Santa Rosa, New Mexico: Eyeball to eyeball on Route 66

A friendly town on New Mexico's Route 66 was the setting for an important family moment in this Ribbons excerpt that recently ran as a front page feature in the Traveling Today department of iparenting.com. Enjoy, and feel free to pass this post along to others who had, have, will have or are glad they don't have teenagers...

Where shall we go next?

Christo, the Chrysler Building and one bad oyster

I'm back from New York City and, as always, she was amazing. Can’t get enough. I’ve got to do more of these spur of the moment quickie trips. Four hours and I’m there. Maybe next time I’ll take the Fung Wah Bus. For fifteen bucks each way, you’re delivered between Chinatowns – Boston’s and New York’s.

I did some of my regular New York things – photographed the Chrysler Building 99 times; sucked down a platter of mollusks at Grand Central’s Oyster Bar (I actually met an oyster I didn’t like – from Kitana Bay. Quite milky, and it sat too deep in the shell, making it hard to get to); ran the city and found more bronze plaques marking historic sites (I now know where Nathan Hale, hanged in New York City at age 21 by order of General William Howe, uttered his last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” and where Thomas Edison screened what was the world’s first “movie”); marveled at the life-sized stuffed horse and elephant ($15K) at FAO Schwarz and watched two young staffers – maybe Julliard students – play The Entertainer with their feet on the piano Tom Hanks danced on in Big and passed on the $16 to-go banana split on offer at the street level ice cream shop; hung out in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library – the food kiosks were closed, but the lovely hunter green lawn chairs were out, and many homeless people sat in the sun, sleeping.

But I spent most of my visit in Central Park enjoying Christo’s Gates (see last post). The whole thing was great fun, and I think that’s the idea. Enjoyment, glee, happiness, good feelings, freedom. Whatever you call it, art or not, it made people smile. And I mean grin really big. Thousands of people walking around smiling. What a lovely gift. Something vast, intriguing, colorful and temporary bringing joy, for 16 days, to everyone in or around Central Park. Even people I overheard professing to hate it (“What is this? Art? We could do this. String some material over some poles...”) kept walking through saffron-draped gate after gate after gate. The naysayers were having a good time, and I didn’t see any of them turn and leave.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude took a few spins around the park in a gray-silver chauffeured luxury car. Jeanne-Claude had her window down in the 16 degree cold, gleaming and waving, her giant red hair laughing on top of her head. I focused on her so long that I only saw Christo as a shadow by her side.

All kinds of people having a huge, happy time in a supreme public space in a city where superlatives are the norm. In February. In sub-20-degree weather. Art? I think so. Powerful, good vibes.

Everyone related to the miles of flowing orange curtains in his or her own way. I listened to a fit, steel-haired man in his 60’s, talking to a friend on a cell phone, say, “I’m under the gates. I’m right under the gates. Get yourself into the city, Sandy. There are women here. Lots of women...”


Ribbons of Highway proceeds continue to go to tsunami relief. Thank you.

Where shall we go next?

Off to Central Park to see Christo's Gates

This will be a short post. Busy day. I was reading the February issue of Smithsonian yesterday and came upon an article about Christo's installation, The Gates, currently alive in Central Park for a mere 16 days. Something wonderful in my favorite place in my favorite city on earth. I bought a train ticket and nabbed one of the last hotel rooms in the city -- Manhattan is sold out. (Mike tried to get me into a Marriott because he's got one of those fancy platinum cards, but no dice. Every Marriott in the city is booked. I then tried our old 3-star favorites, places we use in Manhattan when we're not staying for free using Marriott points -- the Westpark and Radio City Apartments. If you're fussy, or are bothered by bedspreads that don't match the drapes, look elsewhere. Anyway, both sold out. I turned to Expedia and got what looked like the last room in midtown, at the Roosevelt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal. )

I'll tell you about The Gates when I return, but, as anyone who read my inaugural blog post back in October will remember, you'll have to wait a bit for a photo, because I use film and am one of the few people left on the planet who have to wait for slides to be developed...

