Clean as a Whistle, Have Dromedary, Will Travel

_{By Sonya Zalubowski}

                _{The shine in the lady’s eyes exploded into glee as she rubbed the stiff glove loaded with black soap made from olive oil back and forth across the top of my naked thigh.   The friction she generated had rolled a thin layer of my skin into a tight cigarette of exfoliation that she now held up for my eyes to see.  Her hands returned to kneading my now rosy skin,  sloughing off  more dead stuff, this round look of  satisfaction even purer in her dark eyes. It was almost as if she were saying, “see,” she’d saved me from some cruel fate, the result of a naughty neglect at not having peeled off superfluous layers sooner in my long life.}

_{Such was my first visit to a “hammam” or community bath in the ancient city of Fez in north central Morocco.  The woman was dressed only in shorts, her bare breasts looming in front of me. But she and her fellow female workers were unabashed by any nudity as they marched around the several rooms that made up the women's section of the baths.  Men had their own section. Feeling modest, I had worn a bathing suit but my attendant soon made short order of it, standing me up from my stool so she could strip me down to reach my nethermost parts.  I start my story of my three-week tour of Morocco here with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT)  because the baths, which date to the Roman empire of more than 2000 years ago, provide a clue to this enigmatic north African country that has been touched by so many cultures.}

_{The women, probably most of them illiterate, worked hard for their 20 dirhams (about 25 cents per customer), starting you in the hottest rooms first, where several of us foreigners sat with locals in steam fired by piles of burning wood. A splash of hot water from a plastic bucket over your head and the rough glove went on.}

_{Some customers, depending on their agility. were splayed onto the blue and white tiles on the ground for body-long scrubs, water flowing everywhere. We were all reduced to female bodies, a community of us, working to achieve cleanliness and freshness.  Once the ladies in attendance were satisfied they’d burnished our skins into bright red, they finished off with shampoo and dumping loads of yet more hot water over people’s heads.  We were then escorted  into cooling off rooms and finally the area where we dressed to go back outside. Several locals gave us the “hi” sign for all’s okay as lighter us collected our belongings.}

_{Our OAT guide, cheery young Mohammed Oujrid, had assured us before entering the building that we would be fully accepted at the baths which he said act as a kind of glue in keeping the community together.  He said women use the weekly baths as the occasion to get outside the home, turning a usual one-hour practice into three to four hours for gossip.  Oujrid himself admitted he went regularly with a friend, in a case of you rub my back, then I’ll rub yours.}

_{The baths, he said, are an essential part of Moroccan culture and a key to understanding  this fascinating country whose location has made it an historic crossroad of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  Every old town or “medina” as they are called required the existence of a hamman as well as a common laundry area and a common bakery where people who once had no ovens at home could bring their bread to be baked.  Oujrid said people would turn to the baker to find out if there were interest in an arranged marriage since he generally knew who was available and who was not and even more importantly who was prosperous and who was not.  The last necessary elements for a community, Oujrid said, were the mosque and the minaret from which the people are called five times daily to practice prayer in the Islam faith.}

_{This emphasis on community over individual, Oujrid said, has helped Morocco retain its distinct character, this blend of European, Arab and original Amazigh culture.   The country, which boasts the longest coastlines in Africa with the Mediterranean to the north and the Atlantic to the west,  has seen invasions that date all the way to the Phoenicians and Romans to the Arabs who brought the Islam faith to later incursions by Portuguese, Spanish and finally French explorers.  Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912 that existed until independence in 1956.  Moroccans still go to school and govern in the French language.}

_{It is a testament to the Amazigh people --  the world’s oldest Homo Sapiens fossils dating to 300,000 years ago were found in Morocco -- that they remain the predominant ethnic group in the country, which Oujrid estimated at some 98 percent of the population.  The name means “free” or noble people, a collection of different nomadic tribes that invaders called “berbers,” a corruption of the word barbarian.  That word, berber, has now come to be accepted but the people still prefer the original name Amazigh and still speak that language along with Arabic and French.  The various tribes own the land outside cities, while the cities are owned by the government.}

The Romans entered after the fall of Carthage in 146 BC.  Some of the best preserved on-site mosaics exist to this day in the abandoned Roman town of Volubulis near Fes. Rome saw its downfall in the third century and rule fell back to the Amazigh people.  Sultanates developed over the centuries until the Islamic invasion by Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries.  Warring tribes over the years vied for dominance until the French protectorate was established.  Oujrid said the country still pays off the French with unknown amounts of natural resources  under its current ruler Mohammed VI who took over in 1999. He runs a parliamentary theocracy, albeit more benign than the previous rule under his father Hassan II.

