2014: A Memorable Christmas

Christmas 2014: Before the Feast

One of our Christmas Eve dinner guests--my favorite brother-in-law, it was--challenged us all to tell about the most memorable Christmas celebrations that we each had experienced over the years. This was a lovely exercise, as I learned something about each of the other guests, none of whom, except for my husband, I had spent many Christmases with in recent history. It also forced me to think quickly through the years to pick out a year that was particularly noteworthy.

For purposes of the discussion, I spoke about Christmas 1967, when I was studying in England and my then-fiancee flew from the US to London to meet me, and we flew on together to Copenhagen. There I met my to-be mother-in-law and father-in-law for the first time. It was one of only two times that I ever saw my father-in-law, or father-in-love, as he pronounced the term. I remember him with tenderness as a gentle and humorous and oh-so-accepting man. Around the dinner table this year we shared some small incidents about the days we spent in Copenhagen on that first trip. What I didn't talk about much was that in addition to providing an introduction to my in-laws and my adopted country, that Christmas was the first that I ever spent away from my birth family, and I was homesick. Unfortunately it became the norm for me to be separated from my sisters and my parents on holidays throughout decades of my married life, as was also the case for my husband and his first family.

If we perform the same exercise next year--and even if we don't, I probably will remember--my most memorable Christmas will be Christmas 2014. This year for the first time I was able to host my family for a Christmas Eve celebration. All my sisters were here for their first (and last) Christmas in this apartment, but hopefully not the last one in our home. I spent days planning the dinner and the decorations (modest), and I enjoyed it all. After a welcome drink of warm gløgg (mulled red wine) we started with smoked salmon with fresh pea purée and lemon sauce. The main course was pork and turkey tenderloin with little roasted potatoes and a fabulous whiskey sauce; and we had Graeter's (a Cincinnati tradition) peppermint stick and eggnog ice cream for dessert, with Danish klejner cookies that Johannes and I made together, a tradition that we follow almost every year. Later we shared nonpareils from a blue candy dish that brought memories to us all from our paternal grandparents, and cashews from an equally memorable gold dish handed down from our own parents. We four sisters and two brothers-in-love exchanged modest and thoughtful gifts among us all, but my main gift to them and to myself was this special time together.

Becoming Home

We arrived back in the U.S. just ten days ago, after two weeks in Spain packing up what I had thought would be relatively few belongings, getting that house ready to put on the market, doing lots of paperwork for our leave-taking from that country, and making a quick stopover in Denmark on the way back to celebrate Johannes' 75th birthday with good friends and family. Our final trip from Europe to the U.S. consisted of a flight from Copenhagen to Oslo, a long wait there, another flight from Oslo to JFK, an overnight and transfer there to LaGuardia, a flight to Atlanta and then on to Indianapolis, and then a rental car from Indianapolis for the two-hour drive to Cincinnati. Such are the connections that one lives with when reserving late and traveling in December.

We walked, on December 12, into a house nicely decorated for the fall, with autumn-weight clothing hanging in the closets, and a stack of mail higher than seemed possible--I thought everything went by email these days, but I am wrong. During the past week I have gotten through the mail, replenished the refrigerator and freezer, done three big loads of wash, put away the fall decorations and linens in the kitchen and dining room and replaced them with Christmas designs--most of which were  newly purchased, because the ones I had sorted and sent home from Spain were not expected to arrive very soon.

Then, on Tuesday, we heard that our boxes had arrived. Twenty-one of them (the remaining two arrived the following day). The plan was to let them stay in my sister's garage until we were ready to unpack them--which would not be in the final week before Christmas. We did that, retrieving only two boxes: the one that I had designated to open early because it contained winter clothing, and the one that looked like it but did not contain the winter clothing.

This pre-lit Christmas tree seems to be a little
defective, and Guapa says it is not her fault!

This morning I packed away my fall clothes and replaced them with the winter clothing from the box. I also found a couple small treasures that I had stuck in between layers of soft material, candle holders that will add to the few Christmas decorations we have assembled. Then we went out to buy a few gifts and enjoy the winter solstice sun. I already have picked up much of the food I need to prepare the Christmas Eve dinner I am making for my family on Wednesday, but when I check the recipes again--the ones I picked out from a Danish magazine while flying across the Atlantic--I will undoubtedly have to make a couple more trips to the store.

I look forward to being able to make Christmas dinner for my family in my home for the first time in decades; I can't remember exactly the last time that all my sisters were together for the holiday, but it was in Florida when my parents were still alive. So this will be a unique occasion. Even next year will be different, because then, in all likelihood, we will be celebrating not in our temporary apartment, but in the condo that we entered into a contract to purchase on Tuesday this week. I'm not saying much about that yet, for fear something may go wrong, but if all goes as planned, we will have a very busy couple of months in the new year.

The twenty-one boxes in my sister's garage will stay there until they are moved to the new condo. But this is becoming home and we are home for the holidays. I hope all my readers are home for the holidays as well, whether physically or in mind and spirit.

Living in Two Worlds / Viviendo en Dos Mundos

That is what I wrote about for my last OLLI Spanish class of the fall season:

Estoy viviendo en dos mundos. Una parte está en EE.UU. , donde assisto a las últimas clases de OLLI, buscamos una casa para comprar, trabajo con mi empresa en Connecticut, y visito a mi familia alrededor en Cincinnati. Otra parte planea nuestro viaje a España el domingo que viene, arreglando citas con amigos americanos allí para el Día de Dar Gracias, reuniones con el club de lectores, juegos de petanca con los daneses, visitas a mis amigos y a mi profesora de español, y las tareas de preparar a vender la casa. Es dificil vivir en dos lugares cuando ambos son tan atractivos.

I am living in two worlds. One part of me is in the United States, where I am attending the final OLLI classes, we are looking for a house to buy, I work with my job in Connecticut, and visit my family around Cincinnati. The other part is planning our trip to Spain this coming Sunday, arranging appointments with American friends there for Thanksgiving, meetings with my book group, petanca games with the Danes, visits to friends and my Spanish teacher, and the tasks involved in getting the house ready to sell. It is difficult to live in two places when both are so attractive.

