Roskilde 6 in Cincinnati

On Saturday this week I listened to Kristiane Strætkvern, conservator of the Danish National Museum, telling the story of how a Viking ship was unearthed in Roskilde fjord, Denmark, in 1996 and twenty years later made its way to Ohio to be a major focal point of the recent exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

In 1996-1997 the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde was expanding. During the renovation process the remains of nine Viking ships were unearthed. Through investigation over several years, the ships were determined to have been constructed during the period 1009-1032 AD. Roskilde 6 was the sixth one to be unearthed; restoration of this long ship started in 2009. With a series of excellent and detailed slides, Kristiane explained the process of conserving the waterlogged remains of the ship, using polyethylene glycol (PEG) to remove the excess water and then freeze drying—it took 3 ½ years to complete the freeze drying!

When the restoration began in 2009 it was not envisioned that the ship would be exhibited outside Denmark, but by 2013, it was decided that exhibition would start first in Copenhagen but then go on to London and then Berlin. This complicated the conservation process tremendously—in addition to planning for assembling the ship, plans had to be made for dissembling it, packing it, and transporting it. Denmark, unlike some other countries, does excavation and reconstruction piece-by-piece, rather than assembling the object as a whole in one piece. The careful marking of each piece was crucial in moving the exhibit from place to place. All three exhibits were successful, gathering nearly 200,000 visitors in each of the three museums.

In 2016, through cooperation with a museum exhibition company, the Roskilde 6 ship was matched with the Cincinnati Museum Center, and now the exhibit had to be transported out of Europe for the first time. It came from Copenhagen to New York by ship; from there parts were re-packed and sent by air, while other parts came by truck. Kristiane came to Cincinnati to direct the assembly of Roskilde 6, and she returned for its disassembly, which is scheduled to take ten days. (A YouTube video shows its assembly in Cincinnati https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFMB-IBFOk8&feature=youtu.be.) Roskilde 6 is “almost certainly” going to Minneapolis after its Cincinnati run, and it is hoped that it will find a temporary exhibition spot on the west coast and on the east coast before making its way back to Denmark, where it will become part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Denmark.

At 122 feet, Roskilde 6 is the longest Viking ship yet discovered, and required 100 men as crew. It was definitely used as a warship and was built after 1025, probably in Oslo and shows signs of being repaired at a later date, also in Norway, before finding its nearly 1,000-year resting place in Roskilde fjord. It was operational at a time when King Knud of Denmark was fighting against King Olav of Norway, but it is not known who commissioned its construction.

More links:

Roskilde 6, from the Viking History Museum in Roskilde

http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/professions/education/viking-knowledge/the-longships/findings-of-longships-from-the-viking-age/roskilde-6/

Longest known Viking ship goes on display at British Museum http://www.historyextra.com/news/longest-known-viking-ship-Roskilde-6-goes-display-exhibition-british-museum

Rebirth of the Viking warship that may have helped Canute conquer the seas

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/dec/27/viking-ship-roskilde-british-museum

It is still somewhat amazing to me that the first appearance of this restored ship outside of Europe would be in Cincinnati. We went to the exhibit with friends last month and I was amazed at the information in the entire exhibit--the Viking ship was only a part of the excellent content. It closed today, and although the exhibit was excellent, there was virtually no representation of this curation online or in book form, and that is a terrible loss.

On the Line

I did not go to Washington, D.C. for the Women's March last Saturday; I did not even make the trek to Washington Park in Cincinnati for the local "sister" march, though I support most of the various causes espoused so eloquently and peaceably by the hugely divergent groups of women who assembled worldwide to bring attention to women's rights and threats to them under the new U.S. administration.

Instead I chose to make one small, concrete effort on a single issue: feeding at-risk school children in Cincinnati. When schools close on Friday afternoon each week, a shocking proportion of students go home not knowing whether they will be able to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the weekend. Freestore Foodbank helps to reduce the number of students who may not eat, or eat nutritiously, on Saturday and Sunday.

I helped to assemble Power Packs. A Power Pack is a brown paper bag containing easy-to-prepare and shelf-stable food for one person for two days. The food in a Power Pack may include whole grain cereals, fruit and vegetable juices, sunflower seeds, health bars, complete pasta meals, and other healthy options. We had four assembly lines going on Saturday, and I was in station two of one of them. I received a bag in which my partner in station one had placed a cup of beef-a-roni and another cup of...I can't remember what microwaveable individual main dish. My job was to insert a bottle of some branded sports/health water that I had never seen before, and a tetra pack of cherry juice, balanced on its side. My partner on my right placed a cup of applesauce next to the juice, and some pudding. She then passed the bag down the line to three other people, who inserted more food items. I never had the time to find out what products they were putting in. At the end of the line, someone folded over the tops of the bags, someone else taped them shut, and another person packed six bags in a precise pattern into a cartoon and placed the cartons on a pallet.

In addition to the four assembly lines of packers, there were people uncrating products and moving them quickly from pallets to the assembly line, and removing the empty brown cartons, breaking them down, and dropping them into tall dumpsters. There were probably 50-60 volunteers there Saturday morning, some of whom were veterans, and others who were novices, like me. In two hours we filled more than 2000 Power Packs, moved them out to a loading dock, and replenished products in the assembly lines for the next group that was coming in. When we were told to wind up, I was just beginning to realize that I was tired of standing on my feet and moving in a limited, prescribed motion for two hours with no break. But it was a great feeling to know that some kids would eat better next weekend because of what we had done. I hope to come back for another shift next month.

