Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Don’t Get Burned by Niagara Falls

Our road trip took the three of us from Pittsburgh to Niagara Falls in late October, stopping overnight in each direction at Lake Chautauqua. About 50 miles from Niagara, a service station advertised that it provided tourist information for Niagara Falls – and that it was the last stop before Buffalo, NY. Of course we stopped.

As Jaya, Sandy, and I came in the door, the booth was set up so that everyone had to pass it. It featured piles of maps and brochures and leaflets and a jolly guy who was happy to talk to us about Niagara. All three of us love to chatter with strangers and this friendly chap was our match. Eventually he asked about our plans for the Falls and confided that he could secure us tickets for the best tour ever. It would include all parking fees at the various sites, all entrance fees, and a ride to four of the best views – altogether eight attractions. We would have a chance to spend a half hour at each stop, photographing and incredible views. It would take four hours and only cost $108 each.

“What about a senior discount?”

“Included it already,” he smiled.

“We’ll talk to you after we use the bathroom,” I said and off we went. I reminded my friends that there was no way I was going to stand around on my dysfunctional feet for half-hours at a time – and certainly not on such an extremely windy and chilly day. “Sounds like torture, not fun.” So we didn’t grab this bargain.

We got to the Falls and parked for $10. We never had to move the car. We went up to the main observation point and got our first free views of the Falls. Then we went on the exhilarating, amazing “Maid of the Mist” boat ride around the foot of the falls, dressed like everyone else in the pink plastic rain capes (with breast cancer ribbon designs on the back). We had befriended a guy at the info desk and he had given us big plastic bags and rubber bands for our shoes – we were the only ones on the Maid whose feet stayed dry. The wind was insane – so the mist was seriously whipping people around. And that was kinda wonderful. It cost us $20 each.

Afterwards we went on the Trolley (jump on / jump off) provided by the Niagara Falls State Park. It goes to all those eight attractions mentioned by the tour guy who had tried to sell us the tour. But it turned out that several of the attractions were already closed for the season and others were inaccessible due to road works. But the Trolley and its informative driver were fabulous – we got out at the premiere spot for viewing and photographing and then got back on later. The tickets cost $3 each.

So that’s $10 for parking, $60 for three tickets to the boat, $9 for three tickets to the Trolley. In total $79, and it was a full and exhausting day. If we had gone on the painful standing-around tour, it would’ve cost us $324.

How infuriating that this for-profit tour company passes itself off as a “tourist info” spot, even advertising on the highway and being placed immediately as one comes in the door of the last service stop. My feeling was that Niagara Falls is a State Park and therefore looked after us in an affordable and safe way. Don’t get burned – just get to the Park itself, preferably not, as staff told us, on the windiest day of the year.

 

He’s Just 4

It was a beautiful Fall day, so my friend and I got library passes to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, where we intended to explore the new extension.

But something was very amiss in the clogged roads and WAZE was struggling to find us a way to keep moving, as is its wont. The closer we got to Salem, the more gridlocked it became. Cars were searching out non-existent parking spaces, and every spare space – from official lots to peoples’ driveways – displayed hand-made signs with a $20 or $30 price – or more commonly a big sign saying FULL.

The streets were impassable with excited crowds. The town was bulging with pumpkins and alive with excitement. Tourist Trolleys promised tours of witches’ sites and costumed guides were squiring families to all the haunted houses. I did not know, because I am not a Halloween kinda girl, that every October weekend in Salem is a massive big deal, not the least the first weekend. There was no approaching the Museum and so we concocted a plan B.

We set off south down the Essex Coastal Scenic Byway along the coast. The weather was glorious, absolutely perfect. We went to several beaches, noting the offensive “Private Beach: Do Not Trespass” signs in the wealthier seaside towns. We discovered the Audubon nature preserve at Marblehead Neck, which was gorgeous. As we drove through Marblehead, we detoured down a narrow road between two bloated mansions, to catch the view of the scenic harbor where the boats were as abundant as the ghost hunters had been in Salem.

Before we got to the end of this little road which was about ½ block long to see the harbor, out popped a little blond boy from behind a mansion vanity wall. He was gesticulating and waving us away, a big scowl on his little pale face.

I stuck my head out of the window. “Are you trying to tell us to get out of here?”

“Yes,” he yelled, all puffed up and full of himself, “This is my grandmother’s house.” He continued to point down the road and shoo us, petulance and privilege swelling his features.

From behind the wall, a woman said to him, “It’s okay.” But he stood his ground.

I said to him, “When you get a chance, look up the word ‘entitled’ in the dictionary.”

And the disembodied voice of the woman responded, “He’s only four!”

My friend said to me, “And she has taught him already.”

I found it spookier than Salem could ever be.

A Two-Stop Day-Trip from Boston: Wachusett Dam & Reservoir plus Tower Hill Botanic Garden

With so little to celebrate in this world, a warm Spring day is sufficient motivation to turn off the news, leave the computer, put down the protest banner, and go see the explosion of greens, as the flora awakens around us.

We head to Clinton, Massachusetts (less than an hour from Boston) for the Wachusett Dam, constructed between 1897 to 1905, and still the largest stone dam built by hand. It creates the magnificent Wachusett Reservoir, which supplies part of Boston’s needs. At nearly 7 square miles, it is the second largest body of water in Massachusetts. For those willing to descend a gazillion steps, one can tour the very base of the dam where the landscaping includes a handsome water fountain. But I found it plenty gorgeous from atop the dam as well.

