Cathedral of Trees

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: George Farrell

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

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

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The North End: Where the streets wear crowns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Christian Science water

When I put the viewfinder to my eye the other night to frame this photo of Boston's First Church of Christ, Scientist (Mother Church), throwing its magnificent stone glory into the great, oblong reflecting pool that runs the length of Christian Science Plaza, I thought of Venice. I remember taking a photo of Santa Maria della Salute, a night shot, the basilica bouncing its reflection into the Grand Canal.

As if on cue, a boat shot by in the reflecting pool, looking like one of the speedboats that ply the Venice lagoon. A middle-aged man sitting cross-legged on the pavement that rims the reflecting pool was playing with his motorized model boat in the dark.

The Venice flashback dimmed when I turned to see the lights of Boston's tallest buildings glowing in the background. And the Venice image truly disappeared when I saw the plaza's fountain. Its jets are positioned so the sprays of water cross over each other, a feat engineered by my father-in-law, a blue collar Boston plumber, long retired.

My father-in-law was on the job installing the waterworks when the Christian Science Center was being built in the early '70s. (I wonder if he ever ran into I.M.Pei.) He and his crew were installing the fountain, its sprays designed to shoot straight. One morning a bigwig from the Christian Science Church went to inspect the fountain-in-progress and asked that the sprays be made to cross each other.

My father-in-law got some plywood blocks and jury rigged the nozzles. He crossed his fingers that his MacGyvering would make the sprays cross. They did, and they still do, all these years later.

Whenever we walk or drive by the fountain we tell the kids, "Your grandfather did that."

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Marathoner's guide to a Murphy's Law universe (with congrats to Valerie Bertinelli)

"Mom, you're overthinking this," said Dana, as I debated whether to pack the strawberry or tangerine PowerGel -- their caffeine content differs -- in the fuel belt I was readying for last month's Boston Marathon.

"I think not," I replied, and packed both.

I've been a middle-of-the-pack marathoner for a lot of years, and Murphy's Law seems to govern whenever I go into training. So I've developed a guide to help me survive the trip from training to the starting line. (For me, the starting line is always the goal. If I make it there, I'll finish.)

My Top Ten Rules of the Road:

Rule #1: Hide the razor. If you shave your legs before an important long run you will cut the back of your ankle open at exactly the spot where your sneaker rubs the skin and you will lose a week of training.

Rule #2: Eat like Joanie. If you read an article in which Joan Benoit Samuelson remarks that chickpeas are part of her training diet, eat a can of chickpeas for lunch on the day before every run exceeding 10 miles.

Rule #3: Love your legumes. Campbell's baked beans make an excellent power breakfast before a long run when eaten exactly 90 minutes before commencing running, so carry a pop-top can of these beans and a plastic spoon with you on marathon morning and shrug off the looks from the bagel-eating runners all around you. If someone, say a preening, no-body-fat, 30-year-old male says, smirkily, "I hope I won't be running behind you," tell him a) you've heard that a million times and b) you'll try to remember to slow down so he can get ahead of you.

Rule #4: Beware the bathroom. As marathon time nears, step slowly and carefully over the metal door jam at the bottom of your shower stall. Otherwise, you will bash your toe into the metal bar and you will lose a week of training.

Rule #5: Trust no one. Even though race organizers promise plenty of lemon-lime flavored Gatorade along the course, carry your own supply in your fuel belt. Otherwise, one or more of these things will happen: a) only water is offered until mile 7, about two miles after your body's used to having its first Gatorade sips b) the Gatorade is so watered-down that it bears little resemblance to the liquid you've used in training, and your body and mind freak out c) those little cups at the Gatorade stops are filled so meagerly that you don't get enough or d) they run out of Gatorade by the time you hit the final miles, leaving only water, which is not fuel.

Rule #6: Go it alone. Some small marathons have "pace group leaders" on the course. Do not run with these people. There will be much chit-chatting in the early miles, which saps energy and ensures that the race's second half, if not the last two-thirds, will be a sad and sorry few hours. Avoid anyone with placards, paddles or balloons with pace times on them and the people that move with them.

Rule #7: Crank the tunes. Ignore all attempts to dissuade you from running with headphones. There are reasons why God and Steve Jobs invented the iPod. Using 26 miles of music to motivate and soothe so your mind and body hurt less is one of the best.

Rule #8: Ditch the down dogs: Stay away from yoga class the week before the marathon or an important long run. Otherwise, you will pull your back out and lose a week of training. Or miss your marathon.

