Alexandersmap

    Month: November 2018

    • Seneca Falls: Birthplace of Women’s Rights

      If time allows when I visit a town I try to dig into the history of the place and learn something about it.  I think of it as dancing with the ghosts of history.  And there’s no shortage of history in the northeast.

      Seneca Falls is famous for two things.  As I wrote about in my previous post it was the inspiration for Bedford Falls, the town in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, and the bridge inspired the scene with George saving Clarence.  The second, or more appropriately, the first thing that Seneca Falls is known for is it’s role in Women’s Suffrage.  Seneca Falls was the birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement in America.

      In 1848 the first Women’s Rights Convention was held at Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls.  300 attendees participated, and five notable women spoke.  The attendees included a mix of women and men, and one notable black participant; Frederick Douglas.  Douglas encouraged the women to include the right to vote in their Declaration of Sentiments.  This document was a highly controversial statement at a time when women were largely seen as inferior to men.  The convention inspired others soon after in Rochester, New York and in Worcester, Massachusetts and opened up the minds of many that women were equal to men.

      It would be another 71 years before Congress gave women the right to vote, and many years after that before women were perceived as equal to men.  Frankly there are still some idiots who think they aren’t.  But the slow march towards equality began in Seneca Falls.

    • It’s a Wonderful Life in Seneca Falls

      The movie It’s a Wonderful Life was set in a town called Bedford Falls.  Which in the real world is apparently Seneca Falls, New York.  According to folklore Frank Capra spent some time in Seneca Falls the year before the film was made.  Looking around, he was inspired him to set the movie there.

      To commemorate this film classic, Seneca Falls has a festival every year in December.  This year it’s December 7-9.  And while the town has changed a lot over the years, there are still some areas that are the same as they were in the 1940’s when the film was made.  Most notably, the bridge that George jumped off is still there.  There’s a plaque on the bridge honoring Antonio Varacalli, who jumped into the river to save a woman who jumped off the bridge.  Antonio saved the woman but perished in the river himself.  It seems Frank Capra saw this plaque and it inspired his version of George jumping in to save his guardian angel Clarence.

      Visiting downtown Seneca Falls during the holiday season, and with snow falling, it’s easy to see what inspired Capra to film the movie here.  There’s a certain vibe downtown that inspires.  Sadly, that vibe doesn’t extend to other parts of town.  Seneca Falls is a gritty factory town, with a smelly landfill between the highway and downtown that fouls the air when the wind blows the wrong way.  Chain stores and Walmart line the road.  In some parts of town it’s more Pottersville than Bedford Falls now.  But downtown on a snow globe night, it’s easy to see Jimmy Stewart running down the street shouting “Merry Christmas!” to one and all.

    • Dancing with Elephants

      Dancing with Elephants

      “One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted.  Do it now.” – Paulo Coelho

      Fresh off a trip to Key West and celebrating family time on Thanksgiving, I’m already thinking about the next trip.  Frankly, I was thinking about the next trip before I took the last trip.  I have a serious case of Wander Lust.  I was watching a scene from Local Hero that inspired me to look up where it was filmed in Scotland.  Turns out it was filmed in several locations, all beautiful.  That led me to Google how long the drive would be from Edinburgh to one of those locations, and that led to a big lump in my throat.  How the heck am I going to pull this trip off with all the other trips I want to do?  Wander lust reality check struck again.

      “Just be, and enjoy being.  If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything.” – Eckhart Tolle

      Thanksgiving brought together family, and ever so briefly, filled the empty nest before the kids went back to school.  They say that you’ve used up 90% of the time you’ll spend with your children and parents by the time you graduate college.  That’s certainly true if you live far away or travel often.  We have to remember that we’re all here for a brief time and embrace the time we have together.  It’s all just a blip of time.  Think about how fast this year has gone as we approach the end of the eleventh month.  Then mix in the reality of how little control we have over our time together.  I’ve watched too many people exit this world too soon.  A person I worked with lost her husband to a heart attack on Thanksgiving night.  They’d been married for a little more than a year.  You really never know how much time you have with someone. You never know how much time you have left yourself.  Do it now.

