San Juan Journey - West Coast Swing Part IV

We went past a lavender farm and on to Lime Kiln Park, the prime orca-watching area. There are a couple of pods that pass by regularly – they had last been sighted the night before, but were nowhere to be seen by us. Oh well – reason to return (that and seeing other islands – we stayed only on the main one, San Juan). I took a little walk to the lighthouse while Linda rested, basking in her ferry-ride Scrabble victory (I made the basking part up, but not her victory!). On the north end of the island, we stopped at a sculpture garden (more an outdoor sculpture showroom, since everything was for sale, but there was a lot to see! We didn’t see it all) and then went on to Roche Harbor, the other town on the island, the site of the lime works that were the island’s main industry and a big resort where presidents had stayed. Then it was back to Friday Harbor, where we walked around shops and I had more salmon (at the fish ladder, there was a voiceover that was supposedly the voice of the salmon, so a running joke was the talking salmon on my plate. Another running joke – Beryl and I were sitting on a bench in Pioneer Square and I mentioned something about how nice the people are. A stranger behind us said, “it’s the weather,” and that became the explanation for everything!).




The next day, we rented a “Scootcoupe” - more practical than a bicycle, more fun than two scooters – it was too noisy to do a lot of talking, but nice to be together – and explored more. For some reason the around-the-island bus doesn’t go to the National Historic Park, and I wanted to! In the 1850s there was a border dispute with Britain as to who owned the San Juan Islands, the U.S. or Canada, and for a while there were two camps on the island, one English and one American. 54-40 or fight had happened a few years earlier (result - the border with Canada is at the 49th parallel out west). An American shot a pig, and it almost escalated into a military battle. Two of the American officers there at the time were George Pickett, of the charge at Gettysburg, and Robert, of the Rules of Order. Cool heads prevailed, and the only casualty of the “Pig War” was the pig. Eventually, in 1872, Kaiser Wilhelm arbitrated the matter, with the San Juans going to the United States.



We strolled the fort remains, drove to a nature trail that took us from prairie to forest, proceeded on to a black-sand beach. More trails for another time! On to the English Camp, where there’s an English garden and where the Union Jack still flies (though as part of the National Park, not under British rule). Back at our B&B, there were cookies and strawberry lemonade – we hadn’t had any when we checked in, so we had some on our way out! The ferry ride back took a different route, and this time it was sunny instead of misty – which meant the mountain was out! That’s what people in Seattle say on the clear days when you can see Mt. Rainier. It’s quite a sight! Could also see the Olympic mountains in the other direction – if I’d had more time I’d have gone to the rainforest in Olympic National Park – which I guess makes it top of the list for next time!



Back in Seattle, I walked up the Harbor Steps to take a picture of the iconic Hammering Man outside the Seattle Art Museum, while Linda stayed below and savored her return-ferry Scrabble victory (again, I project). We’d also brainstormed some Peace Corps recruiting ideas – that was fun for me and I think helpful for her; she was transitioning from her two-day vacation back into work mode. We had a light dinner and a glass of wine while watching the Elliott Bay sunset, with the ferries coming and going – as she put it, a very Seattle moment.

Ferry Frolic - West Coast Swing Part III

On Monday morning I took the express bus downtown (the transportation modes are adding up!) and met Beryl (who I hadn’t expected to see again, but was delighted to) at the ferry terminal. I guess my modus operandi now is that when I revisit a place I do the things that were next on my list the previous time, which I would have done had I had more time. We took the ferry out to Bainbridge Island – a bedroom community, but with an island feel. I’d heard it was just a nice place to spend a day and that’s what it is! At the game I was talking about job possibilities, and all of a sudden it became critical to send an email right away – Beryl brought her computer and we went to a coffee shop and I sent off the email, and then we sat and enjoyed our coffee. We took a little nature walk, strolled the main shopping street, and took the ferry back. On my own, I went to the Seattle Aquarium – after being on and by the water, I thought it would be interesting to see what’s IN the water! Nice collection of the creatures of Puget Sound. I then went to the Peace Corps office to meet up with Linda, and we went home and had an early night, since we had an early morning to come!