Rule #9: Sleep, then sleep again: Go to bed early the five nights before the marathon. Nerves will make sleep the night before and the night before the night before impossible, so get your rest before that and before that. Knowing you've made deposits to the rest bank helps avoid a freakout on race day eve, guaranteed to be a sleepless night.

Rule #10: Turn up the heat. In the days before the marathon, unless you live in the desert or tropics, keep your furnace humming and wear layers of clothing and a hat around the house. Otherwise, you'll get sick. Then your body will spend its energy staying warm and getting better, and you'll have nothing left for the marathon. If your family or roommates protest, "It's like a sauna in here," tell them to chill and put on a bathing suit until your race is over.

I stuck to my rulebook and had a good race at this year's Boston. Not a personal best, but a decent performance.

And I beat Valerie Bertinelli, to whom I extend a major shout-out. Nice going, Val. A personal trainer and the weighty resources of Jenny Craig may have helped get Valerie out there in the first place, but nobody ran the race for her. She did it herself, one step at a time. Congratulations.

I wonder if Val has a rulebook. I wonder if Jenny Craig lets her eat baked beans and chickpeas.

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Outdoor art adventures

You don't have to go to a museum to find great art. There are marvelous outdoor pieces in cities and towns all over the world. (Think Calders just sitting there on the sidewalks of New York. There's one that looks like a big bunch of red lollipops downtown by City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge.)

Wherever you travel, keep your eyes open for interesting sculptures, murals and other outdoor installations - like this colorful piece near the castle walls in Tarragona, Spain.

If you live near Boston or are planning to visit, check out this story I wrote for a recent issue of Boston Parents Paper that tells you where to find some great al fresco art in Beantown.

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Spring day in Back Bay

We had a lovely Easter. We drove into Boston and went to the noon service at Trinity Church in Copley Square in Boston's Back Bay area near the Charles River.

Trinity is considered architect H.H. Richardson's masterpiece, and it's a glorious work, inside and out. We sat in the last pew, listened to powerful music performed by a superb choir, brass ensemble and organist, and saw some Easter bonnets.

The sun was blazing and people were lounging about the square and walking in throngs down Boylston and Newbury Streets.

We had lunch at Vlora Mediterranean Restaurant & Wine Bar on Boylston. The restaurant gets its name from the owner's hometown in Albania. The menu was extensive and featured tons of Mediterranean goodies -- plenty of choices for carnivores and vegetarians alike -- and the prices were wallet-friendly. We'll go back. My grilled octopus brought me back to sun-splashed Greece.

On the way back to the car we found a recently-opened consignment shop called Annabelle Jones on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury streets.

Dana and I liked the eclectic stuff we saw in the window so we ducked in. What a find. In addition to incredible designer garb, shoes and bags at nice prices, Annabelle Jones has jewelry -- some funky, some estate-quality -- with prices starting at about $20 and moving up (way up for the estate collections).

We saw things we loved and could easily have spent an hour or more cruising the racks and display cases, but Mike and Adam were outside waiting, so we left empty-handed with me promising Dana a return visit for her birthday, coming up in May.

Newbury Street was lined with restaurants and cafes, most with outdoor umbrella tables where tourists, locals, families and students from the gazillion nearby colleges ate and drank, enjoying a beautiful spring day in Back Bay.

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Journey through the night sky

Give your optic nerves some nighttime exercise at a college observatory near you. Most college observatories offer public viewing nights that let you scan the cosmos with high-powered telescopes and reflectors, and there's usually an eager physics student on hand to act as tour guide, pointing out sights like the Moon's seas and craters, the rings of Saturn and the jewel-like stars that arc through Orion's belt.

For college observatory and other space-viewing venues near Boston, click here to read an article I wrote for a recent issue of Boston Parents Paper.

To infinity and beyond!

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Carrion call

Carrion eaters is not a subject that flies across the radar screen of most people's daily lives, but on a recent day I encountered the subject of giant, flesh-eating birds not once, not twice, but three times (one of those times in the flesh).

In the morning Dana handed me her college application essay, the piece of work that will, if done well, convey to admissions officers something true and real about her that other components of her application may not.

Her essay is about our trip to Uganda and its effect on her life. It's beautiful, and I love it more with each reading. Near the beginning she makes a reference to the big birds that lurk in and circle over Kampala:

"There were differences between their world and mine: four-foot-tall marabou storks don’t rest on my neighbors’ satellite dishes, ubiquitous signs warning about the prevalence of AIDS don’t mark my Boston streets, whole families don’t navigate the city on a single, chugging motor scooter, and women don’t sit by the side of the road selling bananas and spreading sorghum out to dry..."

