What to say about 2016?

Hands Around Lake Merritt gave me hope

2016. Whew. What do you say about this year? A year of plotlines that would have made dubious fiction, played out in the newspapers instead. I tried to make a concise list of the most egregious stories but google ran out of memory. And it was downright depressing. Made me want to find Merrick Garland and go get drunk down by the pier together.

So just the most salient point: 2016 is the year democracy failed. The British voted against their own best interests. Colombians rejected peace in the world’s longest running civil war (if you don’t count the murderous chaos in Myanmar). And then, inevitably, Trump.

But I don’t want to focus on that right now. That would be like the man with whom I went to Cuba who could only talk about the toilet seats. (Or maybe what goes through them would be a better metaphor?)

Watching the cows come home in Switzerland did me good

Personally, 2016 was (of course) a mixed bag. I lost the relationship I thought would last the rest of my life. But how wonderful to have had that love! And I have hope that some form of it will continue into the future. Pesky future, being all unknowable.

Professionally, I expanded into a job I feel inexpressibly lucky to have. I had truly incredible groups this year. Let’s be honest, Rick Steves groups are always great, we just draw from good people, who travel for the right reasons and in the right way, but this year was above even our high bar.

Perhaps when the news is preaching fear, those who come into the world anyway are the cream of the crop. People who know that staying home is exactly the wrong response to terrorism. Who refuse to be terrorized. (Or at least who know there is extremely little actual danger involved. Terrorism is still less dangerous than driving to work.) I am grateful for my company, and for the people who travel with us. Best of the best, they are.

Beautiful and bizarre Skopje, Macedonia

And I am grateful for the incredible people at the International Rescue Committee, both the staff and my students. Again I am privileged to meet the best. I wish my students’ confidentiality wasn’t an issue, because their stories and characters would benefit the nation to hear. They’re an antidote to Trumpism.

And finally travel, one of the great joys of my life, was good this year. On a Balkan ramble I enjoyed Bulgaria, was happily surprised by Macedonia, and felt love in Greece. Then this last trip, to Vietnam, where I felt a perspective that might make 2017 a more loving place within me. The articulation is still burbling in my subconscious, but for now I can focus on one truth.

Humans are good. We really are. We are a good species. Too good for our own sake, maybe, since it’s mostly our worst individuals who yearn for power. Anyone who wants to be in control...is exactly who shouldn’t be allowed to.

The Vietnamese people have forgiven a horrible war.
That gives me hope.

That makes for troublesome headlines, but a deeply reassuring foundation. I don’t know exactly how many countries I’ve visited or people I’ve met, but I can happily tell you that in every single one of them I met wonderful people. Almost exclusively. People I would live next to, eat with, and have in my life.

Every country, and every year. 2016 was a beast. No doubt about it. But it had such goodness in there! And 2017 will have that beauty too. Happy new year, my friends!

What Christmas means to me this year

A friend recently informed me that there is indeed a War on Christmas. “Oh yes,” she said with the utmost gravitas, “They’re making it very hard for us to celebrate it.”

North Pole swag, Hue, Vietnam

As always I sought to respect the beliefs of others and to offer compassion to those in distress. Wasn’t easy this time. Because as far as I can tell Christmas is the single most dominant and widespread cultural construct in human history. No other holiday, religious or secular, comes close to globalized Christmas. Even New Year’s, a factual necessity of having a calendar, is more diverse and scattered.

If anything Christmas is TOO dominant, having already won its war when it supplanted the midwinter festivals and traditions of the pre-Christian pagan world. I’m pretty sure Christmas can hold its own.

Okay, so sexy wardrobe malfunction
Santa is a little nontraditional...

Or can it? Has modern consumerism killed the Christmas we cherish? Depends on what Christmas means. (And who “we” are.) Does Christmas mean the birth of Jesus? It surely can. Granted, the older tradition says January 6th, but the Bible doesn’t say. It’s religion, not science, so if you say it’s the 25th of December, then that’s true for you. But as long as they don’t delete the 25th from the calendar, skip straight from 24 to 26, you’re pretty safe.

Is it giving gifts to tell your loved ones that you care about them? Another beautiful interpretation. As far as I can tell, a prohibition on buying stuff is the single most unlikely event in our human future. And since no one can tell you what spirit to give with, not much concern here either.