_{Under the present king’s rule, there have been numerous reforms but certain issues, such as the legitimacy of the king, are not discussed openly in a sort of self-censorship.  Women saw in 2004 a new family law that established rules for marriages, allowing those at age 16 only with parental approval.  There have been attempts to require basic education as well but Oujrid said inadequate facilities have resulted in most rural women still being illiterate and choosing marriage over other roles in life. The country is still basically agricultural, with rural areas in a 55 to 45 percent split over urban areas. Women’s groups that we met in our travels around the country from the north coast to the interior and southeast in the Sahara Desert are still campaigning for more rights. Fatima Habti, an English teacher who works for women’s rights in north Morocco, told us in Chefchaouen that it takes testimony from two women to equal one man in the courts.  She also said a woman only receives half what a brother receives in inheritance.}

_{In 2011 after the Arab spring swept through the Middle East and other North African countries, Mohammed VI moved to grant more constitutional rights for the people but he  kept a firm hand on defense and the army.   Morocco is still in dispute with Spain over parts of the West Sahara and Spain still retains rights in the northern city of Ceuta. The king has worked to develop industry, including expansion of the port at Tangiers.}

_{All of that said, Morocco with its up to 38 million people.  spread over an area the size of France that includes mountain ranges,  deserts, oases and beaches,  is a delightfully exotic place to visit.  I started my journey with OAT in Casablanca, the home of a pseudo Rick’s café from the movie “Casablanca” (the actual Rick’s was filmed on a Hollywood set), and quickly moved on to the northern Rif mountain city of Chefchaouen, known for its blue washed walls and manageable clean medina that tumbles down narrow streets.}

_{Among other highlights in our three-week-long journey by bus and train:}

_{We watched smugglers at Ceuta allowed daily by both Spain and Morocco to move freely from nearby Gibraltar with their forbidden wares in a wink to the economy, taxis stacked up waiting for their users.}

_{In Fez, the skinny often short lanes of its medieval medina,  all 9000 of them, are crowded with vendors offering everything from camel heads to leather jackets and dates.  It can require hiring a guide just to find your way through the maze back to your hotel, all the while watching out for sputtering motorbikes and donkey carts.}

_{When we headed to the Sahara we experienced lush oases with date palms before finding our camp in the desert at Merzouga,  where original caravans once plied the sands with their loads of salt and other goods.  There is nothing quite like approaching a dromedary, sitting on its knees, its face not looking too happy as it shows its yellowing teeth and you approach to get on top.  The animals are different from camels which have two humps on their backs, the dromedaries instead with one giant hump of fat on top.  It’s a wide  girth to get your legs around.} 

_{The nomads with their small herds of dromedaries now often make their livings giving tourists rides on their animals.  It is quite a swell of up and down until the animals are upright.  We rode for an hour among the dunes with the quiet of the winds and the open horizon a treat.  But I have to admit relief at getting off at the end.}

_{Nomads, who travel the desert with their sheep and goats to find pasture, may no longer exist in a few years,  Oujrid said, drawn away from the hardships of their lives to more urban settings.  We met one nomad, Fatima, under the rough brown wool tent she’d woven of camel and goat hair, in the desert.  She’d lost her husband, and the rest of her clan had helped build a mud brick home out on the flatland for a more permanent existence. Her son rented out his seven camels to tourists for rides.}

_{I had never met such poverty, the joy with which the woman accepted the least of gifts as she poured for us the ceremonial tea, the sweetened green mint tea that is the national drink.  Our gifts of hotel soap and shampoo samples, and even worn Chinese laundry shoes, was accepted with such graciousness.  Along the way we had seen the makeshift graves of nomads in cemeteries, marked only by piles of stones.}

_{A word about the religion.  Oujrid said Islam is practiced in its own particular Moroccan fashion. For one thing, he pointed out that alcohol is allowed for tourists but the 182 million liters consumed every year certainly was not just drunk by foreigners.  The hijab or head scarf is seen more often lately but more of a fashion statement, he said, imported from other Arab countries rather than a religious symbol. Women are still seen wearing veils and the djelabas of old, especially in the countryside, but there were not often full burqas, he said.}

_{Coming out of the Sahara, Ouarzazate in the south is the country’s answer to Hollywood, dating back to the filming of Lawrence of Arabia there. Many studios now operate out of the city.}

_{Marrakesh with its insane huge plaza known as Jamaa el-Fnaa comes alive at nightfall with performers like snake charmers,  dancers and musicians and food stalls for the hot harira soup and freshly squeezed orange juice.}

_{The greatest current problem the country faces is water, Oujrid said.  Over a third is now believed lost in sloppy use, which if not corrected can lead to more desertification.  It is compounded by the country’s still high birthrate  of 4.5 rurally vs 2.3 in the cities. Oujrid said still, Morocco is more democratic than the Middle East.}

_{“We prefer this slow way, through education,” Oujrid said.  Not the chaos of areas where the Arab spring overturned governments.  “TIA,” he said.  “This is Africa.”}

