The speaking season is coming to a close. Yesterday morning I addressed the Friends of the Plantation Library. It was a bigger group than I had at the University of Miami, and older, but also overwhelmingly female.
I talked about my favorite places: Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, Poland, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, India (actually, I forgot these last two, so here they are), and - here at home - the South, the Midwest, the West, Florida (pretty much any place outside of New England, with the exception of the Maine coast).
When I was finished, Vivian, who was conducting the meeting, said in her sweet voice that she wrote her first letter to the editor when she heard that I'd been laid off. "My daughter wouldn't let me send it," she added. When I expressed disappointment, she said, "Oh, I can write a real zinger."
I didn't have the heart to tell her it wouldn't have made an impression. The people running the paper were so engaged in a futile attempt to attract young readers that they completely turned their backs on their loyal, long-time subscribers.
Travel famously heightens our appreciation of home. (The means to travel usually comes with things worthy of appreciation.) But at the same time, it can also shed a harsh light on beloved traditions.
I didn’t need to live in Poland to see American Christmas as commercial, but Polish Easter made our celebration seem rather – how shall I say? – tacky.
It always started on Good Friday, when, in Warsaw, people made the rounds of Old Town churches. Each would display a model of Christ’s tomb, a tradition that began during World War II – when the resurrection story took on special meaning – and continued with alternately subtle and overt political symbolism during the Communist years.
On Saturday, Poles took their Easter baskets to their neighborhood church to be blessed by the priest. Each was different, though with similar contents: bread, kielbasa, painted eggs, salt on a little dish, sprigs of parsley and dill, all set down in elegant white linen. These pretty wicker baskets of simple peasant fare made me wince at the thought of synthetic green grass and yellow marshmallow chicks.
Poland has always looked with admiration to America (just as Americans have always made jokes about Poles), yet Easter made me wonder if the roles should be reversed. It was all in the baskets: one country embraced the real, the other the artificial. The priest would sprinkle holy water over the assembled baskets, concluding sometimes with a wish of “Wesolego Jajka!” (Merry Eggs!”)
So yesterday afternoon I drove to Krakus Deli to be surrounded by the real. I bought six sticks of kabanosy (a thin kielbasa), a jar of Polonaise horseradish, a packet of pyzy (potato dumplings), and two Prince Polo chocolate wafers. The woman behind the counter added up the total and, handing over my change, wished me a Happy Easter. I wished her Merry Eggs.
Arrived in Sarasota early Saturday morning for my travel writing workshop at Selby Library. A farmers' market - a subtropical no-brainer that Fort Lauderdale has never managed to pull off - cut across Main Street, offering baked goods, seafood, breakfast burritos, grilled bratwurst, flowers, fruits, vegetables, pasta, Bloody Mary mix. Lots of dogs were on leash - labs, boxers, a bulldog named Buddha, a barking dachshund, a beautiful Bernese mountain dog.
I walked down Main Street, happy to see that the three bookstores were still in business. This is three more than Las Olas has. One is an excellent second-hand shop (a number of years ago I bought a copy of George Ade's Chicago Stories here), one is a paperback and comic book store, and one is a bookstore-newsstand-cafe. There were also a handful of inexpensive Asian restaurants - Thai and Vietnamese.
Sarasota is as wealthy a town as Fort Lauderdale, so how these businesses can afford to be on Main Street is beyond me. Here we have to drive to cheap ethnic restaurants (often west of I-95) and our expeditions to new bookstores always end at chains. Sarasota is doing something right.
True, the people had a somewhat uniform look - lots of hale, angular, ex-boardroom types in polo shirts - but sprinkled among them were two Mennonite women in ankle-length dresses and two charming young female troubadours. They had finished their busking - "One man gave us a $20 bill," the girl with the guitar said in amazement - but asked if I'd like to hear a song. I said I would, and there under the tent of the pasta maker they gave me a private, sweet-voiced concert.
Royal Caribbean threw a coming out party last night for its new ship Oasis of the Seas, even though the behemoth - 16 decks, over 6,000 passengers - won't be launched for another 241 days.
The event was held at the International Swimming Hall of Fame and had the feel of a cruise. There was the obligatory buffet (though the food - soggy egg rolls, crumbly quiches - was much worse than you get on a ship). There was the obsequious staff. There was even a show, out by the pool, emceed by a real live cruise director.
The catch phrase of the evening was "Why not?" which the cruise director, in time-honored cruise director fashion, got people in the audience to shout on cue. Why people actually follow the directives of a cruise director is beyond me, but they do. Or at least the people who take cruises - and go to cruise line parties - do.
The "why not?" had been coined to encapsulate the Royal Caribbean philosophy. Rock climbing on a ship? Why not? Ice skating in the tropics? Why not? Yet it seemed, to me at least, already passe, if not immoral. Isn't "Why not?" what got us into this recession? Didn't the banks that approved bad mortgages ask "Why not?" Didn't the people who invested with Bernie Madoff ask "Why not?" Didn't the folks who ran up credit card debt ask "Why not?" Isn't it time we started asking "Why?"
As in: Why build a ship for 6,000 passengers?
When I do talks on travel a tip I give is to never buy stamps with your postcards. Some stores sell them, and it seems awfully convenient, but you then miss out on a trip to the post office.
Because it's a government facility, a post office reveals a lot about the country. Also, it may provide you with your one significant brush with the locals. Tourists sleep in hotels, eat in restaurants, visit museums; they're cut off, for the most part, from the everyday life of a place. And there's nothing more everyday than a post office. The chapter on Iowa in my last book ends with a scene in the Oskaloosa post office.
I went to the one on 17th Street yesterday - possibly the cheeriest, most efficient post office in Broward - not for local color but to mail two 9x12 envelopes. And yet...
"Do you have some white out?" a woman asked the man at the counter. "I misspelled my mother-in-law's name."
Today - the birthday of the great English traveler and man of letters Richard Francis Burton - I'm heading to Boston for a journalism conference. Will be back Monday.