And if Christmas means going around saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone without caring who you’re talking to, then even if that were in danger (which I don’t believe it is) that would be a pretty shallow meaning to the holiday, wouldn’t it?

So maybe Christmas is something more abstract. Deeper. Felt but hard to articulate. That’s the one I’m feeling this mangled freeway wreckage of a year. When democracy failed on the global level and love was defeated on the personal. 2016 feels like one big dark winter right now.

What do you need in the middle of winter? Warmth, light, hope, love. A reminder that winter is a season, and as with everything in life, it passes. But even better, it’s beautiful in itself. The cold and the dark are just more facets of Beauty. It’s the other side of the “Everything shall pass” coin, take solace that the bad will pass, but appreciate the good because it is finite too.

And holy Christmas crapcakes there’s a lot of positive. The world as a whole is still a peaceful place. The human spirit still wants to do no harm, yearns to offer support, and needs to offer love. I’ve certainly got a lot of love in my life. Family and friends, old and new, so many faces of goodness at an individual level.

And loss? What do I do when I remember that this time last year I was in Holland with my lady? The lady who’s no longer mine.

I remember that to focus on the painful end is to forget the joyful entirety. What an incredible thing it is to love! And that relationships don’t always last forever doesn’t invalidate this, it only makes it stronger. What a marvelous gift to have held something so strong and so delicate, so finite yet everlasting.

I sit with that. And the faces of my loved ones. My folks in their new home. My siblings on their paths. My friends at home and abroad. Each of these is a shining point of connection and caring, spread around the world until a map looks like a star chart.

I sit with it. Like a warming fire in the middle of winter. And it feels like Christmas.

Update: nevermind, there's a War on Christmas after all. This was playing on loop. 15th time around. I cut it off before the part where baby noises take over.

Merry Christmas anyway!

I'm just gonna keep Thanksgivinging

So...how’d it go? Anybody get in screaming matches about TrumpCo? Mashed potatoes remashed against the glass of family portraits that were hung in a tidier time? I wonder how many people gave thanks for their orange messiah, hearing the voice of salvation in what sounds to me like the scream of a descending warhead.

But the fact remains that in most of the world the falling warheads are only metaphoric, and I’ll give thanks for that every day it’s true. And acknowledge the species-shame of the places where it’s not, watching for and thinking of ways to expand our decency to all. And it’s not an answer, but let’s take a moment, a swirl of tea steam and a scratch on the dog, to send empathy and love and peaceful intentions to Syria and all the other places our tax dollars and global structure are killing people.

Man it’s hard to say a complete thought and keep it positive. It’s like trying to sing with a cold coming on, starts up fine but keeps ending in a splattered ball of phlegm.

Speaking of lunch, we’re having it together today, a large portion of my family and I. Not all, siblings and an uncle are missed, candles for the ancestors, but I will happily see the ones I can. And stuffing is as good as I remember it.

Stuffing, that would be a rather cakey mush if we ate it more often, but in its alternation it retains its savory dignity. And dangit, guess who’s headed for another Trump Darkness metaphor? It was an accident, I swear! But maybe hope and progress shine brighter after we’ve looked in the face of quotidian despicability in the same way that stuffing is best after months of Something Else. Fine, it’s sloppy, but you see what I’m getting at.

Did I mention how much I love cranberry sauce? And peace? And hope and optimism? And the chance to meet the refugees, the kind people whose caricatures might otherwise seem scary? And the smiles of friends as we tie in to ropes, buy each other beers, or watch the puppy play? Friends are volunteering, driving to Standing Rock, donating to causes any soul must adore. Dogs laugh through smiles and birdsong is still a song. It’s all just so good. Even when it sucks.

And at the end of the day, when the faceless buzz of People seem so sinister, I can sit back and savor that I only actually know a couple assholes. That’s fantastic! So many good people, any and all of which deserve love and affection. Even the jackwad who climbs with his bluetooth in and only wants to insult Hillary. Even that buttnugget.

And then this blogosphere thing. A place that sometimes has absolutely terrible taste, but is a sort of e-mud with gold nuggets richly scattered throughout. And when I see your familiar title show up in a post, a ‘like’, a comment, it will be be just one more thing for which to be grateful.

I have nothing new to say about Black Friday, so I’ll just hold on to this Thanksgiving idea. Let’s try 365 days straight, shall we? Happy endless Thanksgiving, my friends!