As I hadn’t expected to see Beryl again, I hadn’t expected to see that much of Linda – I thought I’d get out of her hair. But when I told her my plan, she wanted to take some vacation days, and I welcomed the company. Also high on my longtime wish list were the San Juan Islands. Back at the last round-number birthday, I splurged on a Backroads trip to Hawaii, and for years I’d get the Backroads catalog and dream of going on another trip. The one that sounded most appealing was the San Juan Islands, biking and kayaking. Okay, so we didn’t bike or kayak, but the point wasn’t to do either of those, it was to go to the islands!

We took the ferry early on Tuesday morning – that ferry terminal is near Olympic Sculpture Park, so after we checked in I zipped over there to see some sculpture. The ferry ride took us through Puget Sound – which is 100 miles long, about the same as Long Island Sound. It took us past Whidbey Island, which claims to be the longest island in the country, because a Supreme Court case in 1905 or so declared Long Island a peninsula for tax purposes. I had to go to the back of the ship and ask the tour narrator about that one - she said yeah, that’s what they say, but they know Long Island is an island.

One thing that always appealed to me is that the San Juan Islands are on their own tectonic plate, the Juan de Fuca plate. So romantic! What I didn’t know is that since they are in the rain shadow of Vancouver Island, they have their own climate, different from the evergreens and mist we passed by. Much sunnier and drier – in fact, the evergreens and water along the way reminded me of Maine, but the islands had a little Midwest look to them! We had a crab cake lunch overlooking the harbor and started to walk around the town of Friday Harbor. There was an around-the-island bus about to leave, so we hopped on it.

Stunning Safeco - West Coast Swing Part II

We took a quick drive around downtown – past the Gehry Experience Music Project and the Rem Koolhaas library. I had heard about Top Pot doughnuts so we had to stop there – they’re better than the average doughnut (Obama stopped there recently too).


Another obligatory stop was Elliott Bay books – mind you, I did not need any books, nor did I really have room for any, but independent bookstores do have a way of drawing one in, and I ended up with a couple. Long live the independent bookstore! We then went to the Asian Art Museum. Notable is the Noguchi structure outside – the inspiration for the song, “Black Hole Sun.” My tour book noted that people take pictures of the Space Needle through the hole, so I took one too! We then went on to the Conservatory – it looks just like the one in Lincoln Park, which is kind of nice – but it was closed. I saw what I could through the glass!


We went for an early dinner by the water – I had delicious wild salmon. And then we went to an engineering major’s dream stop, the Ballard Locks. Always fun to watch boats go through locks! The main attraction here was watching the salmon going up the fish ladder. Such big fish! Watching them struggle, I felt just a tad sorry about the eating the one that hadn’t gotten away. In many locations during this trip, I was tempted to buy the book “Four Fish,” which had just come out – I finally bought it in Mystic. Things you don’t always think about, but you think about it here because it’s all around you.





Just before I came, there was an article in the local Seattle paper about over-60-year-olds who had served in the Peace Corps. Two people were interviewed for the story – and I am the only person to have served with them both! Linda is one and Beryl is the other. Beryl was another PCRV in the Philippines – I had seen her only twice there, but since then had spent almost a week with her in New Orleans. They had come across one another at Peace Corps functions, and now they regularly work functions together, but I am not sure they had talked much until we all got together for breakfast on Sunday morning! Linda then left us to spend a quiet afternoon alone, and Beryl and I went to Safeco Field, getting there early enough to walk around.


It’s a beautiful stadium; they did a great job. Edgar Martinez Drive! Ichiro in the outfield! My kind of game – Mariners 3, Royals 2, in a tidy 2:31 – though I was having such a great time I would have gladly stayed longer! The Blue Angels flew by. The retractable roof opened (the sides of the stadium are open-air, since it never gets too cold – a nice feature). We walked back to Pioneer Square – the stadium is in a good location, too – and went to Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. There’s another branch of that park in Alaska, but much of Seattle’s original boom is connected with outfitting the gold rush, so it warranted an outpost. Beryl left, and I kept walking – along Elliott Bay, past Pike Place Market, to the downtown center, where I got on the monorail and went to the Space Needle. Not up it though – it was time to go back. Except – I spied a labyrinth, so I did some meditative walking there, and THEN I went back.



