shrubs and trees both exotic and common. I saw the coolest iris: white in the middle and pale lavender on the edges.

One thing that enhanced our visit was the weather: clear, calm and warm enough that you didn't need a jacket unless you were in the shade. Still, I have three regrets about my visit to the gardens: 1) we went late enough in the season that the bulbs were done blooming (I love tulips and the like); 2) we went early enough in the season that the roses hadn't really begun blooming; and 3) we only stayed two and a half hours. I would have been happy to wander that place all day.

The gardens began over 100 years ago as a project of Jenny Butchart, who from everything I've heard was a truly remarkable woman--unfortunately I haven't been able to find a decent bio of her on the web. The history of the place is cool, but what's coolest is the place itself. You should go. You should very, very definitely go to Butchart Gardens. I quite hope I manage to go back. Soon.

Posted by holly at 3:21 PM

June 17, 2006

The Entire Earth Is One Big Toy--Let's Play with It!

I should acknowledge what some of you are no doubt thinking: OK, cruises might be fun, but they're not the most environmentally responsible way to vacation. Cruise ships used to routinely dump crap into the ocean (they're supposed to follow rules about it now) but they also used to do things even stupider and more wantonly destructive, all in the name of entertaining tourists.

One day we visited Hubbard Glacier in Yakutak (pronounced "Yak Attack") Bay. As we approached, we were allowed to go up to the front of the bow so we could lean over the railings and stare right at this massive chunk of ice. It's a damn impressive sight: 76 miles long and six miles wide at the point where it meets the ocean, and every so often it will calve off icebergs the size of a ten-story building. If you saw the chunk fall off, you'd shout, "Oh! Look!" as you pointed; if you didn't, you'd look where someone was pointing and say, "Oh, crap." You actually had to WATCH the glacier and WAIT if you wanted to see it DO anything.

And apparently that patience which is now necessary used to be considered an avoidable inconvenience. While hanging out on the bow, I talked to a guy who was on his third Alaskan cruise. He said that the first two times he went, someone would bombard whatever glacier they were visiting with sonar so that it would calve more often and more dramatically. But then someone else pointed out that since 95% of the world's glaciers are receding on their own, it probably wasn't wise to help them, and the practice was abandoned.

A few days ago, Chris posted an entry about the fact that being crappy residents of this planet should motivate us to STOP being crappy residents instead of rushing about space looking for a new home to move to after we've completely trashed this one. (Not that he's opposed to space exploration--he says that about a dozen times and people still seemed to miss it.) But he went so far as to compare humanity to a cockroach infestation, and both his basic point and that comparison pissed a lot of people off. Personally I thought the post was both funny and apt, and the fact that we would speed up the dissolution of the polar ice caps just because its cool to watch, is one more reason I think that.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM

June 14, 2006

Where or When I Was

Early this morning I had what is for me a very rare experience: I awoke with absolutely no idea where or when I was. At first I thought, "Am I nine? Is this my parents' house?" And then I thought, "Am I in our summer cabin on the mountain? Is that why everything is so dark and simultaneously familiar and a little bit out of the ordinary?" But the ceiling was more than two feet from my face and I couldn't see any exposed two-by-fours (I got to sleep in the loft, which I loved, because it was solitary and strange and I had to climb a ladder to get to it) so I knew that wasn't the case. Next I had to figure out that I wasn't in a college dorm or a hostel in Europe. (The one period of my life I never thought to imagine I was revisiting was anything having to do with my mission or Asia.) I then asked myself, "Do I still live in Iowa?" And I actually worded it like that, with the still, which meant I was figuring out that if my consciousness had me still living in Iowa, it wasn't doing its job properly. Then I thought, "Am I on a boat? Because I was on a boat, pretty recently." And then it all came back, that I'd been traveling but was home now, waking up for the first time in a good while in my little house in the rust belt.

The thing is, I felt no distress or discomfort while I was figuring all this out. I was too asleep to discern immediately where I was, but I was awake enough to feel my mind working, and I was distanced enough from both sleep and wakefulness to stand back and simply watch my mind figure out this situation, and that was kind of fun. I felt fortunate as I cycled through various periods of my life and realized that there had been all these places in the world where I'd slept safely and awakened in the morning to go do interesting things. And I was especially comforted to discover that I was in my own bed in my own house and that I wouldn't have to get up in a few hours and get off a boat or on a plane, and that made it really easy to go back to sleep.

Posted by holly at 6:55 PM | Comments (3)

June 12, 2006

I Love Captain Olav

As I mentioned yesterday, not every aspect of the my cruise was ideal, but over all, it was pretty darn great. My mom (who made all the arrangements) went with the Holland America Line, known for having nice ships and good service, if also for being somewhat venerable and staid. It was a good decision, we all thought--here's a review of the line and the ship, in case you're contemplating a cruise yourself. We sailed on the Oosterdam, a new and spiffy ship--it really was quite extraordinarily lovely, but the one of the best things about the ship was its captain, Olav van der Waard.

There were a couple of opportunities to meet him, but I never bothered, and I still don't feel I needed to meet him. I was content to let him do his job, and he did it very well. It never occurred to me that in this day of sonar navigation and great big engines, a captain really had that much to do, but I was wrong, and Captain Olav, I soon realized, was really good at his job.

From May to September, there are cruise ships sailing all up and down the Alaska coast. A couple of times we were in port with three or four other cruise ships. But the thing is, Captain Olav always got there first, and snagged the best parking space (or rather, its nautical equivalent). When we cruised up to look at Hubbard Glacier, Captain Olav not only got there first, but got really, really close. We always arrived early; we always left on time, and the journey itself was lovely.

By the way, in case you wondered, I'm feeling better: the puking has long since stopped, though I'm still a little queasy. My friends think it might not have been stomach flu but food poisoning, since I started feeling ill immediately after a meal of fish tacos heavily flavored with cumin. Yesterday I couldn't even say those words without retching, and I don't think I'll ever be able to eat cumin or fish tacos again, but at least the clear liquids and simple carbohydrates I put in my stomach yesterday stayed there.

Posted by holly at 10:47 AM | Comments (10)

June 11, 2006

Post-Sea Sickness

About half a dozen people, when I mentioned that I was going on a cruise, asked me if I had ever read "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace (who, like me, is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arizona but who, unlike me, is fabulously wealthy and famous), an essay talking about how cruises aren't really that great after all. I have not read that essay, though I'll track it down now, but I have to say that I had a FABULOUS time on my cruise to Alaska and would do it again in a heartbeat.