Rocky Horror Acceptance Show

If I don’t clean all this uncooked rice out of my pockets before I do my laundry, will I have clean clothes and a snack when the washer’s done? And rice krispies when the dryer finishes?

Such are the questions one asks after the late night performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and what else should one do on Halloween in San Francisco? What, hand out candy? I think we’re one of those cities with more dogs than children, and from what I hear all the kids get crated off to the mall for trick-or-treating anyway. Kids spending time in a mall, now that’s scary.

For my part, I took my variously costumed self to the Clay Theater with some friends from our rock climbing group. I’m used to seeing them in harnesses and chalk, now I got to see pink wigs, 1920’s throwbacks, and a red crushed velvet pimp suit that stood out in the crowd. Heck, it woulda stood out at a parrot convention.

But in a crowd like that, standing out is every bit as encouraged as blending in. Everything goes, and you can spend the evening in the sort of easy camaraderie with strangers that comes when we all drop our fusty attitudes and remember that no one really cares. About any of the crap we think they care about. Because even if they do? Who cares?

They warn you that there’ll be swearing, sexuality, homosexuality, and people in lingerie, and if you’re going to be offended, get the f*** out now. The three people who pretend to storm out prove the rule, and everyone relaxes in the knowledge that it’s a group of people who came together with the same idea, the same ethos of acceptance, and it feels like freedom. Celebrate with handfuls of rice and the other traditional manifestations, and be raucous in public.

The late night bus back to Oakland formed the “After” version of the earlier BART train’s “Before.” At 7:00 all the costumes were clean, the makeup was precise, and the faces were alert. Sometime after November started, as the bus bumped over the bridge it looked more like a triage center for someone’s tangled imagination. And I sat there, between a dinosaur who lost his head somewhere and Slash with hair in hand, and felt right at home.

Can it be Halloween again soon, please?

Happy Thanksgiving Mr R!

Happy Thanksgiving Mr R!

It was a pleasure to meet you a few months ago, and I dearly hope that your first American Thanksgiving is a happy day, when you can join me, join the nation and anyone anywhere who wants to participate, in giving thanks for the good things in our lives. I am thankful for the chance to meet you and your wonderful family. I am thankful for the chance to (hopefully!) teach you all some English, although your daughter already speaks impressively well.

I am grateful for the wonderful people at the International Rescue Committee, and the noble work they do, important in the best of times and crucial when things are running off track, when a small percentage of people abroad are pursuing inhumane agendas, and too many people here are doing the same. Violence and intolerance; intolerance is violence.

I am grateful that my country is still the sort of place people would want to come to. I believe we have been welcoming too few, but I am grateful and hopeful that we are moving in the right direction.

My patriotism

I am grateful that Obama is a much better example of our country than some of the people who want to take his place. For a long time in this country, people would sometimes compare each other to Nazis but it was always overblown and inappropriate, since at our worst, we were far from that vile. I have to apologize that you have come at a time when the spokescreature for half the political establishment is actually advocating Nazi policies (and citing Nazi fake statistics to scare up the paranoia required for the abdication of one’s mind and soul.)

But please don’t be scared, as off track as some of my nation is at the moment, I cannot believe we would ever actually pursue a Muslim database, or close your places of worship, or any of the other headline-grabbing idiocy with which our lowest element is currently hijacking attention in their competition to see who can be the least intelligent, the least sane, the least humane.

The only database she belongs
in is a list of happy humans

They are not this country. We have nutjobs, just like everywhere else! Come on over to my place, and we can shake our heads in disgust, laugh in disbelief, and shiver in fear. It will look like we’ve invented the world’s weirdest dance move. For a moment. Then we can move on, come back to earth, connect as humans in a beautiful corner of the world, and give thanks. That is required on this day. Turkey is optional.

PS. But cranberry sauce is obligatory, so since you, your whole family, and all of your friends are welcome in my home, just let me know how much I should make. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy New Year! From a crotchety and grateful old man.

Holiday decorations in Portland

I don’t automatically care all that much about New Year’s Eve. I’m not much of a drinker, and I get queasy if I’m not in bed by about 3:00 AM, so not a “proper” partier either. But this crotchety old man does respect the notion and beauty of marking the end of one year and beginning of another, even if the calendar is basically arbitrary (the solstice is a much more significant turning point, but I can handle two).