Now as I write this on Saturday, "this coming Sunday" is tomorrow and the balance has shifted to the other side. We have done our final purchases of gifts and supplies to take with us, I have done the final laundry--not that we are taking many clothes--we have kitty-proofed the house and talked with my sister who will become Guapa's best friend for the next four weeks, I have done a good job of using up those items in the freezer and refrigerator that I do not want to face again when I come back, I have finished reading the book for book club next week and arranged for its return to the library, and we have picked up the rental car that we will use to drive to the airport and drop there tomorrow morning. All that remains is packing the suitcases and making sure I have everything I need for the trip. It should be simple, since we have a full house over there and are taking little, and I have been collecting things and making notes for a couple weeks. But it's the part of the job that I always hate. So I had better get to it.

If time and mind permit in the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts at my original blog, Sundays in Spain.

Playing Pètanque in Ohio

Pètanque Court in Zanesfield, Ohio

I've been dealing all week with a nasty cold I picked up by being outside for two hours in the brisk air last Sunday in Zanesfield, Ohio. It's worth it, though, because after a break of more than four months, I was playing pètanque again. Readers of Sundays in Spain, my earlier blog, know that I used to spend a lot of time playing petanca, as it is known in Spanish, when living in the Alicante region in southeast Spain. It doesn't take a lot of resources to play this game: the court can be just a field or sandy area, the game is centered around one ping-pong sized ball, and each player needs three metal balls. No special equipment, though a sun visor helps.

We had looked high and low for other players of pètanque in the Cincinnati area, checking out parks and sports stores, and searching for notices in the newspaper and on the Internet. Finally we came across the Zanesfield Pètanque Club. So last Sunday we made a two-hour trip north from Cincinnati to Zanesfield, a small town that I had not heard of, even though, I discovered during the course of the drive, it is located only a half hour's drive from the town in which I grew up! The Zanesfield club is very active and enthusiastic about the sport, and has corralled support from many organizations in the community to set up the best-equipped pètanque courts I have ever seen.  The members were welcoming and we had a great time, even though I lost two games. And caught a cold.

That Time Again

Readers of my previous blog Sundays in Spain know about my obsession with the biannual changing of the clocks. I am not so much opposed to the changing of time once in the spring and again in the fall as I am frustrated by the inability of Europe and the United States to do it at the same time each year. They both do it at 2:00 AM on a Sunday morning; it's just that the particular Sunday they choose to do it is not the same Sunday.

This year Europe changed from what I know of as "summer time" to "winter time" a week before the U.S. changed from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. I got my first inkling about ten days ago, when I registered in advance for a webinar that was being hosted in London this past week. The registration website had a button that I could click to find out the timing of the webinar in my local time zone. I know that there are normally five hours' difference between the U.K. and U.S. Eastern time but that the U.K. does not change to summer time (I guess Greenwich Mean Time is Greenwich Mean Time, is GMT, is GMT forever.) The website showed four hours' difference between webinar origin time and my point of reception. Oh dear! I should check that, I said to myself, but there is time to do it closer to the webinar date. I wrote it down on my calendar for the earliest possible start time.

Then later I got emails from friends in Spain and Denmark commenting on the impending dark evenings because the clocks were changing, and I knew I should be changing my mental calculation of the normal six hours' difference between Europe and here to the odd five hours' difference. I tried to explain this week to a group of people (those in my Spanish class, as it happens) that I get a little unsettled every year when this happens because it upsets the normal symmetry of my life: it is so much easier to calculate the time difference when one slides the hour hand on a primitive non-digital clock face straight across from 9:00 to 3:00, for example, or 12:00 to 6:00, or 1:00 to 7:00 than it is to move at the oblique angle that represents five hours' difference. Not to mention the change to my very deeply internalized body clock that I think adjusted to U.S. Eastern time when I was born in Ohio and, in spite of many layered adjustments through the years, still reacts to Eastern time as "real time." I don't think I was very successful at conveying this illogical but very deep-seated feeling to the other students, except for one fellow student who I believe is from Germany, who told me after the class that she understood perfectly, and shared my frustration that both continents do not change at the same time.

Happily for me, North American clocks changed from Daylight Savings to Standard time early this morning--one of us was awake to watch the time jump from 1:59 to 1:00 on the iPad. For the first time in ten years--maybe twelve--I experienced the change from EDT to EST in person. My internal clock is once again based in the right zone, and in symmetry.

Cool Cat!

Scooter, the neutered cat. "Hip spectacles. No testicles."
Created by Northlich.

Our public television station, WCET, has GiveThemTen.org as a sponsor of the PBS Newshour. Ten is a project that is fighting the problem of over-population of cats--it claims that a cat is put to death in a "kill shelter" every twenty minutes! We watch the Newshour most evenings and are therefore quite familiar with hearing that "Cool cats are spayed and neutered cats" after we hear other important views of the world. The tagline is part of a stellar eye- and ear-catching PR campaign that I believe has gone nationwide on much media--and worldwide through the Internet--but which I was proud to discover was created here in Cincinnati at Northlich marketing and advertising firm.

We had been reminding our little Guapa that "cool cats are spayed" every time we heard this or saw a picture of Scooter, the neutered cat, in his cool sunglasses and black turtleneck during the past couple of weeks. That's because she was approaching her six month birthday and had a date to keep to be spayed herself. Not surprisingly, she failed to appreciate the warning or the benefit.

 Cool Cat Guapa. ©Johannes Bjorner 2014

But spayed she was this past Wednesday morning. Both she and we survived. After we picked her up Wednesday afternoon and returned her to the house, she slept most of the remainder of the day, waking only to sip a little water drained from a can of tuna and lap up a few morsels of crushed chunk albacore. Then she slept again, and we watched her constantly to make sure she didn't lick her wound. She probably got more sleep than we did that night. Thursday she was ready to eat again, and had recovered enough so that we had to watch that she didn't jump too high and split open her internal sutures.

She is still much quieter than before the operation, but we are astonished at how quickly she seems to have returned to comfort, and without the pain medicine we had prepared. She still occupies much of our attention, and we are continually surprised--and only a little apprehensive--at seeing where she will appear next. She's one cool cat.

Open House

There was sun shining in through our balcony door and down through the living room skylights this morning. There has been precious little sunlight this past week, so we decided to do what we have been doing for the last several Sundays: drive out to a few open houses. Viewing real estate on the market without an appointment or a commitment seems to be an activity largely limited to Sundays in Cincinnati, and it is fast becoming as much a part of our Sunday traditions as watching CBS Sunday Morning from 9:00 to 10:30.