From there it was a quick 5-mile drive to the Tower Hill Botanic Garden. Our state park pass got us in without paying the $11 senior entrance fee. Founded in 1986, the gorgeous visitor center is surrounded on all sides by assorted gardens, all of which thrive in New England’s variable weather – the Garden is only closed in January. Among the one dozen gardens are the Systematic Garden, Winter Garden, Cottage Garden, and Vegetable Garden. On this visit, the plethora of tulips – white and ruby – were a highlight of our visit.We were lucky to visit during the enthralling, mesmerizing exhibition of large stainless steel wind sculptures scattered throughout. Titled “Wind, Waves & Light: Art in Motion,” they are the work of George Sherwood, an engineer/artist who lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A 40-second video clip of the work is below.

The Tower Hill Botanic Garden center has a cool garden shop, a café (already closed when we arrived), impressive event rooms (where, for example, UMass Medical School holds its graduation), a library, and clean bathrooms. Tours are offered. Best of all, there are benches all over the place for relaxing amidst the different plants.

One of the charms of this one-day trip is that it can be as accessible, physically non-challenging as you want, while people with kids and energy can run up and down the steps of the Dam and to the furthest reaches of the 171 acres of Tower Hill. 

 

One Day Mid-Cape Cod Loop without Walking Much

It’s hard to be on vacation when your bad knee conspires with your tendinitis-afflicted feet to keep you from walking more than a block or so at a time. What to do?

We started out from the exceedingly comfortable Hyannis Harbor Motel, and walked one block along the Harbor to fuel up with a fulsome brunch at the Black Cat Tavern. Besides the classic breakfast, the hamburgers are stupendous. A conversation with the knowledgeable manager, Paul Crosby, who was born and bred in the area, led to him sketching out the perfect car trip for us.

We first headed for the Chatham Lighthouse (above) where there is an exquisite look-out parking area overlooking a white sand beach. We had luck: the sky was blue and the sun was shining, so only some sand bars separated the identically sparkling azure water and sky.

Next, Paul had told us, put Brewster Sea Camps into your GPS, but once you get to the Camp’s entrance, plug in Scargo Tower. That worked perfectly, except that we ran into a locked gate at the entrance of the road to Scargo Tower, and we so couldn’t mount to the top. Instead we wound around the residential lanes to share the views of the lucky locals.

We headed to the next suggested stop: Millway Beach (left) on Barnstable Harbor. By then the fog was settling in and the view of the long stretch was dimmed and delicate. Standing there, the world felt calm and subdued and lovely.

The final destination was Sandy Neck Beach in Sandwich. This was convenient, because my favorite source of real scones, clotted cream, and jam – and elegant lunch – is the Dunbar Tea House. It may be a bit pricey, but it’s cheaper than flying to London.

For those with mobility issues, this is a loop that provided a perfect day’s drive. It is always best to ask local folks, especially those who deal with tourists all the time. Thanks to Paul Crosby and to the Atlantic Ocean for a fine time.

P.S. For a day when you are able to walk a bit, try the splendid Bass Hole Boardwalk at Gray’s Beach in Yarmouth Port. Parts of it were washed away in a flood in the winter of 2018, but it’s all fixed up again. We went on a drizzly day at low tide and the marshes were a strange but gorgeous sight, strongly reminding me for some reason of the lava fields of Iceland.

Rembrandt van Rijn Made me Cry

Happy Birthday Rembrandt van Rijn (July 15, 1606—October 4, 1669)

As a high school junior in a tough inner-city school in Pittsburgh, we were given a choice of three topics for a final essay. The topic I picked was “Does the light in Rembrandt’s paintings come from an internal or an external source?”

For a teenager, that sounded awfully deep. The problem was that there were no Rembrandt paintings in Pittsburgh’s public realm. I’m sure there were some in the private homes of such local ruling class figures as Andrew W. Mellon, Charles M. Schwab, Henry Clay Frick, Henry John Heinz, and Andrew Carnegie. But our museum was more blessed with dinosaur bones in the early 1960s than classic paintings.

And so I pored through art books at the Carnegie Library and deduced that in fact the light came from an internal source. I was completely captivated by this first immersion in great art and converted to a loyal admirer – to this day – of Rembrandt. I am dazzled by his paintings of his Jewish neighbors, his memoir of self-portraits, his biblical scenes, and his culinary still-lifes.

That summer I was one of six poor whites and six poor blacks (poor being quite a relative term in this case) to win a full scholarship to the ruling class Phillips Exeter Academy’s summer school. Among the other outcasts was the daughter of the wealthy UN ambassador from India. She should have been welcomed by the others of her class (Westmorland’s granddaughter among them – this was when he was running the war on Vietnam), but she was neither white nor American. At the end of the term she invited me to go home with her to New York City, where the Nanny was holding down the fort. She taught me how to use Tampax, and I thought of her every time I used one in the subsequent decades.

One day she took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I rounded a corner and came upon a room full of Rembrandts. I was ambushed by awe and love and brilliance. There was a round couch in the middle of the room and, body trembling and senses overwhelmed, I sat down and burst out in tears. A uniformed museum worker, an old man, came over to me. “I’m sorry,” I shuddered. He patted my shoulder, “Don’t worry. This happens all the time in this room.”

Once I pulled myself together, I was able to understand his use of chiaroscuro, the light and shadow that had prompted my high school essay question. As I became an adult, I pursued Rembrandt van Rijn. When I was a college student, I fell in love with the little 1633 painting that seemed so out of character: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. It was one of my go-to thrills when I would drop acid and explore the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston while tripping. Years later, when I was living abroad and heard that it had been stolen in 1990 (never to be found), I took it quite personally.