Also, NYE’s have an odd way of coming to represent the year, or at least mark the stage. There was the one way-back-when in Santa Cruz that I spent tortured by jealousy, followed a solar loop later by a party in Switzerland where the sense of freedom and possibilities was as tall as the Matterhorn. (But much warmer.) Then there was the year K and I spent in a beautiful place, and tried our fledgling best to talk about the problems we feared and felt...but failed. A calendar later came a New Year’s of loss, confusion, guilt and pain.

New Year's Day in Strasbourg

Last year I went to a club with friends. I’m as happy in a club as a leech in the desert, and I spent the evening wrestling dickish temptations to shout-talk to someone “How about we go someplace where impressions and experiences are more than single-dimensional celebrations of snap judgments and superficiality?” Or “This is to proper socializing as twitter is to a book.” Or the most succinct, the gutteral growl of the cranky. “Grrrrrrumble!” But I was there for my friends, and appreciated the chance to be near them, even if I could only hear their smiles.

This year I’ll miss those friends, unable to hug and/or high-five them (ever tried to do both at once?) but in a much more satisfying environment: the world. The one that feels real, and comes with more dimensions than I can perceive.

Haven't been to Cambodia yet, but Myanmar's close, right?

New Year’s Eve 2014 will find me somewhere in Cambodia. Not sure where, yet. Maybe I’ll have new road-friends, I hope so. But I’ll have my lady by my side, audible and tangible, and though I won’t be able to touch the loves and friendships I cherish in other countries, they will be there too, audible and tangible in my heart.

That feels like a pretty good way to start 2015.

There are worse things than having been racist

The contractor was measuring the ceiling in my lady’s house when he noticed he’d tracked dog poo all over the kitchen floor. It was awkward, but he helped clean it up, cleaned his shoe, and we all went on with our day. He did not go deliberately step in more and lay fresh prints.

What if his coworker had left the smudges before he arrived? Should he say “Well, I didn’t start it” then go find a steaming fresh pile of Rover’s Revenge to spread around? It’s easy when we’re talking about puppy poop, but what if it’s something worse?

In episode 349 of The Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when asserting the virus was an STI could get you in a fight, as people resisted the guilt of having inadvertently caused harm. But eventually they accepted the facts and evolved. He compares this to those who still deny climate change. There comes a time when you have to accept that what you've been doing isn't right anymore, and update.

He doesn’t advocate convictions for past mistakes, or tortured guilt for things done when we didn’t know any better, but to double down and willfully continue them once you do? That’s a problem.

Scaling back from lethal disease and global catastrophe, how about being accidentally offensive? Tonight in the Netherlands, and tomorrow in Belgium and Luxembourg, Zwarte Piet will help Sinterklaas deliver presents to all the little boys and girls. Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is basically one of Santa’s elves, with one glaring difference: he’s in blackface, big red lips, afro wig and everything.

Controversy over the figure has been growing for decades. The (white) majority says “But it's our tradition!” (True.) “We don't mean anything racist by it!” (Good, thank you.) And sometimes “If I meet you you’ll get a bullet through your head.” Charming.

I know people resist changing traditions, but just a couple sentences for perspective:

-Halloween was long based on vandalism, not changing to its current emphasis on costumes and treats until World War II

-Thanksgiving is increasingly about family, and less about genocidal religious extremists, or is that just me?

-Even Zwarte Piet himself didn’t show up until 1850, his name not standardized until the early 20th century, around the same time Sinterklaas stopped kidnapping naughty kids into slavery. And did anyone grow up believing Saint Nick came from Turkey? Well he did, but we changed it to the North Pole (and Sinterklass moved to Spain) without undue rage. So why cling so fiercely to an outdated racist icon?

(Zwarte Piet briefly took over the child slavery racket, though that’s been phased out too. We’ll talk about the function of a black character selling white children into slavery another time.)

This is all very easy for me to say; I didn't grow up with Zwarte Piet. Also, I don't really give an enraged caboodle about changing holiday details (no, I don't watch Fox News' preposterous War on Christmas either). My lady, on the other hand, grew up in The Netherlands in the days before people saw Piet as racist. She had those happy childhood mornings, when the friendly character threw candies and handed out gifts. She loved that character, but when age and perspective showed her its racist overtones, she adjusted. In her words: “A short moment of nostalgic pain is MORE than worth it for doing the right thing.”