I took the light rail; Linda picked me up at the station and we went to Seward Park, a little peninsula sticking into Lake Washington that has some old growth forest, and we took a walk. And then we went to a hip, trendy neighborhood for hip, trendy pizza with her cousin, who I had met when she visited Linda in Morocco. What a delightful day!

Savoring Seattle - West Coast Swing Part I

My sister and her family use the Southampton home for the month of August, so I thought it would be a good idea to go away for part of it, to give both them and myself a break. At first I thought I might go to the Canadian Maritimes, but that’s for another year (I had let this go before I knew I was going to Maine – the Maine trip both whet my appetite for more and satisfied it for this year). Light bulb – objective changed from one end of the continent to the other - go to Seattle! It has one of the few ballparks I haven’t been to yet, and it has some friends I wanted to see! I used miles for the flight – may as well use some miles; I have a lot of them.


I had been to Seattle once before, in 1993 – I know that because when I was there, the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” had just come out, and we got a big kick out of seeing “Sleepless in Seattle” in Seattle. I saw not one but two games at the Kingdome – the crowd was small but they were having so much fun that I wanted to go again. Those were the heady days of Junior Griffey, Edgar Martinez, Alex Rodriguez (I would have loved to go to see the Kingdome get blown up – I never tire of that video). I thought Seattle was beautiful and I’ve wanted to go back – I felt a sense of mortality when I realized how long it had been. What if it takes another 17 years for me to get back there? That’s a long time. Of course, if it does take that long, it’ll be because I’ve been to other interesting places instead! I don’t think it will, though – Seattle used to seem far away and expensive to get to. Now that I have been farther (and taken those long bus rides in Morocco), it doesn’t seem so distant. Plus, it’s a gateway to Alaska, the only U.S. state I haven’t been to. It’s a feelgood place, and now I have friends there to visit. And there’s a lot more to do than I was able to do in five days – including seeing the houseboats in Lake Union that were depicted in “Sleepless in Seattle”!


I flew in on a Friday night and my friend Linda picked me up – it was as if I had just seen her – in reality the last time was over a year ago, in Morocco. She is now a Peace Corps recruiter out of Seattle (and it was through her influence that I was interviewed for a position there – but the job went to someone local). She had borrowed a car, and on Saturday we went on a mad dash of exploration, though we did start with a quiet coffee on her porch. Linda had lived in Thailand for a while, and she has a mix of things from Thailand, India, Indonesia and Morocco. It all works! Now I wish I had had room in my luggage for more from Southeast Asia… oh well, I’ll have to go back – or find Asian things here!


Seattle is a city of neighborhoods – when I visited before, I stayed in the tourist areas and didn’t get into neighborhoods at all. I think I made up for it this time! I don’t remember the names or the distinctions, but it was nice to see some different places. We had breakfast in a hip, trendy neighborhood (there are lots of those!) and then went to Pike Place Market. Of course I had done this before, but I think it’s a must! We looked at the crafts - with a new appreciation – and then went to a Tibetan pharmacy, glimpsing the famous fish toss enroute. It was the weekend of the big air show, and while we were there, the Blue Angels flew overhead – I always liked seeing them in Chicago!

The New Orleans Birthday Build - Part IV

On Friday we were joined by Martha, my high school friend, her partner Susan, and Elizabeth, another fellow Morocco RPCV, from the year behind me in Timhadite. Diane dropped out – her daughter wanted her to attend some classes – so we never had the whole team together, but I’m impressed that she left her family for the previous day! Friday was also the last day for the UW-Oshkosh group, and the last day of volunteer work on Vanette’s house; we had taken it as far as it could go. Next, professional contractors would come in to do electrical, carpeting, appliances and more. On Saturday we would help to finish a house down the block, and on this day we worked at both houses.