A few hours after Dana's essay had plucked Uganda memories from the back of my mind and put them up front, I sat down with a book, the 2002 edition of The Best American Travel Writing. I'd picked up the anthology the week before at a used book sale and was half-way through. The next story on tap was Edward Hoagland's "Visiting Norah," originally published in Worth magazine. I almost dropped the book when I read the first sentence:

"Two pairs of marabou storks, each of them five feet tall and battleship gray with a pink neck and a wattle pouch, proudly posing and croaking, were raising chicks in bulky nests in the flame trees that overlooked the swimming pool at the Fairway Hotel in Kampala, Uganda."

Where Dana's marabou storks stay benignly in their satellite dishes, Hoagland's fowl are ready to swoop down and feed:

"... marabou storks... are carrion feeders and offal scavengers, similar to but larger than the most no-nonsense vulture, and in famine territory they of course will eat children who drop by the wayside. In the chaos of modern Africa, they have moved from the veldt and forests into the cities, wherever garbage and death and anarchy erupt. They are tolerated because, as they stalk around, gobbling refuse, rodents, fruit rinds, rotting vomit, dog carcasses... with their thick, scary beaks, they fend off disease. But when I saw them roosting in the downtown parks... as if watching for any homeless person who might be staggering or bleeding, they looked like undertakers to me."

They are hideous and huge, and they are everywhere in Kampala. It took me and Dana about a day to get used to their wheeling, squawking, hulking forms as just another routine piece of the urban puzzle.

So, it's lunchtime in my little Boston 'burb, and I've had two carrion encounters. Odd.

After lunch I go off for a slow run. A mile from my house, above the well-trafficked, densely-built route I've been running for 15 years, a giant bird circles above my head and lands on an antique Cape's peaked roof. His wingspan stretches at least three feet. I stop in my tracks and stare. What is that bird? An eagle? He opens his wings, stares directly at me, and keeps his awesome wings open, as if to dry them in the sun that's beating on the black-shingled roof. A second bird flies up a side street, rounds the corner onto the street I stand on, and joins his friend on the roof. Their great wings are outstretched. I am transfixed.

They are magnificent -- from the neck down. No, these are not eagles. These have hideous heads.

A man and his son ride toward me on bikes. "We saw you, and wanted to see what you were looking at," said the dad. I asked if he knew what kind of birds these are -- some type of giant hawk, perhaps?

"Turkey vultures. They're around here, but they don't usually come out into the open like this. They're usually in the fields."

Vultures. "There must be dead meat around," I said, and a second later we spied half of a dead, bloody fox lying near the side of the road.

I continued my run, again with thoughts of Africa in my head, Kenya this time, where, on dawn game drives in the Masai Mara we'd watch scavengers -- jackals and hyenas -- fight over the remains of kills that the lions had brought down and feasted on through the night. Predators kill at night; scavengers feed in the morning. The sated, fat-bellied simbas were asleep in the grasses, leaving wildebeest haunches and zebra heads for the dawn patrol, animals lower on the food chain. Hyenas ruled the carcass-cleaning chaos, and they chased and swatted the jackals who darted fast and low into the feeding frenzy to tear off small chunks of flesh and spirit them away.


The vultures were too smart, too patient or too lazy to fight for their food. They simply waited on the sidelines for the others to finish, then swooped or waddled over to the carcass so many animals had already dined on, spread their wings over it, then hunched down to pick every crevice clean.


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A feast: Boston's North End

Mike and I went into Boston tonight to stroll around and dine in the North End. I'm glad I don't live in the North End because I would want to eat constantly. There's an eatery every hundred feet. And they're all awesome.

There were giant lines outside Mike's Pastry, famous for cannolis, and Giacomo's, a cash-only restaurant on Hanover Street. I heard a guy say that the ATM across the street from Giacomo's "is the busiest ATM in Boston." I asked somebody in the Giacomo line what the attraction was. He didn't know. He was standing in an hour-long line for Italian food in an area with scores of places to eat Italian food, most without lines, and he didn't know why, exactly, he was standing there. His wife said, "It's good food."

We'd just feasted at Assaggio on Prince Street. Good food. No line.

And the line at Mike's Pastry? You don't have to stand in it. "That's the tourist line," said a local, when I asked out loud on the sidewalk in front of Mike's whether the cannoli within could be worth that kind of wait. "You don't have to stand in that line," said the North Ender, holding a white and blue Mike's Pastry box secured with string. "Just go in and go up to the counter."

