Trippin' No More

One of the many casualties of Covid-19 has been traveling. The travel industry, especially ship traffic, has been particularly hit hard. Over the years, whether in a group or alone. Sharon and I have been very fortunate to have covered a good part of the globe. We’re certainly not seasoned travelers like a lot of our friends. But the miles traveled have been fascinating and satisfying; what more could you ask for? Unfortunately, I don’t expect to be traveling anytime in the near future.

A couple of years back, we did several river cruises in Europe. With concern for Sharon’s adverse reaction to motion sickness in mind, we found that these flat-bottomed river boats satisfied our need for slow speed and scenic vistas with a total lack of concern for the ebb and flow of the river.

The first river tour we did was called ‘The Great Rivers of Europe.’ It was our first introduction to European river cruising and we were hooked. Unfortunately, it may be a very long time before either one of us is willing to share tight quarters with a group of complete strangers again. So for now, we have our memories, some good pictures and a real appreciation for the beauty of river cruising in a foreign land.

Once the most efficient and fashionable means of travel throughout Europe, river cruising continues to be an ideal way to discover the culture, cuisine and unique characteristics of the many countries traveled through. Two of the primary water ways we traveled were the Rhine and Mosel Rivers. Yet for all their similarities, the Rhine and Mosel wear two very different masks.

There’s a reason one is called Father Rhine and the other Mother Mosel. Two rivers, each harboring different personalities, yet both are life vessels to their pass-through countries.  

Beyond the bucolic landscapes dotted with fairy-tale castles, terraced vineyards and rust-covered maritime facilities, the Rhine and the Mosel provide a glimpse into their respective history of the region. As economic engines, both rivers continue to provide a wealth of economic infusion into the local communities hugging their banks.

For over 2000 years, Father Rhine, as it is called by the locals, has been Europe’s most important commercial waterway. Its scenic beauty has inspired countless myths and legends. By introduc-ing vines to the region, the Romans paved the way for the excellent vintages that are a further source of the Rhine’s international reputation.

The Rhine River rises in south-east Switzerland and reaches the North Sea after a journey of over 1230 km. While industrialization has left its mark on some parts of the river, most of the water-way provides an idealistic pass-through of towns and villages that have existed there for over hundreds of years.

Mother Mosel wears a very different moniker. Since the days of the first Romans, over 2000 years ago, the most exquisite asset of the Mosel countryside has remained its wine production. Generations upon generations have nurtured, embellished and refined a giant open-air amphitheater to the honor of Bacchus, the God of Wine. The towering slate cliffs store the day’s warmth for the cool evenings that follow while the grapes ripen at just the right angle to the sun.

Leaving Basel, Switzerland, our ship followed what seemed like a meandering path along both the Rhine and Mosel Rivers. It was one river seemingly indistinguishable from the other. It was a daily tapestry of colors, images, sights and sounds that captured our attention and imagination. Walking tours included the obligatory market plazas, cathedrals, historical sites and opportunities for shopping.

The Mosel like so many rivers in Europe unmasks different personalities as it passes through many different regions of Germany. Beyond the bucolic landscapes dotted with fairy-tale castles, terraced vineyards and rust-covered maritime facilities, the Mosel provides a glimpse into its storied history of the region.

Mother Mosel (aka Moselle) River begins its journey in France and flows into Germany where it twists sharply for 150 miles and deposits itself into the Rhine on its way to the North Sea. Along this winding river gorge are found some of the most classic Riesling wines in the world.

Because of the northerly location of Mosel, the Riesling wines are often light, tending to lower alcohol, crisp and high in acidity, and often exhibit ‘flowery’ rather than ‘fruity’ aromas. It’s most common vineyard soil is derived in main from various kinds of slate deposits which tend to give the wines a transparent, mineralic aspect, that often exhibit great depth of flavor.

Generations upon generations of craftsmen have nurtured, embellished, and refined a giant open-air amphitheater to the honor of Bacchus, the God of Wine. The towering slate cliffs store the day’s warmth for the cool evenings that follow while the grapes ripen at just the right angle to the sun.

In the middle ages, whole villages sprung up that were centered on the region’s wine industry. These ‘wine villages’ included paths from the town center up to the area’s vineyards. Nothing much has changed over the centuries except that now those footpaths have been widened and paved over for heavy transport to ascend the heights to harvest the grapes.

Dating back hundreds of years, castles dot the countryside and add to the beauty and charm of the region. The castles are a throwback to the age of kings and queens, lowly peasants, feudal lords fighting for territory and knights in dented armor.  

After two river cruises crossing central Europe, we opted for a smaller boat and a trip to the South of France. Our trip began in Paris and ended in Nice. In some strange sort of way, it was deja-vu all over again for me, at least the Paris part of the journey.

It had been a long time since I’d been tramping down the narrow streets and grand thoroughfares of old Parie. Paris has always been a seductive mistress. As the song title goes, ‘The Last Time I saw Paris,’ it was a much different time in my life. My first sojourn into the city of lights was supposed to be a simple pass-through as part of a full-blown retreat from the harsh reality of winter in Denmark.