And we learned a new skill – quikrete mixing and placing! We were making concrete pads for the side staircases. Martha and Beryl laid down some wire for reinforcing. I was on a mixing crew, holding the wheelbarrow steady as various people took turns mixing. It’s very important to hold the wheelbarrow steady – and it took a lot of muscle! Wheeling it to the pad and dumping it were challenging too. I might have gotten a little dehydrated – the weather all week was cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon, and with all the work, you do have to make sure to keep drinking. The students left at lunchtime, and then we swept the floors and pounded any nails that were sticking up too far and the house was done!


I envisioned Friday night as a grand finale group dinner, the only time for all of us to be together. We didn’t have all of us, but that’s okay! Kristina and her fiancé joined us at the Market Café in the French Quarter. No bisque this time, but a great shrimp creole pasta – and some key lime pie! Then some of us went to Pat O’Brien’s – I had been there many moons ago with colleagues from Mrs. Smith’s Frozen Foods. A story I love to tell – we had hurricanes, of course, and as I said, they go down easy. You don’t realize how much liquor you are drinking along with the fruit punch! I did my part to keep up with the guys, but I also know to eat when you’re drinking, and maybe I had more body fat than the skinny guys I was with, or maybe I just hold my liquor better. They were getting a little rowdy, and then Allen got up a little too quickly, tipping over the table where we were sitting. Somehow, within seconds, we (must have paid up and) were out in the street with to-go cups – the Pat O’Brien’s folks are professionals at dealing with people who have overindulged. Literally, it took seconds and we were out of there. All these years later, it’s just as popular with tourists, but also has a following with locals. Kristina led us to the room with the two-piano bar – an intimate room, playing requests. What a fun evening!

Saturday was more mellow – Aaron, Suzanne and Doug had left and Susan slept in, so there were five of us. Builder Aaron had handed us off to an Americorps volunteer as our handler, and we were at the other house, paired up with five people from a church in Oregon. Beryl and Carol painted, and Martha, Elizabeth and I did…windowsills! This was a chance for redemption from my low point of the week. Well, it helps to be in on it from the beginning and have it properly explained. And it helps to be on a team with your friends – when we erred, we had fun about it instead of feeling chastised (for example, we put one windowsill in upside down – and didn’t notice it, though we were wondering what was wrong with our careful measurements. But we redid it!). There was also something satisfying in doing every single windowsill in the house. Later, I went to an elegant dinner in the Garden District with Martha and Susan – what a great city!


Camp Hope is near Chalmette Battlefield, the site of the Battle of New Orleans. Which was in which war? That’s right, the War of 1812. It took place on January 8, 1815 and was decisive in ending the war. On Sunday morning, I walked the battlefield and watched the Mississippi for a while. I didn’t get to the National Cemetery next door though – it sustained a lot of damage in Katrina and still hasn’t reopened (I think). Then I went down to the French Quarter, to the Jean Lafitte National Park headquarters. The park has several locations out in bayou country - maybe I’ll get to one when I go back for Thanksgiving – and the headquarters has interesting exhibits on the multicultural history of New Orleans and the natural history and beauty of the wetlands and delta. Both are unique! Yes, I’m going back – I want to do more volunteering and I want to see some of the city and the surrounding area – bayou or plantation or both. More stories to come! To close out this trip, though – met Elizabeth at Café du Monde for café au lait and beignets. Then I went to Kristina’s gallery, passing through a French Quarter food festival on the way (and just happened to see some crab and corn bisque). Kristina and I had lunch with Martha and Susan (I had some yummy crab cakes – kind of a New Orleans progressive lunch, with one course in each location) – they had not had a chance to meet any other PCVs when they visited Morocco, so now this week they did! Then we went out to the swamps of Luling, where Martha’s friend and colleague Dan and his wife Mai live, just over the huge Hale Boggs bridge – a bridge to nowhere named after a Louisiana favorite son. Mai made fantastic authentic Thai food – I guess in New Orleans you can find all of the ingredients; at this point I was full, but I had to at least try everything – it was great. Then it was off to the airport – after all the work to set it up, all the actual work of the week, some late nights, some great food, fun with friends old and new, and the energy of New Orleans, I was really glad to have done it.