This should be an exuberant event. A perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to take in something as wacky, wonderful and joyous as a Christo installation. I hope I see Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his wife, wandering around the park. I have a feeling they'll be there, watching everyone enjoy the miles of saffron-colored nylon fabric draped from 7,500 gates set 12-feet apart along Central Park's maze of walkways.

I will spend my entire visit in the park, viewing The Gates in the evening, at dawn on my 6 am runs, at height of day, and in the late afternoon light. I'll also scope out the course for the MORE Marathon, a marathon I'm running in Central Park on April 10.

Which reminds me, I'm in training, and today's my long run day. Gotta sign off and go bang out 14 miles. Come home, pack, and I'm off to New York City. Have a great weekend.

St. Valentine was Italian

Well, not technically Italian, as Italy didn’t exist in the third century, when the priest, Valentine, stood on the side of love and free will and married young couples in defiance of Roman emperor Claudius II’s decree that young men could not wed. The emperor had decided that unattached men made better soldiers than their married counterparts. Valentine, a make-love-not-war type, performed marriages anyway and paid with his life.

It fits that a man whose life legend gave rise to a holiday celebrating love came from what is now Italy, a land to which I could return and return endlessly. Italy is beauty and romance and sun and light and breeze and blue water and sweet nothings and rich tastings and languid afternoons and shimmering evenings. Italy isn’t a country. It’s a state of mind, a sensual experience to be savored.

Love was in the air when we visited Burano, a small island in the lagoon that surrounds Venice and environs. Crazy-colorful like a box of crayons, Burano’s houses are brilliant shades of purple, blue, red, orange, yellow, green. Vivid, gorgeous, great fun. I can’t imagine being depressed in Burano. There’s too much fantastic, spirited color.

As we walked the island’s main street, wide, cobbled and built aside the canal that flows through town, I saw a homemade flyer taped to the window of a small shop. Two young faces – the kind Valentine must have looked on – smiled from the poster, which announced: “Walter & Paola oggi Sposi” – “Walter and Paola married today.” Cheek to cheek, Walter and Paola shared their love with all of Burano. I hoped they’d put the poster up that morning, which would make “oggi” mean “today” actually, and not just in translation. Maybe we’d see a wedding.

We made our way to the broad, cobbled piazza that held Burano’s ancient church. We looked up at the church’s campanile, which tilted some 15 degrees. We’d seen the askew bell tower from the water on our approach to the island, and now we stood under it, trusting it wouldn’t topple onto our heads.

The piazza began to fill up with people dressed in their Sunday best. It wasn’t Sunday. Hot dog. We were going to see Paola marry Walter. We did our best to blend in with the wedding guests, but our backpacks looked like rhinoceroses in the sea of graceful, lace umbrellas the ladies carried to shield their faces from the sun. Burano lace is prized, and each of these exquisite, handmade umbrellas – some white, some a velvety black – was a work of art. I stood behind some of the ladies and examined the intricate, dreamy lace patterns as the sun played on the umbrellas.

Just before noon, Paola walked up Burano’s ancient main street on her father’s arm. He beamed. The train of Paola’s snow-white wedding dress brushed over the centuries-old pavement as she made her way to the church door. Her father lifted her veil, kissed her, and the wedding party and guests entered the church.

We didn’t want the rhinoceroses on our backs to spoil Paola’s wedding or wedding pictures, so we watched the nuptials from the window. Wagner’s Wedding March thundered from the church organ, filling Burano’s afternoon air. The crayon houses seemed to break into smiles. Paola glided up the aisle and joined Walter at the altar. Oggi sposi. Married today. St. Valentine would have loved it.


(In researching links for this post, I came across this webpage by someone named Annie. The page hasn’t been updated since 2002, but Annie shares some interesting Valentine’s Day legends, lore and holiday traditions around the world. Scroll down past the candy and cards stuff...)

Where shall we go next?

Overnight trains

We've made summer travel plans. Mike and Adam will travel two hours north to our New Hampshire cottage and spend a week painting it. We’ve owned the place for 20 years, and this will be the first fresh coat it’s received from us. In New Hampshire, paint jobs, like people, are hardy and weather-resistant.