I have since seen many Rembrandt van Rijn exhibitions, including Rembrandt’s Amsterdam house from 1639 to 1656 and the major works exhibited in that city’s Rijksmuseum. Once in Germany I saw a collection of his etchings that blew my mind all over again. As a kid writing about this marvelous painter, I don’t think I quite understood that I wasn’t alone in my extreme admiration. I didn’t realize that millions of people wondered if the light in his paintings came from internal or external sources.

Amsterdam & Utrecht Travelogue – May 2018

May 19

The taxi driver at the Amsterdam Centraal Station tries to rip me off. That’ll be €20, he says. What? says I. No way. Oh, says he, I meant to say €10. Turn on the machine, I suggest. Too late, he says.

The delightful flat where we’re staying is up two narrow steep flights of steps and luckily my friend Sue has already arrived and comes to help me wrestle my modest suitcase up. The problem is that the width of the first flight is cut in half by the rails of a Stairmaster. And it is also missing a bannister. Bannisters are essential to anyone who does not bounce up stairs with athletic buoyancy and tightrope walker balance.

Our corner flat is above an intersection of two canals, so the views are splendid – from the windows and from the balcony which is big enough to sit on. The life on neighboring houseboats is endlessly engaging. The sunsets last for hours, until about 10:00pm.

Walking down the street, we meet two gay men who are in front of their house with a dog and two of the longest-haired cats I’ve ever seen – apparently called Maine cats. We get to talking with Sean and Clarence and it turns out they own a restaurant just a few blocks away called Small World Catering. We promise to visit it soon.

May 20

First thing in the morning I do a wash and discover that there are two soaps for the machine, one for dark clothes and one for whites.

We set out for a stroll around the hip Jordaan neighborhood, where it is Open Studios weekend. The studios are marked with bright flags and in the process we meet some really interesting artists, all ready to chat and show their art. One woman is in a low-rent municipal studio, but she has to pass an assessment every five years in order to hold on to it.

Amsterdam’s city council decided last year that 40% of new homes must adhere to social housing rules, meaning the rent is capped at €710 ($825) a month. Another 40% must target middle income households with rents of around €850 ($988) per month. The rest is private housing with no limits. Private rent for a one bedroom can easily top €1,500 ($1,743). However, I did meet people who had rent-controlled apartments that were privately owned. To put that in context, the average Amsterdam salary is €48,005 ($55,700) and the two biggest industries are IT and tourism.

In the early evening we head to our new friends’ Small World restaurant where we delight in tongue-thrilling bacon & avocado sandwiches slathered in a secret mayo sauce. We drink an apple/lime/ginger treat and then pig out on a lemon tart, the rousing tartness of which makes our hair stand up. It is all so delicious and they are so friendly and kind (slipping Sue a huge brownie as a gift and me a lemon muffin) that we know it will be our go-to spot. Next time you’re in Amsterdam, you must lunch there and tell the guys “the two Sues” sent you.

May 21

On the trams in Amsterdam, the seats assigned for people with mobility issues are upholstered in a completely different color and pattern, with icons of those who are welcome to plop down. Brilliant! Young healthy people rarely sit in any of the designated seats the way that one sees in the States constantly.

I know about the trams because after a profoundly arduous walk to the Centraal Station, we finally buy our 4-day travel cards that allow us unlimited access. With those in hand, we go to the back of Centraal Station where there is a free ferry east to Buiksloterdijk. The most memorable part of this rather uninteresting ride (about 20 minutes each way), is wiggling my way right up to the front rail for the best view, only to have the water slosh in up to my ankles. I only brought one pair of shoes to Amsterdam, but because of the sun and heat, no harm, no foul.

May 22

We use this rainy day to check out the anthropological Tropen Museum, an exquisite building built around a monumental hall circled by three floors of galleries. The permanent collection centers on slavery and its aftermath. The Dutch have, of course, a rather nasty colonial history – and I believe this museum is an attempt to understand and communicate about it.

The two exhibitions on display during our visit are fascinating. “Fashion Cities Africa” is crowded with dramatically posed manikins wearing cutting edge contemporary clothing from a range of African cities – including Casablanca, Lagos, and Nairobi. There are video clips and giant posters of designers explaining their vision and the latest fashion trends. The new influx of donated clothing from the West starting in the 1960s figured heavily in some of the most creative confections – pieces that were sliced and diced and combined with African fabrics to create looks that are utterly modern and challenging. Hip-hop meets French couture meets political pride all ends up on the runways. Absent from the commentary is any recognition of the gay influence on fashion in general and African fashion in particular.

The other exhibition, Body Art, looks at the myriad ways in which people alter and decorate their bodies, reflecting both their culture and their individualism. One riveting short film shows older women from Myanmar with blue tattoos all over their faces, done when they were about 9 years old. The point was to protect minority girls and women from assault by making them unattractive to their enemies. But as time passed and the political situation changed, they were left disfigured and alone.

Another short film features a Holocaust survivor and his grandson. We see that they have matching tattoos, for the young man has had his grandfather’s tattooed number inked on his own arm. The elderly man is grateful for what he sees as his grandson’s gesture of honor. He also feels it is a way to sustain the memory of the Nazi genocide. Another display looks at the damage corsets did to women’s bodies – from breaking their ribs to fracturing their spine to damaging their internal organs to the point of stopping their periods.

A lovely restaurant in the Tropen Museum serves up an elegant potato soup for me and an Indonesian peanut soup for my friend, warming us up for the rainy trip back to where we are staying.