_{I am left with this late afternoon memory of Chefchaouen, sitting in the sunshine at an outdoor café watching the people go by on the community square, brilliant pink bougainvillea in bloom on a nearby wall.  Old men with canes picked their way forward in their woven djelabas while young men chased tourists with their sticky worn plastic covered menus trying to get people to go to their restaurant.  Flies were everywhere along with stray cats underfoot, hoping for a handout, many of them pregnant. People threw them bread.}

_{A woman in western dress came in leading a small baby goat on a leash.  It proceeded to eat the leaves on a nearby potted plant and then climb on the table before the woman led it off and interested it in some food she placed on the ground.  No one said a word. Everyone seemed to tolerate everyone else.}

_{Such is my memory of this mellow country.}

New Mexico's Wide Open Skies Beckon

New Mexico

By Sonya Zalubowski

          The first thing that hits you after landing in New Mexico is the vastness of the blue sky, a panorama that surrounds you amid the state’s rough high desert and mountainous landscape.  The next thing is this sense that you have landed not just in another U.S. state but in another country.  All without having to use your passport.

          Perhaps that sky with all its limitlessness, including the unrealized possibility of finding more of the gold they found in Mexico, is what first attracted  the Spanish to settle this area.  Their influence dating all the way to the 16^th century plus the large indigenous native American presence color the area’s flavor to this day. Over 40 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic.  All of it combines with Anglo influences in a mosaic that is celebrated throughout the year with regular festivals.

As do most tourists, I flew into New Mexico’s main airport in Albuquerque, the north central city flanked by the Sandia Mountains that’s home to more than one-fourth of the state’s two million people.

 

A cab-ride away, I arrived at my destination, the bed and breakfast inn known as the Bottger Mansion of Old Town.  The home is one of the few Victorian era constructions left in Albuquerque, just steps away from the main Plaza.

 Albuquerque was founded as a Spanish colonial outpost along the Rio Grande River.  The city to this day retains its old town in the traditional Spanish fashion with a central square or plaza with its church,  the  San Felipe de Neri. The area retains its historical character with its flat-roofed adobe buildings featuring original roof timber vigas and kiva fireplaces.

Native American Indians make up nearly ten percent of the state population and have their own system of 19 self-governing pueblos based on tribal affiliations.  That culture is celebrated at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.  The facility features a teaching garden with native plants, a restaurant with native food and exhibits featuring native art.  Live performances of Indian dancing are held on a regular basis.

Albuquerque, with its Central Avenue that runs along the original Route 66, of course also features a modern downtown and is home to the University of New Mexico.  The city –what better way to appreciate its open skies -- hosts its annual world famous hot air balloon festival every fall.

The Indian population owns over ten percent of the state’s land and many pueblos have opened casinos that speckle the route from Albuquerque that I took on my way north with the Rio Grande by rental car to Santa Fe and Taos, both internationally known for their art colonies. I stayed at the Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder hotel with casino owned by the Pueblo of Pojoaque.  It is located at the convergence of the Pojoaque Creek and Tesuque River, an oasis in the middle of the desert. The architecture resembles earlier pueblo construction with its kivas, vigas and urns.

During my stay, the hotel’s Red Sage main restaurant featured a tasting menu for the upcoming Wine and Chile festival hosted by Santa Fe featuring such delicacies as crabmeat Napoleon with roasted jalapeno guacamole to dessert of a sweet empanada with whipped cream, all paired with appropriate wine flights.

A word here about the food. Be sure to bring your “Bean-o.” Most local food features beans and rice along with peppers, plenty of them. You can ask for both red and green pepper sauces by ordering “Christmas.” Delicious as various dishes covered with cheese can be, there is a fatigue factor that can “out bean” you by the end of your stay.

If food indulgence was not enough, the Buffalo Thunder hotel also features its Wo’ P’in Spa which means Medicine Mountain in the native Tewa language. There for an extra fee visitors can experience rejuvenation through facials, body treatments, massages and foot baths and pedicures

Festivals, yes. They continued on my stay that coincided with one of two weekends of the High Country Art tour.  The backroads studded with purple wild sage, cacti, and yellow chamiso (rabbit weed)  wound  past gallery after gallery filled with works ranging from weaving to sculpture to painting to pottery and wood carving, on the backroads to Taos.

          I ended my stay in Santa Fe,  “the city different” that is also the state’s capital.   Santa Fe, which means Holy Faith,  is 408 years old and 7,000 feet in elevation at the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains. The tourism board touts its differences: it is the country’s oldest and highest state capital.  And, it is neither desert nor high desert  but is located at the foothill slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.   

          The city boasts 360-degree mountain views, more than 300 days of sunshine, moderate year-round temperatures and 1.5 million acres of pristine national forest.