The experience of living in Denmark had been exhilarating at first. But gradually the daily work routine had grown stale with a lack of friends and no clear direction in my life. Then as the first snowflakes powdered my apartment steps, I realized another Minnesota winter was in my near future unless I split for someplace warm.

The south of France seemed a logical answer to a young pup ill equipped to face that Nordic reality. Tall tales of warm sunshine, topless sun bathers and easy work was enough to lure me into the false sense of road security. I was assured that a quick thumb and ready smile would take me there in just a couple of days.

By the time I got to Paris, all bets were off. I trudged through the city in hope of enlightenment but instead only got hustled by Gypsies. After three days of aimless wandering I was ready to cash in my pocket money for a ticket home and three steady meals a day. I found a travel agency, got a one-way ticket home, and left on a silver bird the next day.

Paris has always been that stand-alone, a bit standoffish kind of friend. At once it can be charming, brash, conceited, seductive, alluring and always surprising. Taken on its own terms, the city offers sunlight and sin on an equal basis.

The city is different now than back in the 60’s. Ornate low-rise buildings have been toppled by towering glass hi-rise commercial enterprises. There are more tourist boats on the Seine than commercial traffic. Bike-sharing stations pepper the city with their light blue bikes while the new tour buses squeeze into narrow side streets that even an old donkey cart had a hard time maneuvering.

The city has evolved and changed yet feels much the same as it did back in the Fall of Sixty-Seven. The locals have long grown used to the artists, vagabonds, tourists and people of the streets who wander by their doorsteps in search of enlightenment. The smell of cooking, cleaning, and daily living still permeates the side streets and dark alleys.

There’s a Parisian phrase that goes: ‘On the Left Bank, we think and on the Right Bank, we spend.’ I have little interest in the Right Bank where towering glass institutions of commerce and wealth line the Seine. My heart and my head are back on the Left Bank where Montmartre and the Latin Quarter still attract all kinds of creative spirits. While there’s no time to retrace Hemingway’s Paris haunts; I find the quaint cafes, dark narrow alleys and winding streets are

still filled with the polished and unwashed alike. And while the new Bobos (bohemian bourgeois) fake their artistic lineage at gallery openings, true artists continue to live in squalor and strive to find meaning in life itself.

Montmartre still holds an allure for me. Climbing its hill brings back the same sense of wonder along with deep breaths and dampness across the brow. Parisians talk about the place the way New Yorkers talk about the village. Hemmingway is no longer lingering at some corner café but other bohemians, artists and lost souls have taken his place.

Some places never change. Paris is one of them. Like other great cities that are constantly evolving with the times and different flavors of humanity that crowd its sidewalks and fill its cafes, the City of Love continues to hold an allure that is impossible to describe. Every visitor has their own version of its magical pull on their senses. For me it is the storied history of writers, artists, and bohemians who have haunted its shadowy recesses since Celtic Gaul’s walked its shores.

The first time I stumbled into Montmartre, I ordered a coffee at some small corner café. It was a thick black muck that gripped my spoon and burned my throat. No wonder all the pretty young girls were sipping theirs so slowly and taking forever to finish their thimble-sized drink.

This time around, I ordered a beer and slowly sipped it, taking forever to finish the warm liquid. Crowds brushed past my chair and dropped cigarette butts at my feet. The rush of humanity flowed unabated in a steady stream past our café. They were all looking around but not seeing a thing. It was just another day in Paris for them.  Me…I was home again.

After three days of touring Paris, we were on a riverboat meandering south along the Saone River. The trip South to Nice was uneventful, restful and easy on the feet. It gave me plenty of time to ponder the times gone by and the journey I never completed back in ’67.

For me the best part of these trips were the periods of cruising the waterways. Ensconced in a lounge chair on top of our ship, I was surrounded by an IMAX presentation of surround sounds and slowly moving images. It became a place for me to get lost inside my head and let my imagination flourish. It was a time to reflect, appreciate, access and plan for the future.

Unfortunately, it’s probably going to be a long time before we venture back onto the low seas again. The quarters were comfortable but cramped, cozy but close and nearly impossible to social distance. Until we’re vaccinated and the world is close to herd immunity, I doubt we’ll set sail on those fascinating rivers again.

On the Street Where You Live

Like the emptiness of a Paris winter, we often times don’t see what’s all around us as we trudge through the streets of life. In 1929, the great French architect Le Corbusier turned from designing houses to the planning of cities. His classic book shocked and thrilled a world already deep in the throes of the modern age.

One of Le Corbusier’s favorite arguments was that there is an order to things and an order in our lives whether we know it or not. Growing up in Saint Paul, I was hardly aware of the urban changes going on all around me. It signaled the end of one period of growth for the City and a slow painful aging process that followed. Old St. Paul was gradually being replaced with a newer version of itself. Turns out there were subtle changes going on all around me while I was pondering third grade math in grade school downtown.

