New York, New York

What a wonderful town! New World Trade Center; panoramic views of lower Manhattan from Jersey City; reconnecting with Natalya,visiting her son Ivan; her beautiful beaded artwork, a loving gift; being with friends; at the Guggenheim. Then wonder of wonders, Natalya and Ivan came to visit us in Sylvania, Ohio (collage at bottom)! Life's an amazing adventure! 

My daughter Elissa and I had a great trip to New York City November 17-21, 2016, to see my dear friend Natalya, from Starobelsk, Ukraine, who was visiting her son Ivan, who works as an IT expert in NYC.  I lived with Natalya on Kyrova Street for the last six months of my PC service. So you can imagine what an exciting reunion it was! We toured and ate and reminisced.  Natalya gave me a beautiful beaded artwork she had created, a treasure of the heart.She now lives in Kyiv, closer to her grown children and grandchildren, away from the war zone of eastern Ukraine.

We stayed across the river from the gleaming World Trade Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. Easy to take a ferry to and from lower Manhattan, where we toured, explored, and reconnected with my traveling friend Christine Comerford, last seen in Sicily.

We also met with Elissa's friend Eric Blakney at the Guggenheim, a great Frank Lloyd Wright building. Eric was a schoolmate from her high school days at the Maumee Valley Country Day School. We had another great reunion with friend Alice Twombly from my days as a graduate student in Madison, Wisconsin. Oh the stories! We were hoping to see David Britsch, son of our dear friends Jim and Barbie Britsch and brother of pianist Marty, but he couldn't make it. Sadly, David died suddenly a few months later.  If only...

There is something special about being in NYC, a place David loved, a bustling spirit, a wonderful diversity. It embraces you, makes you feel alive and joyful.

50+ Years Later: A Joyous Reunion with Old College Friends

Lovely Dataw Island, Cathy's adopted home where she lived with her husband Tom and is an Island historian, preservationist and community leader, so Sarah and I had the best tours of the Island and surrounding Islands around Beaufort. We had an expert tour of the Sams PlantationTabby Ruins; boarded the Santa Elena tall ship that anchored in Port Royal, a reminder of the 16th-century Spanish history of the Islands; walked on the beach under a clear blue sky; visited the pretty town of Beaufort and the Point, a neighborhood of Antebellum mansions and grand Victorians; enjoyed a fantastic "Lowcountry Chamber Music Concert" with Cathy's friend Ann at the Art Center; shared wonderful lunches and dinners with the best conversations imaginable; savored a meal of fresh shrimp right off the boat at Dobson's, which looked like Forrest Gump's shrimp boat! What a special time, a walk down memory lane. 

What's it like seeing your college roommates and closest friends after 54 years? I was nervous about it, but it turns out I didn't need to be at all. It was wonderful, kind of like watching a home movie in fast forward, traveling over time from the innocence and curiosity of young girls at the beginning of life's journeys, to the vim and vigor of old ladies with lots of experiences under our belts and the humor to match.  We reminisced, shared memories, remembered some things differently or not at all, got updated and recharged, laughed a lot, and created new memories to warm our days.

After graduation from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass, where we spent four years together learning, experimenting, and exploring, Cathy and Sarah went off to New York City and I to Madison, Wisconsin. They kept in touch with each other and several mutual friends then and through the years, while I disappeared off the planet.  God knows why I seemed to never look back over a period of my life that was so important, why I neglected to stay in touch with friends who meant so much to me.  I confess to a terrible failing. I'm guilty of inconsiderate and selfish, unkind behavior. Thoughtless youth, yes, but really so incomprehensible. I got into my graduate student days to such an extent I left the past behind.  How could I? Still, Cathy and Sarah were kind and forgiving, and we were happy we finally came together after all these years. I'm reminded of a blessing for old age: "May the light of your soul give you wisdom to see this beautiful time of harvesting..."

And harvesting is what we did. From the seeds of our individual choices and our shared experiences we harvested the gems of our years.  We reminisced under towering and ancient Live Oaks dripping with Spanish Moss, felt the winds of time sweeping across Dataw Island and over the replica of the old cargo ship, Santa Elena, and enjoyed the culture and special beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry around Beaufort. We were all history majors at Wheaton, remembered our wonderful professors and the high caliber of our education, and we understood the complex history and heritage of the place we now shared. Cathy is active in preserving Dataw Island's history and a leader in her adopted home, so we had an expert and knowledgeable guide. We were on the same page politically, too, which made for some great and hilarious conversations.

It was a magical mystery tour on many levels adapted to the aging spirits of three old college friends. We were "red hat" ladies in purple, like in Jenny Joseph's famous poem, making up for "the sobriety of our youth," letting the inner sparks fly freely and with gay abandon.  There's an energy and freedom that comes with age, not to mention some experience and wisdom about life, and we three shared in them with great pleasure.  I tend to go light on "the wisdom" factor, and a bit more heavy on the "life's a daring adventure" side, and Sarah and Cathy do, too. When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine I used to say, "It's amazing where life takes you, if you take life as it comes."  I still think so.  Life took Sarah, Cathy and I full circle to Dataw Island, SC, and we just let the winds of time fly over and around us, our red hats sailing off into beautiful sunsets and beyond an orange full moon into brilliantly starry nights.