We only ate soup because this evening we meet two close friends of my very dear friend Vicki – Madi and Donald – and dine sitting outside on the terrace of a restaurant they both like. The conversation never flags and Donald is as charming and engaged as Madi is witty and interesting. Donald says that since it is against the law to be racist or sexist towards someone on the street, he is convinced that Amsterdam people would intervene. Madi is a bit skeptical. Later, when I mention my involvement with LGBTQ elder rights, Donald says he has heard of a number of initiatives by aging gays and lesbians organizing group housing situations in Amsterdam for themselves. I want to come back and do a whole piece about that one of these days. It is a lovely evening and Sue and I stroll back to where we are staying after a stop at the grocery for whole milk yogurt and pretzels

May 23

We take a day trip to Utrecht, 25 minutes away on the comfortable, roomy Dutch trains. We are immediately enchanted with the town, which has been recommended to me by my friend Michael who used to live there. With a population of about 350,000, it’s the 4^th largest Dutch city. The city center is ancient: there’s even evidence dating from the Stone Age. With surviving churches built in the 1200s, Utrecht is considered the religious heart of the Netherlands.

We are briefly detoured by a stop at the Keek (pronounced “cake”) café for grilled cheese sandwiches on dark delicious homemade bread and a special sharp cheese made in the Netherlands. We wash it down with their lovely homemade lemonade and head to our primary destination, the Utrecht Centraal Museum.

We start our exploration of the museum with a major exhibition of the work of Jan Taminiau (born 1975), the most prominent Austrian fashion designer. He is very outspoken on his sense of aesthetics, and talks explicitly about his design process from inspiration to creation. His dresses are over-the-top, intricate, complex, and gorgeous. The museum employees are proud of him and we are told more than once that he designed for the Netherland’s Queen Máxima, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé.

We also visit the exhibition The World of Utrecht, which gives us a genre and historical overview – lots of amazing furniture, paintings, and architectural models of the Dom Tower and the Rietveld Schroder House (where we are headed next), as well as the popular and mesmerizing doll’s house.

Our main goal, though, is to tour the Rietveld Schroder House, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. When we find out it is actually located across town (but administered by the Museum), they call us a cab and we race to get there in time for our 4:00 tour. This remarkable house was designed by the famous Utrecht architect Gerrit Rietveld in full collaboration with the owner, Truus Schroder. (They eventually moved in together after his wife died.) Schroder designed the extraordinary, adaptable, multi-use interior, and Rietveld built it all and designed the exterior, based on the ideals of the De Stijl design movement. It’s a masterpiece.

The interior and its contents move and transform. A chair is a table. The walls slide open. The windows can be disappeared to such a degree that it is hard to distinguish between outside and inside. It is magical and practical at once. There are echoes of the work of Mondrian, another member of the De Stijl art movement and group, with squares of primary colors, and vertical/horizontal design in both the interior and exterior.

I was interested to see the first English lesbian novel (and the first I ever read) The Well of Loneliness (1928) on Schroder’s bookcase. Our tour guide explains that Schroder considered herself a feminist – and perhaps more to the point, her daughter was a lesbian.

There is so much more to do around town but we have no time to explore, other than checking out some other buildings in the neighborhood that Rietveld built. I am determined to return one day and stay for several days in Utrecht.

May 24, 2018

We spend our final day at Amsterdam's Waterlooplein market, first established in the former Jewish Quarter in 1885, when it was closed each Sabbath. The main thing we are after is the famous French fries which one dips in mayonnaise that a vendor has been producing in her little trailer for many decades. She shows each new customer the tattered front cover of a newspaper which awarded her Best Chips some time ago. I’ve eaten her potatoes on virtually every visit to Amsterdam.

The stalls have the usual mass-produced flea market fare, tons of t-shirts, piles of wallets, and a bit of jewelry. I have no intention of buying anything until I see a sweatshirt that was begs me to take it home. The shopkeeper wants €35. Not for nothing did I live in the Middle East for 14 years. What about €20, I ask. He is disgusted, says I should go away, that’s less than he paid for it wholesale. I feign departure. He throws up his hands. Okay, for you €30. I want to be friends, I say, let’s settle in the middle on €25. He’s perfectly happy, I’m perfectly happy, and it has been an honorable negotiation.

We take our final stroll around the center of Amsterdam, passing City Hall, the Dutch National Opera and Ballet, and cross over the River Amstel. We’re heading for Small World, our new friends’ restaurant, where we not only eat another bacon/avocado sandwich, but also stock up on nibbles for our trips home – Sue to London by train and me to Boston.

A few Amsterdam curiosities for dessert:

Like Vienna, the toilets are built with a plateau under your butt and a hole for water in the front of the bowl. Your poop falls in a pile, apparently convenient for checking the state of your health, while the paper somehow falls in that hole. When you are ready to flush, you can pick a button for pee (half-flush) or poop (full-flush) and send it all twirling down.

The toilet paper comes in rectangles, not squares, so you tear off many fewer units.

After my first visit to Amsterdam in the 1980s, I have never rented a bike. The transportation culture is totally different than in the States. The small roads and the major parts of the wide sidewalks of the bigger roads give absolute priority to the bicycles. The bikes themselves are the type I love – no cross bar, no complicated gears, and the handle bars are upwards, allowing you to sit straight. I did not see a single racing bike. During rush hour, there is a skilled tight flow of hundreds of bikes. Tourists too often mess up that flow. At other times, people ride in twos and threes chatting. No one wears a helmet, because no one is racing and because it is the bikes that rock the roads. People are able to move big loads or give a lift to their children or friends. A sliver of the sidewalk remains for pedestrians, who also need to navigate the immense lines of parked bikes. The cars fit in where they can, but do not have right of way. This trip, for the first time, I saw SUVs and Mercedes and other large cars on the streets of Amsterdam. They looked out of place.