      “… we need to hurry.  Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding – our grasp of the world – may be gone before we get there.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      “Think of yourself as dead.  You have lived your life.  Now take what’s left and live properly.”
      – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      So there it is; the dueling priorities of time with family and friends versus time exploring the world.  I’ve always said I love travel, it’s the tradeoff of time away from family that I hate.  Best to take them along if possible.  But that gets prohibitively expensive quickly.  And there’s the dilemma.  One I confess I haven’t mastered yet.  Balancing work and family and financial responsibility and elephant hunting for a “successful” life.  Challenging to say the least.

      The year started with hope and adventure in Portugal.  The elation of hiking along the cliffs of Sagres and watching surfers bob in the swells as the sun set was offset by my wish that family and friends were there to enjoy it with me.  Key West was delightful.  But more so because Kris was there with me.  Hiking the Appalachian Trail is a life goal, but one that will come at a cost should I pursue it.  It’s unlikely that Kris would go, and regardless, for every moment spent hiking the AT, I’d be subtracting moments I’d be spending with family or on some other activity.

      “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?  Do you realize that you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” – Robert Cohn to Jacob Barnes, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

      Such is the curse of a short life.  And the blessing of a life lived in relative freedom and prosperity that grants us the opportunities to experience these things at all.  The vast majority of people who have lived or live in third world countries or under totalitarian conditions couldn’t imagine the opportunities to see and do the things that we can do now.  Wars and disease and dictatorships have conspire against the vast majority of humanity’s hopes and dreams.  So I’m at once filled with gratitude for that which I can experience and frustration that I can’t experience even more.  Greedy?  Perhaps, but then again, wouldn’t it be worse to ignore the opportunities presented to you?

      As I wrote about previously, the expression “I have seen the elephant” meant that you’ve experienced a rare, bucket list thing.  Seeing the pyramids or the Great Wall of China or the Eiffel Tower are “elephants”.  Seeing an elephant, before zoos and in-captivity breeding programs, was once incredibly rare for most people on earth.  Having seen the literal elephant, visiting notable places or experiencing notable things – that Grand Canyon moment if you will, is the figurative “elephant” that I pursue now.

      And I have many elephants on the dance card.  Extended stays in Scotland, Dublin, Paris, Hawaii, New Zealand, Machu Picchu are on the card, and so is viewing the Aurora Borealis and hiking the Appalachian Trail and sailing in the Greek Isles.  All elephants I’d like to dance with before I take my last breath.  Hopefully I’ll find a way to check each of those boxes before I reach age 60, and maybe dwell in a few spots along the way.  And in that time I’m already balancing both Ian and Emily graduating college and hitting their own life milestones.  And time with family and friends, and making a small dent in the universe in career and work contribution.  Prioritization.  Eliminating things that aren’t as important.  Focusing on the things that matter most.  There’s no time to lose really.

    • Key West

      Key West

      I’ve been to Key West twice in my lifetime, but feel like I know it as well as any city I haven’t lived in.  There’s a mystique that surrounds this old town, founded in legendary characters and salty songs. It was once the richest town in America until the Great Depression made it the poorest.  Jimmy Buffet built this town back up, but so did Ernest Hemingway, and Tennessee Williams and the tourists who followed these characters to the end of A1A.  Above all, Key West is a drinking town.  And what goes better with drinking than music?  Some of the biggest drinking towns also have the liveliest music scenes; Key West, Nashville, New Orleans, Austin.

      The charm of Key West is partly its size – 4 miles by 2 miles, and partly it’s location as the southernmost point in the continental United States.  But the laid back charm combined with all those other factors makes it magical.  Key West is a tourist town, but it doesn’t feel like those other tourist towns a cruise ship might drop you off at.  No hard press to buy this souvenir now!  No barter culture that I detected.