This is not to say that every aspect of the trip was ideal: for one thing, I got tired of being expected to pose for photographs, with guys in polar bear or eagle suits, and to then pay $7.95 for said photos. The coffee was generally lousy. The DJ in the nightclub was annoying and played crappy music. (More on that later.) The hot tubs were closed for cleaning half the trip, because a case of stomach flu was going around and the staff was anxious to contain it (more on that later too)--this is also why they wouldn't leave salt and pepper shakers on the table. But those are small things, and I had to sit here and think for a moment in order to come up with that list of disappointments.

I could list a lot of great things about the trip, and I will, eventually. But right now I'm kind of focused on the fact that while I was lucky enough not to get sick on the boat, I started puking my toe nails up around 10 p.m. last night. As I couldn't even keep water down, I had a crappy night. However, several hours have passed since I last vomited my guts out and I just moved up to Gatorade, which I fear may have been a mistake....

I really did have a great trip, and I really would like to do it again, gastro-intestinal distress notwithstanding. But this stomach thing is a bummer, you know, because I was planning to hang out with Jim today, but for obvious reasons we would all prefer that I not pass this bug on to his toddler. That means I'm stuck imposing on my friends H&K some more. They are very gracious and accommodating hosts, but who wants a sick person running from the bathroom to the guest room?

Anyway. I'm going to lie down again.... But expect more about the trip soon.

Posted by holly at 8:57 AM | Comments (0)

June 3, 2006

Bon Voyage

I'm in Seattle right now--have been since Thursday. I've been staying with H&K, H being one of the few friends from my undergraduate days I'm still in touch with and K being his wife. We actually fell out of contact for, like, a decade, but a couple of years ago I decided to google H, found a phone number that worked, and this is the second time I've stayed in their guest room since then. They're a lot of fun.

Yesterday K & I were at Pike Place Market and I heard someone say, "Oh, look, there's Holly!" I thought, "Huh, so there's someone else named Holly around," and then this woman came up and hugged me and I realized it was my sister.

"How did you recognize me?" I asked. She looked at me for a moment as if she didn't recognize me, then said, "Well, you look exactly like you did at Christmas."

"So do you," I said. "It's just, I don't know; I didn't expect to see you here."

But it's not really all that weird that my sister would be here, because to tell the truth she's here for the same reason I am.

In a few hours we board a ship, and we'll be on it for a week.

Over Christmas of 2004, my mother said to me and some of my sisters, "What would you guys say if I decided to take us all on a trip? We could go some place like Yellowstone and take all the grandkids, but what I'd rather do is take the grownups on a cruise to Alaska. Don't you think that would be fun?" We did indeed think it would be fun, so since then my mother has planned and paid for a cruise for 11 people: my parents, my siblings and their spouses, and me.

Mom isn't at death's door but she has enough health concerns that we're all aware she won't be around forever. She has decided that while she can, she will spend her time and money doing fun things with her family, and we all think that's a really cool idea.

So I'm going to be incommunicado for a week. After we dock I'll spend a few more days in Seattle before flying back to Pennsylvania: I'll hang out with my good friend and generous blog hoster, Jim, his partner and their son Ray. I'll have (I hope) some cool stories to share (and maybe even some photos, since I brought my camera and can take pictures with it, though I've never tried to upload anything). But to forestall any problem with spam comments, I'm turning the comments off for the next week.

Posted by holly at 5:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2006

Where I've Been

Very nearly everyone is sharing their own version of these maps, which let you highlight all the countries, states, provinces etc you've been to. Here's my world map:

create your own visited country map

Well, I guess I've been a few places, haven't I, though there's a real problem with the southern half of the globe--I've never been south of the equator. I think managing that has just become a goal. I've always wanted to go to Kenya, and I'm pretty hot to get to Australia as well--I love beautiful deserts, and Kenya and Australia have those. So I'd best find a way to get there.

As for the northern half of the globe--the map above makes it look like I've been all over North America, when in fact I haven't. All of Canada is blocked in, but I've only been to Toronto. That will change this summer, however, when I go on a cruise to Alaska with my family and we stop in British Columbia (which I have long wanted to see).

There's also that itty bitty white space known as Switzerland fouling up the middle of my map of Europe--I really should go there, considering that one of my aunts is Swiss and one of my cousins was born there. Soon....

Here's a map of the states I've been to:

create your own personalized map of the USA

That's right, I've never really been to Nevada even though I grew up in a state bordering it, because I'm not counting states where I've never ventured beyond the airport. I once spent a hellish night in the Las Vegas airport thanks to America West Airlines, but I don't think that counts. Same goes for Michigan: I've flown in and out of Detroit dozens of times, but I've never left the terminal.

You can also see I haven't been to the far northeast reaches of the US. I was born on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, and I like history, so I've always been keen to get to Boston, but somehow I haven't done it.

What really bugs me about this map is that North Dakota is unmarked. I took a little trip with a friend a decade ago or so, and we went to Devil's Tower and Mount Rushmore and such and we could have driven into North Dakota and I could have added it to my map, but my friend was driving her car and she had already been there and didn't want to go again, so we didn't. Chances are good I may never make it back there--who just ups and goes to North Dakota? Sure as hell not me.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (4)

February 20, 2006

Baby, It's Cold Outside

It's been cold lately where I live. Saturday afternoon I had to run some errands and it was 15 degrees F (-9 C) when I left my house. As I flexed my chilly fingers inside my gloves so they'd retain the ability to move and checked the temperature gauge of my car every few seconds to see if the engine was warm enough that I could turn the heat on, I thought to myself, "OK, I remember now: this is what it feels like when it's butt-bustingly cold!"

I've learned this about cold climes: if it's near freezing, you can still have an OK time if you must go outside: you can bundle up for a long walk, or shovel your driveway sans hat, or amble across the street without gloves to ask your neighbor if he'll babysit your cat, and it can actually be pleasant in a bracing, wouldn't-want-to-do-it-everyday-but-this-once-was-fine sort of way. But once it drops to about 25 degrees (-3 C), going outside for anything but a nano-second will suck. And when it gets below zero (-18 C), well, then it REALLY sucks. No matter how many clothes you wear, you're still going to be cold. You might not freeze to death, but you won't feel like stopping to chat with a neighbor. You also won't want to take off your gloves to root around in your pocket for your keys, so make sure you know where they are before you walk out the door. Try to pee before you go out as well, because it's disconcerting to drop your pants and discover that even though it's been covered by underwear, thermal underwear, jeans and a long coat, your ass has become downright icy.