Old Saint Paul proper was going through its last death rattles as I boarded a city bus each day to attend ‘the little French school’ on a hill overlooking downtown. The city, which had once prided itself as the steamboat capitol of the upper Midwest, had long ago thrown on the cloak of growing wealth and opulence of its early pioneers. Thus had begun a new period of brick and mortar replacing stick buildings with turn-of-the-century modernism. Yet by the mid-to-late-forties, time and a changing demographic had spelled the end of its downtown area as a core of business, social and economic growth.

Le Corbusier had defined the parameters of a great city back around the turn of the century and metropolitan areas like the Twin Cities and New York were struggling to find and define a new definition of a livable city. Urban development ran rampant and old neighborhoods were falling victim to the times.

Old St. Paul was a Midwestern repeat of New York City’s Jane Jacobs and her continuing battles with transportation czar Robert Moses fighting to save whole neighborhoods from being swept away by elevated highways slashing through their communities. Only in the case of Saint Paul, Interstate Highway 94 won out and the Rondo community fell by the wayside.

From 1943 through 1949, I was living on the outskirts of downtown, moving from one rental to the next. Growing up near downtown St. Paul, I was too young to understand the organic changes happening all around me. Even after we moved to the Highland Park neighborhood, I was still too young to understand the ever-changing cityscape from 1949 through 1957, as I traveled to downtown St. Paul each day.

photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

From 1957 through 1961, I was pretty much cloistered in my own neighborhood with frequent trips to first ring suburbs like Roseville. After 1961and high school graduation, downtown St. Paul had become a place to avoid because there was nothing there of interest for me.

My horizons broadened with time in the service, living abroad, and finally settling into a hovel near the University of Minnesota. The West Bank, Como area, and Dinkytown became a place of refuge for me. Little did I know at the time that the entire area, especially north of Dinkytown, was going through revitalization with dozens of old mansions like my ghetto being torn down for modern student apartments.

Fast forward many years later and I was working at our public television’s new digs in downtown St. Paul. By the late seventies, the Lowertown area of St. Paul had started to come out of its century’s old shell of neglect and decay. The area east of the downtown core began to take on the accoutrements of an urban village; at least in the minds of developers and real estate speculators.

By then I was settled into a third ring suburb and raising kids in a modest yet comfortable environment. The thought of living in the cities never occurred to me. Jump ahead another twenty years and my daughter now lives in St. Paul, less than five blocks from where I was raised. She and her husband love their home, their neighborhood, and new St. Paul.

Sharon and I now have to travel to my old stomping grounds to see our grandchildren in a neighborhood filled with young families eager to enjoy the benefits of living in the city.

I guess it’s true; what goes around comes around.

Save the Last Dance for Me

Last season, I was fortunate enough to write three new plays while in the desert. The intent was to workshop all three back in Minnesota. COVID-19 put a stop to that great idea. Now I’m back in the desert with every intention of finally getting a ‘reading’ for one of those plays, ‘Widow’s Waltz.’ 

Sharon and I have been in the Valley, on and off, for over twenty years. During that time, we’ve made a lot of friends in the gay community. Most of our gay friends here we’ve always known as couples. However, it came to my attention a while back that there is another segment of that population that is seldom talked about. 

I always thought ‘Widow’s Waltz’ would be especially relevant to the Coachella Valley because of its large gay population and a subject matter that is seldom addressed here. That is the plight of single gay seniors in the Valley.

The idea for ‘Widow’s Waltz’ evolved after we took a cruise to Cuba several years ago. On the cruise were a number of single gay men instead of the usual couples we knew. I got to thinking about the lifestyle of those men who lived outside of a normal couple’s routine I was so familiar with here in the desert. More research on the subject brought up a number of articles talking about the plight of the single gay men entering their senior years all alone.

Riot at Sage Corner

Simply stated, they’re older, single gay men without a partner or significant other. Often times there’s no family to speak of. While on the surface, their challenges seem much like of straight singles, I’ve found from research that the challenges are far greater for gay individuals than straight ones.

A survey in the United States has found that most gay men over the age of 45 are single. The findings, released by AARP, surveyed almost 2000 LGBT people across all 50 states. It found that 57% of gay men over 45 were single as compared to 39% of lesbians and 48% of bisexual men and women.

I realized that this is a subject matter outside of my comfort gone and familiarity. Research alone would never help me get to the core of the issues or create a storyline true to their predicament. That is where our friends in the gay community can provide me with honest, heart-felt advice and suggestions to make the play honest and true to their ‘real world.’

It’ll probably be a challenge to present such a play written by a straight author to those appropriate venues here in the Valley. Nevertheless, I’m hoping the honesty of the storyline will grab their attention and an honest evaluation. I’m also looking for some fellow artists to help champion the script for me and open stage doors.

The Last Sentinel

The script has been written and rewritten several times over. Now the hard part begins. After workshopping the play, I’ll probably have to pound out a second or third draft until I have a product ready for theatrical evaluation. Overall, it will be an arduous and challenging task but I hope, one that results in an interesting story, engaging characters and something worthy of my audience’s time and attention.

In the end, isn’t that what every playwright is striving for; to tell a good story and entertain an audience?

I know I am.