The west coast fishing village of Mangily was one place I’d been told we could venture after dark. We discovered that it is one thing to feel tempted to walk a short way along the familiarity of busy city streets, knowing the locals will absolve you by insisting you should not. It’s another to have been told you’re perfectly safe to walk alone down a quiet dirt path into the black, black night of Nowhere.

We had just finished our second dinner in a row at the fantastic Chez Freddie and embarked on the 15 minute walk back to our beach bungalow. Our only light was the moon above, and some bleed from the few structures with electricity along the beginning of the route. The sandy road ran behind the line of beachfront accommodations to our left; to our right was total darkness, and some trails that disappeared into it. It already felt like a demarcation between Mangily-for-tourists and the villages that burrowed inland, like our only way home was the alley behind a restaurant. Then came the crying.

It was a woman, somewhere at the end of those night-eaten paths. She was wailing, somewhere in the distance. We travelers locked eyes, but at first we kept walking. It was faint, and clearly none of our business. What were we going to do, jot off blindly into midnight fields of goodness-know-what? The normal person in me felt cowardly; the Anthropologist in me chided “arrogance” at the idea that we’d be the only ones to save her. My mind filled with images of ways it could go wrong: fighting our way through clutching, waist-high vegetation to find someone with a limb cut off in an accident (and we would help how?) or perhaps a girl being attacked by men wielding scythes; stumbling into a village ceremony of some sort, the unwelcoming whites of eyes all trained on us; fumbling into the darkness, never to find a thing – including our way back. No images arose of us actually being helpful.

But we could not ignore someone so clearly in distress. We stopped in our tracks when it became clear it wasn’t a fleeting lament, twitchy and struggling with our conscience vs. our logic. But Wendy is an innate Protector of Women; she had that look in her eye and I knew she was considering plunging into the darkness after the voice. She would do it, too.

“It doesn’t sound like she’s hurt, or being attacked,” I noted. “I mean, it’s going on and on and on. That’s not fear or injury. She sounds…sad.” The other two nodded. “That’s grief,” we determined. Snatches of calm male voices floated to us from around the bodiless keen, as if trying to comfort her. In some sense, we felt better. “But what if it’s not grief?” Wendy had to ask.

Just then a woman rushed out of a stick house on the ocean side, hastily wrapped in a lamba (Malagasy sarong). She tore across the road, crossing just feet from us, and dashed confidently inland into the darkness.

“Look, she’s got support,” Adam pointed out. “Wendy, we simply can’t help,” I concluded. And with that, we continued to our temporary home, heavy-hearted and uncomfortable.

The next day a local boy sat talking to me on the beach. Surprisingly, he had nothing to sell; he seemed to just want to chat with the vazaha. Maybe he was practicing his French. I asked him about life in the area and, eventually, if he knew everyone in the surrounding villages. When he said yes, I mentioned the night’s events. “I didn’t hear anything from the villages last night, but it is the anniversary of a tragedy from three years ago…a woman left her house and shut the door, with her 7-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl sleeping inside, and a candle burning.” He did not have to describe how fiercely a house made of dried sticks would blaze. “The smoke was very black and thick, and the boy could not find the door.” My new friend mimicked the boy’s search with outstretched hands. “And they never got out?” I asked, without thinking. But sadder yet, he nodded. “Yes. They did, but it was too late. It was…very awful.”

Suddenly the sounds this woman was making made all too much sense and the images stung my eyes. It is difficult to describe the feeling it gave me. The story had little do with the loud things that divided me from this woman: the poverty, the local importance of skin color, our basic standard of living. Even where tourists are from, children die in house fires, parents make terrible mistakes. But at the same time, those elements felt relevant. Maybe it’s because when children are literally all a person has, losing them so cruelly reminds me just how little Luck cares about balance.

Whatever the reason, I also felt intrusive to have overheard her pain. Like I’d peeked behind a veil of privacy that separates all tourists from the life of locals. A veil which obscures the fact that, behind everything we see, there are people living, breathing, celebrating, suffering. It is both something we should not forget and none of our business. That night’s mystery symbolized the veil that had been there all along, as we passed through town after town in our car: people were working hard, but they looked okay. They all appeared fed; children laughed in the streets. But the truth lay at the end of dark roads that are too terrifying for us to go down and we are ill-equipped to even try.