Gay people seem to walk around hand-in-hand without the slightest sliver of concern.

Across from the Small World restaurant is a “coffeeshop” – i.e., a place to buy weed. It has the charming name of “Relax” and the woman who works there is very friendly. From her we got a recommendation for a nearby Thai restaurant that we thoroughly enjoyed. Twice. And whenever I poked my head in she’d ask, “Lost or hungry?” My answer was often: “Both.”

Vienna Travelogue -- May 2018

May 15, 2018

Because in the last election, the neo-Nazis became part of the ruling coalition, I decided that I wanted to see gorgeous Vienna one last time before it tilted any further towards fascism. I have been in Vienna two or three times before, but not since the 90s. I find a three-bedroom Airbnb with a rather parsimonious landlady (“Look it up on the internet” was her answer to any question – whether about the phone number of a taxi company or the location of recommended local restaurants). Two friends join me: Jaya, the sculptor from Italy and Sandy, the paper artist from the California redwoods.

They arrive close to dinner time so after a walk around the neighborhood we settle in for a delicious meal at the Turkish restaurant across the street. Two of us are dealing with varied levels of jetlag, so it’s off to bed with a Melatonin and a remarkable novel The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler about Vienna in the run-up to WWII which I chose from a list of books recommended by 20 different Ambassadors about their own countries.

The Tobacconist is relevant on another level. It describes the path to Austrian Nazism, from increasing anti-Semitism to accelerated anti-democratic and exclusionary laws, accompanied by vicious street violence by right-wing paramilitaries and by everyday “true” Austrian assholes. So similar to what we are experiencing in the States.

I’m very aware the Austria has a deep history of anti-Semitism, dating back to 1267 when the church imposed a dress code for Jews, who were forbidden to mix with Christians. We walk through the square in which Hitler (born in Austria) spoke to a quarter of a million cheering Viennese. We cross a bridge to the Jewish Ghetto on which, a local gay couple we meet there tells us, is inscribed the love story of a young Jewish man, sneaking out of the Ghetto across the bridge to meet his lover – until one day when he does not turn up.

Vienna is exquisite and grand – with monumental medieval and baroque buildings (this is the national library). Today the wide sidewalks are divided in half between pedestrians and bicycle riders and no one but us (accident/ignorance) steps into the bike lane. Public transportation is comprehensive – a combo of subways, buses, trams, and trains, so we buy a multi-day ticket. There is even a “queer” ticket on the transportation poster, which apparently includes entrance into various gay male venues. Even late at night, the streets and the underground stations are spotless. It is one of the most prosperous cities on earth and I did not see a single homeless person in the city or on its outskirts, although my friend saw someone asking for money.

Half of the housing is public (subsidized) housing, which is not means-tested. You need to be a resident of the city for five years and get your name on a list. You can pick the district in which you want to live and once you are given an apartment it is very cheap. One woman we met was paying € 400 a month. It felt pretty easy to spot private housing: those facades were highly decorated with sculptures, bay windows, and elaborate doors.

May 16, 2018

We start at the twin museums – a natural history museum and The Kunsthistorisches Art Museum (first photo), built between 1871 and 1891 on commission from Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. At the country’s biggest art museum, we are delighted by an exhibition called The Shape of Time that juxtaposes classic and new art, featuring so many modern women artists that Sandy says that she can only assume a woman curated the exhibit. We also visit the Stairway to Klimt where we have an opportunity to be lifted 12 feet off the ground to get a close look at the work Klimt did in decorating the walls above the museum’s main staircase.

Outside in the park between the twins, we are smilingly accosted by one of several young men dressed in the velvet embroidered formal wear of Mozart’s time. The lad is selling tickets to a show by the Vienna Royal Orchestra at Imperial Hall, which turns out to be a high school at the Beethoven Platz that was built by Friedrich Schmidt, master builder of St. Stephen's Cathedral. The show consists of opera, waltz, and dance. The fellow is so charming with his notebook of photos, his sweet chatter, and his promise of serious discounts, that we three experienced travelers fall for his patter and purchase three expensive tickets, which we immediately only somewhat regret. The show could better be called The Top Ten Arias, Jaya suggests, and we decide not to cry over spilt Euros. Fast forward to the show, which we attend on our last evening in Vienna, we are surprised by the terrific 10-piece orchestra, the two opera singers, and the two ballet dancers who all manage to perform with good humor and great professionalism on a stage the size of a hot-tub.

We accidentally wander into a regional food and beer festival where we have our first sublime coffee and scrumptious pastries for which this city is most famous. I once deeply offended an Italian friend when I told him that the best coffee I ever tasted was in Vienna. Don’t get me started about the apricot strudel I had.

May 17, 2018

At the Leopold Museum we are thrilled at the exhibitions, but painfully aware that only two women artists are exhibited. Besides collections of Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Leger, Chagall, Magritte, Klimt, and Kokoschka, there is a large display of the unique Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Schiele disturbed genteel Vienna with his intensely sexual drawings and paintings and eventually served a month in jail for exposing neighborhood children to his “pornographic” work. His jagged naked self-portraits and his sensuous portrayals of women kissing each other or masturbating are powerful. He died at 28 of Spanish flu the day of his wife’s burial.