Magical Ireland

I'm back from a magical mystery tour of Ireland.  What made this travel adventure all the more special was sharing it with my daughter Elissa. We're both wrapped in green now, and the luck of the Irish, so coming back to emerging Springtime in Sylvania seems like coming around and completing a sacred Celtic circle.

DUBLIN! Dublin music, dance, architecture, culture, from street life to Trinity College Library and Book of Kells. Elissa with the Sylvania Advantage, where she is the graphic designer; the president's house, St. Patrick's Cathedral, celtic cemetary; the Taylor pub (at least one on every corner), and Searson's restaurant. 

Elissa on a Dublin walk.

Our Gate 1 tour around the Emerald Isle, with informative, awesome and entertaining guide Doug, started in James Joyce's Dublin, where we took in statue-lined O'Connell Street, rows of Georgian houses with colorful doors, Phoenix Park, where the president resides, St. Patrick's Cathedral, dedicated to Ireland's patron saint, and then to Oscar Wilde's famed Trinity College and Library, which houses the magnificent 8th-century Book of Kells, an illuminated Gospel book in Latin, a lavishly decorated masterwork of western calligraphy. That evening we enjoyed an Irish feast with Irish whiskey, wine and beer, and Irish music and dancing, at an Irish pub, all enthralling and fun.

We got into the spirit of Ireland that day, even though Elissa and I preferred walking about central Dublin's streets to paying a visit to the Guinness Storehouse, which occupies several city blocks and bolsters the Irish economy! But before our first pint, as they say in Dublin, we did learn the Irish toast "Slainte" (pronounced Slahn-che), to your good health, which stood us in good stead to the end of our visit.

A bookstore displays books
on the 1916 Rising.

Galway street poster

We were in Dublin on Easter Sunday, 27 March, when the country commemorated the 100th anniversary of "The Rising" of 1916 and the massacre of its now-revered freedom fighters seeking Irish independence. England's brutal response increased support for Irish republicanism, leading to the rise of Sinn Fein and

Our itinerary

the Irish Republican Army (IRA).  It also laid the foundation of what the Irish call "the Troubles" of the late 1960s to 1998, a violent period of nationalist and sectarian revolt that resulted, at last, in peace and an independent Republic of Ireland. A part of Northern Ireland (in white in upper right on map) continues under British tutelage with its capital in Belfast, but a sense of cultural unity also persists among the Irish people.

Waterford, Kilkenny and nearby landscapes. An excellent 
local tour guide, Patrick, lead us around his hometown of Kilkenny. 

Killarney by Elissa. She loved the gluten-free fish & chips, and onion rings!
We also had a great Thai dinner. 

From Dublin our trusty bus driver Barry, who navigated the winding roads with ease, took us to Waterford, home of the famous glass makers; the Blarney Castle en route to Kilkenny; around the famed Ring of Kerry through Killarney National Park on the Island's southwestern tip, and also past the remote Michael Skellig, the dramatic location of the final scene of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Who can forget that scene of Rey hiking with determination up those rocky green slopes to meet Luke Skywalker and present him with the magical lightsaber that belonged to his father and grandfather. 

From County Kerry in the southwest we headed north to Bunratty Castle and an interesting "Folk Park" of 19th-century reconstructed or rebuilt Irish homes, then to the fabulous Cliffs of Moher with its Henry Potter feel, and onto beautiful, bustling Galway. 

Bunratty Castle and the Folk Park, an outdoor museum of 19th-century Irish homes. Our tour group  (there were 40 of us from all over the US ) had a nice guided tour of the castle.  We missed the popular 'medieval banquets,' but got a good sense of the place.  

Iconic Irish Images

Doug's Irish "gift of gab," so eloquent and so rich in humor and insight, entertained us all the way as we drove through one iconic landscape after another.  Near the town of Limerick on the River Shannon, Doug read us several limerick poems. Elissa, so creative and clever, such a dear, added a wonderful limerick of her own to the travel festivities, which Doug read with pleasure. I hope she posts it! We learned Irish history, about the language, about farming, about Irish gypsies. So many fabulous stories! We had a wonderful overview of a lovely country with bustling towns and modern cities, beautiful countryside and farms, and gentle landscapes dotted with ancient ruins and fences made of thick shrub or ancient stone. Our Ireland tour enveloped us in the warm, soft feel of Irish wool with a overlay of sparkling emerald green.

Galway, once a small fishing village, is now one of the fastest growing cities of Europe, according to our tour guide Doug. It's on the Shannon river, which is now full of rushing water at a very high level and turbulent.  Our hotel, Jurys Inn, was on the river and in walking distance to the heart of the city. Wish we could have stayed longer but we got a great feel for the city. 

Cliffs of Moher, a mystical landscape.  George Bernard Shaw called it "a part of our dream world."