We scoured the Internet listings and came up with four new possibilities. One was in an attractive condo development where we had viewed before but which we had largely discarded because the two-bedroom condos were too small, and the four-bedroom one we had seen was a bit too large and even more too expensive. This was a three-bedroom, and it was much more to our liking. In fact, it was so much to our liking that one of us was ready to move in tomorrow. There had already been another condo that we had viewed two weeks ago which was very much to our liking: three bedrooms and in the same area where we are currently living, thereby close to stores and public transport. Alas, that one is now under contract to someone else, but I am keeping my eyes wide open for similar models in that development.

The fact is that we are reluctant to commit to a new property before we sell our house in Spain. And though we are returning to Spain next month to ready that house for the market, it would be very dumb to expect action too soon, and foolhardy to act on that expectation. On the other hand, we are living in a rental and will have to decide by next April whether we intend to renew our lease or not. So even though we are not ready to make a commitment in the next few months, we are spending our Sunday afternoons exploring different parts of the region and different styles of living.

We have driven to the east and to the west. We have driven north, though I am reluctant to go very much farther north than where we are already situated; we have not explored very much to the south, so that may come next. But the longer we stay in this area, the more we see its advantages: we had one agent last week rave about the wonderful community center in this town and the modest cost for seniors--and we have yet to darken its door. This week another agent explained that we have one of the most reasonable tax rates of any of the surrounding communities, because of some industrial properties (which we generally bypass) and lots of commercial properties (which we have taken great advantage of).

Time is on our side, so we will continue to explore and examine and think about what we need and what we don't at this particular point in our lives. Can we really find a smaller house with an open feeling that still allows enough space for each of us to have our private area?  A place with at least one bedroom and full bath accessible without steps, and a laundry room on the same level as the primary bedroom? With a low-maintenance but attractive yard? With walking and public transportation close by?

Time is on our side. While we watch and hope and let one or two get away, we are also peeking into a lot of closets and garages and observing the state of many properties on the market. All of which gives us a good idea of what and how much we need to do when we get back to our house in Spain in November.

Go Metro

We had to chase the bus around Tri-County Mall to find the bus stop. Fortunately, there was a very polite driver who rolled down his window during his rest stop between runs at this end point and advised us where to drive to (at the other end of the mall parking lot) to park our car and get on at the official start of the downtown route.

Yesterday morning arrived with sun and warmer weather than we had had during most of the week, and we had heard that there was a book festival in downtown Cincinnati--Books by the Banks, though it was held in the Duke Energy Convention Center rather than at The Banks, the trendy new area fronting the Ohio River where I would have expected it to be by virtue of its name. We had been thinking of trying out the Cincinnati Metro public transportation from our northern suburb to the city, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

The first thing we noticed after we got on the bus and it started its route was that there were two other stops for this and two other lines closer to our house than the one we had found at the mall--one within walking distance. We were familiar with the route for the first half of the tour--this was all area that we drive through for shopping and general days out. We had also driven down the lower part of Winton Road just a week ago to go to an evening dinner and auction in Clifton. Then we passed Findlay Market and the area leading up to Music Hall, and then, suddenly we were in what I would term "downtown." The driver had promised to tell us when we should get off so that we would have only a couple blocks to walk to the convention center. We noted the "end point" of the route at Government Square, but we didn't get off there--we continued on the "return" journey, which seemed to criss-cross over many of the downtown streets, partially to facilitate downtown transit, but also due to the inconvenience of road construction for a new trolley.

The book festival was a noisy to-do. We visited several of the tables staffed by representatives from the various libraries and arts organizations throughout the Greater Cincinnati region. I replenished my pen and pencil, post-it note, and bookmark collections and picked up a lot of information about the organizations that contribute to cultural life in the area. We also wandered though the new book displays and chatted with some of the authors, but we did not manage to hear any of the scheduled talks and panel discussions. W left the convention center and went looking for a place for lunch. We soon found ourselves headed toward Fountain Square but ran into a detour at the 5th Street Gallery and discussed art with this month's guest artist Tom Pope, an interesting photographer.

After a light lunch at Potbelly's, we decided to head back to the bus stop but first happened upon an office of Cincinnati's tourist bureau, where we picked up some good maps and brochures and chatted with a woman who remembered a couple places that we knew from our limited time in Cincinnati eons ago: Avco Electronics, where Johannes worked, and Wiggins Restaurant, where we went on our first date. Both exist only in memory now.

We discovered that Government Square, that end point terminal of the bus line that we had passed through on our trip down, was just behind Fountain Square, and we only had to wait seven minutes before the next bus came. The trip back seemed longer than the one-hour trip down, for we were tired now, but we still watched carefully and observed the route, thinking that there may be times when we want to take in an event downtown and leave the driving to someone else.

Music, Music, Music

Fountains in Washington Park across from the Music Hall on a summer evening
©2014 Johannes Bjorner

Though the weather turned suddenly cold last week, it was technically still summer when we made our first 2014 trip to Cincinnati's venerable Music Hall. We drove into the city guided by Gladys Philips Smith, found parking easily right beside Music Hall and across from Washington Park, and walked down 14th Street to Race to find a bite to eat before the 8:00 PM performance. We were attracted to the outdoor seating at a place called The Anchor, and we were able to snag a table on the patio and next to the sidewalk, so we could observe the other diners and the passers-by on a Friday evening. There was a large party of younger people in the center of the patio--maybe a work gathering to celebrate a special event for one of their colleagues, an upcoming wedding perhaps. Another couple nearer our age were within my view, and they were enjoying a full dinner and sure seemed as though they would be heading back over to Music Hall after they finished the bottle of wine that accompanied their meal. We settled for a single glass of wine, coffee, a snack of hard cooked egg with salmon caviar and an appetizer of cold salmon (gravad laks, though it wasn't termed that on the menu), and then a giant pecan pie ice cream sundae for dessert. Sated but not stuffed, we ambled back toward Music Hall through Washington Park, a delightful and lively small park filling the space of two city squares in the OTR (Over-the-Rhine) area. There were people everywhere--walking, sitting on the benches, biking through the park and around the colored water jets spouting up in the center of the park. When we got around to the other side we read a poster telling us that you can select music on the internet, and the various jets will react to the music.

The performance that night was grand; we were introduced to a fantastic clarinetist, Martin Fröst, who was featured in Mozart's Concerto in A Major for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622. You can hear and see him play it yourself in three movements on YouTube and discover why we were so enthralled.