The Freestore Foodbank's Power Packs are part of a larger national effort called Feeding America.  Perhaps there is one near you.

Making a Home in Cincinnati

It has now been a little more than two years since we formally moved from Spain to Cincinnati to call it home. Mostly it has been pleasant, but there have been a few rough spots. Nothing, however, as rough as the time the Alhamoud family has had since their home in Syria was leveled by bombs in 2011and they lived first with grandparents, and then in a refugee camp, before coming to the United States in October 2015.

In a three-part feature, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported this week on the first Syrian refugee family to find its way to Cincinnati to be resettled. They had received a call from the United Nations in July 2015, while they were in a camp in Jordan, asking whether they would come to the US. Yes, said the father, thinking primarily of the possibility of a peaceful future for his children. It took more than a year of vetting before they set foot on the plane that took them from Jordan to Rome to Miami and then to Greater Cincinnati International Airport, in northern Kentucky.

The Enquirer story talks about the life they had in Syria before the war, the loss of their home and numerous family members, and the effort that they have made over the past year to adjust to life in Cincinnati: for all to learn English; for the father to find a good employer; for the mother to learn to care for her family in a very different environment and help them and herself heal from the terrors from which they have tried to flee; for the children to go to school and make friends; for everyone to manage to live with an uncertain future.

My UU community has been working to be connected with a refugee family to "adopt" for the past year, and this week I thought that we were close to finding one. But after we gathered commitment from at least five members to be actively involved in providing English language tutoring, transportation to grocery stores and medical appointments, help with children's homework, assistance in preparing for job interviews, and providing a general welcoming presence and orientation to the community, we learned that we were too late for the two families coming in the next two weeks. It's a good thing, I suppose, that there are more people wanting to adopt refugee families than there are families, or is it? There is not a dearth of families needing resettlement; there just are few coming to the US and to Cincinnati. And we are entering an era in which there may be even fewer coming across the Atlantic than there have been.

Nevertheless I expect there will be some more refugees and some more chances. I recommended the article "Finding Home" to the refugee support group this morning for background reading, because of the illuminating picture it gives about the resilience of refugees and the many people and efforts required to help someone make a new home for themselves.

Time and Time Again

This is the post I meant to write last Sunday, soon after returning from two weeks away, mostly in Spain, and the day of switching from Daylight Savings Time to Eastern Standard Time; but time got away from me. What I was concerned with then was how odd it was to have two seasonal changes of time within just one week. We were in Spain when Europe switched from Summer Time to Winter Time, on Sunday, October 30. Our hotel in Barcelona had thoughtfully put a notice in the elevator, and we had an extra hour to enjoy a Barcelona Sunday morning before we found our way to the Cathedral to watch the weekly national (Catalunyan) dance of the sardanas.

Then this past Sunday, after returning on Tuesday across only five, instead of the usual six, hours of time difference, we were in Cincinnati. We had not adjusted to the time difference yet and were still in the mode of waking at 1:30 or 2:30 AM, and struggling to stay awake until 8:30 at night. And then we had to deal with another changing of the clocks on Saturday night, just a week after we had already done it. We didn't have an efficient hotel staff to put a note in the elevator this time, but fortunately the mechanism inside the iPad adjusts itself automatically, so when I wok up in the middle of the night--2:30 AM--I didn't even have to remember that we had changed times. In fact, I didn't remember it until later, after I had slept a few more hours, and I went downstairs and turned on the CBS Sunday Morning program and realized  that it was only 8:05 instead of the 9:05 that it said on my digital devices. I had to look at the analog clocks to remember that we had changed, and then I occupied myself with running around the house and setting them back. There are more than I would have guessed.

 What I don't understand is why Europe and the Americas cannot agree on a common time to make this seasonal switch. For one week of the year, rail, bus, and airline timetables have to be adjusted to accommodate the first change, and then a week later, they have to be adjusted again when the second change comes. Broadcast schedules also have to be adjusted during that week--we had trouble getting the Danish morning news program that we often listen to in bed before 7:00 AM because we didn't know when it would be available. That's an inconvenience, but I worry more about the potential for miscommunication in serious international interconnections.Whatever automatic time settings are on the hotline between those with their fingers on the nuclear trigger--I hope someone has taken time change into consideration so warnings are adjusted and nothing goes off unintentionally!

But I didn't write about this last week, since time got away from me. By now I have adjusted to the five (or six) hour time difference between Europe and the Eastern U.S.--a late night on Tuesday this week helped that; or rather, it was the night after only two and a half hours of sleep on Tuesday night when I was finally able to sleep until a reasonable time on Thursday morning. And now I have other thoughts of "time and time again," for it is not the first time in my life that I have awoken on the morning after an election feeling worried and disappointed. I don't seem to have made much progress in my life in aligning my country's leadership with my own ethical and political values. But they don't seem to have made much headway in getting me to change mine, either.

The Endorsement of the Century

© 2016 Cincinnati Enquirer 

When I moved back to Ohio two years ago after spending my entire adult life elsewhere, I knew I was moving to an area that was more conservative politically than any of the places I had lived since I grew up in the state in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The best news I had this week was the surprise announcement that the Cincinnati Enquirer had endorsed Hillary Clinton for president of the United States. It is truly the endorsement of the century--the Enquirer editorial board has not endorsed another Democratic candidate since 1914. The long, well-reasoned, and yes, conservative, statement is here. It bears thoughtful reading by all.

And if you are interested in how the team at the Enquirer came to their decision, and why it is even important for newspapers to endorse candidates in this day and age, you can find out in this video presentation.