I lived through a few spectacularly dreadful winters in Iowa. In January 1994, it was so cold that all the universities in the state--with the exception of the one I studied at--canceled class: the actual high temperature was near -20 F (-29 C); the wind chill factor made it feel like it -55 F (-48 C). To paraphrase a report I heard on the radio, when it's that cold, "You shouldn't go outside if you can possibly help it, and if you must go outside, be sure to cover every inch of you, because at these temperatures, exposed skin can freeze within 30 seconds."

Of course, classes weren't canceled, so I had to go outside. Not only that, but Iowa City is a town that requires walking: it's rare that you can just drive to some destination, park, then walk a few yards to the door of a cozily heated building. No: you have to walk all over creation, out in the elements, which are often really nasty. So (and this is where I get to lapse into my self-righteous, suffering curmudgeon mode--oh, the anticipation!) I regularly walked the mile and a half from my house to campus in temperatures below zero. (Though I also found all kinds of buildings and shops I could duck into along the way in case it was just too cold to make the trip in one straight shot.)

I would try to explain to a friend of mine, a Celsius-using Brit, how absolutely ass-achingly cold it was. I would say, "The other day the high was -10 degrees, and the low was -22," and he'd say, "Oh, really?" as blandly as if I'd informed him that the sun had risen that day or was scheduled to set at some reasonable hour.

"Yes, really," I'd say, thoroughly peeved. "It was really, truly, awfully, extremely, excruciatingly cold."

"The cold doesn't bother me much," he'd reply. "I grew up in the north of England, not southern Arizona."

So one day I got on the internet, found a temperature conversion program, then said, "The other day the high was -23 degrees C, and the low was -30 C."

To my immense satisfaction, he was suitably awed. "Oh my god!" he said. "I've never experienced anything like that. I can't even imagine how cold that is! OK, now I believe you when you say it's cold."

(Interesting fact: I was playing around with conversion charts and discovered a grand total of one temperature that is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius: -40. It didn't even come up as -40 F and -40.33338 or some such thing in Celsius. No, -40 is just -40. Try it yourself. Whereas 40 F equals 4.4444444 C. I find all these fours kind of cool.)

The Midwest is its own special kind of frigid--and I was even in the mid-Midwest, not someplace truly northerly like Winnipeg. Maybe the Midwest isn't as bad as the Arctic, but there are a lot more Midwesterners than Eskimos--hell, I bet there are more people in Chicago alone than there are humans who subsist on seal fat and whale blubber. So I still feel I evinced some sort of moral and physical fortitude by surviving eight Iowa winters.

It rarely gets Midwest miserable where I live now, though this place is certainly colder than Arizona. Just for comparison's sake, here are the temperatures for Saturday, February 18, 2006, for five places where I've spent the month of February, with Winnipeg (which I've never been to) thrown in for good measure:

Northwestern PA: High: 28 F (-2 C) Low: 10 F (-12 C)

Iowa City, Iowa: High: 8 F (-13 C) Low: -8 F (-22 C)

Thatcher, Arizona: High: 72 F (22 C) Low: 44 F (7 C) (God, that seems so civilized, especially since it's cold enough at night that you can layer on some blankets and sleep cuddled up and cozy)

Kaohsiung, Taiwan: High: 75 F (24 C) Low: 64 F (18 C)
(It was WAY colder than that when I was in Kaohsiung)

London, England: High: 45 F (7 C) Low: 34 F (1 C)

Winnipeg, Manitoba: High: 7 F (-14 C) Low: -15 F (-26 C)

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (5)

January 6, 2006

Home Again

As you'll no doubt have surmised if you read my entry about what happened when I picked up my mail, I'm home. I left my sister's house in Mesa well before dawn on Tuesday and got back to my house in northwestern Pennsylvania well after dark. I can't say my trip home was anything approaching an ordeal: the only problems were that 1) the airport was PACKED and getting through security took about as long and involved as much standing around and responding to the commands of officials in silly uniforms as a college football game, because the Fiesta Bowl had been the day before and seemingly every last person who went to the damn game had a flight out of Phoenix the same time as mine; and 2) my flight was delayed about 30 minutes because we couldn't leave without our flight attendants, who got stuck in traffic on the freeway. But once they showed up, everything was fine: I made my connection on time; my suitcase rolled onto the conveyor belt early and intact; the weather here in PA was OK (rain rather than snow); I didn't have to call a cab because there was already one waiting, blah blah blah.

Back at my house, I was greeted by Dinah, my cat, who was yowling and needy and distressed with me for leaving her, albeit healthy and well-fed thanks to my extremely reliable neighbors. My plants were all alive and aside from the cats toys scattered all over the living room floor, the place was pretty tidy (I always straighten up before I leave, because I hate coming home to a messy house), and I was really glad to be home, blah blah blah.

I AM glad to be home, really and truly. But I never enjoy the first day or two after I get home from a long journey, because there's just so freakin' much to do, and most of it isn't that fun (i.e., spending three hours sorting through a gigantic stack of mail). I generally find the outbound part of a journey much more pleasant and pleasing than the return. Outbound, my suitcase is filled with clean clothes and gifts I'm excited to give someone; I feel virtuous and entitled to fun because I've arranged for business to go on without me for a week or two; most of all, I'm looking forward to spending time with people I haven't seen in a good long while. But on the trip home, I've got a suitcase full of dirty laundry and souvenirs I'm not sure I should have bought; I'm a bit apprehensive about how long it will take me to catch up on the work I've been ignoring; I am well aware that it might be a very long time before I again see the people I've just said good-bye to.

But oh well. A far worse option than dealing with all that would be never going anywhere in the first place.

At this point I've pretty much put my life back in order. I've restocked my refrigerator and cupboards; I've done four loads of laundry; I've gone in to campus and turned in my syllabi to be copied, because classes start Monday. (That's right, Monday, January 9th. Most other universities start January 17th, after Martin Luther King Day. Not my institution, unfortunately, because I could really use another week to get ready for what will be a very busy semester.) And now I think I'm ready to stay home for a while--I have no trips planned until May. Because although I would hate it if I never traveled again, a few months of sleeping every night in my own extremely comfortable bed (the thing I've liked best about being home has been waking up each morning in MY BED, not a bed vacated by one of my nieces so I wouldn't have to sleep on the couch) seems pretty damn appealing.

Posted by holly at 12:16 PM

December 20, 2005

Curbside Delivery

I'll soon be flying back to Arizona so I can hang out with my family for Christmas. I'm excited about it, for several reasons: 1) I have all these really cute nieces and nephews that I haven't seen since last Christmas; 2) I'll get to see Wayne, who will also be visiting his family in Arizona; 3) the highs in Tucson are supposed to be around 75 degrees (that's 24 Celsius, for those of you lucky enough to live someplace that doesn't use Fahrenheit, the stupidest of all non-metric measurements), which is a hell of a lot better than 25 F (-4 C).