          But perhaps the most outstanding is the city’s reputation for its art market.  Santa Fe was the first designated UNESCO Creative City for craft and folk arts and with 250 plus galleries is the third largest art market in the United States.

         

One of the newest areas is the Railyard District with open land that has been developed for more art galleries as well as restaurants and the farmer’s market. Wander New Mexico offers a tour of the district “off the beaten track” that takes visitors behind the scenes at restaurants and other sites.

I stayed in Santa Fe at La Fonda, the 1920s era hotel that sits on the ground where other hotels have sat since Spanish colonial times, not far from the Plaza, the epicenter of downtown. The Palace of Governors, the oldest continuously occupied government building in the U.S., was built in the early 1600s.  Indigenous American artisans still sell their fine crafts beneath the palace’s long portal on the plaza as they have for hundreds of years.

          The hotel features original kiva and timber  viga construction as well as delicate painted windows and even ghosts, though I blissfully encountered none.

         

Near the hotel, there are several museums, all within walking distance. They include a museum devoted to the work of painter Georgia O’Keeffe.  An independent woman before her times, she relocated from the East Coast to New Mexico after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz.  “I realized I had things in my head not like what I had been taught,”  she wrote.  Known for her giant flower paintings, she became  more of an abstract artist. I was most drawn to her large paintings of clouds, depicting the wide open skies of New Mexico.

        

  Santa Fe, with its devotion to retaining its historical legacy, established historic districts in the early 1980s.  Today, there are five such districts covered by building regulations aimed at preserving historic character.

          Lynn Zeck, realtor with Casas de Santa Fe, says many visitors, often retirees,  come here with the idea of trying it out, rent one of their homes and later she helps them to find just the right spot in historic Santa Fe. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently ranked Santa Fe as the forty-third most popular city chosen for relocation by seniors.

          “They love the city and all its cultural possibilities,” Zeck said.

          Sources:

 www.wandernewmexico.com

www.santafe.org

www.casassellssantafe.com

www.VisitABQ.org

Life as a "pata negra"

Iberia

 After 14 days of touring the Iberian peninsula, it occurs to me that  I  might want one day to return  in another lifetime as the valued black pig,  the “pata  negra.”  Only I’d designate  it  “jubilada,”  for the Spanish word  “retired,”  hopefully making it safe from slaughter.

That idea may have only started off as a joke I made to my fellow travelers but I came to realize during my journey to the backroad inns of Portugal and southern Spain that the pig and the way it is treated is emblematic of what these Iberian folk value.  They take the small pleasures in life seriously, such as the nutty taste of a well satisfied pig that has been allowed to roam freely as it munches  itself into a fatty richness. 

An attitude replicated in the way I saw Iberians approach their days. Work, yes, but time also for morning coffee with friends and then afternoon siestas in a day that stretches well into the late night, try dinner at 10 p.m.  The entire day is used, not just focused on work.   

It also occurred to me that perhaps that laid back approach owes something to the area’s rich history.  The people are surrounded by remnants of a succession of cultures ranging all the way back to prehistoric to Roman, Visigoth and  Moorish,   to the kings and queens whose rule dominated Europe as they sent out Portuguese and Spanish explorers,  to 20^th century despots and finally present day governments.   All reminders that power can vanish and what turns out to be important  is how you can live today.

 The “pata negra,”  whose name reflects their black hooves, thrive in an area that stretches from eastern Portugal for thousands of acres of rolling pastureland dotted by oak trees into southwest Spain’s Extremadura and Andalucia regions.   Most of it is devoted to raising happy pigs and cattle.

 The area was surprisingly empty of humans, given the peninsula’s long history.  The pigs, believed to be a cross between a wild boar and animals first brought to the area by the Phoenicians,  are prized for their rich marbling, a function of  that seasonal diet of fat acorns. Some of them three times the size of any acorn I’d ever seen.

 Juan Pedro Alvarez Vacas,   the  energetic and enthusiastic Spanish guide on my Overseas Adventure Travel trip, said that food and freedom for the animals were the main reasons Spain had such good beef and pork.

In every restaurant, we found evidence of the pork harvest, the prized leg of the “Pata Negra,”  hanging above the bar from its black hoof as it air cured.   A tiny plastic cup was attached at the bottom to catch any dripping fat during the process which can take years.   The Iberian ham is thinly sliced on a special apparatus, resulting in wafer thin portions that highlight the reddish color and fat marbling.

Our group was first introduced to the famous specialty –  I saw legs of Iberian jamon costing over 500 dollars  -- at a midmorning breakfast.  Slices of bread were topped with olive oil, followed by pureed tomatoes and the ham.   I never ate anything so tasty in my life, the combination of the intensely nutty flavor reminiscent of acorns along with the melt in your mouth texture.