Maintaining Control

It's been anything but a quiet week in Lake Wobegon since Garrison Keillor left us out on the Prairie for the last time this past week. Two sudden, vicious, and senseless murders of individuals going peacefully about their business, targeted for no defensible reason by people who have been entrusted with the responsibility of helping preserve the peace. The subsequent retaliation murder of five other individuals actively engaged in protecting people's right to peaceably assemble to petition redress of grievances. The resulting shock level throughout the country seemed greater with this accumulation of killing than it has for months, even years, though heaven knows that killings of this nature are no strange event to life in these United States. Churches and caring communities have come together to mourn and try to hope, social media is flooded with reactions and admonitions, and even the broadcast media is still devoting full time to video replays and analysis, since nothing else has yet taken place to fill up the airwaves.

And yet, we keep on keeping on. We have to, perhaps, in order to maintain some control over lives that we fool ourselves into thinking that we have some control over. This week I did a positive thing by meeting with my family members to jointly sign and validate State of Ohio Advance Directives: the Health Care Power of Attorney and the Living Will Declaration. A task that we have been  meaning to do for months, and for which we have all, by this stage of our lives, received several reminders in the form of sad and tragic brushes with death and ending of life of various family and friends. We are so lucky that all in our family have similar ideas about how to approach end of life decisions in the event of diagnosed terminal conditions or sudden catastrophe, so it was not too hard to select the agents who will have control over my medical treatment if I myself have lost control.

Two days this week my plans for the day were disrupted by unexpected events, other than those in the national news. On Friday I had scheduled a luncheon meeting with a friend, and I was really looking forward to seeing her and going to this particular restaurant. But the day before, the oil light had come on in my car, or so I thought, and when my favorite mechanic told me that the oil repository was full and the light was a "check the engine" light and that we should go to the dealer immediately, we did. So that luncheon engagement was cancelled. I found out in due course that the engine light signified only that I needed a new gas cap. The visit to the dealer solved that problem and allowed the opportunity to get the factory recall airbag replaced, a potentially dangerous situation that I had been neglecting for no good reason.

The other day with unexpected events was the day I had been scheduled to observe English language classes at a refugee center. In this case, I still showed up at the center, but there was a surprise celebration of Eid, the end of Ramadan. We had an unexpected free and interesting lunch, but there were only a few minutes available for observing classes. It was extraordinary and humbling to meet several refugees one-on-one, who each introduced themselves, saying "My name is ... " [something I could not repeat, nor distinguish first name from surname], "I am from ... " [a far-away country I have never been to, most Bhutan, some Gambia, one Syria], and "I have been in the United States for ... " [a ridiculously short period of time, ranging from five days to two months].  The composure of the individuals I met was astounding for someone who had been uprooted from their own country, living in a refugee camp for years, and then suddenly dropped into a mid-sized Midwestern U.S. city.

Since we were there, with a car, we were asked to take two clients to an appointment they had at a  health clinic. Although we have been here for two years, we did not recognize the name of the health clinic, nor have any idea of how to get there. And though we were introduced to the young man and young woman who we were to transport, we could not communicate with them beyond hand signals and "thank you." It was a long 20-minute drive down Reading Road and into the university health center area, with only the mechanical voice of the GPS lady to tell us where to go. I sat and enjoyed the feeling of having some recognition of the area we were driving in, though I never could have found it myself and would not have been comfortable driving alone. And I marveled at the trust of our passengers who had willingly and politely allowed themselves to be deposited in the automobile of a couple they had never seen before, to go to a place they presumably did not know how to get to, when I am uneasy about getting into a taxi cab alone in a city I do not know. I think they must have learned something about the illusion of control and real control from their experiences. They certainly had learned something about grace.

We all want to control the big things like where we live, and for how long, and under what conditions, and we can make plans for some eventualities. But war, or hate, God, or fate--life--can intervene at a moment's notice, and the unexpected will happen. The only control we have is the way we meet it. Each day. Each minute.

Faces of Cincinnati

This has been a week spent largely beyond our dwelling place in the city of Springdale in north Cincinnati. In spite of our location adjoining a somewhat dated Latino shopping center, with an Hispanic and a Halal grocery store, and a Mexican restaurant, the feel of our neighborhood, and our experience, is distinctly white suburban. This week brought us welcome interchanges with the world beyond.

Impromptu dancing with men and women at World Refugee Day.

On Wednesday we went to Saint Francis de Sales parish on Madison Road near downtown Cincinnati, to participate with others from The Gathering at Northern Hills in preparing and serving a hot lunch to elementary school students who are members of the UpSpring of Cincinnati summer camp enrichment program for homeless children. I am not used to cooking in quantities of 100s, so it's a good thing that I was not in charge of the menu and planning. But I did enjoy chopping more onions that I every had before in a single stretch for sloppy goes, stirring one of six pots of the mixture, and then preparing the plates for the sloppy joes, cole slaw, and tortilla chips. It had been busy with adults  in the kitchen from 10-12, but when the kids came into the dining area after their morning activities, the activity level skyrocketed, as did the decibel level. I went out to check some of the kids in the dining room later in case they wanted seconds, and it was hard hearing above the roar of the crown, even though any child that wanted individual attention from adults stood patiently with hand raised in air to attract attention from one of the teachers or volunteers. We heard details about the work of UpSpring, which sadly has increased the number of people it serves during the summer months in the seven years that this congregation has been performing this service. Shockingly more than  half of all children living in Greater Cincinnati live below the poverty line.