Then the following week, through the generosity of a new acquaintance who has retired from playing in the CSO, we were at another performance. This one was at 11:00 Friday morning, which is the earliest I have ever been to a professional concert (and about twelve hours earlier than they normally begin in Spain!). It turned out to be a great time to listen to music. Emanuel Ax was the piano soloist for Chopin's Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 21. The remainder of this performance had a nautical theme:

Ravel. Une barque sur l'océan (A Boat on the Ocean)
Mendelssohn. The Hebrides ("Fingal's Cave") Overture, Op. 26
Debussy. La mer
     From Dawn to Noon on the Sea
     Games of the Waves
     Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea

Following the performance we went out for a bite to eat for lunch at Salazar, another chef-owned bistro down the street, where we split a giant burger and plate of scrumptious Mediterranean sea salt fries. But there was no music at the park afterwards, and no colored lights. After a longer-than-expected tour of OTR that confused even Gladys Philips Smith, we found our way home and still had part of the afternoon and all evening to revel in the music we had heard.

Voice of America Museum

When I wrote previously after first hearing about the work-in-progress that is called the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting, I knew that the museum itself was in its very early stages. It is housed in the old Bethany Relay Station building on Tylersville Road north of Cincinnati. The building itself was described as a rabbit warren of rooms at various levels. And the museum was not open yet--it only opens to the public one Saturday each month for three hours, and it didn't open last month due to vacation schedules.

So it wasn't until last Saturday, September 20 that I finally got a chance to visit the museum building. We didn't arrive until nearly 3:00 PM, two hours after the official opening time, and we knew the doors were due to close at 4:00. I expected that hardly anyone would be there, given the fact that the museum is more of a promise than a fact at this point, and also due to the fact that it was a beautiful late-summer Saturday afternoon and many folks probably had something else on their minds than the history of broadcasting through the WWII and Cold War eras. I was wrong, and we were not the only people there. Our tour, guided by a volunteer, started with a couple other visitors, and we all saw a 20-minute video describing the history of the Voice of America project. Following the video we were free to wander through the three major parts of the museum, which are devoted to the Voice of America organization, the history of wireless communication, and the "media heritage" of early radio in Cincinnati, primarily Crosley Radio and the WLW network.

It was easy to get lost in nostalgia in the Media Heritage portion of the space. There were picture and posters of famous personalities who got their start in Cincinnati radio, like the world-famous Doris Day, or who appeared here early in their career, like Andy Williams who was the youngest of four singing Williams Brothers while in high school. I was reminded of the early television program Midwestern Hayride that I saw in my youth, but which apparently had started as radio and as traveling road shows. Several of the exhibits we saw are looking a little ragged--more money is desperately needed for this museum--but a lot of the content is being captured on an active website. The site offers broadcasts of classic radio programs and a blog about the history of broadcasting from the Golden Age of radio to the early days of television, covering the people and stations that made history. Also noted are several archives available only in-person and on-site, chief among them the Frederic W. Ziv collection, consisting of over 15,000 items related to the person who pioneered television syndication, starting with programs including The Cisco Kid, I Led Three Lives, and Bat Masterson.

The self-guided part of our tour continued with stops in the Gray History of Wireless Museum. memorabilia and artifacts collected by Jack Gray, a long-time employee of the Crosley Radio stations, who started collecting in 1930. There was  lot of old equipment that I didn't understand, but it gave me a similar feeling to what I experience when I walk through old computer museums and see floppy disks and memory boards and punched card systems. It is important to be reminded from time to time of the beginnings of a particular technology.

I still want to learn more about the Voice of America program and its history, but that may have to wait until funding comes through to improve the museum and its collections. An ambitious master plan is in place.

In the meantime, the Voice of America continues to broadcast throughout the world, even though the Bethany Relay Station closed a decade ago. You can read or listen to VOA world news at http://www.voanews.com and news is broadcast daily in a slew of languages to people in Eastern and Central Europe, Eurasia, Central Asia, East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America. English language broadcasts go worldwide, as does a "Learning English" version.

I know a few people who have learned or improved their English, and learned about the U.S., by listening to Voice of America broadcasts. That was several decades ago, but apparently it is still happening.

Korean Connection in California

Korean Bell of Friendship, San Pedro, California
©Johannes Bjorner 2014

We left Cincinnati mid-morning and, as it happens when you fly non-stop from east to west across much of the expanse of the Unites States, we arrived shortly after noontime at the Los Angeles airport. We had packed light (carry-ons only) and it took little time to get to the car rental and to drive  the half hour to our motel. Finding it was no problem, as we had brought Gladys Philips Smith, our disembodied GPS lady, with us.

Finding a place to eat a late lunch, which was closer to our normal dinner time, presented more of a challenge. And we wanted to stretch our legs. We walked beyond the chicken take-out next to the motel. We crossed the street and passed McDonald's and Jack-in-the-Box. Then we went around the corner and saw a Korean restaurant. I don't think I had ever eaten in a Korean restaurant before, but we could tell it was authentic: we could not understand the conversation from the other occupied table, and our table was set without western cutlery. Fortunately there were English descriptions on the Korean menu.

Our luncheon combination plates (one broiled mackerel and one braised chicken) sounded innocuous and they were. It was the eight different small dishes of completely unknown condiments that arrived first that threw us. We never did determine whether they belonged to the mackerel or to the chicken, or to the table at large. They were almost all spicier than one of us wanted. Our server told us that there were broccoli and spinach and pickles, and some other words that we did not understand well enough to even try to remember. It was an interesting lunch.

Paseo del Mar, San Pedro, California
©Johannes Bjorner 2014

On our last full day in southern California we drove along the Paseo del Mar in San Pedro and spied a pagoda high on a hill. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon, breezy and sunny, and we had to park the car and walk up the hill. The intricate structure housed the Korean Bell of Friendship, we discovered. This massive bell and pavilion were donated to the people of Los Angeles in 1976 by the people of the Republic of Korea on the bicentennial of U.S. independence, to honor veterans of the Korean War and symbolize friendship between the two countries. The peaceful pavilion looks out over the calm waters on which U.S. troops have sailed into wars in the Pacific.

Korean Pavilion and Bell of Friendship, San Pedro, California.
©Johannes Bjorner 2014

Experimental Art

Opus 273, ©Johannes Bjorner. ISEA Exhibit 2014.