The North End's a feast.

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The Luddite goes digital

I've done it. I've gone digital. I've been building up to this decision for a few years now (really), and I've made the move. I just invested in a Canon EOS Rebel XSi and have spent the past few days getting used to the new machine. I'm hoping to fall in love with it.

Today I took my two gorgeous, circa-1974, steel-body Nikon Nikkormats -- cameras that have circumnavigated the globe with me many times, steadfastly delivering quality images of the planet's most wondrous places -- and mothballed them. It was a hard thing to do, which is why I've been putting it off for years. Those trustworthy friends, my tough little workhorses, have accompanied me to the tops of mountains and bottoms of canyons, through big cities and across endless open spaces, at latitidues and longitudes the world over, capably chronicling for me every amazing mile. They've earned their rest, I guess, but that doesn't make it easy to say goodbye.

So, Canon Rebel, you've got some big shoes to fill. Your first travel test will be in Paris in July, and I'm expecting great things from you.

While I'm nostalgic for my hefty, indestructible Nikons with their film that turns into prints and slides that you can hold in your hand and keep forever in boxes and closets, I have already found that the no-film-required technology has me shooting more pictures. I turn the camera on and shoot and shoot and shoot. I spent yesterday shooting buildings in the historic district in my hometown. For the 20 years I've lived in this town I've been promising to load up the cameras and photograph the district, but I never got around to it.

Until I went digital.

The Dalai Lama's laugh

Turns out I could have taken pictures of the Dalai Lama at Gillette Stadium. Everyone had cameras. Everyone except me.

And what did I miss? I missed capturing His Holiness delivering his talk on "The Path to Peace and Happiness" while wearing a bright red New England Patriots cap. I'll have to content myself with memories of the Jumbotron images.

The Dalai Lama has a very endearing chuckle, a slow, deliberate "heh-heh-heh-heh-heh." Whenever he made a funny remark -- and he made quite a few -- we were treated to the "heh-heh-heh-heh-heh" over the stadium speakers.

In explaining the fine points of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, for example, he said, "All of our problems are humanmade. They are manmade. And some problems are womanmade! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh."

The college student beside me said, "He's so cute! Like a teddy bear. I just want to wrap him up and take him home to be my grandfather."

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Dalai Lama, rock star: No photos, please

I don't save ticket stubs, but I'm saving this one.

On Saturday I'm going to Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, to see His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

In a venue that hosts Super Bowl champs and rock legends like U2, Springsteen and the Stones, the Dalai Lama will speak on Buddhism and paths to peace and happiness. I'll be there, rapt in row 34, for both the morning and afternoon sessions. There will, I imagine, be no fighting over parking spaces. I predict that we attendees will conduct ourselves in a zen-like manner and with a spirit of major brotherly love so as not to risk sticking out like a selfish meanie among the gathered community of gentle people.

I'm so excited about this. I am going to lay eyes on the Dalai Lama and hear him speak. This is big. I'm going to wear my bright red "Free Tibet" t-shirt, emblazoned with an embroidered Tibetan flag. (A free Tibet isn't going to happen. Click on Tibet in the right sidebar for previous posts about the slow but steady erosion of a culture that is a world treasure.)

No cameras are allowed at the Gillette Stadium event, which is a bummer, as the only photo I have of the Dalai Lama is a photo of a photo of the Dalai Lama.

In the picture at left, our American guide and a monk at a monastery in Tibet -- I won't say which one, and I've cropped the faces so neither man can be identified -- hold a Dalai Lama picture that our guide presented to the monk. I can tell you that in the uncropped version, the monk is wearing a smile four miles wide. Everywhere we went in Tibet people would whisper, "Dalai Lama pic? Dalai Lama pic?"

When I consider this photo -- and especially the uncropped version showing the recognizable participants standing in a crowded courtyard openly beaming at the image -- I shudder. How could our guide have been so stupid? Tibetan monasteries contain monks (rather, some Tibetan monasteries contain monks...), and they also contain people charged with keeping an eye on the monks and their activities. To say that our guide put this monk at risk is an understatement. Before we left the States, our tour company warned us repeatedly not to pack or bring any pictures of or items relating to the Dalai Lama. We might be detained for possessing such items, and we'd put anyone to whom we offered them in harm's way.

I want so much to take a picture of the Dalai Lama on Saturday. But I'll content myself with sitting in row 34, eyes and ears transfixed on the live man and his message. It will be amazing, uplifting. Perhaps life-changing.