A very young attendee at World Refugee Day.

Friday morning I made a quick stop at the Northminster Presbyterian Church in Finneytown, catching a group of adult refugees at the tail end of their weekly English and citizenship classes, sponsored by Heartfelt Tidbits, a relatively new local non-profit organization that concentrates its efforts on refugee resettlement. I spoke with the executive director, and I am hoping to start some tutoring of adults in this program in the upcoming summer weeks.

Saturday was World Refugee Day, and Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio had planned a festive event for the refugee families it serves. My volunteer efforts there included the making and sharing of a Vietnamese chicken-cabbage salad and a late pot of South African yellow spiced rice--both these in more customary sized quantities, for a couple families. There were lots of volunteers and lots of other food offerings, too, and some beautiful music and dancing. The large majority of the refugees to Cincinnati now are from Bhutan., but several African and Asian regions are represented. One of the unique experiences I had Saturday as I helped staff the soft drinks table was to hear the Nepali national song and see it interpreted in a graceful dance.

So much joy and grace in this dance! Smiling faces all around!

Danish Connections

Since my sister-in-law arrived from Argentina a month ago, I have been speaking Danish at least half the day. Carmen claims not to speak English (though she manages several words from time to time in social situations, especially those involving shopping, ice cream, and one-on-one with family and close friends). She has been a resident of Argentina since the age of 14, when she emigrated with her parents and her brother (my husband) from Denmark. Theoretically we could speak Spanish together, but her first language and my second is Danish, and that is the language in which we talk best about the little things and the big things.

So busy we have been, talking about past memories and current concerns, that the Nordic dinner at the White House on Friday, May 13 passed by us without notice. It also passed by the U.S. media outlets that we watch without notice. But then there was Facebook and postings from Danish friends to alert me to the speeches made at the state dinner. And later there was email to actually send along the links to listen to the speeches from President Obama, the prime minister of Iceland, and the prime minister of Denmark.

If you read the transcript of the toasts made that evening, you may wonder, as I did, whether there had been a few toasts before we got to Mr. Obama's remarks, and to Mr. Jóhannsson's, and to Mr. Rasmussen's. There were a lot of jokes, but what interested me primarily were two paragraphs from our president's talk.

He spoke of N.F.S. Grundtvig, a Danish pastor and educator, who was a 19th-century proponent of  of the Danish folk high school movement. These folk schools were attended by some youths, but mainly working adults, and provided education on many practical and cultural topics. I knew that the the folk high school idea had achieved some international recognition, but I did not know that there had been a school inspired by the folk high school movement in the U.S., in Tennessee--hardly a bastion of Nordic influence. But the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee traces its roots to Grundtvig, and the Highlander Folk School has played an important part in the civil rights movement in the United States. The Highlander school provided a place, in the segregated south, for blacks and whites to meet together to learn how to resist racism. Rosa Parks attended a 1955 workshop at Highlander four months before refusing to give up her bus seat; Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis were trained there, and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the Highlander's 25th anniversary celebration in 1957. According to a history of Highlander written for children, the song "We Shall Overcome" became a symbol of the civil rights movement at the Highlander School.

Shortly thereafter, the Highlander Folk School was accused of being Communist and was closed down by the state of Tennessee. The ideas engendered there survived. Grundtvig knew that knowledge was the best tool to fight for freedom, and so did the people who moved through the Highlander Folk School.

Do You See What I See?

No, I don't think so. Right now I have three blue marbles dancing around in the lower part of my left eye. They are clustered together until I move my head slightly or blink; then they move. perhaps they scatter. Perhaps they roll, one against another. Perhaps two cling together and the other rotates up or down.

They are blue and bronze marbles: a dark blue center, surrounded, in a diffused way, with red-bronze. One is the size of a contact lens; the other two are the size of a marble, or a very colorful nickel.

How did they get into my eye? They appeared this afternoon, a by-product of a shot of Eylea administered at the Cincinnati Eye Institute. I have been having more-or-less monthly injections for slightly over a year now, to control wet macular bleeding. There were times in the past when I thought I would faint dead away if I had to endure a shot in the eye, but I am now used to it: it goes amazingly quickly, the numbing drops work perfectly to eliminate all sensation except a tiny prick, and the doctor is precise, efficient, and, as I said before, very fast.

Blue marbles in the eye are not a standard outcome of the procedure. I have had them only once before, and the doctor explained, somewhat apologetically, that sometimes air bubbles get into the needle and are transferred unintentionally to the eye. I was enchanted the first time I saw them. After all if you have to get a shot in the eye, isn't it just a bonus to also get treated to a free light show ias part of the bargain?

The last time this happened, there were five marbles; two disappeared sometime in the late evening of the day of the procedure. I still woke up with three but then, suddenly, I noticed they were all gone. I felt bereft.

So, I don't expect my marble game to last much longer; very likely when I wake up in the morning the translucent blue balls will have disappeared, and my vision will be back to what passes as normal for me. In the meantime, I am enjoying twisting and turning and experiencing the effects.  Although they reside in the bottom third of my eye, when I stooped down to get a drink from the water fountain at the institute, they popped upward and "separated" my mouth from the water stream in the fountain. Right now they are floating over my keyboard and covering up some of the letters I need to find. When my husband reached over to kiss me on the couch after we enjoyed a pizza while watching the evening news, I kissed him back and giggled as the balls came between our lips.