It’s such a contrast from home, where the jobs we perform have nothing to do with our actual daily needs. For us, the facts of life happen behind the scenes. Somewhere else. But in places like Madagascar survival plays out each day in a constant-motion drama. It’s arresting to see how hard *most of the entire world* works, for such incongruously humble lives.

Don’t get me wrong; I was never one of those who thought that if someone is struggling to make ends meet, it’s because they aren’t working hard enough. (Nor that I have any real clue about the life of the people I’m seeing.) Even so…the scene is striking. People walking, walking, everywhere. Barefoot. Bare feet! Rolling tires down the road. Infant tied into the small of a woman’s back – or the back of another child – head flopped to the side in oblivious baby slumber. Carrying you-name-it on her head: planks of wood, birds, oranges, carrots, laundry, barbed wire, firewood, sacks of rice, bricks piled 10 layers high. Wandering zebu, chomping dry grass. Stalled cars. Fixing bikes. Whole families pushing carts. Together. Uphill, burdened high with rice or wood. Maybe a youngin’ perched on top. Embroidering linen. Selling honey, self-collected; different flavors from different trees. Riverbeds crowded with washers: of clothes, of zebu, of cars. Of themselves. Planting rice, ankle deep in shiny water. Scattering seeds, skirts a fabric bowl. Plowing muddy terraces. Burning land. Tending to a mud-brick kiln, black smoke seeping out the cracks. Smearing homes with red clay stucco. Children walking home from school, blue-uniformed herds. Women braiding hair. At wooden stalls. Stall after stall after stall. Selling nuts and nails and everything in-between. Making. It. Happen.

Then there is a different kind of work. We became very aware of pretty young Malagasy paired up with vazaha men. Particularly middle-aged ones. In fact, our favorite hangout was Hotel Glacier – a notorious prozzie bar with an open friendly ambiance and fantastic food. We expected a sad scummy joint (as we’d read in advance what was also “on the menu”); what we found challenged our preconceptions and made us debate our multiple types of naiveté. Were we really looking at prostitutes, or just pretty girls from a poor country who dream of finding a foreign saviour? It was impossible to tell. On top you saw just an ice cream and pastry shop on one side, a cafe on the other. A gem of a place where locals and vazaha mingle, for reasons that all look sweet on the surface. Gorgeous smiling locals, dressed like any in a London lounge. Chatting friendly in the washroom. Helping me dig-up some TP. Back in the bar, receiving drinks from mostly middle-aged white men. Was that it? Laughing. Smiling at us like we’re all on the same page. We did not actually see any women leave with any men. But we looked, simply because we do not understand. So much we do not understand.

Every night my lids are plump with images that have scattered by the morning like fragments of a jigsaw. Red earth, scorching and fumes, humble shacks. River banks clothed in fresh laundry spread to dry. Easy smiles framed by dimples, full of surprisingly perfect teeth. Children who come running as they see your car pass, cheerfully waving: “Bonjour, Vazaha!” And Lionel Richie (more on that later).

One thing the Malagasy do not lack are dimples, near perfect teeth and a welcome, sweet gentleness. Vazaha is pronounced ‘vaza’, and when the children greet you with gusto it comes out sounding like the old Bud Light commercial: Whazzuuuuuup?!

Vazaha means “stranger”, almost always meaning a white person. We laughed heartily at the idea of swapping places with them on the streets of America. Running out to their car, waving happily “Hello, black/Indonesian person!” But in a place like Madagascar, it felt like something richer. A rare moment of uncomplicated exchange, where there is nothing incorrect about naked curiosity. There was something settling about being observed as much as we were there to observe.  Like the exchange we represented was of more than just tourist dollars. That impression remains precious.

We processed the vast differences in our worlds, and poked fun at ourselves, with a long-running challenge: what things do the Malagasy not need? That’s a hard one, not because they couldn’t use a lot, but because they already find clever ways to manage with…everything. Soda cans: made into model airplanes and cars. Empty water bottles: transport packaging and honey containers. Talk about reduce, reuse, recycle. These people have got it down.

Many items from infomercials got mentioned in our challange. The winner, by far, was a chain of gyms. To our surprise we did find one customer among those stuck in a life of back-breaking work: a man in bright red underwear performing his morning stretches on a giant boulder sticking up from a valley of rice terraces, for all to admire. That was lovely and strange. A winking show of vanity in a place where there is little time for such things. Good for him.