What I'm not so excited about is the getting there part. I'm not the least bit afraid of being 31,000 feet above the earth in a big metal tube, but I don't like sitting around at the gate, waiting to get on and off that metal tube. I don't like being cramped for several hours in a seat next to a person who as often as not hogs the armrest. I don't like entrusting a suitcase full of my stuff to people I don't know. I don't getting to and from the airport.

I had a hell of a time finding a decent flight this trip--actually, I FAILED to find a decent flight this trip. My plane leaves at 6 a.m., which means I need to be to the airport around 5 a.m. The shuttle service I used to use is in the process of going out of business, and only delivers you to the airport if you want to get there during "convenient" times. 5 a.m. ain't convenient.

So I begged a ride from my friend Tom, who not only said he'd do me this favor, but didn't even seem to think I was being unreasonable in asking it in the first place.

Last night I was thinking about how great it is that he's willing to do this for me, and how I should do something to make it up to him. But that reminded me of an incident long about 1994, when someone I'll call Arianna asked me to give her a ride to and from the airport in Iowa, promising me that in return she'd find some truly fabulous gift to bestow upon me in recognition of my generosity.

I admit I thought Arianna was overstating the situation: she was flying in to the Cedar Rapids airport on a Tuesday afternoon in July. It was pleasant drive and I didn't have anything special to do instead--I mean, it's not like I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and drive through a bunch of mushy, muddy snow to get to the airport. People need rides to and from the airport: it happens. To borrow a line from Zorro, the Gay Blade (one of my favorite movies--add it to your Netflix queue!), her gratitude would have been thanks enough.

But no. Arianna made this BIG DEAL on the way to the airport about how she was going to GET ME SOMETHING, and it was going to be SPECIAL. And I will admit that on the drive to the airport to pick her up, I couldn't help wondering what she'd brought me: chocolate, maybe? A cool refrigerator magnet?

Turns out it was a fashion magazine she'd bought to read on the plane, and a bottle of shampoo and some hand lotion she'd taken from the hotel she stayed at. Wow, I thought. So that's the kind of person she thinks I am: someone so simple and/or out for what I can get that I'll jubilantly accept someone else's cast-offs.

And maybe I truly was that kind of person. Because a year or so later, Arianna was dumped by a man she loved quite deeply. About fifteen minutes after this guy broke up with her, he asked me out. I felt bad about saying yes, but I admit I said yes--jubilantly, in fact, because I really did like this guy. We dated for a couple of months.

Every so often my conscience bothers me when I think about how I wasn't a very loyal friend to Arianna. But then I think about the fact that this guy who broke her heart ended up being a good friend to me--we're still in touch, and he called me on my birthday. And then I think about the fact that Arianna thought so little of our friendship that she felt she had to bribe me to take her to the airport, and thought so little of me that she figured a complimentary bottle of shampoo and an unwanted magazine would suffice as a bribe. And then I don't feel so bad.

But I still think it's really cool of Tom to drive me to the airport well before dawn in the middle of winter, especially since he's not doing it because I'll get him something; he's just doing it because he's a good friend.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 1, 2005

Welcome Home

Monday I got up at six a.m. so I could leave for the Brussels train station at 7 a.m. to catch my 7:52 a.m. train to the Paris Airport. It was a train de grand vitesse (a really fast train) and it traveled the distance between Brussels and CDG (about 270 kilometers, or 170 miles) in under an hour and twenty minutes.

So at about 9:15 I descended from the train, then ascended the escalator into the airport and what a nasty shock that was, about like having someone's laptop fall on your face when you open the overhead compartment at the end of a flight and all the items stowed during the trip have shifted. I've been to quite a few airports in my life, and usually there's some kind of prominent signage telling you what terminal various airlines use. Not so in Roissy-Charle de Gaulle! You need to arrive at the airport already familiar with its layout, especially since the few "Information" desks randomly dotting the terminals tend to be closed.

Unfortunately I had no clue which of the terminals (A through F) in Complex 2 was used by Northwest Airlines, so after wandering aimlessly for an hour or so, I finally resorted to asking the concierge at the Sheraton, which is built into the airport, no doubt to accommodate stranded passengers or people with 5 a.m. flights to Tokyo, because no one in her right mind would stay there for fun. Even though I wasn't one of the hotel's unfortunate guests, the guy willingly looked up the information I needed on his computer, and directed me to Terminal 2E.

But even once I arrived in that terminal I was still uncertain where to go, because the signs at the various counters are generally for Air France. Lucky enough to find an information counter where an actual human being dispensed actual information, I was directed to a very long line in front of an entire bank of Air France ticketing counters. During the process of standing in that line, three different people inspected my passport and looked up my flight information on a small handheld computer, the last of whom directed me to another line, where two more people inspected my passport and looked up my flight information on a small handheld computer before directing me to an Air France counter staffed by a young woman who kept climbing over the luggage conveyor belts to ask the guy next to her how she should do her job, which did not inspire confidence on my part.

Travelers are instructed to check in at CDG two and a half hours prior to departure, because it's such a badly designed and inefficiently managed airport, where everything takes for flippin' EVER. My flight was scheduled to depart at 1:55 p.m., and I arrived at the check-in counter at about 10:45, a mere forty minutes sooner than the airport suggests, and the girl almost turned me away because she thought I was too early. But finally she issued me a boarding pass and I went to sit at the gate, which, of course, involved going through security, taking off my coat and shoes so they can be x-rayed, etc.

CDG is one of those airports where the planes are often nowhere near the gates. When the flight was announced for boarding, passengers queued up in a very long, disorganized line, so that three more people could inspect our passports, boarding passes and carry-on luggage--there were even random thorough searches where they made you take your shoes off again, and I was so grateful to have been passed over for that. We then walk through a door and stood on a sidewalk before boarding a shuttle that drove for ten minutes to a plane in the middle of the tarmac. They didn't bother boarding us from the rear of the plane, so getting on the plane took almost as long as the actual flight, because people at the front of the plane were standing in the aisle, taking off their coats and stowing their carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment, while other people stood impatiently behind them, waiting to reach their seats at the back of the plane.

Yada yada yada. Eight-hour flights just suck, no matter what, though it did help that I had brought David Sedaris's Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy as my reading material. But I'm a fast reader, and I finished it less than half way into the flight. So I watched Wedding Crashers and played some games on the console in the back of the seat in front of me.