Further dipping was allowed in olive oil dribbled into saucers.   Juan Pedro said the Spanish require there always be a source for dipping.  At one point, he even led us to a restaurant that featured freshly deep-fried churros which we dipped into cups of warm thick chocolate.

          Bulls, too, enjoy pampered existences.   We visited the  ranch owned by matador  Rafael Tejada outside Ronda, where he breeds fighters for the ring.  Only the bulls he deems best suited get to lead the privileged life on his ranch,  allowed much like Ferdinand the bull to roam the oak tree studded acreage where black pigs also play.   Until the day they must show up in the bull ring.  A minute number of bulls win pardons, we learned, if they show noble courage during the fight.  One such bull already had a grandson who had also won a pardon.

We asked Tejeda, now 45, what were his thoughts when he stepped into the ring.  He joked, “What am I doing here?”  But, he said, he had no plans to retire soon.  None of the bulls raised on his ranch is  used in his own bull fights. 

The beef I enjoyed during the trip, presumably failed fighters,  was succulent, tender and juicy.  Unlike any I’d had before.  I had an aversion to U.S. beef but here I ate it all. 

Juan said in Spain you eat every three to four hours . ”It’s a sin to be hungry in Spain,” he said.   Yet, I saw few obese people on the trip.  Undoubtedly, they are aided by daily exercise,  a function of the steep walks up into old towns that were once fortresses in most cities. In Lisbon, built on seven hills, walkways all over the capital  were covered with small slithery tiles that only added to the precision required in retaining your foothold.

Not to shortchange the historic part of our tour.  In Lisbon, we visited monuments to the Portuguese explorers who ushered in the great Age of Discovery in the late 15^th century, including Vasco da Gama, who is buried in the Jeronimos Monastery.  He was the first to sail from Europe to India by way of Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, opening the connection between the West and Orient.

  Once we hit the road,  we stayed in the government-run  inns of  Portugal and Spain.  The “pousada”  where we stayed in the medieval Portuguese city of Evora was a former monastery, where we spent the nights in the old cells of the monks with all the modern conveniences.   Right next door was one of the best preserved Roman ruins, the temple of Diana.  Breath-taking in the early morning mist of a December morning.

 Not far way we visited another reminder of  the need to enjoy every day, the bone chapel in the Church of  St. Francis, where thousands of skeletons and skulls have been arranged along the chapel walls, ceilings and columns. The visitor is greeted by the message “we bones in here wait for yours to join us.”

In Spain, we stayed in similar state-run historic sites called paradores. The luxury hotels are located in castles, palaces, fortresses and other historic buildings in areas of outstanding beauty.  In  Carmona we stayed in a parador that had  been a fortress.  The thick walls looked from on high onto the river below.

 Notably our parador in Ubeda  was known for a poltergeist who was said to slam doors and play other tricks.  I said hello on entering my room, which was located next to an upstairs balustrade.   All night long I heard the wind grinding away in the outside corridor. One of my fellow travelers  was spooked enough to sleep with the lights on. For me just a hall light, but I did dream there were ghosts in that hallway, albeit in my dream state,  Disney-like conquistadores.

One of the most thrilling moments was our visit to the alcazar  in Segovia, the castle with foundations that date to Roman times, where Isabella and Ferdinand reigned in the 15^th century.  We stood in the very throne room where Christopher Columbus once knelt before her. The very same Christopher Columbus  who inadvertently discovered America.

In our journey to our final destination in Madrid, we made one troubling stop,  at the Casa Pepe, a roadside restaurant that has become a shrine to the former dictator Francisco Franco who died in 1975.   The owner has died,  Juan Pedro informed us, but his children continue the restaurant.  A surprising number of people were coming and going from the restaurant which sells endless trinkets honoring Franco.

Franco had the Valley of the Fallen built near Madrid before his death to honor the soldiers who fought with him in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s when he took over power.  Currently there is controversy over proposals to move his grave from there to Madrid.  Our guide said we made the stop at Casa Pepe for historic reasons  but that it made him very uncomfortable. He urged us not to leave any money there, noting that nearly every family in Spain still has  connections to lost fighters, including himself.

The country like much of Europe today faces immigrant flows and moves to the right.  Spain has also been holding corruption trials for years now.

The visit was too short.  Yes, I would like to come back to roam these rolling hills, the home of the “pata negra.”  My thanks to the pig.

But better than in another life, perhaps to come myself again as a human retiree, a “jubilada,”  to sit in a café, to spend long hours working on my Spanish, getting to know the place and its customs. My tour, a kind of snapshot of the back roads of Portugal and Spain, helped me understand a bit more of the character here.  One that I would like to know even better.

