On a recent trip to Paris to visit a dear friend, I learned an insider’s tip: the Louvre is open Wednesday and Friday nights until 10 pm. Also, it’s a local tradition to use museums as classrooms, so art students are welcome to sit among the treasures studying, drawing, painting, gaping. My friend and I are both art students so we leapt at the chance. While others were feasting on foie gras, we’d be feasting on world-class art.
photo by Robert S. Donovan via flickr The first Wednesday night we packed our drawing pads, pastels and pencils and headed across the Seine to the Louvre, eager for this special treat. “Let’s start with classical Greek and Roman statues,” my friend suggested. “I’m a beginner, we need easier forms for me,” I lobbied. We climbed the stairs past the Winged Victory of Samothrace statue and passed through glorious halls filled with Italian paintings. We saw the crowds in front of La Joconde – the Mona Lisa – and Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks (famous to Da Vinci Code readers), but we weren’t seduced. It felt liberating to give up trying to take in as much as possible to concentrate on a few pieces.
In a remote corner of the museum, we saw the perfect models – 200-400 year old wooden sculptures from Oceania. Most of the totem figures I drew were from Vanuatu and were basic shapes fun to study. They were male figures, between five and seven feet tall; some were painted, some were streamlined to the essence like Brancusi sculptures, and some were very detailed with carvings. I worked longest with a sculpture of a seated man and woman, arms and legs entwined, which once guarded the entrance of a ceremonial house in the Solomon Islands. Their figures, pedestal and head covers were all carved out of one tree. My friend drew a very detailed study of an unusual and complex hermaphrodite figure, with a crested headdress, that looked warlike and powerful.
One morning last November, I was searching the internet in the school library when I came across a post on our school’s website. “A New Look at Study Abroad: 40 States in 40 Days – Taking Applications,” it read. The course was offering six hours of credit—three hours for writing and three hours for sociology. Immediately, my interest was piqued.
Belmont University: A New Look At Study Abroad
I’m not an inexperienced traveler by any means. Between the ages of 6 and 16, my family traveled to 16 countries in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. I’m pretty sure I had been to more countries than I had states.
This left a gap in my heart—I had always yearned to learn more about and see more of this country I call home. No matter where I went in the world, I always loved home the best. So, call me a homebody. Or maybe just call me an American.
After an extensive application process, I found out in December that I had been accepted. My parents were in full support and the planning began. But I don’t think reality hit me until I was standing on the tour bus and it began to move. This was really happening.
by Jules Older
There’s something to be said for stating boldly, baldly and in print the bases upon which a reviewer writes a review. After all, reviewing is personal, even when disguised as objective. Resorts lose their AAA stars and Mobil diamonds for things I find totally insignificant, like still using brass, not plastic keys; or even things I find laudable, like the absence of a noisy ice machine on every floor.
Jules' RulesWell, AAA and Mobil have their tastes, I have mine.
Here are mine.
A restaurant or inn loses a full point if:
• Arugula appears on the menu. Knock off another point if the menu boasts “wilted arugula.” Or wilted almost-anything-else.
• Raspberries are served in any course except dessert or palate-clearing sorbet. Raspberry vinaigrette counts the same as whole fruit.
• Fish (almost always trout) is served coated in pistachio. These first three points are not meant to discourage creative chefs; they’re intended to penalize trendy chefs who follow any food fashion, no matter how ephemeral or awful-tasting.
• Vegetables are treated as a throwaway item. Overcooked beans, combined carrots and peas, soggy zucchini—each counts as a point against.
• A rural New England restaurant offering only zucchini in the month of August loses an additional point.
• Patrons are expected to use a single fork for salad, main course and dessert.
• Everyone in the dining room is whispering. My wife the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant calls this “a WASP restaurant.” No, a meal should not sound like a rock concert, but it needn’t sound like a funeral either.
by Jessica Lynn
The other day, as I was gearing up for yet another flight, someone at my office asked me why I fly, when flying is such a hassle. GOOD question. EASY answer...
I fly to travel the world. I fly to see Buckingham Palace from the top of a double-decker bus in London, ride a bike in Amsterdam, take the slanted elevator ride up the Eiffel Tower, roam the imperial forum in of Rome, and enjoy a river cruise along the Great Mississippi River.
I fly to taste the world. I fly so I can devour an all-American hotdog in New York, discover a traditional English breakfast in Great Britain, eat authentic menudo in Mexico, taste the decadent crepes and cheese in France, and sip sangria in Spain.