After two bad meals and a few cans of carbonated beverages, we arrived in Detoirt and went through customs, where my declaration form was stamped COMPLEX so that I had to stand by and watch some fairly good-natured guy empty my suitcase, all the while explaining to him who I'd been visiting in Brussels and how I knew him. I said, "It was a friend I met in Tucson, Arizona, in 1988, when he was a Mormon missionary there," which seemed a fairly irreproachable answer. Then the guy wanted to know why I had bought $100 worth of chocolate when I lived in Pennsylvania, home of Hershey. "Uh, it's generally agreed that Belgian chocolate is just a little bit better than Hershey's," I said.

"Different," he said. "It's just different."

We were all in some windowless basement of the Detroit airport, and there were armed cops all over, and there was no place where you could acquire a cigarette lighter or a book of matches, but after customs, we still had to have our luggage inspected AGAIN, and go through security AGAIN, blah blah f*cking blah. The airport staff was not very nice, and seemed unable to understand why several hundred people who had just spent eight hours on a plane and god knows how long traveling before that, might be a little disoriented and slow on the uptake.

I had a four-hour layover, so I called Wayne, who had just acquired a nephew and a new car, only one of which he has blogged about at this point. The weather was abysmal, with lots of wind and rain, and the ceiling in the new regional terminal I was in leaked in several places. But my flight out of Detroit was basically on time and I arrived at my home after a mere 22 hours of traveling.

And it was at that point that I remembered why I kind of like staying home a lot of the time.

And then there's all the readjustment stuff: I had conscientiously turned my water heater to "vacation" setting, so that I couldn't take a shower until it had had a chance to heat some water, and my cat was freaked out both by the fact that I had left her for ten days and returned so abruptly, and some of my plants had wilted, so on and so forth, and I had a suitcase full of dirty clothes and a million things to do the next day, and I felt like shit.

But hey, I'm a seasoned traveler, I know how to deal with all this stuff, and I'm back in my routine and everything is going as it should, aside from the fact that on that nasty flight I picked up both a mild eye infection and a severe cold. But more on that later--or maybe not.

Posted by holly at 10:37 AM | Comments (3)

November 29, 2005

Someplace High in Paris

A week ago Monday morning Matt and I visited a Parisian landmark I neglected to see on my first visit to Paris 21 years ago. I don't know why I didn't go before; I just didn't. But it was very cool to see the Eiffel Tower up close, and to gaze down on Paris from a height of over 300 meters.

Here I am:

Here's Matt:

Posted by holly at 3:57 AM | Comments (2)

November 27, 2005

Hosts and Guests

Sunday was my last full day in Brussels. I was sitting at Matt's computer doing my email when he walked in to say good morning. We began discussing what we'd do on my last day, and I felt compelled to ask him if I'd been an OK guest.

He frowned for a moment, then nodded. "You've been an OK guest," he said, emphasizing the "OK" while looking away. Then he looked right at me. "You're not the easiest person to live with."

I frowned and nodded myself. I already knew this. At this point in my life I generally find other people hard to live with, and I figure it must work both ways. I'm very habituated to living alone, to managing my money, my space, my stuff and my time as I see fit. I first did it when I was 23, after my mission (which involved as little privacy as possible--you're allowed to use the bathroom on your own, but the rest of your time is supposed to be spent in the presence of an assigned partner, so you have fewer opportunities to break the rules). The parents of one of my friends in Tucson had a studio apartment they offered to rent me, and it seemed like a good place to live while I finished my bachelor's degree. I was surprised at how much I liked living alone. Yes, I was often lonely, but there are many, many worse things in life than loneliness, and one of them is sharing a kitchen with someone who never does the dishes, either properly or at all.

While thinking about these matters, I asked Matt if he had ever lived alone. He said he'd had his own room in the dorms in college, but we agreed that's not really living alone. Among my friends and family are what seem to me a remarkable number of people who have reached the age of 35 never having lived alone, or having lived alone in a small apartment for a year or two after college, before they move in with a significant other.

Whereas out of my 42 years on this planet, I've lived alone for 16 of them, and over eight of those years were spent not merely in an apartment but a house, so I had a yard to myself as well.

When Elizabeth Bennet (the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, for anyone unfortunate enough not to recognize that name) and her aunt visit the ladies at Pemberly one afternoon, it becomes clear to Caroline Bingley that Darcy admires Elizabeth. Jealous and upset, Miss Bingley makes a nasty comment about Elizabeth's appearance. Having failed to goad Darcy into declaring Elizabeth unattractively coarse and changed beyond recognition, Miss Bingley then complains that Elizabeth's nose lacks character while her complexion lacks brilliancy, adding, "in her air altogether, there is a self-sufficiency without fashion which is intolerable." I am sure there is considerable self-sufficiency in my air; I hope it is not entirely intolerable, but no doubt it's part of what makes me hard to live with. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that these days it's not unfashionable to be rather self-sufficient.

I like other people; I like them quite a lot. I think I'm capable of great loyalty and I try to be a generous and compassionate friend. But I also really like solitude, and I really like being in control of my time, my money, my space and my stuff. This is one reason I have often said that were I ever to marry, I would find it ideal to live next door to my husband, or perhaps share a big house with separate households in different wings or on different floors. That way we'd see each other easily enough but we wouldn't have to ask each other where the scissors are because we'd each have our own pair, in our own office. I know that seems like a mundane example of how it's inconvenient to share space with another human being, but the thing about living with someone is that it IS mundane--it's what you do every single day: accommodate the most quotidienne needs and demands of another human being.

When you're a host or a guest you do the same thing, but for a few days or weeks, instead of a few years or decades.

You could not ask for more generous or accommodating hosts than Matt and Leo. They feed me better than I feed myself. They go out of their way to amuse me. They take me places. They spend time with me and also leave me time to myself. They have a lovely home and make me very comfortable in it.

I try to be a reasonable guest: I try to minimize my requests; I try not to spend too much time in the bathroom (though it does take a long time to wash my hair); I try to do what I can for myself without being intrusive or demanding--for instance, I'll make tea for myself, because I can do that with a minimum of fuss, but I haven't insisted that anyone show me how to work the espresso machine. I am happy to let my hosts go off to the gym and leave me at home to blog (though I should really be doing some preparation for teaching--in less than 48 hours, I'll be back in the classroom).