The New Orleans Birthday Build - Part III

On Wednesday morning, I did some more coping. Our little group gelled well and everyone was joking around and having fun – but also working hard! It seemed time to give someone else a chance to cope (and to be outside), so I was reassigned to a team of UW-Oshkosh students doing windowsills. I adored Aaron, the staff person assigned to our house – he had a good leadership style, explained things well, kept an eye on everything, helped where needed. There were also some Americorps volunteers assigned to our house – that was it for skilled labor, and there were a lot of us to manage. When Aaron rejected some of the windowsill work we had done I was crushed. He was right though – they weren’t level. Time stopped for a while in the middle of the afternoon. But we rallied and redid them and they came out right and looked good and I learned to use other tools and by the end of the day felt proud again. There was a long shower line back at Camp Hope, but I wasn’t about to skip – I earned that shower! Glad there was enough hot water for everyone.



Carol, Aaron and I (Beryl stayed in) headed downtown to meet Kristina for free jazz at Lafayette Square – this is a regular Wednesday afternoon NOLA thing and this was the first one of the year. The featured performer was Trombone Shorty, who I’ve heard of since – maybe I’ll get some of his music! It was fun. We then went to the Warehouse District (a new area of town for me) for Cajun music at Mulate’s, a place recommended by our post-Katrina-tour driver (they had some great shrimp and corn bisque!). We then took the ferry across the Mississippi to Algiers point – I love boat rides so was happy to do it. Algiers is where my friend Meg lived when she lived here, and it looked both familiar and different. The view of the skyline at night is impressive, too. Once there we went out to a local bar and it got late and I was tired – I would have been happy to just take the ferry right back, but on the other hand, it was another experience, and nice to go along with the group, and nice to have Kristina with us.


On Thursday, we were joined by Diane, the sister of a Princeton classmate of mine; her daughter goes to Tulane and she was visiting anyway and decided to join the build for a couple of days. She’s a big baseball fan, and she and I have emailed over the years, but we had never actually met. If you’re counting, out of ten people on the build, four of them were people I had not met before! But I knew that we’d all get along and have fun, and we did. Today, we painted the interior of the house. Somehow 24 of us split up naturally among the various rooms of the house and weren’t on top of each other. The Birthday Build people were for the most part in the living room, though volunteer Aaron also spent a lot of time in the bathroom (painting it!) and Doug – who, as staff/handler Aaron quickly recognized, was the most experienced and competent person on the volunteer team – did a lot of troubleshooting all over the house. Some of us used brushes in the corners and around the windows – I spent most of my time with a roller, doing ceilings and walls. And getting a lot less paint on myself than I did in the Philippines! I think.

On the way home, we stopped at a drive-through daiquiri place that’s close to the highway on-ramp – as the driver, I did not partake, but we all marveled at the existence of such establishments (only in New Orleans?) so we had to go. We ate dinner at Camp Hope – Suzanne and Doug came too; it was pizza night. Suzanne, Doug and Carol then went into the city for some theatre, and Aaron, Beryl and I went into the French Quarter, found a bar that had the NCAA games, and played some cribbage – a low-key evening. It was nice to get back to Camp Hope before lights out – the headlamp I’d bought in Boulder came in handy, but it was even handier to be able to make a little noise and to see…. The Camp Hope staff people were very nice, but were wondering what to do next, with the numbers of volunteers coming to New Orleans falling off. There were plenty of people when we were there, because it was spring break, but for other times, what? I helped brainstorm some marketing ideas. I later read in the Times that it was taken over for BP cleanup crews, with air conditioning and carpeting put in – and heard that the staff, who had been dedicated and hardworking, have been replaced. I wonder what its fate is now.