A big discovery with this injection: although the balls were shot into my left eye and are presumably swimming around only in that eye, I can close my left eye and still dimly see them with my right eye open! I have no understanding of the neurological connections between the brain and retinas and other parts of the mechanism of eyesight, other than that they are complicated. I don't know how I see what I see right now, but it is entertaining and illuminating.

An OLLI Sampler

I have written about OLLI before, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute for senior learning, held in this city by the University of Cincinnati, and in other cities by other entities. The Winter 2016 session is coming to a close, but I cannot let it fade away (to be replaced by the Spring session, whose catalog has already arrived in the mail and online) without acknowledging my gratitude for the way it enriches my life. I did not sign up for any weekly courses this term; instead I selected a whole slew of one-session lectures on various topics. These lectures are held at three different locations in the city: Adeth Israel on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 12:10 to 1:30; Sycamore Senior Center on Wednesdays, from 9:30 to noon; and Llanfair Retirement Center on Friday mornings from 9:30 to noon. I have been busy one or more days for the last seven weeks (minus the two that I was out of town on vacation). This weekend I cleaned out my winter handbag in preparation for exchanging it for a spring bag, and in the process I pulled out scraps of notes from a number of my OLLI lectures. I'm one of those people who  learns and remembers best by taking notes, on paper or on the iPad, but I rarely go back to read the notes again. Glancing through these however, was a pleasant reminder of the diversity of topics to which I had been exposed this term.

The Freestore Foodbank is the granddaddy of food kitchens in Cincinnati, having begun 45 years ago. It employs 115 individuals and is supported by 9200 volunteers to serve customers in 20 counties in the tri-state area via 250 food pantries. 70% of its customers are working, but not earning enough to purchase proper food for their families. Federal guidelines say that "food salvage businesses" of this type should allow customers to acquire food sufficient for three days; the Freestore Foodbank aims for 7 days.

I heard about the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and how it distributes aid around the world in times of disaster while maintaining a policy of impartiality and neutrality. The local unit of the national society of the American Red Cross has been particularly effective in  tracking family members of refugees and Holocaust victims. Our speaker asserted that 91 cents of every donated dollar goes to direct client services, which is a higher figure than for many charities. We also learned of the four Geneva Conventions that haste defined rights during armed conflict.

This week I was uplifted by a three-hour program of live music:. We started off with the Queen City Klezmorim, who played a fabulous collection of in turn haunting and happy klezmer songs on the clarinet, violin, tuba and bass, piano, and drums. Then on to the Marzan Brass Quintet, who started out with "Down by the Riverside" and included a number of other tunes, some as old as the late middle ages. I was seated in the second row and was really intrigued to be able to watch the three fingers of the trumpet player synchronize perfectly to play true notes.  The Highlandaires concluded the program, and though I had to leave early, I enjoyed this nine-piece dance band and walked out to the strains of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

I also had notes from a full morning talk about the wonders of growing plants indoors without soil: hydroponics. I learned almost as much about the nutrients needed for good plant health as I know about nutrition for humans. We also saw a hydroponic installation at the LLanfair center, where the chefs use herbs in their kitchen. This was an import ant presentation, because although I was attracted to the idea of growing herbs indoors in an apparatus like the one we saw, I had to admit that I was not up to the rigors of managing the indoor farm on a daily basis--thus saving myself an outlay of $1000 or so and another opportunity to feel guilty about my imperfections.

I think I have pretty much moved away from the public speaking that I had to do during the height of my career, thank goodness, but I still enjoyed a presentation on "Be a Better Speaker in (Almost) One Easy Lesson." The moderator modeled her tips perfectly and held my attention so well that I had no need to take notes, but I did enjoy the excellent half-page handout she distributed at the end of her talk and will keep it in mind if I have the opportunity to speak in any of my volunteer groups.

I attended a short lecture on "Mature Driving" a couple weeks ago and learned that I-75 opened in 1959 through downtown Cincinnati, with a median strip of trees that lasted a half year before dying of gas fumes. There is an ALICE disaster preparation session this week, to which I am looking forward with trepidation, as well as  something called "England Inside Out" and a session on the "Value of Art," postponed from one of the snow days in the term.

I'm already scanning the catalog for the next term of OLLI courses and preparing for exposure to some things that I never ever imagined I would be able to learn about so easily.

Portugal Holiday

We returned this past Friday from a two-week holiday in Portugal. Although we lived in Spain for ten years, we had never made it to Portugal, Spain's western neighbor on the Iberian peninsula. From our time in Spain, we knew we were not going to a tropical paradise--I wrote too often about how cold the winters were in Spain. But we expected sun and light and somewhat warmer temperatures than those that had recently begun to creep into Cincinnati. We were right for most of the time.

Our first two nights were in Lisbon, where we had a beautiful and comfortable hotel within walking distance of the port and the Bairro Alto (the upper neighborhood), where we enjoyed the views, good fish, and fado music. We thought Cincinnati was hilly, but the Cincinnati hills have nothing on those in Lisbon. We walked up and we walked down. I felt it in my legs the next day when I woke up. In fact, my calves did not get back to normal for an entire week. When we moved to Porto on the third day of our holiday, we discovered hills there, too. Lots of them.

In Porto we had a fantastic apartment with cooking facilities and an open kitchen and living room, in addition to the bedroom and bath.  We liked it so much that we immediately extended our planned three-day visit to six. We were conveniently located in the Cathedral area, a stone's throw from the São Bento train station. It served as a great  central point for our walks down to the port area (and then back up), two excursions on the yellow hop-on, hop-off city bus tour, a day trip to Guimarães, the birthplace of the Portuguese nation, a metro ride to the Casa de Música for a Carnaval concert the Sunday night before Ash Wednesday, and daily trips to the nearby grocery store for provisions for breakfast and our evening meals.