But the fact still remains that I know darn good and well that however happy I am to have someone come visit me, I am also glad when s/he leaves and I get my space and my routine back. And I know Matt and Leo feel the same way about me--and I don't just come for a weekend, either; because it's so expensive to fly from the states and because Matt is one of my dearest friends, I always come for a week or two. And I know it's because Matt loves me that he lets me be his guest for so long, even though I'm hard to live with.

Which really does make me lucky, lucky, lucky.

Read about the rest of my trip in Someplace High in Paris, Il Neige, I Went: Europe, and Happy Thanksgiving. Get the details on coming home in Welcome Home.

Posted by holly at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)

November 26, 2005

Il neige

Brussels has been hit by a freak snowstorm.

According to a Francophone newspaper I'm not going to link to because so few of my readers read French, the storm this weekend was one of the three most severe of the previous 100 years--for this time of year, anyway. Brusssels doesn't normally get 10 to 15 centimeters of snow in late November. (Actually, it rarely gets 10 to 15 centimeters of snow, but it's more likely in January or so than in November.) We woke this morning to--that's right, you guessed it--a winter wonderland, and I convinced Matt to take photos of the view from his balcony.

Here's a view from the guestroom balcony, which faces east:

I find the chimneys and snow-covered pitched roofs quite charming.

To the east of Matt's apartment is this lovely park. In mid-morning it was full of children sledding and building snow people.

Here's the street to the northwest:

Below is the view to the northeast--the dome at the right is the Palais de Justice.

This apartment, which is on the seventh and final floor of one of the tallest buildings in the area, has been a lovely place to be in while it's nasty outside. Last night we got home around midnight and watched it snow for a couple of hours--big, fat, wet, mushy flakes. This morning we had a leisurely breakfast and watched it snow some more. About noon the snow tapered off, and the temperature rose above freezing, and the snow started turning to icky, soggy piles of misery. Then, because Matt and his partner are lovely, generous hosts, they took me out in that slushy snow, and we walked to Pierre Marcolini, the finest chocolatier in Brusssels.

We did a little additional shopping, then came home. Matt lit a fire, we watched How to Marry a Millionaire, and we ate REALLY good chocolate. Right now I'm drinking a Kriek (an absolutely WONDERFUL Belgian cherry beer) and blogging; Matt is knitting (he's very good and has helped me with my stitches) and Leo is making dinner, which we'll soon eat. After that, well, we'll no doubt do something glamourous and exciting, because you can't just spend all weekend sitting by a comfortable fire, eating chocolate, drinking beer and watching TV--oh wait, you can!

Posted by holly at 1:51 PM | Comments (1)

November 25, 2005

I Went: Europe

Once upon a time, in January 1984, when I was 20, I got on a plane, went to London, spent a semester taking courses in English literature and English history, then hoisted a backpack with a sleeping bag strapped to it and set off to tour the British Isles and the Continent of Europe for two months or so BY MYSELF. I had one sweater, fewer pair of socks and underwear than I like to admit, a copy of Let's Go: Europe (at the time,Let's Go was the bible of the cheap traveler--I've been told its coolness has waned and the preferred travel guide is now The Lonely Planet series), my passport, and a Eurail pass. I was often profoundly lonely and on several occasions found myself in circumstances so desperate or extreme I was afraid for my life, but somehow I escaped not only death but serious injury--for that matter, I was never even robbed, though I was frequently menaced. Considering the class of hotel or hostel I stayed in, considering how often I slept in some isolated compartment of some night train, considering how willing I was to ask for and accept help from complete strangers, it's remarkable nothing truly bad happened to me.

For instance: in late April, a few weeks after the semester ended, I arrived in Edinburgh. It was cold and damp and I was not happy to be there. I had spent some time visiting friends in the North of England, partly because I liked them and partly because I wanted to kill some time before I started my journeys in earnest--I was afraid of the entire prospect of backpacking around Europe on my own, you see. But the time came when I had to go SOMEPLACE because I had two months to kill before my flight back to the states, and I figured I should see something of the British Isles before heading to the continent.

I wandered around Edinburgh and would have found it fascinating and delightful had I not been so very, very upset: was I really going to do this, I asked myself, was I really going to travel through all these foreign countries by myself, as cheaply as I possibly could? Was I even capable of it? But then it got late enough that I could check into the hostel, and the clouds broke and the sun appeared, and I shared a room with a very cool young woman from Ireland, and she suggested I take a ferry to Belfast and then tour Ireland--in particular, she suggested I head south to someplace picturesque like Kilarney, rent a bicycle, and see how very beautiful the island was--and it all seemed possible and potentially even fun.

So that's what I did, the very next day, which happened to be Easter Sunday. It was a singularly glorious day, the sky clear and bright enough to make you suspect the resurrection was a distinctly possible event. I traveled by train across Scotland, by ferry across the Irish Sea, and got into the Belfast train station late that night. Someone had told me that it was usually possible to get a night train in various cities, and that catching such a train and sleeping on it would save me the cost of a hotel. Unfortuntately, when I got to Belfast, the station was very nearly closed--the station master was waiting only for our train to arrive before shutting the place up and heading home--and there wouldn't be another train out until morning.

I didn't know what to do. I looked up the number of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the phone book, thinking some nice members of the church would help me out, but the number was for a chapel, not a bishop's home, and of course no one answered. But the station master offered to give me a ride to the home of a friend of his who ran a cheap bed and breakfast, and I accepted.

So I ended up in the house of some young guy named John, who fed me peanut butter and toast and chatted with me for a few hours, before offering me a couch where I spread out my sleeping bag and went to sleep. The next morning he made me tea, I gave him a few pounds, he told me which bus to take to the train station, and I caught a train and went to Dublin.

But that story could have ended so very, very differently. I ran into women who had similar tales to tell, except that they were raped and/or robbed by the station master and/or the guy renting out the spare bedroom.

As I mentioned, there were a few very dangerous situations, and there was one time in particular when I knew I was in very real danger. But I survived. And I did it all pretty much on my own, except for a few weeks in Greece and Italy where I met up with friends.

I would never undertake such a thing now. I don't know if I've become wiser, more cowardly, or more accustomed to a certain level of physical and psychological comfort, but I can't imagine wearing the same dirty sweater for three weeks (because it was too cold not to wear it and I was never in one place long enough to wash it, and I didn't have room in my backpack for a second sweater), sleeping every third night or so on a train, and, on those nights when I didn't sleep on the train, spending no more than $15.00 on a bed.