Dana and I are going to Russia. We’ll spend a few days each in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I can’t wait to see St. Basil’s wild-tiled domes and Peter the Great’s sherbet-colored palaces lining the Neva River, but what I’m really psyched about is the overnight train between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

When I was a student vagabonding around Europe, rail was my mode of transport, and overnight trains saved the cost of a hotel room. (That’s Backpacking, Lesson 1. If you’re female, you learn Lesson 2, How to Keep Safe, on the fly. Trust your instincts, ladies, and when intuition speaks, listen without question. If you feel the need to hit someone over the head with your pack, excuse yourself from the compartment, and sit on the floor near the well-trafficked and brightly lit bathroom, do so without hesitation or apology.)

Despite an occasional misadventure, I grew to love the trains. When we went to Kenya as a family not long ago, I booked us on the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. We didn’t sleep much, but we savored the experience.

Our cab driver, Emmanuel, deposited us at the Nairobi Railway Station. We bid him kwaheri, good-bye in Swahili, and went to the station’s central platform, where “LORI HEIN PARTY” was listed, with coach and compartment assignment, on the “Berthing Allotments” section of the station’s notice board. A railway worker in a white coat gave us four meal tickets for the train’s 7:15 p.m. seating.

We boarded, found our four-berth second-class compartment, and made ourselves at home. Dana read animal books and Archie and Jughead comics, Adam fired up the Gameboy, and Mike pulled out a copy of The Economist someone had left behind in the station waiting room. Luke, our “caretaker,” popped by to say he’d make up our bedding while we were at dinner. (When we returned he gave us a security drill, and his most urgent tip was to keep our windows closed at station stops to thwart thieves who’d try to reach into the compartment and grab things.)

A pair of stewards walked through our compartment banging a dinner gong, and we proceeded to the restaurant car. Dinner was orchestrated like a rolling ballet, white-coated waiters serving drinks, soup, bread, and rice and curry in an efficiently choreographed performance that gave you just enough time to eat, and them just enough time to clear, before the next seating. Dana, in the photo above, was dubious about the curry – she saw chicken in it. Not much of a flesh-eater, this girl has clothing that reads, “Spare an animal. Eat a vegetable.”

As we rolled toward Mombasa on this railway that Queen Victoria ordered built in 1898 to best the Germans in the European chess game of dominion in East Africa – Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm lived to outdo one another – I stayed glued to the window, recording every nighttime scene and nuance in my journal. Over a dozen stops. Emali, Kiboko. Makindu with its beverage stall lit up bright in the black night and music playing. Darjani, where a full African moon lit the landscape and a lone, powerful southern hemisphere star commanded the heavens. At each stop, I heard nighttime voices and the sound of leather sandals padding the platform outside our window, hurrying to get on the train before it slithered southeast to the coast. Mtito Andrei, where big rigs traveling the dangerously narrow and monotonous Nairobi-Mombasa highway were parked, waiting for daylight. The road parallels the tracks, and I’d experience occasional middle-of-the-night terror when an 18-wheeler barreled next to our train, engine and headlights blazing.

I remember Voi at 5 a.m. A road and railway commerce hub that sits between Tsavo National Park’s east and west sections, the outpost was humming with trucks and trains, all moving, transporting goods from one piece of East Africa to another. Before we reached Voi, I’d looked out onto Tsavo – the Nairobi-Mombasa train rolls right through it. Twenty-eight indentured Indian slaves, part of the contingent “recruited” to build the railway from Mombasa to present-day Uganda’s Lake Victoria, were eaten by lions in the landscape I looked upon. Two man-eaters plagued Colonel John Henry Patterson’s railway-building camp, carrying workers away in the middle of the night, feasting on them, leaving only limbs and bones behind. Patterson himself eventually shot and killed the two lions, and his 1907 classic, “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo,” recounts the whole bloody ordeal.

I’m excited about my next train ride. Overnight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Will I sleep? Or, as it was in Africa, will so many fascinating vignettes pass outside the window that sleep is rendered impossible...


Ribbons of Highway proceeds continue to go to tsunami relief. The headlines have faded, but the need hasn’t. Details here.