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Boston Marathon: Tour de course

If that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I should be happy that this has been such a brutal winter for marathon training here in New England. Having battled snow, ice, bitter cold, biting wind, unplowed sidewalks, snowbank-sided roads and drivers eating, drinking, phoning and texting as they peer through dirty windshields and veer toward me despite my being decked out in numerous flourescent green and orange clothing articles, I will surely find the marathon itself easier to survive than all this, at least on some level.

Tomorrow, though, there will be no battling. Tomorrow will be a supreme, sunny joy. The weather report promises clear skies and 60 degrees, so I'm heading to the Boston Marathon course to run some of its more interesting segments. There will, no doubt, be hundreds of us out there, many running the Newton Hills, which include Heartbreak, the last in the series and the one that crests at Mile 21 opposite Boston College. (The next landmark you pass is a cemetery...)

It should be great fun out there tomorrow, with lots of bare flesh that hasn't seen sun in many moons. I just dug my sunblock out of the bathroom closet and put it in my gear bag. Yahoo!

I found a few sites that offer good virtual tours of the Boston Marathon course, including some YouTube tours of the route.

For a good Google Map-based course tour, try this site, which lets you zoom in on each Mile Marker and learn a bit about the communities on the route. If you set the map on hybrid and zoom way in, you can get a great feel for the whole 26-mile shebang from Hopkinton to Boston, helpful whether you're running, spectating, or just curious.



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Good luck charms: Washington's nose and llama fetuses

With luck, I'll be running the Boston Marathon in April. It's not so much the marathon I need luck for, rather surviving training and staying injury-free. I try to keep the level of limb-pounding abuse low enough to keep me out of the physical therapist's office and let me show up at the starting line but high enough not to send my body into shock as I work toward the finish line. It's always a bit of a balancing act, and when I find something that works, I put it into my permanent bag of training tricks.

About four marathons ago I adopted a ritual to bring me luck. Between the first day of training and the last I must find at least 26 cents, heads up, while out on a run. Coins found any other time don't count, nor does face-down currency (which I'm allowed to pick up and toss back down and hope I find it, face-up, on my next run). If I find 26 good luck cents, I take that as a sign that I will make it to the start and I will complete the 26 miles.

Sometimes I find much more than 26 cents over my four months of training -- I once found a face-up dollar bill -- and sometimes I just squeak by, finding my last needed penny a few days before the race. Once, while out on an 18-miler, I found a heads-up quarter and a heads-up penny within a few feet of each other. Talk about your good omens! I carried those coins in my fuel belt on race day, felt awesome, turned in my best marathon performance, finished fourth in my age group, and qualified for Boston. Superstition works for me.



Today was Day 24 of my Boston training schedule, and it was a lucky day indeed. My run was nothing to write home about; it was cold, I was slow, I had to dodge more than the usual number of texting drivers, and I couldn't stop thinking about places I'd rather be, like in a Jacuzzi. But then I saw, poking through some muddy snow, a battered, quarter-size disc. I picked it up, spit on it, and after some rubbing made out George Washington's prominent probiscus in profile. Eureka! Not even a month down, and all I need to find between now and mid-April is one penny. I'm thinking God's trying to tell me something good, like, You're gettin' old girl, but you've got a few more in you.

My coin thing may sound weird, but it's tame compared to some good luck traditions practiced around the world. Like in Bolivia, where dried llama fetus is a popular talisman.

I was in La Paz, Bolivia's capital, and I climbed up steep Calle Sagarnaga to Calle Linares, known as Witches' Street, where “witches” in wide, bell-shaped taffeta skirts and bowler hats sit at stalls and try to tempt superstitious customers with sacks of amulets to repel evil and bring good fortune. The witches had stacks of neon-colored soaps; candles shaped like stars, birds and alpacas; soapstone figurines of Inca gods; unlabeled, tar-sealed bottles of homemade aphrodisiacs. And heaps of deep brown, dried llama fetuses that looked like the skeletons of giant, prehistoric birds.



The witches explained that nearly every Bolivian family buries a llama fetus, a sullu, under its house, often at the threshold, to keep evil from entering. Workers at Bolivian construction projects want assurance that a llama fetus, complete with a witch’s or soothsayer’s blessing, has been buried at the site before the men will pick up their tools.

I watched a vendor wrap a fetus for a Bolivian customer. She blessed the sullu, laid it on a cloth atop a pile of bark and plant material, and tied a thick strand of dyed, multicolor llama wool around its thin, brittle neck. The customer bowed slightly before picking up his precious package of good luck insurance.