Surprisingly, we started to get little drizzles of rain the last day we were in Porto, and the cloudy weather continued after we returned to Lisbon for three more nights.  Our apartment near the Santa Apolónia station wasn't quite as nice as the one we had in Porto, but it was adequate, and we had two days there to see a different part of the city. The last day we took a local train out to Gare do Oriente to be close to the airport for an early flight the following morning. This is a modern and bustling new part of the city, and we enjoyed the shopping mall and seeing the outside of the convention center.

It was a relaxing trip, one we needed after the intense preceding month, and we find that with this vacation we no longer race around trying to see as much as we can see. One planned sightseeing or cultural event a day, a meal out, shopping for and preparing a meal in, keeping up with emails and Facebook (Johannes posted most about our sightseeing), some reading, writing, TV, or iPad games is about the right speed.

We came home refreshed and pretty much relaxed.

Immigration Crises and Family Values

In between the gross excesses of the U.S. political campaigns blared daily on the evening news programs you might find a few minutes, or occasionally a longer, thoughtful story, on the unending immigration crisis. I mean the immigration crisis playing itself out in Europe, though I can think of no reason why it should end there. Earlier we saw huge boatloads of refugees from war, crossing treacherous waters and arriving on land, and the ensuing chaos as the people tried to move farther along in their journey but were stopped by bureaucracies and fear. Many of these first arrivals were men who had left early and were trying to find a new home for their families. Now the families have joined the journey, and we tend to see unending lines, comparatively orderly, of men, women, and children walking hundreds of miles in long queues, still on their way north, still trying to find countries that will take them in, if only for the length of time it takes to pass through to a place that will accept them legally.