Other pieces that stand out for me are Keith Haring’s picture of a man’s huge dick choking himself, and the aluminum Boxman by Erwin Wurm Kastenmann.

The museums are tough on my feet so I suggest we jump on a random tram and start seeing parts of Vienna beyond the exquisite decorated facades of the grand buildings. As we head out to the edges, the buildings shrink and we pass through some industrial parks near which are massive projects of social housing – tall, wide, plain buildings with flat and undecorated windows. I notice the changing demographics of the people on the tram – with workers heading home. We enter the suburbs, with adorable and very individual small houses, some with a modern industrial flavor, some with roofs like a traditional Dutch hat. Further on the houses and gardens grow more intricate until we pass walled-in mansions. The final tram stop is at the Otto Wagner Hospital, an art deco building commissioned by Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph in 1904. Unfortunately, it turns out to have a disgusting if not unusual Austrian history: the National Socialists performed cruel “health” experiments on children, many of whom died there. 

May 18, 2018

Our outstanding dining experience was a spontaneous meal at Das Dreieck, a woman owned-and-operated establishment just down the street from the famous Hundertwasser Village. The environment is welcoming and comfortable, the scrumptious food is created with love, and the waitress Germina is personable and professional. Under various owners, the restaurant has been serving traditional Wien Schnitzel since 1804, but surely the basket of helpful items (from tampons to floss sticks) in the women’s bathroom is a recent innovation.

We catch a bus to visit the Karl Marx Hof, a municipal tenement complex in Vienna. At over a kilometer long, it’s the biggest residential project in the world. Built in 1927, only 20% of the land was used for apartments; the rest was saved for gardens and amenities such as schools, nurseries, washhouses, a library, and a medical center – all of which still remain. From the outside, it appears that every flat has a balcony. Unfortunately, in 1938, according to this plaque on the building, 66 Jewish families were expelled from Karl Marx Hof and many of them were subsequently murdered. Their names are listed here.

For me Karl Marx Hof epitomizes the conflicts inherent in much of Vienna: a history of culture and beauty combined with a nasty fascist legacy that taints even the most progressive visions. Besides the Vienna-born Schubert and Strauss, Vienna (known as the City of Music) was a magnet for other great musicians including Mozart and Beethoven. Many major Jewish cultural figures were escapees from Austrian fascism, including Sigmund Freud, Fritz Lang, and Hedy Lamarr. With the recent Austrian elections, I feel the echoes of bad times and wonder how the United States is going to fare under its present, similarly vicious regime.  

At the airport I have a delicious goulash, a slice of traditional marble cake, and a smooth coffee (my regular fave is Viennese Melange, small espresso served in a large cup with half steamed milk topped off with milk froth.) Airport food never tasted so delectable.

My friend Linda Greenberg has died

This is the letter I wrote to my friend just hours before she died. Her husband Jim, who cared for her for many years, read it to her and said that she sent her love to me. I'll put in the link to her obituary at the end for those who want to learn more about her.

March 13, 2018

Dear Linda,

When Jim told me that you are gravely ill, I remembered back to when we first met. I was working for a huge British non-profit that promoted full-time volunteerism. I had just been promoted to developing international partnerships. As my parents lived in Pittsburgh, I decided that a partnership in Pittsburgh would be just the thing to pay for my flights for yearly visits.

Through the University of Pittsburgh, I found you in your Oakland office just a block or two from my parents’ apartment. There you were sending young people to Europe to be nannies. Organizationally, it was a perfect fit. Personally it was mutual love at first sight.

We began sharing hotel rooms at European conferences. It took us a bit of time to work it out – you with your stream-of-consciousness chatting and me with my need to sit in silence and write every day. But we fell into a pattern smoothed by love. One time in Paris you arrived later than me and when you came into the room, you had a perplexed look on your face. “I was unable to get my bag off the luggage carousel,” you told me. You were such a seasoned traveler that this made no sense. Later we realized that this was one of your first symptoms.

That night we went out to a brasserie that you knew and I had the best steak I had ever eaten. Little did I know that it was only one steak of many that I would savor as a result of our friendship. Every time I visited you in Pittsburgh, Jim would grill me the best steaks in the world. I certainly have always dined well at the Greenberg café!

Speaking of meat, when my parents heard we were meeting up at some European conference or other, they came by your house, despite having never met you, to ask you bring me a Kosher salami they had brought for me, which of course you did.

On one visit, we went shopping for eyeglasses for your daughter – then just a teenager – in a part of Pittsburgh that was being yuppified and reinvented. You re-introduced me to my very changed hometown.

I’ll never forget how you turned up at my dad’s funeral. It was such a special gesture on your part and looking up and seeing you there during my eulogy was incredibly comforting. But then generosity is one of your strongest cards. I have luxuriated in your basement accommodations more than once at your invitation.

You’ve met many of my closest friends – from Barry to Sandy – and always welcomed them into your home. I appreciate your ability to embrace new people, which is probably one of the reasons you were so successful at your work. Then too, there is your tenacity. Long before “She persisted” became a feminist cry, you fought for your rights as a person with a disability, becoming an expert in your field. We even formed a non-profit to propagate your knowledge and to introduce children to a person in a wheelchair ready to share her story.

I’ve learned tons from you, but most poignantly, I’ve been showered with love from you. I thank you and kiss you and miss you.