Our trip to southern California was occasioned by the 23rd Annual International Art Exhibit of the International Society of Experimental Artists. This is a juried show, and Johannes Bjorner, sometime photographer and recorder of events for this and a prior blog, entered a painting and was accepted into the show. Although Johannes has done art for many years now, this was a new group to us both.

ISEA says that art is experimental when the concept, attitude, techniques, or materials--in any combination--are experimental. ISEA artists work in two and three dimensions, and both my artist and I agree that this particular exhibition, which presented 87 works from the 400 or so that were submitted, showed some very creative pieces and was the best overall show that we had ever seen. It was an honor just to be included.

The exhibit is being held at the National Watercolor Society gallery in San Pedro from September 13 through October 12; a view of the gallery can be seen currently on the NWS website. Images of entries and prize works of the ISEA exhibits in 2012 (Gloucester, Massachusetts) and 2013 (Sanibel, Florida) can be seen from links at http://www.iseaartexhibit.org/photo-galleries, and presumably images from the 2014 show will make it there in due course.

Moving Around SoCal

Reminders of our recent short trip to southern California just keep coming. This past week it was a fire in the Port of Los Angeles that, according to the TV news we saw, elicited a suggestion to residents of San Pedro to shut their windows to stop toxic air entry from the outside, and to stay inside. Now reading this weekend report from the Los Angeles Times--a newspaper that we were glad to get to know during our days there--I see that the fire hit the Pasha Stevedoring and Terminal wharves on South Fries Avenue in Wilmington, the industrial town we drove through several times between Long Beach and our motel in Harbor City. It took 32 hours for more than 100 firefighters to contain the fire, but no one was injured, despite toxic air that threatened terminal workers, firefighters, and elementary school children. With shifting winds and above and below sea-level activity, fighting this fire--the worst at the LA port since 1976--was extremely difficult. Some awesome and instructive pictures have been gathered by the Times in several stories.

Having familiarity with an area brings a story like this home, even if it happens in a place that is not your home. We had lots of free time during our five days in southern California, and a rental car. Even though our GPS operator had a preference for freeway driving, we managed to see a lot of the byways of the towns of Harbor City, San Pedro, and Wilmington, and even touched into Long Beach, Lomita, Carson, and Torrance. It never occurred to me not to rent a car for the trip--that's the only way to get around in LA, isn't it?

It is not. The first thing I noticed outside our 50s-era (but completely updated) motel--smack dab on the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) in Harbor City--was a bus stop. A bus stop with benches and sun shelter, and lots of people using it. Every time we walked across the "highway," which is more like a Main Street at this point of its trajectory, we saw people waiting for, getting on, or getting off buses. I heard from a colleague after returning from my trip that he had lived in downtown Los Angeles for a year, half of it without a car! He rode the buses and got all over the huge area of southern California. Everywhere we drove in SoCal, we also saw buses. It is indeed possible to survive in the great metropolitan sprawl without a car.

But if you are driving, you have more flexibility. And you had better put that flexibility to good use as you share the street with emergency vehicles, trolleys, bicyclists, pedestrians, and oodles of skateboarders!

The Queen Mary

No, folks, the Queen Mary is not docked in Cincinnati. But ten days ago--including last Sunday--I was not in Cincinnati, but in southern California, and that is where the Queen Mary has been docked since it took its 1002nd, and last, sea voyage in 1967. Touring the Queen Mary was one of the highlights of our brief trip to San Pedro, California, which is part of the Port of Los Angeles. We got to the Queen Mary via a short car trip from our hotel in Harbor City (directly north of San Pedro) to Scenic Harbor Drive in Long Beach. Scenic Harbor Drive is not the most scenic harbor drive I have ever taken in my life--we drove through acres of wharves and cargo areas on our way. But stepping onto the Queen Mary was like stepping into another era.

Several eras, in fact. Plans for a ship that would carry people and post between England and the United States began in 1926; construction started in Clydebank, Scotland in 1930 but was halted in December 1931 because of the Depression. Two years later Cunard agreed to a merger with its main competitor. the White Star Line (which had earlier lost the Titanic) and construction resumed. The ship was named Queen Mary and launched in 1934; it took its official inaugural cruise and then its first transatlantic cruise from Southampton to New York in May 1936. For four years it plowed the North Atlantic, carrying luxury passengers to and from the U.S.--see the historic menu collection at the New York Public Library for what they ate! Our tour showed us a "typical" stateroom suite with living room and study and two bathrooms and two bedrooms--one for the maid. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, we were told, sailed often on the Queen Mary and kept 80 pieces of luggage in their stateroom, with an additional 75 in the cargo hold.

Of course there were also second class and third class passengers on board, and they did not have such luxurious quarters. One westward crossing in 1939 was singled out as carrying several refugees from Germany to the United States, and an uncertain but safer future.  In early 1940 the Queen Mary departed from its usual route and went to Australia for fitting out as a troop ship. During WWII the Queen Mary carried more than 800,000 troops, sleeping in bunks packed horizontally together so tightly that a soldier could not roll over from side to side during his eight-hour-allotment--and then he had to get out for the next shift of soldiers to get eight hours of sleep. In April 1943 Winston Churchill traveled on the Queen Mary to meet President Roosevelt, sharing the ship with 5,000 German POWs being sent to U.S detention camps.

Following the conclusion of the war, nearly 15,000 war brides and their children were transported to the U.S and Canada on the Queen Mary, and in 1947 she began her first post-war peacetime voyage. There recommenced an era of leisurely and, with varying degrees, luxury travel, but in the late 1950s jet travel began to encroach on the dominance of even the fastest ship on the ocean. In May 1967 Cunard announced that the Queen Mary would be retired and sold, and in July the offer of $3.45 million from the city of Long Beach was accepted.

On September 22, 1967 the Queen Mary left New York for her final transatlantic crossing. I was there. There was excitement and wonder in the air as we looked down the harbor to the berth where the Queen Mary was docked. Sadly, I was not appropriately impressed by the occasion; I was on my own first transatlantic voyage, leaving on the S.S. United States to spend a college year in London.

Queen Mary Shuffleboard Court

In Long Beach we wandered through part of the ship with self-guiding audio players and then assembled for a group tour with a live--and very lively--guide. After the tour we had a light bite to eat at the café on the Promenade deck, reminiscing about earlier cruises we had each taken separately, and then finished off with the specialty Queen Mary banana split.  More touring over Sun and Sports decks.