Martha's Vineyard is Seafood Heaven

          Seafood, seafood, seafood. As if you’d need another reason to want to visit  Martha’s Vineyard, the small island off Massachusetts' Cape Cod that is so picturesque with the Atlantic Ocean on one shore, sounds on the other that it is nearly inundated by tourists come summer.  The population swells by more than six times to over 100,000.  I had the double good fortune to visit in mid-May, right before the crowds, and to tour the awakening island with chef Christopher Gianfreda who had just returned for his seventh season of cooking here.  (Full disclosure, he is my great nephew, the son of my niece Liz Manning.)

The lanky 27-year-old who says he has islands in his blood, started his culinary training in the Virgin Islands and later honed his skills by working with chefs the likes of Jean Georges and Jim Burke in New York, Frank McClelland in Boston and Susan Spicer in New Orleans.  This year, he takes over as chef at The Outermost Inn, a quaint hotel and restaurant owned by Hugh and Jeanne Taylor of the James Taylor singing family. It is located “up island,” way on the rural western tip, near the lighthouse in Aquinnah and its famed red cliffs. And, miles from “down island” and the honky tonk of Oak Bluffs and the upscale boutiques of Edgartown. 

Gianfreda’s menu features seafood ranging from lobster and sought-after Katama Bay oysters to black bass and sea scallops.  All subject to change with the availability of catch and most strictly local. The inn website, www.outermostinn.com, promises Gianfreda will shadow the fishermen for the best of their labors.   And, indeed,  that was where we headed on one of our first stops.   We followed winding roads edged by scrub oak forests, their crooked branches barely budding despite late spring, to Menemsha, a quintessential New England fishing village on the Vineyard Sound. Its working harbor was featured in that blockbuster movie Jaws.  

Only a few ramshackle buildings in the typical weathered cedar shakes lined the docks.  We first stopped at Larsen’s, which sells prepared seafood.   Gianfreda said we needed to sample some of the freshest lobster in the world.   That and squid were then being caught, the live lobsters floating in tanks, some of them probably brought in on the early morning catch.  The owner, Betsy Larsen, clad in work clothes that included apron and rubber boots, her smile wide, was eager to share that she was the second generation running the shop. She said she has never missed a day without at least a taste of lobster for all her life.

Her openness and willingness to talk was characteristic of most of the year- round inhabitants I encountered during my visit. This eagerness to stop and enjoy life that Gianfreda said matched the spirit he felt back in the Virgin Islands.  At least at this pre-season moment.

Gianfreda recommended ordering the hot butter lobster roll over the version mixed with salad.   A sprinkle of hot sauce, dab of horseradish and we took our lobster rolls outside to the docks where we sat on empty lobster crates.   Imagine, succulent chunks of lobster,  steamed and then finished off in butter, sitting in a plain old white hot dog bun. Didn’t matter the bun, just the conveyor for the best lobster I ever had in my life.   A fistful of it.  Juices flowing down my wrist. 

There was plenty more back in the store if you wanted.  We just looked. Smoked bluefish in a cream cheese blend, oysters, to enjoy on the half shell raw. Littleneck clams you could eat raw or cooked.   

Next door was our real reason for coming here. The Menemsha Fish Market where we were met by employee Mikey Rottman. He explained that the market is the wholesale purveyor for most of the catch coming into the harbor.   “We call it ‘sea to table,’” he said. The goal is to sustainably sell as much as possible to local restaurants.

   “It is good for the fishermen and the fish,” the red-cheeked former chef explained. “Our best fish and the freshest. If a catch isn’t sustainable, we don’t sell it.”

He reached into vats filled with lobster brought in that morning. “You look for the feistiest one to get the freshest,” he said. Inside a big cooling room, we saw a 75 pound halibut, chunks that had already been removed and another container with some fluke. 

With a promise to look out for Gianfreda’s needs all season, Rottman sent us on our way.     We needed to get back down island to check out the annual Martha’s Vineyard Wine Festival being held in Edgartown, a couple of bus rides away onboard the island’s transit authority.  More winding roads, scrub oak and pitch pine forests, amid glimpses of sandy beaches.  Gianfreda said he completes the local sourcing for his food by buying his produce from Morning Glory farms in Edgartown.   The 60 acre spread raises everything from asparagus to nettles and for good measure also raises beef, pork and poultry.   The Outermost Inn has its own garden to grow herbs and flowers.

Of course, with his background, Gianfreda adds refined finishing touches to his menu, such as green apple mignonette, chile lime cocktail sauce and prosecco granita to set off those Katama Bay oysters.  

          The winefest was teeming with people, more than 50 distributors and vineyards there, for sampling under tents in the heart of Edgartown.  The several day festival also featured small dinners scattered at various venues.  We ran into Michael Holtham, the general manager of the Menemsha Fish House in one corner of a tent. He was busy shucking oysters and littleneck clams to serve to visitors.

