First, I have to say that Kay and I didn’t go to Italy recently during one of the coldest, grayest weeks of the year on a whim. We went to see an art show we had read about a month before in the International New York Times.
Author: Eric Farber
Barcelona
December, 2015
He: Where you going?
She: Barcelona
He: Oh
A lyric from Steven Sondheim’s musical Company
One recent evening Kay and I found ourselves in Dry Martini, a bar not far from our hotel in Barcelona’s fashionable Eixample district. We had come as a prelude to the single extravagant dinner we would enjoy during our short visit to that splendid city. Dry Martini is the kind of bar all too rare nowadays. Its dark paneled walls, intimate lighting, and relaxed seating engendered in us a feeling of joy and well-being. We were mildly tired after a day of sightseeing.
74 Days and Counting
Dear Family and Friends,
Kay and I are on the road again. Wait! I have to qualify that. We’ve been on actual roads only part of the time unless we extend the literal meaning to railroads, for on much of this voyage through North America, we’ve taken the train. In fact, we embarked on four long-distance train journeys: from New York City to Oakville, Ontario; from Toronto across Western Canada to Vancouver; from Vancouver to Portland, Oregon; and from Portland to Chicago. Though no strangers to train travel in other countries, until now we hadn’t traveled long distance by train in our own. The results were not bad at all.
Vive la France
August 2015
As the song goes, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you don’t . . . “ Well, we did anyhow. It’s not that we didn’t know better than to travel in France (the world’s most visited country) during the months of July and August, it’s just that the month of July is when our literary society meets annually, and this year it met in France. I won’t say much about this year’s conference except that the venue was a holiday camp lacking air-conditioning and that that the weather was exceptionally hot. Post-conference, Kay and I spent ten days in southwest France, and they are the subjects of this missive.
Journey’s End – USA 2015
Well, it’s over. As we sit here watching the rain fall outside the window of an airport lounge at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, we think how long it’s been since we left home almost three months ago. We’re tired; we want to go home, and yet we feel a bit melancholy at the end of the trip. Maybe it’s just that endings are hard or maybe continuous travel is like a drug that we’re withdrawing from.
Certainly there has been nothing unrewarding about our activities since our last epistle. In Illinois, we sampled the pleasures of 19th-century Galena and learned about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln at Springfield. In Indiana, we relived old friendships and old memories at Wabash College in Crawfordsville before discovering one of our country’s greatest concentrations of modern and post-modern architecture in Columbus. Finally, in Chicago, we said goodbye to friends and family members before heading to the airport. It’s been our kind of trip, and it’s been fun. Allow us to expand a bit and recount some of what we’ve experienced.
Days Later at home in Istanbul . . .
The Austere Beauty of Iceland
March, 2015
Geologically speaking, nature did a good thing for the planet fifteen million years ago by giving us the volcanic island of Iceland. Of course, it took humans a long time to discover it. It wasn’t until the 9th century CE that a fugitive from Norway named Ingólfur Arnarson approached the island by boat. Throwing two carved logs overboard, he declared that wherever the gods decreed they would touch land he would settle. That spot became known as Reykjavik (Smokey Bay) due to the steam rising from its fissures and thermal pools. Today, it is that steam that heats the water that supplies the bathroom shower and fills the kitchen sink. Its faint odor of sulfur betrays its source.
The Center of the World
February 2015
Among my photos from a recent trip is one of me standing beside a middle-aged Palestinian in the doorway of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I’ll call him the doorkeeper since it is his job every morning to unlock the doors to the holiest Christian church in this city filled with churches and to lock them again at night. This is his life’s work as it has been for members of his family for six centuries. Six centuries! Imagine that! Of course, in times of war and unrest, there must have been interruptions to this routine, but still . . .
I Married a Beatlemaniac, Part 2
November 2014
In Part 1 I claimed that the Fab Four rose to success from “quite ordinary circumstances.” Now that Kay and I have traveled to Liverpool and been privileged to see for ourselves, we can tell you just how ordinary those circumstances were.
Menlove Road, a boulevard in south Liverpool not far from the John Lennon Airport, is a pleasant thoroughfare. On either side of a wide median are rows of two-storey, semi-detached homes that must not look very different today than they did when young John lived at Mendips (Number 251) in the 1940s and 50s. Mendips belonged to John’s Aunt Mimi, who raised him with the help of her husband George Smith. Why John didn’t live with Julia, his mother who lived not far away, is an interesting point that I’ll address further on.
I Married a Beatlemaniac, Part 1
November 2014
Kay, being eight years younger than I am, was exactly the right age to be swept off her feet by The Beatles when they first came to America in 1964. Actually, she was a big fan earlier than that. She had bought their early singles and played her favorites dozens of times. (And when I write, “dozens” I may even be understating the case.) Kay’s love for The Beatles was one of the first things I learned about her when we met in 1978.
Why Visit Armenia?
If you are someone who has lived a long time in the West or in Russia, it is likely that you count one or more Armenians among your acquaintances. If a person’s last name ends in –oyan (William Saroyan) or –ian (Aram Khachaturian), it is likely he or she is of Armenian descent. The worldwide Armenian diaspora numbers more than five million (One source claims ten million.) America alone accounts for nearly half a million, while the population of Armenia itself is barely three million.