The Minnesota watershed moment

You're probably thinking, "Wait... this doesn't look like Minnesota...". You're right. It's Nevada. This Ribbons excerpt from a recent issue of Hackwriters -- The International Writers Magazine ties the two together. Everything's relative...

Ignorance is not bliss

I told you my mother reads this blog. Her response to my last post:


I enjoyed reading about it now that it is in hindsight. Once again it proves that the old saying, "What you don't know won't hurt you" is not true, since not knowing that these Indians believed that if you took their picture you captured their soul, could have hurt us.

Love Mom

Otavalo, Ecuador: Cameras and culture clash

My mother and I had hired a guide to take us by car from our base in Quito, Ecuador to the livestock and artisan markets at Otavalo, about two hours away. Marika, the guide, was a chic Dane who dressed in tight black pants and heels and stood nearly two feet taller than than most Ecuadorans. She’d married an Ecuadoran banker and had lived in Quito for about four years.

She met us in our hotel lobby and walked us to the car, a huge, steel, late-‘70s Mercury sedan with a metallic coppertone paint job and a back seat the size of a living room sofa. Behind the steering wheel sat a massive bear of a man whom Marika introduced as “Charlie.” Charlie owned the Mercury, which had somehow made its way from its Detroit birthplace to a new life in South America. Charlie spoke little English and focused on his driving, negotiating the panoramic cliff-hugging roads with great care.

We watched pigs and produce change hands at the agricultural market, where the Otavalans did their shopping, then wandered among the handicraft and textile stalls in Otavalo’s main square. Women in richly embroidered blouses and deep blue head scarves worked at the stalls, while the men, dressed in white pants and shirts and dark indigo ponchos stood nearby, often in pairs. The Otavalo Indians are proud, protective of their lineage and are among the most successful of Ecuador’s indigenous groups. The work of these renowned weavers is highly prized.

Imbabura province’s lush, high altitude landscape rolled past the car windows as we headed back toward Quito. We resumed the routine we’d adopted on the ride to Otavalo: Marika made nonstop polite chitchat from the front seat, and silent Charlie kept his eyes on the road, stopping whenever we wanted to take a picture.

What’s that up ahead?! Something interesting is going on down that embankment off the road! A flurry of color and activity. A large group of Indians in bright colors is swirling and dancing and singing in a dusty yard next to a low, white building with a covered porch. A festival! What luck! Charlie stopped the car, and the four of us walked down the hill to watch the celebration.

In short order, my mother and I were pressed into the crowd, in the center of which were half-a-dozen men in garishly painted bird and animal masks. Marika was whirling about, too. Charlie, over six feet tall and the size of a linebacker, stood on the porch, watching the scene as carefully as he’d watched the road. I read and understood his body language, and kept my camera at my side.

My mother, dancing in the circle’s middle, raised her camera, looked into the viewfinder and clicked. Before I realized what was happening, Charlie bolted through the crowd and said to me, “Run! Now!” My mother was still dancing. Charlie pushed his way to her. I risked one shot of a man in an orange mask raising his arm toward me before I turned to run. The men in the circle lunged at us, pointing at our cameras. Faces that had been friendly and welcoming turned angry. People shouted, shook their fists in our faces and tried to grab our cameras.

Charlie, bigger than any three of them glued together, put his body between us and the snarling crowd. “Run!” We scrambled as fast as we could up the short embankment. Marika was already at the car and had opened all the doors. We jumped in and waited for Charlie, who’d stayed below longer than he should have to give us more running room. He bounded up the rise, jumped into the driver’s seat and tore away, the crowd not far behind.

I’d seen something before I’d jumped into the backseat. A car had pulled up behind us, and a blonde tourist in yellow polyester got out and started bounding gaily down the embankment toward the festival. Around her neck hung a big, black camera.

Where shall we go next?

Update on book proceeds to tsunami relief (see Jan. 2 post): The Red Cross has announced it has collected enough funds to sustain a 10-year rebuilding effort, and UNICEF is scaling back calls for donations. Thus, I'll target future proceeds from "Ribbons of Highway" sales to Save The Children.