Now want to hear something cool? The Netherlands is showing its impressive character yet again. Not waiting for everyone to find their empathy, they are changing, slowly but steadily. In previous years they’ve toned down the blackface by removing the big red lips (and earrings), consciously avoiding portrayals of him as inferior to the white Sinterklaas, and this year they’re adding other colors of Piet, including cheese yellow and (gasp!) white.

I can only imagine it’s a matter of time until people look back and say “Remember back when we had that awful racist character? Nutty!” (Though I expect the overtly racist and anti-immigration parties like the PVV and Vlaams Belang will cling to their crusty obstinacy far into the future.)

So as America roils, burns, and shatters under the weight of our own racism and malfeasance, the sickness in our system that seems unwilling to change, and I figure out my own minuscule part in it, I’m going to look at the waffle-striped Piet this year with a smile, and hope that the arc of history might speed itself up a bit here too...

Trick or treat? Or not.

Granted, I have no children. This places me solidly in the spectator box when it comes to child-rearing, but I noticed a pattern when asking friends if they would be giving out candy to kids this year:

I'm gonna be bold and suggest that if we're worried about
violence and kids, maybe allow the trick or treating, but cut
back on the stabbed-in-the-head costumes?

“We don’t get them in my neighborhood.” Not a pattern, really, more of a uniform chorus of the same sentence. So...where have all the kiddies gone?

“Our neighborhood is full of kids. We see them come out of their houses in full costumes and we get the candy ready, then they get in cars and drive to the mall.”

Wh- Wh- What? The mall?!? Wh- Why? (In my opinion, kids should never be allowed to go to the damn mall, but that’s just me.)

“They do their trick-or-treating at school. People come in, set up a trunk or a table, and pass out candy there.”

Th- Th- That’s not trick-or-treating! That’s grocery shopping.

Why the shift? I feel like in the 80s we were plenty scared of kidnappers, razor blades and poison in candy (the latter of which has never happened, by the way), not to mention ample cause to bemoan, in our pre-adolescent voices, the reflective tape totally messing up our costumes! We’re gonna stay on the sidewalk, mom, there are no cars there! Gawd!

But we went. And we had a barge-load of fun every year. Running door to door, swapping insider tips with friends met along the way as to who as giving out the best stuff, and mapping out the neighborhood in your mind for optimal candy-ation. I would not be surprised to learn that whoever created mapquest was inspired by childhood candy-mapping.

“Skip the one-sided cul-de-sac, it’s not cost effective!”

It seems sad to me that people are so scared of each other these days that we’ve taken this experience away from our kids, especially given that we actually live in the safest time in human history, it’s just that we also live in an age tragically miseducated by the 24 hour news cycle. (Note, that US media article still manages to focus on violence. But unless you think your kid is at risk of engaging in a holy war, the Brits were a little more on track.)

But as I mentioned, I ain’t got none of them little critters, so I don’t really get to talk.

Well. There is one. A certain four year old, whose continued well-being feels like arguably the single most important task of the planet today… Would I want him trick-or-treating? The answer?

Shit yes! He’s going to LOVE it!

But then again, he lives in a small town, and has two responsible parents to chaperon his tiny Iron Man butt.

Big city? Packs of kids wandering loose? Would I want him in one of those in a few years? I….don’t know.

What about you? (Vote in the poll on the vagabondurgres.com version of this blog.)

Finally reaching 2014

Everyone knows Valentine's Day is a hellscape orchestrated to torture unsuspecting boyfriends (with sharp collateral damage for girlfriends), where the pressure to have a magical night is a self-sabotaging prophecy.

And it is hardly groundbreaking to admit Christmas has a sleigh-load of pressure for a perfect harmonious family event, leading to bitter disappointment when your uncle has a little too much zinfandel and hits on your cousin's new girlfriend. (Or the more mundane moment when the well-meaning older female comments on the eating/body/wardrobe/make up/life choices/employment/social habits/beverage consumption/hairstyle/fingernail length/cell phone case of a younger female, and le merde hits le fan.)

But surely New Year's Eve is pure! Nope, it's the social version of V-Day's romance trap, and Xmas's familial pitfalls. Plus sex. Yes, New Year's Eve is booby-trapped.

My 2013 started with board games among friends, and it was great, even if I couldn't get enough brick to build that settlement on the port. Anybody wanna trade for a sheep?

I didn't make this, but I wish I could have
worn the beard to da club.