Here in the U.S. we tend to focus on our own immigration crisis. I have been dipping into an extraordinary book about the toll that illegal status places on children in families in the U.S. The author, Joanna Dreby, speaks about families in New Jersey and in Ohio. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families is an academic book; her research is thorough, but imparted in plain English. What makes this academic title also a book for general audiences, however, is her recounting of her own story and that of her two children, who somehow entered into the uncertainty of a family living with illegality through some mishandling of paperwork discovered in a divorce transaction. There are hundreds of gotchas that affect thousands of children, and this book shows in painful detail how families can be torn apart in our own immigration crisis.

````````````````````````````
Even though I haven't read it all, I need to take this book back to the library soon. I've already renewed it once and I just don't think it's right to keep it longer. But it's worth mentioning that getting the book represents a minor everyday miracle of the library system in Ohio. This title was not available through the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library system, but it came to my local public library from Capitol University, via OhioLINK, the consortium that links many libraries of different types in the state. I worked for multitype library lending and cooperation many years ago (in Massachusetts) and Ohio was a best practices model then. It is nice to see that the system still works. And it's always nice to see my tax dollars going for something good.

Inspiration

I went to two OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, sponsored by the University of Cincinnati) sessions this week and left both uplifted in knowledge and spirits.

Thursday a woman by the name of Tambura Omoiele spoke about "Blacks in the Holocaust: The Rhineland Bastards." I was not the only person in the audience who, having read the description lightly and long ago, came to the class thinking we were going to hear about the children of black American soldiers who had gotten involved with German women. We did not. And when I did read the class description, I discovered that I was a little too late to read the recommended (advanced) reading: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.

Few people know that between 400 and 600 black German children were castrated, sterilized and/or sent to concentration camps during the Hitler years. They had lived in Germany since the migration of many Liberians to the Rhineland in the early 20th century. Hans Massaquoi was born in Germany in 1926 of a marriage between the Liberian consul and a German mother; somehow he managed to escape the fate dealt to many of the black children. After WW II he left Germany and came to the United States, where he served in the army, married and had children, made his living as a journalist, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and became managing editor of Ebony magazine. His book on his life in Germany was published by Morrow in 1999 and is still in print.

Tambura Omoiele is on a mission to inform people about the forgotten black people in major world events. I certainly did not know that black German citizens were among the 11 million people who died in the Holocaust. Now I do. Tambura mentioned in passing that a black couple had also been on the Titanic, but we never knew that, did we? Maybe that will be her next speech. At any rate, her telling of this event of WW II history was passionate and profound.

The next day I drove to another OLLI location to hear Jonathan T. Reynolds speak for three hours about "Every Bite a Taste of History: Food in History." Not only did Professor Reynolds, a specialist in West African history and Islam and currently on sabbatical from Northern Kentucky University, impart many facts about food in history, he treated his audience to a history of the teaching of history since the years that many of us had studied it in high school and college. Dr. Reynolds theorizes that one can teach the history of the world using a cookbook as a text. He hasn't gotten approval for that yet, but if he ever does, I'd like to take that course! And when he finishes his current textbook (his sabbatical project), World in Motion: A Dynamic History of Humankind, I may give that a shot, too.

Again this one-shot lecture was given with passion, and it taught me things about historiography and the origins of foodstuffs that were brand new to me. He inspired me.

Beginning Anew

It's been a week filled with comings and goings: a visit to the eye doctor, a late afternoon at the movies for Woman in Gold, meeting with out-of-town cousins for a supper visit, a day out for the  symphony and lunch, and a Sisters' gathering for brunch, not to mention overdue trips to the grocery store, library, bank, and Ikea food shop. The weather has been changeable, too; some days sun, alternating with cold and rain showers, but there was only one day of really unpleasant rain, and thankfully I could stay home for that. The other times that I was out and about driving to the various appointments and errands, I relished the view of spring flowers and the greening of lawns and foliage. The daffodils are gone now, replaced by tulips and multitudes of flowering trees in white and pink. The lawns have turned from blah to light yellow-green and now to a rich, deep green, and the trees separating our neighborhood from the little commercial area to the south have sprouted blades so the view is no longer as stark as it was during the winter. Soon we won't be able to tell that there is anything but forest between us and the main road. I walked that area on Saturday during a quick trip  to Walgreen's for the batteries I needed to get my mouse working again, and the weather was clear and fresh and sunny on the way out, though a few raindrops moved in by the time I had made my purchase. Today we drove west to our favorite superstore to get groceries and curtains for my office, deliberately taking the slower town road instead of the interstate so we could view the gardens along the way.

This afternoon we installed the curtains that I desperately need to shield my desk and computer from too much sun coming in through the venetian blinds on my south-facing window. Then I got energetic enough to put together a new floor lamp that I hope is going to encourage me to sit in an easy chair in my office to read, rather than relegating all my pleasure reading to the bedroom. I have been mindful since we moved in of the opportunity to reshape old habits, and I am attempting to define certain areas for certain types of reading. My reading is dependent on good light, and I now have several places in the house with good light, so I am reconsidering what I read where, both to foster the reading and to manage the clutter. I just might be able to keep the newspaper in the kitchen, I think,  or failing that, on the dining room table, instead of spread over the living room couch or my bedside stand. I'm trying hard not to bring magazines and recipes and cookbooks into my office at all, as they will only get lost there. And I'm trying to keep work-related paper only in the office, not just to reduce chances of losing them throughout the house, but to reduce the encroachment of work into other aspects of my life. I am not forbidding myself the pleasure of reading in bed entirely, though--that would be a real hardship and counter productive for the imagination. But I am trying to limit the objects on my night table to one book and one tablet at a time. That is going to take some discipline. But new environments can help to form new habits.

Hanging On

We had been coming through a very busy time. Just as we finished the major part of our move, we were hit by a series of social events--good things all, but in the sort of squeezed sequence that makes you wish you had a bit more control over the timing of so much goodness. But that's life, and we were hanging on and enjoying it.

We spent an interesting evening sampling an Indian dinner, won at a church benefit auction months ago. We entertained non-family visitors for the first time in our new house--the Scandinavian Scribblers from whom we receive stimulation to write and enjoyment from sharing experiences. We made it to the local cinema--on Senior Discount Day, no less--to see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We met a new group of people at the Torch Club of Cincinnati and heard an excellent overview of recent genetics research. We attended a Danish Dinner with talks about Piet Hein and Jørn Utzon, and samples of æbleskiver and homemade pumpernickel bread. I lead a book discussion on A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, at my new reading group, and I molded my mind to applying a developing knowledge of XML protocols to a web publication. We attended an evening lecture on current Alzheimer's disease research being conducted in Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky and I was contemplating whether I should offer myself as a subject for (I hope) a control group.

And then in the space of just one hour after a pleasant but uneventful lunch of green salad, mixed fruit, and working on the Word Game puzzle from the daily newspaper, it went from every-day routine to crisis.  An emergency trip to the hospital, which we had remarked casually only days before was just 15 minutes away, never dreaming that we would need it so soon. A harrowing time as I saw my husband become faint, weaken, go into shock, and lose consciousness from acute internal bleeding. He revived slowly after IV fluids started dripping into his arm, but not before I realized with a conscious certainty that I had not experienced in awhile that I really was not ready quite yet to go into that next phase of my life alone.