I am one of a supposedly rare breed, a woman who not only can but likes to read maps, so I could usually figure out a decent way to get where I wanted to go. I spoke reasonably comprehensible (if profoundly ugly, not yet having taken a class focusing on pronunciation) French, and I was clever enough that I could usually figure out enough German or Italian or whatever to make sense of instructions, and I was also not the least bit afraid to ask for help from anyone. So I got along. But I wouldn't want to do it again now. I am so happy to travel with Matthew, with his excellent French, and I stand back patiently as he conducts any necessary business with hotel clerks and taxi drivers. I am glad to stay in a three-star Paris hotel (not particularly glamourous, but comfortable enough) instead of some hostel where you have to provide your own sheets.

I suppose I COULD travel like a clueless cheap undergrad again, but what would be the point? I see little romance in roughing it any more, and having taken the approach to travel where you "visit as many of the great museums of Europe as you possibly can, and let yourself be profoundly moved by the art," I'm content to try a different mode.

In fact, I find that I don't feel the same way I once did about art, but discussing that will have to wait for another entry.

Posted by holly at 4:37 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Brussels, which is where I currently am. I got here last night with my friend Matthew--before that we were in Cork, Ireland for about 20 hours (more on that visit later); before that we were in Paris for about 52 hours (more later on that visit as well); and before that he was hanging out in the luxurious Belgian penthouse apartment he shares with his partner, Leo, while I was spending my time getting to and from first the Detroit Airport and then Aeroport Roissy-Charle de Gaulle.

At the risk of sounding, uh, neither French nor francophilic, I must say that while I find Paris lovely and charming, I still prefer other cities to it, among them London and Amsterdam. I am glad to be in Brussels, partly because it is where Matthew lives and partly because it is not Paris.

Last night at dinner Matthew, Leo and I discussed the fact that the next day would be Thanksgiving. Matthew, who is British, spent a couple of years in Arizona (this is where I met him) and occasionally (OK, frequently) encountered people who were remarkably ignorant about the world at large and not always very tolerant or even interested when it came to other cultures, so he is sensitive to American arrogance and ethnocentrism. I said I planned to have a lovely Thanksgiving, even though neither Leo nor Matt expressed the slightest willlingness to cook a turkey for me. "It won't be Thanksgiving here, Holly," Matt gently explained to me, "because we don't celebrate Thanksgiving."

"But it's still Thanksgiving, even if no one observes it," I said, "just like it's still Chinese New Year whenever it's Chinese New Year [those wacky lunar calendars!] and it's still Boxing Day on December 26, even if no one observes it, and it's still your birthday even if no one remembers or even knew in the first place." (I am sensitive to the importance of observing dates that mean something to you even if the place you're living in doesn't give a shit about them, having spent a couple of years in Asia, and I am also big on expanding the number of days of the calendar you find meaningful, having very much enjoyed learning to celebrate and observe the holidays of other cultures.) I could have added, it's still Veteran's Day even if my employer is not cool enough to observe the federal holiday and give me a day off, and it's still Rosh Hashanah even in a predominantly gentile country like the US. Matt was not entirely convinced by this logic, but I am still thinking with fondness and happiness of all my friends and loved ones in the US going about their preparations for Turkey Day.

This is not to say that I am the least bit regretful that I decided to get the hell out of Dodge and fly across the Atlantic for my Thanksgiving break. I like turkey, but I don't feel that missing one meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie has impoverished my life in the slightest. I vaguely recall that there is a football game on Thanksgiving, but I do my best to ignore that.

And I certainly have options available to me as I attempt to remember what I have to be thankful for, and to express that gratitude in meaningful ways.

Here are some of the things I'm grateful for.

1. My friends, especially Matthew, who is one of my oldest, dearest friends in the entire world, and who has loved me with constance and generosity, and who has forgiven me for some fairly awful things I've done to him, and who has sincerely atoned for the ways he has hurt me. He not only is my friend, but he has worked hard to include me in the larger network of his life, making sure that I know the other people close to him. I feel very, very lucky to know him.

2. My blog, and Jim, who designed it and hosts it, and everyone who reads it--that's right, I'm grateful for YOU. Can you tell that I really do love blogging? I could go on and on about all the great things it does for me, but that should probably be another entry.

3. My family. They're conservative and Mormon and we often disagree about things, but they still love me and have helped me become the person I am, and I think that counts for something.

4. The fact that if you work at it, you do get a bit wiser with age. I'm really grateful not to be as foolish and confused as I was 20 years ago.

5. Beautiful things, not just paintings and sculpture, but ingeniously crafted tables and mantlepieces. The older I get, the more I find I admire things that are not merely lovely, but useful.

6. Postcards.

7. Having a job and a source of income.

8. Belgian chocolate.

9. Belgian beer.

The last two items are among the things I plan to use in helping me celebrate. In case you didn't know, Belgian beer is among the finest in the world: exceptionally diverse, finely crafted, FREAKIN' DELICIOUS. Last night I had a bottle of something called Corsendonk: Oh, it was lovely! Spicy and complex, dark but not heavy.

OK. It's almost noon here, and I'm still sitting at Matthew's computer in my pajamas, my hair filthy from all that Parisian pollution. He had errands to run and I promised him that when he got back, my hair would be clean and I'd be ready to go out and have fun, so I better get up and get in the shower. (I am also grateful for how I look in the mirror in the bathroom in this place--the bathroom tiles, which cover most of the walls, are a gently glowing bronze, so that the light reflected off them is as flattering as light can possibly be.)

In any event, I must close, and I'll do it by wishing the whole world--not just that big hunk of land in the middle of North America--a very happy Thanksgiving.

Read more about my trip in I Went: Europe, Il Neige, Hosts and Guests, Someplace High in Paris,and Welcome Home.

Posted by holly at 4:54 AM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

There Is No X in....

In 1994, the landscape of Iowa City was forever changed when the Java House opened at 211 ½ East Washington. Its appearance heralded the arrival of the coffee craze in the general Midwest--sure, there were probably Starbucks all over Chicago at that point, but there wasn't one in Iowa City. (In fact, there wasn't a single Starbucks in Iowa City when I left in 2001, but there's one now, I saw with disappointment, though at least it's off the main drag and not nearly as crowded as other, older, cooler places.)

Iowa City's downtown features an area known as the pedestrian mall, the ped mall for short. It runs through four blocks bounded by Washington on the north, Clinton on the west, Burlington on the south, and Linn on the east. Paved with brick, dotted with trees, well-stocked with benches both in the shade and in the sun, equipped with a fountain and a playground, it's a cool place to hang out if there's no one you want to avoid; if there's someone you don't particularly want to encounter--say, for instance, an evil ex named Adam--you are sure to find him there, sitting on a bench in the sun, hitting on some undergrad who can't understand why this 30-something guy with the crazy eyebrows (his eyebrows were his worst feature, looking as they did like small furry rodents nesting on an otherwise attractive face) is putting on this act of intense and obviously fake sincerity. The restaurants, shops and bars (mostly bars) around the ped mall occupy prime retail space, because it gets so much foot traffic.