      Duval Street is a lovely stroll.  A bar seemingly at every turn, and a guitar playing in just about every one of them.  Hemingway’s house and the lighthouse across the street, having our token picture at the Southernmost Point, Mallory Square, the Old Seaport, sunset cruising, Fort Zac Taylor and swimming at the State Park were all highlight moments of course.  But it was going with Kris that opened my perspective up quite a bit.  I’m usually traveling alone for work, and we don’t have the opportunity to play tourist all that much as a family.  Getting up early, driving to the airport and flying to Miami, renting a convertible and driving to Key West was a shared experience.   We simply don’t have enough of those.

      That drive from Miami to Key West is in parts beautiful, but in other parts ugly highway sprawl.  But it was an adventure in both directions, especially when you look for stops along the way.  We stopped for lunch on the way down, and at a bar and for Key Lime Pie on the drive back up.  So Key West joins the Alaska cruise, the two Caribbean cruises, the Bahamas trip, Disney x 3, the Sedona/Grand Canyon trip and other trips for shared experiences.  We need many more of these.

    • Seeing the Elephant

      There’s an old expression that people used to ask when asking if someone had experienced something unique or special.  Have you seen the elephant?  Today seeing an elephant isn’t particularly hard to do – go to a zoo and there they are.  They used to be a big draw in circuses as well, until people realized how traumatic it was for the elephants.

      At any rate, seeing the elephant meant checking a box. Today people might talk about it as a bucket list item.  Have you seen Niagara Falls?  Have you seen the elephant?  Have you been to Paris in the springtime?  Have you seen the elephant?  According to Jon Sterngass, “seeing the elephant” also signified a quest for satisfactions in disreputable quarters.”  Wikipedia describes another meaning for seeing the elephant for soldiers – have you been to war?  Have you seen battle?  Wiki describes seeing the elephant in a negative connotation – yeah I saw it but wish I hadn’t.

      I confess to not really knowing the term.  I’d heard it before but it didn’t resonate with me.  Seeing the elephant?  Whatever.  Didn’t care.  I’d seen elephants since I was a kid.  But the term stuck for me when I read a Sports Illustrated article about the 18 inning World Series game 3, in which Tom Verducci compared watching that game to “I have seen the elephant”.

      I’ve seen a few metaphorical elephants in my lifetime.  I’m hunting many more.  Currently seeing the aurora borealis is by far tops on my bucket list of elephants.  Paris, Scotland, Hawaii, hiking the Appalachian Trail, hell, even seeing the last six episodes of Game of Thrones…  the elephant doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful.

      Life is very short, and as the expression goes, “Man Plans, and God Laughs”.  I keep aiming for the elephants, and hope that I might see all of them before I check out of here.  Without goals, what would life be?

    • Hardtack

      Hardtack

      In the world of refrigeration and preservatives that we live in today, we don’t think a lot about how long our food lasts.  Sure, canned food and beef jerky are still a part of our diets, but in general we aren’t thinking about enduring long periods of time without a source of food.  When I look at the diets of sailors, soldiers and explorers a few hundred years ago some items come up again and again.  A ration of rum was certainly expected.  But so too was hardtack.

      Hardtack is made from flour and water, with some salt to help preserve it and hopefully make it more palatable.  But taste wasn’t the priority with hardtack, it was to have something to sustain you when fresher food wasn’t available.  Dip it in water, tea or if you were lucky whiskey or rum to soften it up to save what was left of your teeth.

      Hardtack was called many things, depending on who was using it for food.  Army Bread, sailor’s bicuits, and a large assortment of derogatory names was used to describe this staple.  Ultimately it was often the only thing between carrying on and starvation.

      Thinking about traditional foods like hardtack help me appreciate being alive today.  Life is much easier now, and our food is so much more available and palatable than it was not that long ago.  I’m going to have a turkey wrap for lunch today, with avocado.  I’ll be sure to savor it.