Holtham said his company handles more than half a million clams per year, a million oysters and 100,000 pounds of lobster, all from local fishermen.  What isn’t sold on the island goes to Boston where the firm is affiliated with the wholesaler Red’s Best, the distributor for over 1,000 small American community based boats.  They sell at Boston farmers markets, trading any excess with other wholesalers to procure fish not grown in the area for local markets.

Martha’s Vineyard is small, only 100 square miles in area.  And we kept running into other chefs whom Gianfreda had worked with in previous years.  Talk always about food, the wines we tasted at the festival and then he had to head home, way back up island on three buses.

Gianfreda and the rest of his cooking staff are camping out on the property at the inn, far from all the touristy activities available down island but he said they are all mighty glad to have their accommodations.   Happy to escape the high prices of finding a place to live in, try 800 bucks for a room if you are lucky enough to find one. He lives in a funky ‘90s trailer, the refrigerator sitting outside. The rest of the staff are camped out in an A-frame cottage and rooms in the loft of a barn.
I stayed in the comfy Madison Inn down in Oak Bluffs, a cozy bright hotel with a homey feeling that even included snacks and coffee on demand.

Gianfreda says despite the seasonality of his work here, usually five to six months during the tourist influx, he loves being a chef here, for all the freshness and bounty of ingredients.  Especially the abundance of seafood that is probably the freshest anywhere.   He hopes one day to open his own Italian restaurant, featuring homemade pasta, but until then, “I’ll keep coming back,” he says. “Long as I can.”

University Reunion Brings Back Youth and Gratefulness

Madison, Wis. – The blurry black and white picture from so long ago, I am standing on a chair in an A-line skirt with the bunched hem held up by a few pins.

          Decades have passed since that photo, probably from Peg’s instammatic camera. Don’t recall ever even seeing the picture before.  Don’t know who was measuring to make sure that hem was even.  Peg has brought a handful of such photos along to share with the rest of us, back for the first time all together again since graduation in 1965 at our alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. Peg and Sue,  I and Shari.  (Shari actually graduated the year before us, but joined us for this 50^th alumni weekend since so much of our life on campus had been spent together).

That picture at our dorm, Slichter Hall.  It records our enthusiasm when we discovered we could make our own A-line skirts. Don’t know where we got the sewing machine but we could have this richness, an entire wardrobe of A-line skirts for so little money, just the cost of material and our own efforts.

The memories flood back. Here we are all together again, only now we all have at least some white hair and wrinkles. Here this blustery fall day for the alumni reunion. I had forgotten how we were back then so long ago.  We were a pack.

And now we were once again.  For one rollicking fall weekend, in the same place where all our hopes and dreams were hatched nearly a lifetime ago.  Somehow, the combination worked its original magic and we were able down the long halls of time, to reach back and touch the girls we had once been.

I get ahead of myself.   Back to the old photos, that one with the skirt.  I am wearing a Norwegian print sweater, machine-made but my pride and joy. Doesn’t go at all with the cotton A-line skirt.  Me with thick darker hair, short and somehow curly before the rest of a lifetime of a bob and straight hair.

More pictures, that was how my hair was curly. A girl with a bonnet hair dryer,  one of the triumvirate of true prizes in the dorms along with a popcorn popper and a typewriter.  No cell phones,  I-pads, laptops or television sets.  We all shared one phone on our floor and you were lucky to have a record player and alarm clock.  I remember the pain, if you didn’t have a hair dryer,  brush rollers poking your head all night long while you tried to sleep.

Like I said, we were a pack. Photos of us everywhere, striking model-like poses next to a tree, girls on the verge of emergence as young women.  Dreamy with so much future ahead of us.

For me, my first time away from home except for a short stint at summer camp. For the first time, I was finding myself without family and all the duties of a much younger brother and working mom and dad. No comparisons like before with an older sister. No nights of babysitting.  The feeling of freedom, all these new friends to make. Both Shari and I had to reform by second semester after our grades suffered from too much socializing.

And now we were back, each of us traveling from afar, me the farthest, the West Coast.   We jump up and down in the hallway at our hotel, the Lowell Center, a former lady’s dorm. Causing a ruckus of noise, squeals of delight at seeing each other after so many years. Sue from Minneapolis, a retired social worker. Shari a ph.d in psychology still working in Pittsburgh. Peg a retired elementary school teacher from a small town near Philadelphia. And me, a retired journalist from Vancouver, Wa.

Excited, we head off to the  main drag, the nearby State Street.  The  first impression, still the same commercial zone of bars and coffee shops and the university bookstore.  But the kids, so young and so many, so concentrated. We order teas and coffee in a shop and sit out in the wind.

The parade of youth before us.  We laugh and laugh at each other’s jokes.  Each recounting their trip here.  The vagaries of plane travel today. Only Sue drove  from her home.  Where the weather is often way worse. I recall a visit eons ago when it was 30 below the morning I left in  my car, worried when the door slammed shut and Sue already off at work. Would my car start?