I had been thinking about the Queen Mary experience, and then this morning, CBS's Sunday Morning featured a piece on the ship, and it reminded me again especially of its wartime history. You can see that at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-salute-to-the-queen-mary/.

Tasting for the Cure

We've been driving under "Beer-Wine-Food - Sept. 5-6" banners for a couple weeks now, strung across the streets leading in to the village of Glendale from all directions (we live just to the north of Glendale). I finally remembered to go the website mentioned on the banner to find out what good thing was happening so close to where we live.

It was a beer and wine tasting event on Friday and Saturday evening, with over 100 varieties promised. The "food" part of the promotion focused on Cincinnati's "Porkopolis" history, this year calling for all things bacon. Fine for the beer part of the tasting, I thought, but not so much for the wine.

The online brochure also noted a rather hefty entrance fee: $30 for a tasting admission (wristband, 5 tasting tickets, and a commemorative glass) and $10 for a non-tasting admission (no wristband, no tickets, and no glass--just the privilege of walking around and watching the people, I guess). Nevertheless, we were driving, so we purchased one tasting admission and one non-tasting; five tastes was sufficient to share between two people, and we are good enough friends that we can also share the glass.

Our first taste was a too-sweet sangria, and from then on we looked only for the driest red wine at each stand. We found a few and had some pleasant chats with the volunteer pourers at the booths. They couldn't tell us much about the wines, though, as they really were volunteers for the charity portion of this event, which benefits a foundation called The Cure Starts Now, devoted to pediatric brain cancer research.  We did learn the names and locations of a couple of interesting local wineries, and we also learned that The Cure Starts Now funds an annual two-week research symposium in Cincinnati that draws the top researchers from around the world. Not bad for a "homegrown" charity only in its seventh year.

In between sips and chats we meandered around the attractive village square, which is off the beaten path (main street) by which we usually drive through Glendale, and I made note of the lovely gift shop, a small bakery, and a couple eating establishments that seemed a few cuts above most of the baconed snacks being served on the street that night. Glendale has only a few over 2,000 inhabitants and was incorporated in 1855 as Ohio's first and one of the nation's first planned communities. An early suburban area, it lies next to a direct railroad line into the city of Cincinnati, and during the brief hour and a half that we were there, freight trains rumbled within view at least six times. Indeed, the frequent nocturnal train whistles from this track have lulled me to sleep when I stayed with my sister in Wyoming and now in Springdale.  

Final Friday and Art in Action

I had heard about Final Friday, an art walk through numerous galleries occurring each month in downtown Cincinnati, from a sister, and then I was reminded of it again by a new acquaintance. And suddenly it was the final Friday of the month of August, so off we drove last Friday at 5:30, to catch the beginning of the event at 6:00.

Gladys, our GPS lady, sent us south on I-75, my least favorite method of getting into the city, and either she or we made a mistake, because we got close but weren't actually at the Pendleton Art Center in OTR, the "Over-the-Rhine" area that has changed from a dangerous neighborhood to become "the" new chic entertainment area in town. We parked the car and walked, and fortunately a young woman wheeling a baby stroller found us and directed us across the street and in the opposite direction to which we had been wandering.

When we got there, we found an old building--it had been the headquarters of U.S. Shoe Corporation, which itself has a fascinating history--in various stages of renovation, but with eight floors of artists' studios and galleries. What a feast for the eyes! and for the ears, with music, and also refreshments. We took the elevator to the eighth floor and figured we could walk through each studio and then descend, floor by floor, using the stairs.

I only made it through three floors Friday night before becoming saturated, so we left well before the 10:00 closing, and just in time to escape the worst of an evening rain. But Final Friday is only the start of the weekend events: Art in Action is held in the same place(s) on the Saturday following, from 11:00 to 3:00, so there we were again on Saturday afternoon. This time we knew the way to Pendleton Street and where to park, and while not as many galleries were open for demos and lessons as the night before, there were enough to make the trip worthwhile. And starting on the fifth floor, we still have not made it down to two and three.

The directory of artists and the website claim that this is the largest collection of artists under one roof in the world, and I see no reason to dispute the claim. Some artists work in the Pendleton studios while others only exhibit and sell there on the once-monthly weekend--many of the artists still support themselves with a "day job." It's a pity that there is only one weekend each month for this extravaganza, but it's a sure thing that we will be there at the end of September and many times more.

A very active Facebook page shows some of the happenings at each Final Friday.

Tar Hollow Week

For my entire adult life August has rarely, if ever, ended without the thought passing through my mind: "It's Tar Hollow week." This year is no exception, and since I am physically in the state of Ohio--home of Tar Hollow State Park--I have spent even more time this week thinking about Tar Hollow.

In my youth, Tar Hollow week was always the last full week of August; it was when my Methodist church sponsored a youth camp experience for its members from 5th grade through high school. I have no idea now whether there were 100 or 200 campers of these ages, plus or including adult counselors and activity leaders. I just know that there were a lot of people, some of whom I knew, and most of whom I did not in the early years. My one-year-older sister had the Tar Hollow experience a year before I did, of course, and she told me a little about it: you slept in cabins with four or five other campers and an adult of your own gender, you had to walk a few hundred feet to go to the group toilets and showers, segregated by gender, and your days were structured: you started with an early breakfast in the main hall and "morning watch" worship, proceeded to study and discussions on various social and religious topics, returned to the hall again for lunch, and dispersed for physical activities in the afternoon--often swimming in the small lake a short walk from the central activity area. Dinner was a substantial meal, followed, I believe, by vespers after the dining hall and kitchen had been cleaned up, all campers contributing manpower on a rotating basis.  The dining hall was transformed for various group activities in the evenings: popular music from a record player with the almost-latest hits, dancing (jitterbug and square dance), games, maybe, though I don't recall any in particular, and later in the evening a mysterious activity called "the submarine races," which  was never announced as an official event, but you always found out the next morning that so-and-so and so-and-so had enjoyed the submarine races last night.... It seemed as though the submarine races always started after the younger campers had made their way from the main lodge up the hills to their cabins with flashlight shining on the path so as not to trip on exposed tree roots or rocks or the poisonous copperhead snakes that we were warned about continuously.