And then there’s Lionel Richie. Madagascar seems to have a thing for him. If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a place where old 80′s albums go to die, this is it. This is their afterlife. We were hoping to ride in our car to the sounds of local music. But (our driver claimed) there were rarely music stations along our roads. So Dancin’ on the Ceiling it was. And I heard it several places other than that, like the “cabaret” at Hotel/Bar Glacier. A little Beyoncé, too. But mostly Lionel. Ballerina Girl will be in my head for a long time, as I could not help but think of my home town friends-turned comedians Rhett & Link (who have a thing for that album). But I didn’t tell anyone about that. It seemed something else they didn’t need from me. But they probably would have smiled and politely found a use for it anyway.

(More Mada commentary to follow later this week…)

Did you ever make a lot of promises, not realizing how all the obligations would come together at once? That’s what happened to me this year. Except – although it won’t win me any band of wailing sympathizers for saying so – the promises I tend to make have to do with traveling. So for the last, oh, quarter of 2011, that’s where I’ve been. Keeping promises on the road. (My dear husband is very understanding!)

It started like this: every year I have two standing travel plans. I take one trip with my dad in the summer; this happens to be one of my most favorite things ever in life. If I’m even luckier, like this year, sisters (and/or husbands, kids) will decide to come too. The other standing plan, of course, is my husband’s vacation.

On the down side, these trips cannot be merged. In his current job, my husband’s vacation is split into two parts, tethered to the months of August and September. Dad is only open May-July. (So much for the fact that it’s 100x easier for me to travel in the shoulder/low season.) That makes three trips, de facto. On the other hand, this works out, because my husband doesn’t like to fly so much. He doesn’t like to fly over the ocean at all, although he will if strongly enticed. (Or appropriately drugged up. That works too.) So he’s very content for my father and I explore the Far and Away; hubby is thrilled to deal with the less-intrepid me.

But a year ago I also promised to look after my nieces in America for a few days (albeit another one of my favorite promises to fulfill), which happened to fall in August, then get postponed at the last moment until September. Hmmm. The calendar was getting crowded, but I could manage (…she said with determination).

Then came one of my best friends. To be fair, he’s been begging me to travel with him for years, but I’m always too booked up (see above). So this year I promised, with the stipulation that I only go for 4-5 days. I just couldn’t take more. “I couldn’t”. Unless it was like, Madagascar, or something, where I’ve wanted to go for 10 years. Oh what? You’re keen on Madagascar? October is the perfect month to go? Er, ok then. Maybe a bit longer. Wait, what? My other best friend wants to go too, and is already buying her tickets from America? *sigh* Fine. Two weeks it is. (Life is so hard…)

So that’s where I am. I just finished a week with hubby, where we did nothing but sit by a pool all week (and write some, yeay me); I have just two days before I leave to try and explore an island twice the size of the UK, where about 90% of the roads are unpaved, all in a span of two weeks.

Thank goodness I’d promised to relax by the pool for a week, even if it falls on the toes of the Far Place.

That’s what Venice just did for me. After years of a solid loving relationship with Europe in which I grew to feel that it held no more surprises, Venice gave me that first kiss feeling. I guess, after ages of hearing that it was dirty, stinky and clogged with tourists, I was bound to be pleasantly surprised. The water, the boats, the cheerful Italians, the bridges, the food. Venice is a place you could just wander the streets for days and never grow bored. Every corner is more interesting than the last. It’s a giant labyrinth of bridges, tiny twisting streets and stunning architecture. (We had plenty of laughs as the men would lead us somewhere confidently – only to wind up dead ended into the water.) Underneath all of your enjoyment lies the nagging and unfathomable issue of how such a place could ever exist. Seriously. How did they do that?! But anyway…

We were accompanied by our friends Dan and Anna, and we couldn’t be happier to have shared the weekend with them. I had purposely never gone to Venice, figuring that it would be a shame to waste the romance of it by traveling there solo. So it is perfect that Del took me there for a birthday present, and just as nice to have shared it with another couple that we like so much. I can’t believe I ever held such low expectations for such a wonderful place! In fact, I hope to go back again and again. (Namely, I’d love to take a less strenuous visit, when I can just relax and drink a cappuccino while listing to the water slop against the stairs, boats and houses.) My only disappointment was not being able to see an opera in the famous Teatro de Fenice (sold out), but hey, I can always use an excuse to go back!