He hung on through the night and through the corrective procedure the next morning, and then he hung on well enough through the day so that he was released from the hospital by supper time. And we are hanging on during this weekend, following doctors' instructions meticulously. And in all the days ahead I will try to hang on mindfully to that conscious awareness that I experienced during those few interminable hours of crisis, for the perspective it can provide when I am faced with irritations that should be small.

"The Lives We Live in Houses"

One snowy Sunday afternoon a month ago, I spent time in the Joseph Beth bookstore in Crestview, Kentucky and happened across a slim volume of poetry that has been haunting me. It is The Lives We Live in Houses, by Pauletta Hansel, a poet and native of eastern Kentucky, who now lives and practices her art in the Cincinnati area. Hansel's poems in this book are all short enough to be printed on one page, so it is excellent for dipping into whenever there is a free moment. I had read several while standing at the Kentucky authors section of the bookstore. Since then I find myself reading one or two before going to sleep or before starting preparations for a meal, which is when I have contemplative time.

I was attracted initially by the title, for I knew then that I would be moving into a new house in the near future. I had been packing up belongings for weeks and planning where to locate them in my new home, and in that ritual of sorting, selecting, packing, and wondering I was reliving the lives I had lived in the many houses I have occupied during my lifetime.

But it is not houses per se that Hansel writes about; it is the lives lived therein, the various persons that we remember, long for, are, and become. Many poems evoke her childhood and early experiences growing up; "Doppelgänger" posits an unusual and shocking origin; "Class Lessons" shows the long reach of a teacher's thoughtless comment.

In a section titled "Blood Line," she remembers her parents with "My Father's Ghost" and the humorous and touching "Boxes," and "Becoming My Mother." Other intriguing sections called "Dance Lessons" and "The Stepmother in Fact and Fiction" reveal an interesting life made more so by her consideration of it and the word images she creates.

As I now unpack the boxes of things that I have brought from the many lives I have lived in previous houses, I read Pauletta Hansel and gather the courage to contemplate and the acceptance of remembering.

On the Road to Cincinnati

She lumbered down the block toward me, slowly making her way through Chicago's packed and unshoveled snow on the sidewalk near Union Station. She was the second traveler to be lining up for the MegaBus to Cincinnati; I had dragged my four-wheel suitcase, laden down with books and papers from the library conference, through the slush in the street, and then through the ignored white remnants of the blizzard from two days previously and was now standing, booted feet freezing through the soles from the snow, and hoping that the bus would be on time. That had been a trial, I thought. But I had it easy. This lady did not have a suitcase to pull. In each hand she carried a bright blue WalMart shopping bag, loaded to the top; hanging on to each of those bags was a tiny person hardly higher than the snow through which they were toddling. One of them, a girl, gave me a big grin and I couldn't help but smile back and say to her mother, I presumed, "It doesn't take much to make her happy!"

It was now less than a half hour before the bus was scheduled, and other people began to accumulate around us in the unordered way that happens with MegaBus. In only ten minutes the  empty city block had filled with dozens of people. Some were waiting for other buses, we guessed, and sure enough, the Minneapolis bus arrived first. Many of the crowd scrambled to get luggage into the rear compartment prior to boarding to find an unreserved seat, but there were still more than enough balancing on the sidewalk to fill the next coach. The woman next to me had kept up a running banter with her two small charges, telling them "no, please, don't lean over to pick up the candy that you just dropped into the snow," promising that she would give them juice when they got on the bus, and that then they could take their coats off because it was going to be a long trip. "Are you on your way to Cincinnati?" I asked, and she replied no, they were going on to Columbus and should get there around 8:30 that night. They were going to surprise their grandfather, her husband, who had not seen them "in a long while." "And how old are they?" I wondered, thinking they might be twins. "The boy is two; the girl one," their grandmother said. I marveled that the girl was walking as well as she was, and thought that their grandfather must have seen them just after she was born. Th grandmother expressed one small doubt to me, based on her observation of the loading of the first bus: "I hope people don't rush from behind when we try to get on the bus; it's sort of hard for us to move fast."

But I lost track of her when the Cincinnati bus arrived, as I had to scramble to get my way-too-heavy suitcase lifted up to the baggage hold at the back and then stand in line to show my ticket, hoping that an aisle seat on the lower level was still available. So I was not able to see whether people rushed her, let alone try to help. By the time I got on, they had occupied three of four facing seats at the front of the bus, and the fourth place was also filled, so I preceded on a few rows behind them, where there was indeed an aisle seat. By the time the driver put the bus in gear every seat in the bus was taken, and between passengers and helter-skelter carry-on bags, I couldn't even see the little family. But I could hear them.

All the way out of the city and across the interstate to Indiana, Granny, as she referred to herself, spoke to the children about what they were seeing, and reminding them they had a long journey. Her voice was unfailingly patient and cheerful. Soon, of course, one of them had to go to the bathroom. Granny was very polite as she squeezed sideways--barely--through the aisle to the on-board toilet with the two youngsters. "I don't know how we's goin' to all fit in there," she said, and I didn't turn my head to see how they arranged it, for certainly they could not all fit in that tiny space. Later I heard a woman--probably one of the returning librarians--talking with the girl, pointing out in a picture book, I presume, various animals that I doubt the one-year-old had ever seen. Does a one-year-old from inner Chicago know of chicken as a farm animal, or is it just something served at a table or out of a bag?

Through much of the I-65 nightmare road the voices were quiet; presumably the children were sleeping, and I hoped Granny was able to get a nap, too. A large number of people got off at the Indianapolis stop, and I was able to shift over to two seats on the opposite side of the aisle. These seats were raised on a platform, and now I could see through to where Granny and her children were sitting. When we rolled into the rest stop area east of Indianapolis and the driver announced a fifteen-minute break (as opposed to the usual half hour) I wanted to offer to bring them something from the McDonald's, but I wasn't sure that there would be time for me to get something and make my own way through the bathroom line. Not a problem anyway, I realized, as those WalMart bags seemed to be an unending source of food that kept the kids satisfied and uncomplaining.

We were now on my home stretch, from Indiana to the University of Cincinnati stop, and entertainment was provided once more by the children and their granny. She taught them to say hello to the trees as we passed by, and the trees answered back in happy and excited voices. She asked them what color that old house was, or the barn. She pointed out clouds and the grass, which was no longer covered by snow. And she kept talking about what they would do when they got to Grandpa's house and how surprised he would be to see them all, and what a good time they were going to have in the next month on this visit. Someone around them asked Granny if they would be taking the bus back from Columbus at the end of the visit. "I hope not!" Granny said; "I hope there will be a car, or a truck, for that trip." The bus was necessary for the surprise, I guess.

As we approached UC, Granny was still not tired, or not so tired as to be noticeable. She continued speaking gently and calmly, and with humor, to the toddlers. Granny was infinitely patient. She never once raised her voice, except in laughter.

I think it is sad that a one-year-old and even a two-year-old will likely never remember much from this day-long journey across three states, a tedious trip which their granny turned into a magical experience of love and learning for them and for all the passengers on the lower level of the bus. Perhaps there will be other trips, but I hope they will be in that car or truck to make the journey a little easier. And though I know they couldn't have made it to Columbus by 8:30, I hope they made it soon afterwards, and that this inspiring granny enjoyed the great surprise and then slept well that night.

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/.