I think it was not until the year I had finished sixth grade, or maybe even seventh, that the important addition to the curriculum and camp experience occurred for which Tar Hollow became such a turning point for me. That was when ten or twelve international college students were brought in to spend the week with us. I suppose that the purpose was to give those students--far from their homes in Asia or countries of Africa whose names no longer exist, and perhaps shut out of their college dorms until the next term started--a place to stay and a view of life in the United States beyond a small college campus in Ohio. For the campers, it introduced us to real live individuals from countries we had only heard of--or often had not--and to people of different colors, with different languages, and professing different beliefs from those that we were exposed to in small town life in Ohio in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They camped with us almost as equals--they were, after all, a good five or ten years older than we were--but they seemed more like us than they seemed like the adult counselors and chaperones.

I don't remember all of the international students, nor can I point to specific lessons I learned from them. This first international experience provided me more with an attitude, or an orientation, and one that has permeated throughout my life. I remember Misako from Japan showing us how to wear a kimono and fasten an obi, and Mike Badu from Ghana explaining that he needed to learn as much as possible about the modern world because he was supposed to go back to Ghana to be chief of his tribe. He was vegetarian because his people were vegetarian, and that fact provided a memorable lesson for my family when he came to our house for Christmas dinner one year and we therefore did not serve meat for this holiday dinner--this in an age and place where meatless meals were just not known.

In addition to being exposed to a world wider than I knew in my small Ohio town, I picked up a few specific skills and habits from the Tar Hollow experience. I was introduced to ping pong and became quite good at it; I enjoyed square dancing; I drank my first coffee (those early breakfasts were not for me); and I learned the value of meditation and solitude.

But to the despair of my teenage heart, no one ever invited me to watch the submarine races in the small lake at Tar Hollow.

Great Parks

Even though we didn't get the sticker on our car until a couple weeks ago, one of the best Christmas gifts we received last year was a one-year pass to the Great Parks of Hamilton County. Now that we consider ourselves officially "settled" we have begun exploring the 17 parks throughout Cincinnati and Hamilton County to which that pass provides free admission.

Our first park visit was to Glenwood Gardens. It was an overdue visit, as the entrance to this park is next door to one of the Kroger supermarkets that we frequent--the one closest to my sister's house where I stayed before we got our own place, and the Kroger still between our house and hers. Although we had driven by the entrance numerous times, we had never explored it, so we did a couple weeks ago. In between some lovely gardens, a lake, and well-maintained walkways, we found an exquisite gift shop. Fortunately, it was about to close for the day, so the only thing we picked up that time was a superb booklet with descriptions and maps of all the parks in the system. Winton Woods and Sharon Woods are names familiar to me and not far from where we live; Johannes and I took my father on a paddle boat tour around a lake in Winton Woods one summer in the past. Miami Whitewater Forest is another known name; though farther away, I remember a family bike ride there while I was visiting several years ago--the last time my father was on a bike. Now I look forward to exploring the other parks all over the city and county.

This morning we headed off to another park--not part of the Great Parks of Hamilton County system. I had my eye set on the VOA Park, northeast of Cincinnati in the West Chester/Mason area. I had heard about the Voice of America museum and park earlier this summer at a lecture that was part of the summer session of the University of Cincinnati's lifelong learning program. This morning seemed like a good time to explore, and after a short drive of about 20 minutes, over to and then up I-75, we found ourselves at the entrance to the VOA Park. There I discovered another system of municipal parks, though these were not part of the Great Parks system. We had crossed from Hamilton into Butler county, and now we were entering one of the MetroParks of Butler County. MetroParks uses the same membership model as Great Parks: you pay a modest fee ($10 per year) and affix a sticker to your car's windshield, and you get free entrance to the entire (county) system of parks until the end of the calendar year. So we now have two stickers on our front windshield (Hamilton on the left, Butler on the right) and also ten more parks to explore through the end of 2014.

Unfortunately I had not re-read my notes from the Voice of America lecture. The museum--a forthcoming museum at that--is not in the park itself. Nor is it yet open on a regular basis. But we found it, and we will return again some time when it is open--the next time being Saturday, September 20.

Oktoberfest in August

Last week I expressed surprise that the Oktoberfest in MainStrasse would occur in September. The first weekend in September, as I subsequently discovered. Now, however, I have already been to an Oktoberfest in Cincinnati, and we are not yet in September.

The Germania Society kicked off the Oktoberfest season this weekend, the fourth in August. I have learned that this is "The Original Cincinnati Oktoberfest." I believe it, because this year is the 44th festival. The Germania Society itself was founded in 1964 and is celebrating its 50th year this year. (I find it interesting that the Scandinavian Society of Cincinnati is also celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2014.) The Germania Society maintains  a large park and clubhouse northeast of the heart of Cincinnati, and that placed the festival just 15 or 20 minutes due west of our house. (A new acquaintance and I joked this week that "you can get almost anywhere in Cincinnati in 20 minutes or so." I have yet to see that time estimate disproved.)

It was a huge Oktoberfest. Even before we approached Germania Park we saw signs for off-site parking, with big yellow school buses transporting people to the venue. We didn't turn in time, though, and continued to the park. Fortunately, they still had on-site parking, and eight or ten volunteers guided us through a maze of pathways to the next available meadow parking area. It was right next to the giant inflatable cat playhouse for the children, we noted so that we would not forget where we had parked when we were leaving. We passed by other kiddie amusements, and a grown-up rat race game tent,  as we made our way over the meadow and by several food and drink stands.

We walked around to get an overview of what was available, but we were drawn to the covered pavilion, which provided some shade, folding chairs at long tables, and loud German music (interspersed occasionally with other popular favorites) by the music group AutoBahn. We had fortified ourselves with bratwurst, bierwurst, and a beer before we found our seats. My bierwurst was topped with the best sauerkraut I have ever eaten.


After music and dancing (the hokey-pokey, among others) we walked again through a beautifully shaded picnic area and also through a shop selling gorgeous authentic German dirndl dresses. Then we were told that they were serving sauerbraten in the Klubhaus--and it was air-conditioned. We found that, but were far too full to partake of sauerbraten or even a German pretzel.


Unfortunately, the characteristic Cincinnati heat and humidity finally showed itself yesterday. It was 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which is only 32 or 33 Celsius, but the humidity was high enough so that little droplets of water were raining down on us.

We only stayed a few hours at the Germania Society Oktoberfest, but I imagine that next year we will plan our day(s) better and take in more of the three-day program of music, dance, a parade, and food. And I suspect that it will not be the last Oktoberfest we attend this year.