Hmmm... I wonder if I could attach a llama fetus to my fuel belt...



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Wampsutta, monkey meat and other Thanksgiving thoughts

Unless you're a Native American, Thanksgiving is a happy feast day. In Plymouth, not far from where I live, there's food and celebration. But if you look deeper, you'll also find members of the Wampanoag tribe gathered for their National Day of Mourning, held since 1970 when Frank James, a Wampanoag known as Wampsutta, was disinvited to speak at a Thanksgiving dinner when organizers discovered his speech was about the real history of relations between the so-called pilgrims and the native people whose land they landed on. Read James's speech here. No mention of turkey or fixins'.

Thanksgiving. Giving thanks for the blessing of being able to get together with others to buy, cook and eat way too much food, store it as leftovers, and, a week later, figure out what to do with the still uneaten remains. (Pitch it. If you freeze it, it will still be there next Thanksgiving.)

Allow me to use Thanksgiving as a segue into a travel post by sharing with you some of the things I've eaten around the world: monkey stew in Peru; yakburgers in Tibet; boiled, mashed manioc root softened (I swear) with human spit in the Amazon; roasted guinea pig in Ecuador; octopus in Greece; rotten black eggs in Hong Kong; gelatinous green yolk balls in Taipei; tea brewed with coca plant leaves in the Andes.

OK, I didn't really eat the manioc mess -- I pretended to take a taste as the bowl was passed around -- it was probably still full when it returned to the hands of the Yagua Indian woman who'd made it. But all of the other dishes were at least marginally palatable. Some, like the monkey and guinea pig, were culinary treats.

I can't say that for the eel chunks in broth that I was served on a train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. And positively foul were the snake bits I found hidden in half the dishes on nearly every lazy susan set in the middle of the table in most big-city Chinese restaurants. The Chinese habit of sneaking slices of slithery serpent into my food made me turn to the Power Bars and canned beans and tuna I had in my suitcase. Otherwise I might have starved.

www.LoriHein.com

"Williams Street Village" site plan

To my readers in Scotland and Canada and Malta and, indeed, anywhere beyond my humble burg, forgive me for hijacking a blog post to display the above. There's a frenzy of overzealous real estate development going on around my parts, and I'm using my Web presence to share some information with folks in my town.

www.LoriHein.com

Going totally green at Fenway Park

Boston's Fenway Park will be greener than usual tomorrow night. Besides the famed left-field wall known as the Green Monster, the Red Sox will reportedly take the field in green shirts to honor their fellow hometown team, the Boston Celtics, who just captured their 17th NBA Championship. Nice to see our local teams, who've been on quite a roll lately, honor each other's achievements.


You don't have to have tickets to a Sox game to visit Fenway Park, America's oldest major league ballpark still in use. You can take a tour. And, according to the park's website, you can try your luck in an auction for seats atop the Green Monster.

I don't know. I'd be worried about getting hit in the head with a baseball.

Oh yeah-- you might want to eat before you get to Fenway. The food concession stands failed a raft of city health inspections this season. Supposedly things are now gleaming behind those counters and in those fridges and under those sinks and the rodents have departed for greener pastures (sorry, couldn't resist), but somehow the venerable Fenway frank has lost all appeal for me.

Fenway photos courtesy of my husband, Mike.

www.LoriHein.com

Get me out of here! Tourists trapped

At yoga the other day our instructor, Anne, complimented the class on having attained a level of limberness that let us execute crunches on balance balls without rolling off and crashing onto the studio's wood floor. We students patted ourselves on the backs (a few of us literally, as further demonstration of our increased flexibility).

Over in the corner, Kathy commented that our workouts had also improved her lung capacity. "I went along on a field trip to the Bunker Hill Monument and climbed all the way to the top without getting winded. I was so excited!" She compared that visit with a previous Bunker Hill foray that had left her gasping for air on the narrow staircase that leads to the monument's observation deck and panoramic view of Charlestown and Boston's harbor and skyline. "The staircase keeps winding and turning, and people are coming down while you're going up. And there are no windows."

"Like the Statue of Liberty," said Lucia, unfolding herself from a perfect cat stretch. "I climbed up the Statue of Liberty once and got claustrophobia. Real claustrophobia. I had a panic attack. I was perspiring. I started crying. My son was five, and he didn't know what was happening." A fellow sightseer came to Lucia's aid and guided her to an open air platform where she was able to regroup and steel herself for the trek down.

