I’m not sure which countries have the most spontaneous public singing and/or dancing—Brazil? Ghana?—but I wish we did more of that here.
I wish it would just happen in the grocery store and other ordinary places. For example, when it’s someone’s birthday in a restaurant, I think everyone should pause and help sing the birthday song.
During the closing credits of the movie The Sheep Detectives, which we saw in a full theater a couple weeks ago, they played I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers. The woman next to me started singing, so of course I joined her, then she stood up and started dancing too. Her kids did not seem at all embarrassed. It was great.
More of that please.
New Orleans gets it. They’ve got more people making music and dancing in the streets than any other US city I’ve ever visited.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but if I were you, I’d pass on visiting the US during the Trump administration. I really don’t think it’s safe for foreigners here at the moment. They’re even detaining the white ones.
I recommend going to Canada instead. It’s spectacular in the summer.
I remember walking around in the airport in Paris—Charles De Gaulle—in December 1985. I was waiting for my flight back to Boston after my semester abroad in Rome. I was listening to my Sony Walkman, which had the songs that had been the soundtrack for the entire semester—Take on Me by A-Ha, Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, 99 Luftballons by the German band Nena.
I was hungover. I was sad. It was the end. Back to America. I knew it was going to be culture shock. So many things had happened that semester—some good, some bad—but all of it was new and exciting. I had traveled through Europe with friends, had a fling with a fellow student who was studying in France, been semi-stalked by an Italian guy, smoked hash and saw Sting perform live, been chased down the street by a very angry nun who was mad I’d let my friend use my roommate’s bed in the convent, been subjected to my first public masturbator (aka “The Jerk”), ordered entire meals in Italian, been awakened on a train by a French security guard who didn’t like my friend’s Filipino passport, got all my clothes destroyed by an Italian laundromat, and seen the most magnificent art and wonders of western civilization from the Mona Lisa to the Colosseum to Pompeii to the Vatican.
Walking through that airport felt like the last scene in a movie—a very 80s movie.
Here I am in Rome in 1985 with my short 80s hair and my friend Scott who was in my program with me. Scott was my close friend Carla’s boyfriend, but she was studying in cold old England for some reason. Girl Code obviously eliminated any chance of a fling with Scott, but he was so cute, right? Look at those legs.
This prompt is N/A (not applicable) to a retired person.
Sometimes I have to wrack my brain to remember what day of the week it is, when I wake up in the morning. As other retirees know well, you want to take advantage of weekdays to do stuff like grocery shopping, when other people are busy at work. I had to learn this lesson the hard way over the past year. I messed-up several times. I specifically remember fighting for a parking spot at Costco in tax-free Nashua on a busy Saturday last year when the lightbulb went on: Why on earth would anyone go to Costco on a weekend unless they had to?
Back when I was working and raising children, work-life balance wasn’t a huge problem for me. I mostly worked as a part-time consultant/contractor, except at the very end of my career when I went full-time. I liked my job a lot and was happy to leave suburbia and go to the city a couple times a week. I especially liked going out to lunch with my work friends, most of whom had no children. It was great to talk about non-mom things with other adults. They couldn’t have cared less about the outcome of travel soccer try-outs or which kids were recommended for Honors Math.
One of the biggest issues for me back then was traffic. Getting back to the suburbs from my Boston office could take over 2 hours on a bad day. It was hell. I got involved in several road rage incidents. I was sometimes late to pick-up my son at his afterschool program.
In conclusion, if the powers that be want to help people have work-life balance they should fix traffic. And retirees should stay the heck out of the way and do their errands at 11am on Wednesday.
The 10 US Cities With the Worst Traffic: 1. New York 2. Chicago 3. Los Angeles 4. BOSTON 5. Philadelphia 6. Miami 7. Houston 8. Atlanta 9. Washington 10. Seattle
I’ve registered and paid for a five-day dance retreat in Maine in August.
I’ve been hearing about “Ferry Beach” from my fellow Unitarian Universalists for decades. This mythical coastal retreat center has transformed many a life. They’ve got retreats for everything from Yoga, to Women’s Healing, to Buddhism. My church friend Ron, who leads our monthly Sacred Circle Dance, is co-leading a week-longSacred Circle Dance retreat. I brought the flyer home and stuck it on the refrigerator about a month ago.
With my husband’s knee replacement recovery taking for fucking ever, we have zero travel plans. Nothing booked. Nothing to look forward to. And I have noidea when or what type of travel he’s going to be up for.
This led me to Dance Camp. I tried to convince my two friends from high school that I rarely get to see to join me there, but so far, no dice.
So…I went ahead and registeredfor five nights by myself in the mythical UU retreat center. Dancing 5 hours a day with strangers, could be a terrible idea. I mean, I like our monthly dance, but this is going to be waaaay more than that. There’s a chance I might hate it and bail out after a night or two.