Sunday in MainStrasse

After the morning news program this Sunday morning we felt the need to get out of the house and see something different. Where to? Anything but shopping, we both agreed! A little investigation and MainStrasse Village, in Covington, Kentucky, seemed like a good idea.

We took the long way around. Instead of driving straight south on i-75 or even diagonally on I-71, we took I-275, which runs in a circle all the way around Cincinnati--through Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. We drove  first  toward the east, and then eventually south and back west before crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky. After all, the objective was to see something new, and I had never been on this stretch of I-275 before, or at least so that I remembered it. We got off the highway shortly after crossing into Kentucky and set the GPS for Philadelphia Street in Covington, because though I could easily find Covington on the Cincinnati map, I could not read the fine print for Philadelphia Street.

Though we were already on the outskirts of Covington, Gladys Perry Smith (cousin of Gloria Pérez Sanchez, our GPS lady in Spain) sent us in a convoluted way back out and around Covington, the better to use the interstate highway rather than city roads, unfortunately. Nevertheless we arrived soon, just one exit south of the Ohio River. From there it was an easy two turns to the free parking lot of MainStrasse Village, which is a lovely neighborhood, larger than I had pictured, with unique house styles and interesting shops and restaurants. A nice and helpful gentleman taking a break outside the Magic Shop told us that not a lot would be open on Sunday, but that it was well worth strolling down a few blocks on Sixth Street until we got to Main Street. So that is what we did.

It was warm though not sunny, and by the time we came to the corner of Sixth and Main, we were ready for a bathroom break and a bite to eat. We stopped at the Cock & Bull Public House--not very German, we thought, but there were lots of people sitting at tables outside next to the Goose Girl fountain (inspired by the Grimms' fairy tale) but still with tables to spare. After our necessary visits inside we decided to join those outside--the air conditioning was too cold for us and it was not humid. It could have been really hard to choose from the beer menu--the Cock & Bull has 50 beers on tap!--but Carlsberg is one of them. We matched that up with a shared plate of two fish sliders, accompanied by "pub chips,"also described by our server as Saratoga chips. The fried fish was as good as I've ever had in England, and since it was a slider, I didn't feel guilty for eating too much,

While we ate and drank we browsed the two pieces of literature we had picked up at a sidewalk information center: one glossy brochure from the MainStrasse Association and another plain paper flyer depicting a MainStrasse Walking Tour, complete with an excellent map, architectural descriptions of 25 or so buildings, and a few pictures. The MainStrasse area stems from the 1840s, when German immigrants started arriving in Covington due to promotion of the similarities in typography between the Rhine River Valley and the Ohio River Valley. Most of the 800 buildings surviving today were built by the late 1870s, and though a large number are still residences, many have been converted into the restaurants and shops that make this an active urban entertainment district.

We walked around several blocks after our little lunch but did not do the full architectural tour. That will have to wait for another day, which may come a bit sooner than we had expected. Two people told us that, not surprisingly, MainStrasse has an excellent Oktoberfest each year. And one wisely informed us that it comes in September.

We also learned, from a card on the table at the Cock & Bull, that the MainStrasse pub is not unique. There are four in the Cincinnati area, and one, it turns out, is in our neighboring village, but in the village center, off the "beaten path" that we traverse frequently between towns. So now we have another place to explore.

Things and Stuff

We made it all the way through to Saturday this week before making our Ikea run, but then we headed out at 9:15 for the free breakfast and to pick up just a few small things on our list: an office lamp, two pillow cases, and knobs for various doors and drawers in the kitchen and bathrooms. We didn't find the knobs, but we got the other things, plus two small pieces of furniture--the last pieces, I feel sure. One was a small console table for the entry way--a place to set the shopping bags, library books, mail to post, and other little things that need to be taken down from our third-floor apartment to the car on the next trip down. Or perhaps to set a shopping bag, or stack of books, or the mail or newspaper when first coming in the door on a trip up.

The other last piece of furniture was one of Ikea's brand-new Billy bookcases, with birch veneer panel doors, to be used in the dining room to hold the nice china and other dining room objects that don't fit in the oak curio cabinet that was my parents' last gift to me, and which has stood in a sister's house during the entire time I was living in Spain. It's odd that this cabinet was among the last things we moved into our apartment. I had expected that it would be the first, simply because we had it, and the dining room table and chairs, and we had to go out and buy everything else when setting up the household. Having spent so much time (and money) buying household furnishings in the last month, and realizing the order of purchasing them, has made me contemplate the value of things of various types in my life.

I had overestimated the quantity of everyday things that I had stored. I had one set of dishes, one set of  everyday cutlery, both of them, incidentally, the sets we had entered on our bridal registry wish list  almost fifty years before. I had virtually no cooking utensils, neither pots and pans (having given away many heavy Wagner Ware pans, despite a sentimental loss, when I thought I would never use them in the U.S. again) nor vegetable peelers, mixing bowls, nor measuring cups and spoons, and the like. Not surprisingly, if you think about it, acquiring the paraphernalia for food preparation took precedence over moving the cabinet and unpacking the other "pretties," some also wedding gifts, that are only used on special occasions. I am pleased now to have reached the stage where I have the place and the time to do the final unpacking of the "pretties," and that will happen today, or this week, if, as I suspect, there are still a couple boxes of Royal Copenhagen china packed away at my sister's condo.

My contemplation of the value of things both practical and sentimental is also being fueled by my current reading of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. Frost's work was highlighted on the CBS Sunday Morning program a couple weeks ago, and that reminded me of the book, which was "Highly recommended" when it was reviewed by Choice magazine three years ago, not to mention the positive notice it had gotten in psychology literature, The New York Times, NPR, and hundreds of user reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. My own clutter probably does not reach the hoarding stage, but considering the amount of paper and books that I managed to accumulate in our house in Spain in ten years, I would rather not invite a psychologist in to render a professional judgement.

Changing location and setting up a new household with only the few things that can be carried in an airplane or shipped at sufficient expense to make sure you don't ship unimportant items, plus the items that have been stored in boxes in a closet for the past decade, offers a brand new, clean slate. It also offers the opportunity to develop new habits, and I am trying hard to alter my daily actions so that I do not accumulate too many things and too much stuff to sort through, discard, or move when that time comes again. Even more importantly, I am trying to maintain a clear vision of the world around me in our modest but adequate home, because I think a clear and uncluttered visual space will help keep a clear and uncluttered mind, and I'm reaching a point in my life where I value that immensely.