Prior to the arrival of the Java House, the only coffee house in downtown Iowa City was a place called the Tobacco Bowl, the retail equivalent of an AA meeting or an indoor cigarette break: no need to shiver in a snowstorm between classes or put up with the boozy smell of stale beer while you get your nicotine fix--heavens no! Why not enjoy a nice espresso instead of a beer and stay warm while you're at it? You can either study the cigars in the humidor--such a variety--or sit in front of a big window facing the ped mall, watching everyone who walks by! I admit I see the appeal of all that, I just don't see the appeal of smoking. I would never hang out there, even with friends who smoked, because I hated how I smelled when I left.

But then the Java House opened and the city was transformed. The Java House was pretentious, expensive and perennially overcrowded, which didn't prevent anyone from loving it, me included. It was centrally located--just a dozen yards or so off the north entrance to the ped mall--and had a phone from which you could make free local calls (this in the days before everyone had cell phones). It had reasonably clean bathrooms clear at the back of the establishment, so you could stroll through the whole place, see if there was anyone around you wanted to talk to, use the bathroom, then go on your merry way. Everyone hung out there from time to time, sometimes for hours on end. When we had visitors from out of town, we'd drop them off at the Java House while we went to take or teach classes; we called it "adult daycare."

The Java House also served damn good coffee--still does. Every cup is individually brewed, before your very eyes, after you order it.

There was one thing I always HATED about the Java House: the t-shirts worn by its employees. These shirts had a little slogan written over the heart: "There is no X in espresso."

It drove me nuts because the kind of people who drink espresso are generally the kind of people who know how to spell it. I always felt like responding, "There is no X in ‘pretentious f*ckhead,' either," but I realized that the employees just WORE the t-shirts; they didn't create them.

On my recent visit to Iowa City, the first place I went after checking into my hotel was the Java House (the original Java House, to be specfic--there are now five in town). It had changed in that there was more seating--a good thing--and the graphics on the paper cups were busy and fussy instead of austere and elegant like they used to be, but those goddamn pretentious annoying t-shirts were just the same. Thank god the coffee was too.

Posted by holly at 8:40 AM | Comments (2)

November 10, 2005

Greetings from Iowa

I'm currently hanging out at my second alma mater, the University of Iowa. I'm here for a very cool conference on nonfiction, called, appropriately enough, NonfictioNow. I'm having a FABULOUS time, despite the fact that the conference organizers made no arrangements for attendees to be able to use computer facilities for anything: not email, not printing out last minute revisions of papers, not blogging. I'm only able to write this entry due to the generosity of an old classmate, who, saintly, trusting woman that she is, gave me her user name and password and let me log in on her account. My god.... I am still in awe of her benevolence.

But I'm so glad I came. I've been lucky enough to meet up with many old friends, which is always wonderful. I've met new people. Then there's the fact that I get to wander around someplace I lived for eight years. I didn't really love Iowa City when I was here, especially at first; it was cold and midwestern and filled with ugly architecture. But it has gotten WAY cooler in the four years since I left, and there's almost no comparison to what it was like in 1993, when I first arrived.

One of the standard lines about Iowa City went, "Oh, it's a nice little town, but there's hardly a decent restaurant in the whole place!" But now there are quite a few shishi restaurants just downtown. And there are all kinds of cool galleries and shops. And some of the ugly buildings have been torn down and replaced with buildings that aren't quite so ugly. (Though there are still PLENTY of HIDEOUS buildings, so that I still feel I recognize the place, and don't quite wish I could move back.)

Anyway. I'll no doubt have more to say about this trip and this conference when I get back to PA, but in the meantime, I thought I'd give a shout-out to you, my vast and devoted readership, and say HI FROM IOWA.

Posted by holly at 7:12 PM | Comments (2)

September 1, 2005

A Little Distance

A few months ago I was thinking about how I'd like to spend next summer in Europe, but it would be really inconvenient because the post office will only hold mail for 30 days, plus I have a cat and a house full of stuff I can't just go off and leave. Then I thought about my colleagues who are married or have live-in partners, and how they gallivant around the planet and leave their spouses back home to take care of everything. "That's what I need," I thought. "I need a live-in boyfriend who will babysit my cat and keep an eye on my stuff while I go to Europe for six months."

I told Tom about this. "Holly," he said, "most people want a boyfriend or a girlfriend not so they can go off and leave them, but so they can be with them."

"Yeah," I said, "I know. But I've always thought most people put way too much emphasis on the whole togetherness part of a relationship."

I wasn't just being perverse when I said this. My closest friends live in Brussels, Hollywood and Seattle. The guy in Brussels in particular I hardly ever see–-the last time was May 2002, and that was because he bought me a roundtrip plane ticket from Phoenix to Brussels. Given that he was so generous to me, and given the fact that I can call western Europe for three or four cents a minute, I figure it's my moral duty to call him often. As for the other two, weekend and evening calls on the cell phone are free. I feel we do a pretty good job of maintaining warm and intimate friendships. Not only that, but I was in a couple of long-distance relationships, and I liked certain things about them. For one thing, I write fabulous love letters, a skill I rarely have opportunity to use.

Tom is married to someone very cool and they have a very cool five-year-old daughter. I have gotten the distinct impression that he enjoys spending time with his wife and child. He rolled his eyes at me, despite my sound logic. "Are there are any other reasons you'd want a boyfriend?" he asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Like what?"

"Oh," I said, pausing to think, "uh, physical affection. Intellectual companionship--definitely. And emotional intimacy."

"So what matters most?" he asked.

"Well, I guess...I guess the physical affection/ intellectual companionship/ emotional intimacy stuff all kind of tie for first place, but the free cat-sitting runs a close fourth," I said. "I'm not afraid of a little distance."

Apparently the only part of my request the universe paid attention to was the "not afraid of a little distance" part. Not long ago I met someone I really liked, at least for a while. Unfortunately, we lived on opposite sides of the continent. There were other reasons the relationship died an early and ugly death, but the distance didn't help.

And now that I think about it, I remember that although there were things I liked about long-distance relationships, my two previous efforts ultimately failed as well. I have been forced to admit that despite all the ways modern technology makes it possible to stay in touch with someone, it's not the same as being together.

To hell with free cat-sitting. I'll trade it for someone whose face I can actually see when he says "Hello."

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)