If you’d like to hear about my recommendations, I’ll post those tomorrow. Otherwise, I’ll leave you with a couple of photos (as usual, the rest are on Flickr).

From Accademia bridge over the Grand Canal

Looking back from the island of Burano.

DIY hot chocolate deluxe.

Servizio Gondole (from St. Mark’s).

Note: This is a post I did back in 2008 for my former blog “Life with the Others”, which focused on travel and cultural topics. I am working on a new post for Killerboob, but recently I was reminded of the post below and – if you will allow me to be immodest – I like it. So I decided to dig it up and cross-post it here. Hope you like it, too.

June 28^th marked five years all clear of cancer. (Holla!)

There are varying opinions on what exactly this means, why precisely it is a big deal. There is even uncertainty as to how exactly one counts this.  My original oncologist, the amazing Doctor Professor Neven, said that the 5 year mark is when my risk factor drops back to that of someone who’s never had it, and that I was considered “clear” just after my mastectomy, since there was no cancer in my lymph nodes and they had, after all, just cut the damn stuff out. Technically it was all gone.

So. There you have it. Five years to the day, no cancer found. I had blood tests and a bone scan in May (for unexplained neck pain), so I can feel pretty good that my last clearance was thorough. And that’s saying something since I have been rather uncertain about the NHS (National Health Service) since moving to the UK last year. But that’s for another post.

The strangest thing is how I let this anniversary float by, like barely noticed driftwood. For those of you who know me well, that is not much of a surprise. I don’t like to make a fuss. Not for myself anyway. Throwing a party for anyone is incredibly angsty for me; I certainly would not dream of doing it for myself.

But I wanted to make an exception for this anniversary. It wouldn’t be celebrating “me”, after all, but the death of an awful thing. You know: Ding Dong, the witch is (by some official measures) dead!!

That deserves something really special. It didn’t have to be a party per se. It could have been anything giddiness-inducing. But what? A hot air balloon ride. An extra-splurgy vacation. Some Botox? A pedicure? Good lord, something!

Doing nothing felt like saying it wasn’t special. Or that I wasn’t grateful. Or that I don’t remember the number of friends who were not lucky enough to make it to the same landmark….

So I upset myself a little when exactly that happened. For six months I watched it coming. For six months I said I was going to do something. At least have a champagne toast, for goodness sake!

When the 28^th rolled around, the whole family – including best friends and in-laws – were in Ireland, in a castle, all together and everything. That’s already special – all I had to do was claim that this event could double as an honor of the anniversary. But I’d gotten distracted in the 2 months prior, planning for that vacation. The 28^th came, and the 28^th went. And no one said a word.

On the 29^th I remembered. And everyone said, “Oh. Huh. Five years. How about that?” And then we talked about something else.

I feel weird about this. Perhaps my sister is right, that forgetting is the best gift of all. Forgetting means I’ve healed in a lot of ways. Forgetting means we have already moved on, that we’ve not let it scar us. Forgetting says, “Take that, cancer. We don’t even care about you anymore.” But I just don’t know: is that a wise thing to say? Is that sort of like cash-baiting a mobster?

So part of me remains unsatisfied, and I struggle to put my finger on why. Perhaps I am just being superstitious. But whatever the reason, I’m not letting it go by here. So, not for the first, but hopefully for the last time, I’ll say it properly:

Ding dong the witch is dead!*

*Ahem. By some official measures

So Ireland. That castle thing? [*Smirk*] It was like winning a prize. My photos are downloading right now (such a multi-tasker!), so I’ll come back to that tomorrow or Wed.  However, while it was so wonderful to have my entire family on “my” side of the ocean, having come so far to vacation together for the first time ever (I don’t count driving to grandparents’ houses every summer as a kid in the same category), it was also stressful to be the organizer of a group that swelled to 13 people on the weekend. I’m the sort that can be a leader, it’s fine. But lust for power is not my vice, let’s just say! In many ways, the week reminded me of my wedding, where I was so thrilled to have everyone there, but was torn between so many people, wishing I could have an entire quiet day with each one, and being 3 hours behind on everything. Always. But in both cases, it’s a good sort of madness.