I fly to meet people. I fly for the joy of visiting with old friends who have moved away, to strike up a conversation with the person sitting in the seat next to me, and the prospect of meeting someone new and hearing their story.
I woke up, itching intensely. My thigh had been bitten by an execrable critter with the temerity to invade my bedding and create a huge and hideous scarlet welt that thumbed its nose at all the anti-itch creams and ointments in my medicine cabinet.
Even in our black abayas and scarves it’s obvious that we’re foreigners. Saudi women rarely venture on to the streets. This is a man’s world. I know the women are somewhere and I’m determined to make contact. 
photo by Dave G. HouserWe travel in a full- size tour bus; an escort of police cars, with flashing lights, and secret security men, with big guns, drive ahead of and behind us. No one can miss us.
This works to my advantage. Not being allowed to drive, women stare out of their car windows. We make eye contact.
As my face isn’t covered, it’s easy for them to see my smile. All I can see are their eyes smiling back at me. Some women even return my subtle wave. One lifts up the corner of her veil to get a better look.
Thank goodness for malls and washrooms. It’s there that I get my chance. Curious about me, the women initiate conversations as they touch up their makeup. Why I am here, school, their great shoes, my beaded abaya, Canada. We laugh. I have a brief encounter with woman after woman. As a new grandmother, I admire their babies and show pictures of Claire. We smile and a bond forms in spite of the language barrier.
by Janet Eigner
Mother’s left the building again to search
for her husband, a year ago passed on,
says, "Do you know where Len’s gone?"
"Our charter...we can’t
guard her safely on this side,"
worries the director,
"Call in our movers."
We creep along the palm-shaded sidewalk
the pristine lawns, behind the scrawny,
muscled couple toting
the plaid sofa-bed, her queen mattress
sturdy chair with arms to push herself upright
cherry china cabinet to hold the proud evidence
they’d shed the immigrants’ threadbare cloth:
Lalique crystal sculpture, a sixty year collection:
Sister takes the small dove.
I warm the smaller owl in my palm
across the parking lot that divides each
past day lived in her vivid suite,
front door open to clan and friends,
HAWAII REVISITED
by Jules Older
On our first trip to Hawaii, our twin daughters were two-and-a-half.
Max in Hawaii. Photos by Effin OlderOn this trip, our grandson Max was two-and-a-half. Max’s mother, Willow, and her sister, Amber, were now 35. And his young sibling, Babybrotherben, just turned eight months.
On the first trip, we four — Effin and I and our twin daughters — stayed in a cottage at Puunalu on the (then) largely undiscovered north side of Oahu. This time we eight (add Willow’s husband Leroy and our dear friend Barbara) stayed in a slightly bigger cottage on the south side of Kauai.
Travel with Kids
In some ways travel with kids is harder today. If you intend to drive, you have to lug along awkward, heavy car seats. You have to make your way with kids and car seats and fold-down strollers and disposable diapers through airport security. On the plane, there's much less legroom and even less food.
On the other hand, these days you can rent a van, and you can rent or bring along a portable DVD to keep the kids amused.
Max did pretty well through the taxi to SFO, the airport wait, the five-hour flight to Honolulu, the Wiki Wiki bus to the other part of the airport, the two-hour wait for the next flight, the next flight, and half the mini-van ride to our cottage. We made a big deal of driving in a “brand new blue mini-van.”
Hawaiian Meltdown
At precisely the halfway point between airport and cottage, Max went into meltdown. His lower lip quivered ominously. “I w-w-want to go h-h-home.”
by Bethany Ball
A few months after I arrived in New York City, I was homeless.
My friend Joe, who I’d rented a room from, hadn’t paid the rent on his sublet and the locks had been changed. Joe, en route to Chicago, wasn’t too concerned. I was frantic.
A friend tipped me off to a building—a nearly burned out structure on the desolate block of 109th and Amsterdam—that a woman from Calcutta had just inherited from her uncle. When I first met Elizabeth, she was on her hands and knees in a simple colorful sari, hand-sanding the floor of one of the apartments. She wore a mask over her face, which she did not remove. When she stood up she came to my waist. Elizabeth was kind enough to let me live in one of the unrenovated apartments, until a renovated one opened up. The problem was the renovations never got done. The apartment had three large bedrooms, kitchen and a large living room with a fireplace. But it was all rubble, dust and debris and, it appeared after months of ‘repairs’, it would never be anything else. Elizabeth hired drug addicts and crooks. They tore down windows without reason, cut pipes, smashed tiles and pulled down the drywall. They put wood studs in the middle of living spaces for rooms they never finished. Keys to my apartment, furnished by Elizabeth, allowed them to enter my apartment whenever they pleased and I would often return home to find things left behind; a sweat jacket, a pair of jeans, that day’s New York Post.