Always,

Sue

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/postgazette/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=188456857

 

It Takes a Village (to get me through a rural Xmas storm)

From the start my planning didn’t go smoothly. I fell off the list of my dear friends Richard and Todd’s annual Christmas Eve party in the rural Vermont community that has been the home of my heart since 1968, but got myself reinstated. They even invited me to stay at their place after the party, which I have done several times in the past. Then I received the offer of a cottage in the neighborhood where I could stay for 4 or 5 days to write and so I cancelled my overnight at R&T’s. Next I get a call that there are problems with the cottage so I ask R&T if there is still room at the inn, and luckily there is. So a simple overnight it will be.

The day before I leave for the party, Nan and Jeremy invite me to join them for Christmas dinner and to stay at their place that night, extending my trip by 24 hours. I’m thrilled to be included and for the chance to spend time with them together. Each is a friend of mine, but since they got together I haven’t hung out with them. Yes, yes, I will.

In my defense before we go further, I will remind you that I have many skills. I write, I dance, I cook tuna stroganoff (well, I used to), I love my friends intensely. I have lived in five different major urban cities in three countries, and visited many more. You can drop me in Riga, Latvia or Nairobi, Kenya or Istanbul, Turkey, and I find my way around. I have located the Dollar Store (or currency equivalent) in probably a dozen or so countries. But put me in the countryside and I am simply no good to anyone until I’m sitting in a living room. I don’t have confidence. I don’t have the goods. I’d be hard-pressed to keep a fire going; to relax when a kerosene lamp was the only illumination; to chase out a skunk that has come into an enclosed porch; to grow food; to tramp through brambles; or to identify an edible mushroom. But slip me into a charity shop or a bookstore and I’m good to go.

On the day of Christmas Eve, on the way up the Hill where all my friends live about 2 ½ hours from my Boston apartment, I pass by N&J’s place and they are outside. Nan tells me a big snowstorm is coming. I don’t even have a scraper for my car. After all, at home I park in a basement garage in the building where I rent. I never deal in snow except to get out of my car and into wherever I’m going. Nan lends me her scraper and tells me that while the road has been sanded from the last storms, the driveways are all icy.

My first stop, always, is to see Verandah. I’m glad to overlap with a visit from her daughter Emily, who knows me as Uncle Katz, as do several of the community’s younger generation. V has a long icy driveway, so I park at the street and gingerly make my way inside. I am wearing the hiking shoes I bought for my visits to Vermont, but realize that while they’re good for the spring, they won’t work in the winter. V lends me a pair of magic metal grippers that go over the soles and for the rest of the time, I am safe walking.

At the marvelous party, full of scores of old friends and strangers, and tables laden with culinary riches, I accidentally get a bit too wrecked about halfway through the evening. Valerie informs me that if I mean to move to N&J’s, I ought to do it this night because my car will be buried by the storm. I’m too discombobulated to deal with the ramifications, but before we all go to bed, I get permission from R&T to stay the next night with them. This turns out to be a godsend.

In the morning, the Hill where all my peeps live in different homes is covered with deep snow and there is a power outage. This is not unusual during Vermont storms, but this time it will be out for more than 12 hours. R&T’s incredible generator kicks in and runs their house until the juice returns. Other friends make do with wood stoves and kerosene lamps. Of all the houses where I stay (and I have several generous friends on the Hill), this is the place to be on such a day for a city girl with no boots and cotton slacks. I am warm, fed, and showered. My computer and phone charger work, I can make tea, and my friends pamper me.

The road gets plowed and sanded on Christmas day, but each homeowner has to hire someone to plow their own driveways. My hero Todd goes out to free my car once their driveway is cleared and I watch through the window as he guns it and my wheels spin and the car goes nowhere – over and over and over. After a long time, he hikes back down the driveway, lashed by freezing blowing snow, to fetch a bag of sand and a shovel, and returns to my car. Still the wheels are spinning. There is a break for a minute or two, and suddenly the car shoots backwards and is free. Turns out that no one in the countryside uses a hand-brake and I neglected to tell him mine was on. I learn later from Nan that hand-brakes are forbidden in Vermont because they rust out from the salt and cause problems. How little I know about surviving out here.

I’ve received conflicting advice about going out to the restaurant which is on the other side of a formidable mountain. Some say that I’ll be too anxious on the ride, which may well be fraught in the stormy conditions. Others are themselves setting out down the Hill for Christmas dinners in other places and see no problem. All day I observe that when the wind blows, it’s like being in a snow globe: there is an immediate white-out and when it settles, the landscape has drifted and changed. I will be peeing in my pants with terror when that happens on the mountain road, even though N&J have a big truck with four-wheel-drive, studded tires, and lots of experience navigating storms. In the end, I convince Nan that I will be a bit of a bummer, being all white-knuckled in the truck, and we agree to make plans for another time. I stay home at R&T’s writing and reading. The next day when I run into Jeremy on my way down the Hill, he says that the winds were, in fact, fierce and the drifts many. I understand that I made the right decision for everyone concerned.

On Boxing Day I get up and, thanks to the shoe grippers from Verandah, I am able to easily take my goods up the driveway to my car in two trips. This includes a big bag of leftovers that Richard packed for me – from meatballs to cookies. I worry about my car slipping and sliding, but the road down the Hill is nicely sanded. When a huge fat sanding truck comes up as I’m descending, I back up to a driveway and it gets by somehow, and I continue safely home, knowing that it takes a village to get me through a rural storm and that I’m the luckiest girl ever to have just such a village in my life.