The New Orleans Birthday Build - Part II

New Orleans has a weird combination of devotion and hopelessness, of energy and despair. It’s seductive in one way, and a great place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there in another. I had visited my friend Meg when she lived there in the mid-‘80s – one year just after Mardi Gras, and then the next year for Mardi Gras – I was glad to see it in both quiet and in parade mode – and even more glad to return this year to help build, help the economy, and see some other parts of the city. After the post-Katrina tour, Kristina and I had lunch in the French district (along with a hurricane – the drink, that is; those go down easy…). I drove to the airport to pick up Aaron, another build participant. He’s another Morocco RPCV, in the health program – I had shared a taxi with him from Marrakesh to Essouaira, he came up to Azrou once and it happened to be a Friday so he joined us for couscous with Youssef’s family, and I am not sure I ever saw him other than that! But he had lived in Louisiana for a little while and when he saw that the build coincided with his grad school spring break, he signed on (and we agreed to share the rental car).


Kristina took Aaron and me on a little tour of the Garden District. We took the streetcar (no, not Desire) along St. Charles, past gorgeous old homes – this area didn’t sustain much damage during Katrina either; it’s the high ground. We passed Tulane and got off around Audubon Park. We had a beautiful walk in this green space and then walked along Magazine Street, another main drag of the Garden District, residential with little commercial pockets. We stopped and I had some crab and corn bisque – I had that at least twice more during my stay, and if I thought I could find a recipe that would come close to duplicating it, I would learn how to make it. Yum!




Then it was on to Camp Hope, a former school in St. Bernard Parish that has been refurbished as a place to accommodate large groups of volunteers. The ground floor has a big cafeteria, and upstairs the former classrooms have had the walls removed so there are two long sets of rooms filled with bunk beds and lockers – one side for men, and one side for women. I thought it would be fun for the whole group to stay there, but most of the group found more plush accommodations. However, as long as someone was going to stay there, I as the group leader felt I would stick with the group – Beryl, Carol, Aaron and I stayed there. We found our beds and got settled and then I turned in – usually I’m up for a game of Scrabble, but I was tired, and I knew that we’d be up early the next day (and by early I mean before 6:00 a.m.).


For $25 a night at Camp Hope, you get a bed, breakfast and dinner if you want to eat there, and a make-your-own lunch. A good deal! We got ready, and the four Camp Hope-ites went to Harvey, on the other side of the Mississippi, for our orientation. This area didn’t get flooded either, but it isn’t all that desirable, so land is cheap and Habitat for Humanity has built a lot of homes in the area. Habitat is the largest homebuilder in New Orleans, which says something about the city’s recovery. It built 97 houses last year (up from eight to ten a year before Katrina) and has built approximately 240 homes in the past five years. This year it will build around 60 – 20 to 30 were in process while we were there. The week that we were there – a big spring break week (I had trouble getting the slots – it might have helped that I mentioned that I was working with Habitat for Humanity Philippines and really wanted to do Habitat as opposed to other volunteering, or they might have held slots open for college groups and opened them up just in time for me) – 300-400 people were there. I might have this wrong, but I think they said 300,000 have helped on builds since Katrina, and Habitat for Humanity USA has two million annual volunteers total. That was all said quickly, and there was a short safety talk, and then the large group was split among different houses in the neighborhood. Our group – now joined by Suzanne and Doug, friends of my friend Joy (who didn’t come, but she told them about it and they decided to come – you never know, as I said) – was to spend the week with a group from University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, building a house for Vanette, a young woman with two kids whose parents are currently in the Army in Afghanistan. She has a job, but without Habitat for Humanity she would never be able to afford her own house. She had already put in most of her “sweat equity” hours (in the Philippines they don’t tell you which unit you get until all the houses are built, so you don’t spend more time on yours than on the others; here, you know it’s your house) so we didn’t see her much, but she and her friends did some painting and she came by a couple of other times during the week.


Our house was almost finished – our task for the day was to do trim. I did a lot of coping – that is, using a coping saw. That meant I was outside most of the day, while others were inside measuring and putting the trim around the windows and doors. I developed quite a knack for coping – of course, they break everything down into chunks that people with no experience can handle. But it still felt good to master some tools!




Our little group went out for Vietnamese food – there’s a large Vietnamese population in New Orleans, and the food was quite authentic – I can say that after having just been in Vietnam! Back at Camp Hope, I was tired after a day’s hard work – but this time, not too tired for Scrabble and cribbage!