In any case, I’ll have finally experienced Ferry Beach.
I was lucky to visit the two most iconic US national parks over the last few years—Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.
I’m now realizing that trying to paint landscapes based on any of those photos is just going to be frustrating. Those views are just too beautiful to be rendered by an amateur painter. I should just be happy I got so many great photos with my cell phone. My pics take me back to the actual feeling of awe.
I want to try another landscape at some point, but need to try something more humble.
Really not happy with this. I’ll keep it out as a way of hopefully learning from it.
This area is called “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” in Yellowstone National Park.
My husband is just about 8 weeks post-op from his second total knee replacement (and it has been a real bitch of a recovery), BUT I am pleased to report he walked the first mile of my walk with me yesterday without too much pain. That was the first time he’s walked a mile since last summer. He had walked a half-mile with me on Wednesday and it was OK, but he went faster and it felt better yesterday.
He’s still got swelling and using ice a lot, but now he can take Advil or Aleve which was not allowed for the first 6+ weeks. He still needs Oxy some, but not as much. Weed gummies for pain relief and sleep have helped. Yay cannabis.
I can feel a battle brewing between us over footwear. I’m a walker—usually 2-4 miles per day. Even though I never ever break into a run, I wear running shoes. I’ve been purchasing a new pair of ASICS-Gel Cumulus sneakers ever year for the past ten years, ever since my doctor told me I needed to replace my shoes more often.
This is my latest pair.
They are comfortable and in my opinion, COOL. Right? Both of my kids said they liked them, unprompted. Well, my husband hates shoes like this. He thinks they are dorky. He always wears black VANS, which in my opinion are too flat and not cushiony enough for walking with his new knees. I want him to get shoes like mine, but he thinks he’s too cool to wear dorky running shoes. I’m hoping the physical therapist comes out on my side.
Here we are in Yellowstone National Park in 2024 (pre knee replacements) in our usual footwear—me in ASICS, him in VANS. He thinks he looks way cooler than me, based on the shoes.
What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
Given the success and inspirational nature of the Artemis 2 mission, I’d have to go Astronaut.
I wouldn’t want to do any of the preparation or training (I’m prone to vertigo) but just beam me up, Scotty, to a window seat, for one day so I can see the coolest views ever.
It would have to be a day when very little is required of the crew, because I’m not good at incapable of running science experiments or flying aircraft. I could probably handle photography duty for one day and also I’d be good at the PR stuff. I could call Houston and talk to the media from space with great enthusiasm.
Photo of the lunar flyby captured by the Artemis 2 astronauts
Can you imagine how mind blowing it would be to see that for real?
I’ve posted a couple times about my trip to the Soviet Union in college. I was with a group of students and history professors. It was a big deal to go “behind the iron curtain” back then, so we prepped for this trip for many months—studying Russian history and learning how to behave in a communist country. (They didn’t want any of us to end up in a Siberian prison camp.)
In addition to stopping in Helsinki (Finland) on the way into the USSR, we stopped in Budapest (Hungary) on the way out. Back then, Hungary was firmly part of the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc. And we happened to be there in the immediate aftermath of an epic snowstorm. Other than the snow and total paralysis of transportation on the streets, I remember kind people and one particularly delicious hot meal in a restaurant with some young musicians who gave us a cassette tape of their rock band.
In light of the recent good news that Hungarians dumped their far-right leader Viktor Orbán (a buddy of both Trump and Putin) on Sunday, I dug out my Budapest pics. Google describes Budapest in 1987 like this:
Budapest in 1987 was a city in late-communist Hungary characterized by economic scarcity, socialist architecture, and a quiet, daily struggle, yet it was on the cusp of major political change. The city experienced a historic, paralyzing snowstorm in January 1987 and was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site that same year.
I’m not in any of these photos, but I took all of them. None are particularly good, but as a group, they give you the vibe.
Fun fact: Budapest is actually two cities—Buda and Pest. In this pic, I’m standing in Buda looking over the frozen Danube River towards Pest. The large domed building on the far side is the Hungarian Parliament in Pest. (Pronounced PESHT)
The famous Fisherman’s Bastion is a fairytale-like, Neo-Romanesque lookout built between 1895 and 1902.
An Aeroflot route map in a Budapest window. (We flew sketchy Aeroflot into Russia.)
My friend Lincoln standing in an alcove in Budapest.
My friend Rob playing a balalaika at the Budapest airport.
Walking was the only option for seeing anything at all while we were there! The city was paralyzed with snow and the authorities really couldn’t deal with it.
Two of our professors at the Budapest airport. The one on the right, Dr. James West, taught Russian history and was one of the best teachers I ever had. He’s one of the reasons I majored in History.
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