Last weekend was the return to a house full of boxes. Dad stayed a couple of days. BIL visited for a couple of days. And hubby and I worked very hard to get the new place in order. (“Please don’t ever make me move again”, said the girl who ironically still hopes to buy a home soonish…) I’m sure you heard me mention that the old landlord, who insisted we leave exactly when we did? She didn’t move in for a month after that. I do not envision us becoming close neighbors…but hassle aside, at least the move was worth it. This apartment, though just one floor up, is far better than the old one. So there’s that. With lost of windows and balcony doors, we constantly have sunlight and breezes sweeping through, and thus it kind of feels like a holiday home.

Finally I feel it’s together. I feel organized. There’s a place for clean towels, and a stack of them to go there. My office desk is assembled. My stereo is plugged in with my iPod on its throne. The wine glasses are displayed in the new wall unit. There’s food in the cabinets. (Well, some…) The dust is clearing in my head, and I can get back to the rest of life – writing (hopefully), photo editing, even looking out one of my two new terraces into a sunny summer day. (Yes, of course we have those in London!)

That’s what I mean by “reconstructing Earth”. A stable platform of time on which to establish a rhythm to life in the new apartment. That’s my theory anyway…

If you recall, Del and I have been “homeless” for the past 3 weeks, in the interim between our old and new apartment contracts. So I’ve been working, which has basically meant a different bed every night – until I crashed after my last Paris trip. Nothing major, just a long-agitating cold that wouldn’t go away (gee, wonder why) that threatened to go nuclear + lots of little injuries which I check up to fatigue. So I had to call sick for my last trip and spent a few days recouping at my sister’s.

Cold’s still poking at me, but I’m doing ok. Finally flying home tonight and I cannot wait. Del got the keys to our new place about 5 hours ago. He’s probably working right now, loading a rented truck with our belongings to drag them from storage back home. What a guy!

My big sis and BIL arrive in London tomorrow, just half an hour after I’m due in (well, we’re all flying stand-by so, fingers crossed); then my dad comes this weekend; then we all go directly to the castle vacation in Ireland. Sooo excited, but you almost surely won’t hear from me until after then. And after that, along with the castle report/recommendation, I can tell you what it’s like to travel with 11-12 adults and 2 kids! (Anybody tried it? Got any tips?!)

From a trip that is usually just my dad and I, we’ve grown this year to include: my husband, middle sister + husband + two kids under 3, oldest sister + husband, best friend, in-laws, PLUS my best friend from high school will happen to be in Shannon one day and will join us too. Wow!  I cannot believe we’ve gotten such a group together and we’re going to pull this off!

Great Family Vaca 2011 – Here we come.

Don’t mistake me – I love good luck. I am not knocking it. But “be careful what you wish for” is not a cliché without wisdom.  The universe always has a way of evening things out, don’t you think?

For example, when Del and I were informed we had to leave our apartment, it felt rather unlucky. Did the owner have to move back home now?! But when another apartment – a better one – came open in our same building, we thought the Luck Fairies had sprinkled us with favor. But then, when all was said and done, a 3 week gap between contracts appeared, and we were unable to close it. (Bad luck.) We’re still psyched about the new place, but as I speak, we’re homeless, as we wait out the time in-between. A schlep upstairs has turned into not one but two moves – into and out of storage.

So here we are: the old apartment is cleared out, all traces of our presence scrubbed away; Del is at his parents’; I am passing the time in America. A good excuse to pick up some extra work, right?

So although I’d rather be at home than at work, I got a Budapest trip on reserve.  (Great luck.) You see, people tend to think that F/As spend their days flying off to varied and exciting destinations, but  that is not the case. My destinations are good, but they are certainly not varied. Not even Paris is exciting the 400^th time you go there.  I’m not complaining, Paris is great.  I’m just pointing out…Budpest was quite a coup for me.  I’d never even been there on my own time. So to get paid to see a place I’ve wanted to go was a special treat.  (Case in point: the most Jr. F/A besides me on the trip was 32 years seniority. 32 years!! That means even if you DOUBLED my career time at the airline, I’d still be too junior to get this flight. By 4-5 years yet.  Crazy huh?)

Anyhow, Budapest was great. A few of us did one of those hop-on, hop-off bus tours. It was my first time ever on one of those, and when we hopped off for a drink overlooking the city and randomly bumped  into our pilots at the same cafe (!), we skipped the end of the tour and finished the evening with goulash and dinner.  Good luck. Except I was exhausted from the trip over (working until 4:30am is hard enough; add to it that my body clock is set to it being 5 hours ahead of that), and felt the prickle of an oncoming cold as we exited customs into Budapest. Then my hotel  nap was a FAIL due to a continual phantom hammering from somewhere above my room. Insanely bad luck. (The hotel eventually located a hotel guest “repairing something in their room”. Who does that? All afternoon?!)