I felt pangs of sympathy hyperventilation as Lucia recounted her clammy excursion into Lady Liberty's innards. I rolled around on my balance ball and thought about some of the weird, uncomfortable places around the world that I'd stood in lines and paid money to enter. Small, close places I'd have been better off viewing from the outside. High, dizzying places I'd have been better off contemplating from the ground.

The world offers the tourist many places to have a panic attack. Among them:

* Chichen Itza -- I had no problem with the steep climb to the top of the Pyramid of Kukulkan at this remarkable Mayan city in Mexico's Yucatan -- I even sat, smiling, in Chac the Rain God's lap for a rest and photo op when I reached the summit. But when Mike and I ventured inside the chamber behind a staircase at the structure's base for a look at the priceless jaguar statue it held, I freaked out. I imagined the entire pyramid collapsing on my head and pinning me inside the airless, unlit tunnel. A gringo sacrifice to the Mayan gods. I never reached the jaguar -- Mike tells me it was breathtaking -- but before I turned to grope my way back to the exit, I saw two luminescent green balls floating eerily in mid-air at the end of the pitch black passageway: the jaguar's jade eyes.

* St. Paul's Cathedral -- What could be cooler than a climb up into St. Paul's dome, one of the highest in the world? Imagine the sparkling views of merry old London I'd get from up there. I started up the stone staircase, following two 90-pound Japanese girls in stiletto heels, thinking, Piece of cake! London is my oyster! Then the cakewalk turned from broad, stone steps surrounded by reassuringly thick walls to an exposed metal catwalk with near-vomit-inducing gaps between the steps. I couldn't close my eyes, because I'd surely trip and go hurtling over the thin wrought iron armrails and splat unceremoniously onto the stone floor of the nave, a mile below. But I couldn't look, either. A see-through catwalk suspended a hundred feet in the air? Are you kidding me? I need an air sickness bag! I turned around, slowly, and picked my way, squinting, which was a compromise between keeping my eyes open and shutting them tight in terror, to ground level. And way, way up there, the two Japanese girls I'd earlier mentally dismissed as powder-puffy lightweights, pressed onward into the dome, bravely planting their toes and forefeet onto the metal grates and lifting their heels to keep their spikes from getting caught in the gaps.

* Sears Tower -- My architecture cruise on the Chicago River was a highlight of my visit to Chitown. I sat on the boat's top deck with my head tilted back, soaking in the amazing march of magnificent towers that lined both sides of the curving river. When we passed alongside and under the breathtaking endlessness of the black-glass Sears Tower, I couldn't see its top. So, of course, after the boat docked I decided I had to see -- no, stand in -- the top. I walked to the Sears, bought a Skydeck ticket and waited for my group to be called to board the elevator. As we shot up through the shaft at a speed I thought would surely launch us through the roof and into Indiana, the attendant told us about the gargantuan rollers in the 1,353-foot tower's basement that allow it to sway with the prevailing Windy City wind, that literal wiggle room essential to keeping the Sears from breaking in half and crumbling into Lake Michigan. The elevator opened at the Skydeck, and as I made my way toward the windows that faced Lake Michigan, one or more of those Great Lakes-spawned prevailings pummeled the tower. Which, in response, rolled on its gargantuan ball bearings. I was 1,400 feet above the earth in a moving building. I never even looked out the window. I turned tail and took the next elevator to terra firma.

(In July 2007 construction began on Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's Chicago Spire, an immensity that will dwarf the Sears. It will be a residential building. I assume it will have its own version of basement ball bearings that will enable the mega-skyscraper to roll with it and blow in the wind. Just the promo video on the Spire's website scares me to death. I can't imagine living in it. Or even going to a dinner party in it. Imagine the host announcing, "No worries, everyone. When the building quiets down and your wine's stopped sloshing up out of the glass, Jeeves will come around with refills.")

* Ming Tombs -- I should know by now that I do not have the fortitude to handle tourist attractions with the word "tomb" in their names. But when you've spent thousands of dollars and flown three-quarters of the way around the planet to get to a place, you sometimes tune out the voice of experience. In the name of adventure, into the tomb you plunge.

No doubt many Beijing Olympic-goers will take the day trip from the capital -- if only to escape the city's toxic smog for a few hours -- and head to the Ming Tombs, eternal resting place of 15th-century Chinese emperors. I enjoyed the clear air (Whoa! What's that? Blue sky?!) that surrounded the tombs' 40 hilly park-like acres and the 24 larger-than-life-sized animal sculptures

that line the Sacred Way leading to the crypt. When I got to the crypt itself, the fun was over.