That was when I told her, “you live in a crapola place.” Innocent words directed not at her home but the climate. It became the catchword among us for the rest of the trip.  That I said she lived in a “crapola place.”

“When I get home, I shall have to send you all pix of my condo,” she says. A cascade of laughter.

The pack is back. We march to Bascom hill, the steep hill that ends in the old center of the campus at  Bascom Hall and the iconic statue of Abraham Lincoln. Graduates now take their picture in his lap.  But we only walk around the bottom of the hill, aching hips and backs, the wind so fierce this October day.  We enter an ancient hall with stained glass windows where on fall afternoons each of us at some point listened to chamber music. I can recall the sense of peace it gave, plus the nearly free extra credits.

But this is just the start of the whirlwind weekend that will pass too soon, a time when place and company help bring back a moment’s taste once again of being young, of being so hopeful. A time of nostalgia. A time when we took for granted having friends, having family, all around us. So much of that, especially primary family, now gone.

We realize the preciousness of our group. In the whole wide world, the four of us together are probably the largest concentration of people who remember each other’s mother. We walk past the University club, the UW band playing inside. The music, State Street, the early darkness and wind. We are back.

The next day, the alumni association has a “day of learning”  which they have had to stage at the newer south union, the main one we knew and loved under major renovation. We assemble with the few hundred other alumni to hear from various departments. How music changed since the 60s, how we can try to get enough fuel for the future, how will we feed the 15 billion people the world is expected to have by midcentury. All bemoan the loss of public funding, but say they reach out and will somehow continue through private donations.

Sitting and listening once again to profs.  Sitting together and taking notes.  Afterwards, we walk to Babcock hall, famous for its dairy plant and single ice cream cone that was actually three whole dips. Hey, this is Wisconsin.  We crowd in where there used to be just one lady to a real store with counter and tables. Order up our cones. Still so good, still so big.

Then onward to our old dorm. This side route is much flatter we all note than marching up from the bottom of Bascom Hill.  Steps matter these days though all four of us are dedicated walkers. A rush of wind and we are at Slichter hall. The same square stone faced building. 

A young man opens the door for us.  Like all the youngsters we met, so polite and willing to talk and help.   He tells us boys live now on one side, girls on the other. All girl when we lived there. The students don’t share bathrooms, he says, much to our sigh of relief. We try to remember what floor and room we were in but memory fails. We do remember though how you could get late minutes and campuses and even get thrown out of school for violations. The necking that would go on at the doorway before those last minutes ticked away. And now the boys and girls live in the same building.

Onward to what used to be the Pine room, cherry cokes and blond brownies of our past. Now a reception area. Then Van Hise dining hall, the same dining hall no more.   We all worked there once, amazing that you could pay for your schooling that way instead of today’s massive debts. We all worked the scrape table, pulling off the dishes and leftover food. The starched pink uniforms we had to wear, how we’d sneak the hems up from around our ankles. The required hairnets and the “W’s” on the plate edge we had to position just so. The hall, now something different, wasn’t open to visit.

Then along the lakeside path.  Choppy waves, the blue Lake Mendota. Stories I recall about a mental home on the other side, bodies that might float up. All just stories.  The lake and adjacent woods are beautiful. We all remark, how lucky we had been. This campus, the opportunity our families gave us. Each of us except Peg the first in our families to graduate from university.

Peg, always gentle, her head down as she moves forward in thought just like before. I always felt safe with her. Even when she took me out in one of the little sailboats they still rent out on Lake Mendota down near the main student union.  I’d never sailed before, didn’t know how to help with the sail when the winds changed. I dodged and somehow we made it safely to shore.

 Sue with her analytic mind. Perfect for a social worker, her life’s job. How we would sit on her bed and parse what someone had said and what it might mean. Shari, always practical and moving forward,  she got us going on the A-line skirts.

Saturday the big game.  We get our picture taken with the UW mascot, Bucky Badger. Heck, he is 75 this year.  Grab up some cheerleader pompoms, the characteristic red and white. A mountain goat climb to our seats. Our delight when the student section does this new tradition, jump around and the entire student section, hundreds of kids in the red and white school colors jump up and down. Our old knees allow some wiggle.  The pompoms help. The man in front of us, another alumni, says I am Medicare, uses our shoulder to hold him up as he goes by. We lose the game, a blunder at one yard from goal, but even so we stand with gusto to sing “Varsity,U rah rah Wisconsin” with the characteristic hand wave at the end.

The next day early we all peel off, back to our respective lives. But Sue says it all for us, “Growing old is not easy but having connection with those people with whom you share a past can help ease the pain.”

So much we shared. So great to touch upon it all again. This sense of gratitude for all we had once and still have.