Confronting a Bit of Smoke, Fire, and Rain in the Berkshires

SATURDAY Oct 7, 2017

We’re staying at an Airbnb “suite” – not a full apartment. This suite has a private bathroom down the hall and a small alcove (formerly a closet, maybe) off the bedroom where there’s a half fridge and a microwave and an electric kettle that sits on a small desk. Soon after we arrive, as I unpack some food from my freezer bag into the fridge, I complain to my bestie B that there is an acrid smoke smell. I set up my computer on that desk and then go into the bedroom to unpack my clothes.

The house was built in 1810 with an addition that was built much later – and the seam between the two is a rather awkward connection of uneven stairs and sudden low ceilings. We’re in the old part of the house. It’s tasteful, but there is the usual tangle of extension cords that ageing houses with one outlet per room sport.

Eventually I want a cup of tea and put some water in the kettle in the alcove. When I click on the kettle there is a startling huge burst of stinky dark smoke that envelopes the alcove and nearly overwhelms me. I yell for B who drops to his knees and starts pulling out all the plugs that are in the jumble of extension cords and multipliers under the desk. As he is down there, he sees that the extension cord with the smoking plastic power strip has ignited the carpet and the flames are trying to crawl up the wall.

I grab the kettle and dump water directly onto the flame and extinguish it. Later B says that it’s a good thing that my aim is so clean because if I had doused the power strip we would have had even more trouble. The host is not around and I leave him several messages. Soon he calls back and is freaked out, knowing that we’ve saved his massive 1810 home. He was very lucky that we were around. We were unlucky that no smoke alarm warned us.

We go off to see the Shakespeare & Company’s season-closing play, God of Carnage, and it too is a disappointment. It is a rather dated play about two sets of parents who meet and argue over the fact that their young sons have been in a brawl. The gender roles are old-fashioned; fueled by alcohol, the disagreements too often get hysterical; but worst of all, at one point, out of the blue, with no context or reason, one mother screams at the other: Your son is a faggot! No, that’s not the worst. What bothers me most is that the audience laughs at this jarring slur. A lot.

We are starving after the play, having been unable to eat as planned when the fire intervened, so we stop at an open pizza joint and order. They’re closing so we can’t dine inside, but we find a picnic table in the rear and eat under the stunning autumn moon.

The Airbnb host is waiting up for us, having rushed home. He has removed the faulty power strip, but understands that we can’t sleep in that hideous smell. He offers us his own bedroom or a guest room, and we accept the latter. Unfortunately, it is tiny and airless, with no TV, no cotton sheets (I do hate those slippery microfibre sheets), no chairs and tables like the original room, and a couple of dangerous steps to access the bathroom. Our food is still in the fridge in the reeking alcove way down the hall. The host is generous about our using the rest of the house freely, but the rest of the house is down a rickety set of stairs and our stuff is increasingly scattered everywhere.

SUNDAY

The night is difficult as the tiny room has an exaggerated level of humidity and for some reason there are flies buzzing around. In the morning we must go up and down in order to eat at the host’s table. He has insisted that we can use any part of this not inconsiderable home, but we would’ve preferred to be self-contained, as we contracted for.

We take off for a drive to Bash Bish Falls which is set in an ice age gorge in the Taconic Mountains, the highest single-drop waterfall in Massachusetts. It sits on the border between New York and Massachusetts, with a hiking path from each state. We’ve been warned to take the New York path and avoid the treacherous, slippery one on the Massachusetts side. The day is incredibly warm and humid and the walk is about a mile on a muddy path – it had rained all morning – full of rocks and other obstacles. I’m not a walker, but this is just why one goes leafing: to be immersed in foliage. Once we arrive at the waterfall, we view the Falls from a platform before deciding to descend the irregular stone steps that bring one much closer to the gorgeous Falls. I sit my sweaty ass down on a big rock that has been generously placed there for me by a glacier and relax.We have dinner reservations at Chez Nous Bistro on Main St. in Lee. I like this restaurant because they offer half portions of their entrées, which not only makes them affordable, but suits tourists who really don’t want to deal with leftovers. I have the yummy lamb ribs. B has the sirloin, anointed with a flavorsome sauce.

MONDAY
It is going to pour all day, so we decide to pig out on breakfast and then beat the crowd on the way back to Boston after the long weekend. The Starving Artist Gallery and Café in Lee specializes in crepes, but I have an egg and bacon sandwich on a croissant. There is some wonderful art on display including a triple piece about the women’s march and the pussy hats. The elder using a walker on the left and the ecstatic little girl on the right are separated by kittens knitting the hats in the middle. I push my way into the image like this. [photo]

We stop on the way back to Boston at Tafts Farms in Great Barrington – we had already shopped there before going to our lodgings – in the hopes of finding their scrumptious biscuits, but they only bake them during high summer. Their scones are nothing to snort at, so I pick up a couple of those and somehow manage to resist their incomparable frozen mac & cheese. A mile down the road, my quick glance around the local Goodwill is a total disappointment – where are the discards of the fancy people?

In the end, our annual leafing trip has brought us lots of lovely yellows, but virtually no reds or deep oranges. The Berkshires, though, are exquisite all year round and we are satisfied with the foliage. We can’t help but notice a rash of homes on the market. I am struck by the waves of For Sale signs and wonder what the hell is going on.

Back in Boston we are in touch with the Airbnb host who is going to return our money. The missing smoke alarm turned up in a drawer in the guest room where we stayed and he explains that the previous guest had apparently taken it down to stop it from chirping. I turn on the TV back in town and am horrified by the news of the fires in California. We escaped unharmed from this individual spark, and I can only think what a nasty autumn so many around the world are having – the floods, fires, and machine guns. I’m so grateful to have had this time in beauty, but feel for the millions without such privilege.