I lived in the one room that locked. I covered holes in the wall with a photograph of my great grandfather with his violin. A water-damaged print of the Virgin and Child covered up another. The rest of the apartment was filled with bric-a-brac, bug-eyed Keane figurines, clothing and furniture, piled floor to ceiling in the other two rooms.
words + photos by Melanie Fidler
My mom and I just got back from a mother-daughter bonding trip to Italy to visit my little sister, Jaclyn, who is studying abroad in Florence. We traveled hand-in-hand to Venice, Florence, and Rome in 10 days. It was the first trip we took, just the two of us. It was my first trip to Italy and I was happy to have my Italian mother with me.
We started off in Venice, a magical wonderland of masquerade masks, Murano glass, gelato, and romance. If only I was on my honeymoon! It’s an amazing place that almost seemed fake, like a movie set. Instead of streets and highways filled with car traffic there were quaint canals and waterways with gondolas and boats. We really did nothing all day but wander the streets, get lost, find our way, and eat, drink and be merry with the locals. I’m lucky to have had my mom there to experience such fine treats with me.
We celebrated my mother’s birthday on Feb. 8th, but never really knew how old she was. She said that she was born in 1900 because it not only made her two years younger than my father, but was easy for her to calculate her age. In 1968, when my mother died, we did some of our own calculations and came up with something between 72 and 74, but of course didn’t know for sure. 
Coming of age in New York’s Harlem, she expressed her independence by dropping out of school before she even entered high school and then taking a factory job, something not unusual at the time. In her early twenties, she opened her own retail shop with one of her multitude of sisters.
Education was never one of her goals but she was beautiful and was known for the way she dressed, spending more on her clothes then than I do now. Of course, I don’t have the interest in them that she had.
Marrying my father and settling down with children must have been difficult for her but she thought that was what she was supposed to do, especially since she had passed the 30-year mark and needed to make a move if she was going to do what was expected of her by her family and culture.
Her mood swings, her constant complaints about her life, her put- downs of my father, my brother and less, of me, were accepted. She was discontented about almost everything. Never knowing what was going to set her off, I retreated and tread lightly. Not ever being able to drive (she said she was too nervous), she was imprisoned in her own life.
Now, that I’m approaching that time of her last years, I’m a great deal more understanding of this woman, my mother, who never lived the life she thought she should have. Instead, although vastly different in temperament, I’ve done the living she never did……
This July I turn 59 years old. If I live as long as my mother, then I am about to embark on my last year of life.
Mom, you were the queen of selflessness.You gave up everything for everyone else. My deepest frustration was not being able to get you to see that your mother and sister were sucking the life out of you. Every day, on the phone, you’d try your hardest to get them to listen, think things through, and calm down. It NEVER worked. The medical profession says that stress can cause disease. It's clear in your case that it did.
There's A Whole World Out There
I was lolling in the bathtub reading a comic book (the Amazing Flash) when my mom came in waving a copy of the afternoon newspaper. “Russians Launch Satellite,’ blared the huge headline. I tore myself away from superhero suspense to listen. You should listen to your mom, right? It was October 4, 1957. I was 6 years old.
“You may not understand this, but your world just changed,” my mother told me. “Pretty soon people will travel into space. You could. There’s a whole universe out there.
“All you have to do,” she added, “is make sure those grades keep up.”
She used to work that into every conversation; in fact, until recently, she would occasionally resurrect her offer that, should I wish to go to law school, she’d pay for it. Never mind I have no interest in law school and I’ve enjoyed a 30-year career writing everything from hotheaded newspaper columns to, well, hotheaded internet columns.
Most of my childhood is vague to my recollection, but I remember that evening the whole world marveled at the news Sputnik I had circled the globe. A 6-year-old boy’s grasp of the world is pretty much rooted in baseball, bikes and Cheerios, so I can’t say I comprehended the fact the universe had just shifted. Did this make the amazing technology behind the Flash more likely? What about Superman? “Just remember this moment,” my mom admonished.