I desperately needed stay in bed, but I was not going to miss my layover. By dinner I felt so ill I almost skipped eating and returned to the hotel. Except I didn’t know how to get there alone. And it was worth it…except the cold is haunting me. Then when I expected to rest in NYC, work sent me out again. Bad luck. On a day-trip. (= no hotel) Double bad luck.  I dumped well over $100 on a hotel room to get some decent sleep, then  made it to Atlanta to visit my rapidly changing nieces and nephews. At least my ear stopped popping painfully. And I felt better. And was having a great time. All good luck, and then even more came my way:

My trip trader got me a Rio flight! Another one of those rarely-seen-by-me trips. My last time there was…2003? Maybe? Lots of hours; feeling better. Alright! So I accept. Good luck! But this morning my cold is raring back and all the morning flights out of Atlanta were full. Ohhh, bad luck.

But finally I squeaked on a flight. And that’s where I write you from now. So while I hate to leave the kiddos for a couple days, I’m off to make a little money (v little, as it so happens!), to somewhere really cool, sniffing and snorting and blinking my stinging eyes as I go, as I will be all the way through to 7:30am. Is that good luck or bad luck? I’m not sure. Sometimes everything is a little of both.

um…[*shuffles feet*]…hi.

[*cough*]

As I told a new internet friend, I have been meaning to come back here. It’s just, it seems that my news gets communicated on FB statuses (the only thing about FB I really like, although I am strangely anti-twitter, considering it’s not far off the same thing). And once you fall out of the habit of writing it out regularly, and the further you go from where you left off…well. It’s hard to jump back in there and know what to say, cause there’s lots I haven’t kept up with here. But I promised to try, so here I am. Nice to see you.

I guess I’ll start by following up on a few bits-and-bobs that I was talking about when we last met. In case you didn’t catch it by the “bits-and-bobs” thing, I’m well settled in London and I really love it here. What a great city. In fact, comparing it to my old city of NYC, I must say the latter looks less and less impressive. But then again I’m still new here. Ask me again in two years and I might be just as judgmental about London. (Don’t think so, but maybe.)

In fact, I’m so well settled in that we’re moving house already. Yes, that is a bummer. We were hoping to have bought a place by now, but that hasn’t yet worked out. And then our landlord decided to move back to London. We lucked out in scoring an apartment in the very same building (Whuuut? Yeay!), but then when all the bureaucratic necessities were done, there was a 19 day gap between apartment availability dates (Get out! Boooo!). We were sure the landlord would let us stay for that period – as were her mutual apartment owners here – but no. So, short version: we’re now moving out into a storage space, going to be “homeless for a few weeks”, then have to move back in. To the same damn building. (I mean, I like it here, just…a lot of trouble for a double move!) And a fresh rental contract means probably another year renting. So there’s that.

On the cancer front, I am well, though have had another round of tests due to weird, lasting neck pains. I’m (currently) feeling pretty confident on that front, but learning to navigate the NHS – yet another medical system – carries its own sort of pains in the neck.

In other related news, we have lost another dear lady to breast cancer. That makes two awesome women off my blog role that are sadly no longer with us. (Punk Rock Mommy and Sprucehill, you are missed.) It always takes me by surprise. I’m always sure they’re going to be fine. I had been lightly, but regularly commenting with her on FB. Suddenly there was a note from her family about her death. Aside from the sadness and feelings of injustice, it just brings all the fear rushing back, I must admit. I also lost a high school friend to melanoma in January. She had turned 36 not a week before, and I was just gathering detailed information on her situation (as I hadn’t wanted to pry earlier). I got the confirmation of her cancer from am mutual friend, and went to leave her a fresh note on FB, only to see lots of “RIP” comments. It was such a physical blow. I mean, I find it “wrong” enough that, at my age, myself and several friends have already dealt with cancer. But for one of us not to have made it…I am speechless.

In better news, my friend “P” (read below) has moved home back across the world. Even has a stellar new job. Her mom is hanging in there and they see each other often. For that much I am grateful.

And I guess that seems like enough for today. Next on the editorial calendar – more cheerful updates! How about travel and writing? Yeah. Those sound like good topics.