This year, another group of friends was going to a club. Not my scene, but whatever, I was there for my friends, not the clubbin', but the inanity of socializing in a place where you can't hear each other wore me down, communication without personality left me cold, and sheer image without substance pushed me towards macro-irritation.

I made it to midnight, though spent the actual countdown separated from my friends in a sea of smelly armpits and splashing beer, barely able to breathe. Annnd that'll do. I can check “go to the club” off my list for 2014-2100.

I walked to the BART station behind two girls who had also left early. Our conversation:

Them: “We were kind of having fun, but we both have boyfriends, just wanted to dance, and the guys were getting kinda crazy, so we left.”

Me: (Being normal. Not a douchebag.)

No camera in the club, but trees'll make sense in a second.

Them: “Oh my god! You're so nice! If I didn't have a boyfriend, I'd be like 'F*** me now!'”

Me: “Oh. Heh. Um. Thank you? Okay then, I'll be riding in the other car, bye!”

The other car carried seven other girls, also heading home early. That conversation went similarly to the first, minus the explicit compliment. We waved goodbye out the window. The last rider, also female (I swear I didn't seek this out! It was just me and the driven-away-by-dudes cadre on the train at 00:45) and I had a nice conversation about books.

The path is only scary when you think
the other hiker is following you.

But Americans don't know how to talk to strangers, exacerbated by the heinous behavior of a small percentage of males. So, when we happened to both be getting off at the same stop, suddenly I was not an interesting guy on the train, I was a serial killer. Halfway down the escalator she interrupted her own comment about Orwell to say “okay,nicetalkingtoyou,bye!” and ran off down the stairs.

Oops, she needed to add money to her fare card, so I tactfully exited on the other side of the station. But of course, my card didn't work, error: see agent, whose empty office was right next to Scared Woman. I loitered vaguely behind her. Cuz that's not creepy or anything.

When the agent showed up I explained “the machine won't accept my card” a little bit louder than necessary, barely managing not to add “that's why I'm here, not because I'm waiting to follow that woman home in the dark.”

So New Year's Eve was a bust. But if Icould move Christmas, why can't I move New Year's? The calendar is pretty damn arbitrary, after all (we really should have New Year's on the winter solstice).

This was by where the pit bull came
to tell me she loves me.

So my actual New Year started on Saturday, when a close friend and I went for a walk in the woods. We had clear communication, substance, personality, and a marvelous lack of macro-irritation. The redwoods were brown, the dirt was soft, and the dogs smiled because they love me. And you. And tennis balls, and running, and drooling, and pooping, and running some more. Among the trees, I could breathe.

It's going to be a good year.

Christmas is what, and where, we choose

I wish I'd taken pics of the food, but I was busy eating it.
I only have half a dozen from a walk I took.

It's a malleable business, this human experience. Preferences, priorities, and personalities shift and adjust. Even the calendar can be fluid, because tomorrow may be Christmas Eve, but the bulk of my Christmas 2013 was last weekend.

A huge part of the reason I came back from The Magical Land of Abroad was to reconnect with family and friends, so that's what I'm going to do, damnit, even if I have to drag recalcitrant ass to the table now and then.

And what a table I found. I am far from a foodie (ironic that the Oxford English Dictionary says the word “foodie” entered the world the same year I did), but the fact that I'm well pleased with a plastic to-go tray of chicken and rice didn't interfere with the culinary contortions of that fiesta of flavor.

Savory spasms of bacon-wrapped dates beside bogs of brie fondue preceded slow-cooked pork shoulder that dripped all the customary adulations one could hope for. Or was that before the chicken stew that turned plain bread into a platform for piquant pleasure? I remember the pear crumble that coincided somehow with Spanish coffees, whose blue flames of burning alcohol illuminated the grinning faces of family members carefully caramelizing the sugared rims of their glasses. And there is no disputing the tongue-teasing triumph that obliterated my long-standing stigma against carrots and cauliflower.

And if the arrivals lounge at Portland International Airport blindsided me with recollections of another visitor in years past? Or if a shattered flower pot put me in mind of another balcony across a sea?

Well.

The season can accommodate a breadth of sensation, from the simply salubrious to more complicated questions of sentiment and memory. But one thing's for sure, I have a helluva lot to be thankful for, from previous years, the one now ending, and in the era to come. And I, for one, am optimistic.