Her death is still as fresh as my birth. It was nine months ago, (her death, not my birth) and I miss her very much, especially on days like today. I remember her love and her singing Happy Birthday to me. I also recall the story she told of my difficult birth.
She was, of course, rushed to the hospital where she waited, and waited, and waited — in labor for 72 hours. I am not sure if mom was reluctant to bring me into the world, or if I was being extra cautious about sliding my pudgy baby body those last few inches to a new existence. Given my subsequent history, I’m pretty sure it was the latter.
Just as my mother had endured my birth, this willful woman endured her life, and mine, though not without letting me know that she knew what was best. To her dismay I did not become a Jewish heart surgeon (or even a Presbyterian foot doctor). Mom also put up with me marrying two non-Jewish women (not at the same time, God forbid), and gradually grew to love them as she loved me.
The more time goes by, the more I become like my mother, for instance: waiting for the burglar. My neighbors have been ripped off five times in two years and I 
find myself trying to out-think the would-be burglar when I travel.
Mom showed me the way in this behavior by turning on her radio when she left the house, doing a pre-departure round to check door and window locks and hiding valuables when she took trips. One time, after she returned from a trip, Mom couldn’t find her silverware and was convinced the burglar had shown up and stolen it. Dad refused to submit an insurance claim, as he was positive Mom had hidden it and forgotten the hiding place. Sure enough, years later, the “stolen” silverware was discovered in a picnic basket in the attic.
The highlight of this long wait for the burglar happened when Mom, Dad and my sister were home one night, watching TV in the living room. My sister went out to the kitchen to get a soda and found the kitchen door not only open, but propped open. The burglar had finally shown up and they hadn’t heard a thing. Nothing was actually missing…my sister had aborted the heist by showing up at an opportune moment. In a way, we were all relieved that the years of expectation weren’t in vain, but we laughed pretty hard at the irony that we were home when it happened. Meanwhile, I still put my lights on timers and hide my valuables when I leave on trips. I seem to be programmed to wait for my own burglar!
My mother was always an intrepid traveler, which seemed odd because in other aspects of her life she is so passive. For her, I think getting in the car and heading out of our tiny village in Upstate New York was a way to escape poverty. With the windows open and the radio blaring and a cigarette propped between two fingers she'd begin the journey, which was often home to Washington, D.C.
As part of a course in spirituality, we were asked to create a card for Mother’s Day in ten minutes or less. The words tumbled out unbidden. Uncensored. I showed it to the course leader and told her, “It’s not exactly a Hallmark card so if you feel it’s not appropriate for me to read it to the group, that’s okay.”
by Andrea Gross
Ten years, ago I was watching as Charlie Rose interviewed a guest who was publicizing a book about his mom and dad. Rose looked envious. "You know," he said, "I've interviewed thousands of people, but I've never interviewed my parents. I've heard many of their stories, but I've never written them down." I looked closer. Did he have tears in his eyes?
Light bulb: I was working for a major consumer magazine. Like Rose, I spent my time interviewing people who weren't my parents. Mistaken priorities? Definitely.
Two weeks later I was at my parents' apartment, fully outfitted with tape recorder, microphones and all sorts of journalistic paraphernalia. My mom talked non-stop for four days.
Her eyes sparkled as she told stories of flying in a single engine airplane with the handsomest boy in town. She spoke of times that made her laugh, experiences that made her cry, and events that changed her from a young girl concerned only with appearances to a wise woman dedicated to helping others.
by Judith Fein
I was sleeping on a cot in her living room. Early morning sun was streaming in through an opening in the white linen drapes and she was standing over me.
“I was thinking about it all night,” she said. “I can’t believe you don’t know who Usher is!”
“Usher?” I asked, dragging myself from dreamland.
“Yes, Usher. Have you been living under a rock? He sings R &B, has won 5 Grammies and is a major philanthropist.”
I looked up at my 91-year-old mother.
“Okay, ma, you win. It’s important. I’ll find out all about Usher,” I conceded.
She doesn’t just know about Usher. At 85, as a result of her rabid interest in Eminen, she gathered her dear ones at a restaurant in La Jolla, threw some signs and began: “My name is Mickey and I’m here to say/I’m coming out as a rapper today.” The mouths of her guests and the entire staff of the restaurant fell open.