I followed my guide and a herd of tourists down a ramp into a smotheringly horrific underground space. As I stared at the lineup of royal sarcophogi, the walls started closing in. The ceiling got lower and lower. My eyes rebelled at the strange, thick, gray-dark of the chamber. A fetid stink -- death rot mixed with a noxious-smelling air freshener -- snaked through my nasal passages and attacked my lungs. I told my guide I had to leave. His task was to keep his assigned foreigners in a group and keep his eye on them, so he was disinclined to let me go. "Few minute more. Few minute more." A few minutes more would have rendered me insane, so I apologized to the guide and fled, pushing up the ramp against a new incoming stream of mostly Chinese visitors. To be ebbing when everyone else was flowing defied the cosmic order, but people saw the panic in my eyes and let me pass.

I must not be the only one to have clawed my way, sheet-white and gasping, from the clutches of the Ming Tombs. One online guide to the crypts contains this caveat: "We feel it necessary to remind visitors with heart problems to consider carefully whether they should enter the underground chambers. The atmosphere and dull lighting can be a problem."

I'd add: "If you don't have heart problems when you arrive at the Ming Tombs, there's a better than even chance you'll have some when you leave."

www.LoriHein.com

Bookstore souvenirs

I traveled to Cape Cod last night to see a dear friend and to sign books at a fundraiser for her daughter's school. The event was in Falmouth, one of my favorite Cape Cod towns, and was hosted by Inkwell Bookstore, a beautiful shop on Falmouth's Main Street. If your travels take you to the Cape, pop in and browse and say hello to owners Kathleen and Michelle.

Books make wonderful travel souvenirs. Forays into stacks and along shelves of booksellers around the world have netted me a collection of interesting and quirky titles. Among them:

From Jamaica: Mi Granny Seh Fi Tell Yu Seh: The A to Z of Jamaicanisms, with advice on topics like Grief, Family, Confidence, Patience and Aspiration. From the chapter on Opportunity: "Hog wash enna de fus wata 'im ketch." Translation: "A hog washes in the first water he sees/Take advantage of the first opportunity."

Also from Jamaica: A Code of Conduct For Police-Citizen Relations. The "Attitudes of Approach" section offers this advice for citizens approached by the police: "RUNNING AWAY: Whether you have committed an offence or not, irrespective of how frightened you may feel, DO NOT RUN AWAY! TO DO SO MAY MAKE YOU APPEAR GUILTY."

From China: A dutifully well-thumbed, pocket-sized copy of The Quotations of Mao Zedong, known in the West as the Little Red Book. I can't read the copyright date because it's in Chinese, but it's clearly Cultural Revolution-era, when carrying the book and studying it daily were compulsory. I bought it from a sidewalk bookseller and paid him his two dollar asking price without haggling. Pleased with the ease and profit of the transaction, he threw in a free antique porcelain teacup.

From a Bergen, Norway souvenir shop (photo) that stocked trolls and kiddy lit: colorful chapter books with blond, rosy-cheeked tots on their covers and Il-Vjaggi Ta' Gulliver. Gulliver's name's the same, but, being plurals, Lilliputians become Lilliputjani in Norwegian.

From an antique and used book shop in Eton, England, home of 15th century Eton College and a short footbridge walk over the Thames from Windsor Castle: How to Lay a Nest Egg: Financial Facts of Life for the Average Girl, copyright 1950. It begins: "Ladies, this book is about You. Some girls (that includes the author's wife) have long wished they could lay eggs instead of having children the cumbersome human way... But laying a nest egg is something else again; something quite within your power -- yours alone, no daddy required, not even a sugar daddy."

From Kenya: Wisdom of Maasai. The introduction tells us "these proverbs reveal the knowledge inherited by the speakers of Maa. It is good that the children read this wisdom so that they do not forget completely. Proverbs are an integral part of the Maasai language. A Maasai hardly speaks ten sentences without using at least one proverb." A sample from the "Conduct" chapter: "Menyanyuk enchikati enkutuk o eno siadi/ The odour from the mouth (words) is stronger than the odour from the arms."

In Perros-Guirec in Brittany, a region in northwest France that sits on the sea and has deep Celtic roots, I picked up a little green book of Breton proverbs, Krennlavariou Brezhonek. The book delivers its gems in Breton, French and English:

"A bep liv marc'h mat, A bep bro tud vat/ De toute couleur bon cheval, de tout pays gens de valeur."

Translation: "Good horses come in all colours, good people come from all countries."