Cuban Sandwiches

They're everywhere now.

People are arguing about who makes the best one and who made the first one.


The bread is a fat crusty loaf and must have originally been invented in Cuba a long time ago.


To slice it and stuff it with delectable things is one thing, but to press it down and make it flat, not fat, and crusty and melty and tasty, is another.


The first one I had years ago at a friends' house had been reheated in their microwave and it didn't do a thing for me, leaving me to wonder why they were nuts about a Cuban sandwich.


So off we went to Tampa in their little car, to the tiny restaurant in a tiny, out-of-the-way plaza.


I watched the loaf being sliced, the meat and cheese and everything else being slapped on.


But the press was amazing to see.


And then I ate.


People should keep on arguing about who makes the best one and who made the first one, for as long as they like.


But just keep on making them, because they have to be one of the coolest sandwiches ever invented.

Good and Bad Teachers

We all know who they are, don't we? It doesn't matter if it happened sixty years ago or yesterday - we know the difference in our hearts.

Good - They not only like kids and teens, they love them.
Bad - They can't stand you.

Good - Born for the job.
Bad - Should be wardens at the worst penitentiaries you can find.

Good - Receive loving gifts at Christmas from you.
Bad - Receive begrudged stuff because your parents made you give them something.

Good - Have patience and easy smiles.
Bad - Patience isn't even in their meager vocabulary. Smiles would crack their sour faces wide open and their noses would fall off.

Good - Say "good morning" and "goodbye" each school day, as if you're their very own children.
Bad - Tell you not to waste time vacating the premises if you know what's good for you.

Good - Teach, show, and explain until you get it.
Bad - Slap it on the board, ignore your questions, sneak out for a smoke when you all need help. You can hear them cackling through the closed door.

Yes - those bad teachers are cauldron witches, male and female and the questionable, alike.

They have lives after hours doing their best to make everyone around them as miserable as they are. And if they live alone, they pollute the very air they breathe with their ugliness.

Bad teachers yell at the kids.

They scare the kids.

The kids never learn much in their classrooms, unless it's how to treat their enemies on a bad day.

Good teachers you think of years later with a smile on your face and a pleasant sigh.

Bad teachers make you kick the coffee table years later. They make you say you hope they met a miserable death, like hanging upside-down by one shoe caught on an over-hanging tree limb three miles above a canyon in the middle of nowhere, where even the buzzards and vultures turn their noses up at their carcasses.

Now you can think of them with a smile on your face and a sigh.

Oh, yeah.

The United States of America, Chapter Seven: Palm Springs, California, Part Two

The motel where I stayed was owned by two men who loved fashion. The rooms were softly decorated in wonderful colors and I had a yellow and white one.


It left such an impression on me, the effect of yellow and white and sun, that I bought deck furniture in those colors when I went home that spring, and it never failed to remind me of Palm Springs.


The temperature reached 115° in the shade during the days. I couldn't even breathe in that, so I ran for the air conditioning wherever I could find it.


The motel owners were friendlier than anyone else in town, and when it was time to head to San Diego, they pulled out a map and traced a route for me to take. It cut across country, through lush green hills, past miles and miles of black wooden fences, thousands of Aberdeen Angus cattle and bulls grazing in the sun, and ranch buildings so sprawling they looked like well-kept mansions parked at the end of long, paved tree-lined driveways.


Wealth was everywhere along those back country roads.


The motel owners had said I'd enjoy the drive as much as they did, whenever they headed down to San Diego with their cute little dogs to visit family and friends.


If it wasn't so unbearably hot in Palm Springs, I would have wanted to make my home there. It had a peacefulness about it, an aura that everything was special and to be savored at leisure.


But a friend years later sent me a postcard while he was on business there, and he said that on the sidewalks, the glue melted on the soles of his shoes, and the soles came undone. His shoes fell apart.


Now that's hot. I can't breathe just thinking about it.

The United States of America, Chapter Seven: Palm Springs, California, Part One

Back in 1975, Palm Springs wasn't all that large an oasis in the desert.

Mostly it was golf courses for celebrities, the rich, and the PGA tours.

Mostly, it was walled-in estates on curving roads in the foothills, so secretive that you could see nothing but stucco and red bougainvillea vines and massive, expensive palm trees.

There were small motels and small streets, a small mall, and spas for Hollywood over-weights to come for a week or a month to lose the fat and feel like a pampered queen while doing it.

Sambos Restaurant made the best eggs and coffee in town, so I went there a lot.

The first time I laid eyes on grits was at Sambos in the early morning just after dawn. A pile of white, with a dollop of melting sweet butter on the top of it, sat beside two eggs fried so gently that they melted in my mouth.

I didn't know what to do with the grits. They were bland-looking and definitely unappealing.

But the other patrons, I noticed, were eating theirs easily, as if they knew grits were a normal food in Palm Springs, maybe even good for you.

By the time my stay in Palm Springs was over, I ate the Sambos grits with great enthusiasm, even letting the gooey yolk of the eggs run all over the pile of white before I scooped it up on my fork.

I saw an interview later with a sitcom actress who went to a spa in Palm Springs to lose a few pounds, and she said she snuck out at night to head to Sambos to gorge herself on their tender fried eggs and grits. And I thought, yeah, I know what that's all about.

Long Ago Teachers: Field Trip

I had a really sweet teacher for grades one, two, and three.

She had to put up with a few bad boys who probably ended up in juvenile detention by the time they were eight, and the federal penitentiary the second they turned eighteen.

Who could take a class of kids anywhere when you had even one nasty little boy to ruin everything, let alone two or three?

But she really liked the idea of field trips. After all, the small city teachers had field trips for their students, and so did the small towns.

So, my teacher took us to the woods.

Wonderful! My favorite place in the world!

Just down the road a bit, then follow the hot train tracks to a farm, down a lane hill and across a green field, and on and on until she decided that, "here we are, children."

We sat in the woods and ate our sandwiches and drank our warm sodas from the general store. The store owner was given our orders a few days before, so he could be sure and have enough of what we wanted without draining his supply.

I always sat  near my teacher when we ate. She always had a huge, thick sandwich with canned salmon on it, so big she could hardly hold it.

I could never take my eyes off that sandwich.

I figured that a rich person could have a whole can of salmon on one sandwich and not go broke.

I figured that the ultimate, best thing in the world would be to grow up and be rich enough to put the whole can of salmon between two slices of bread, any old day you wanted to.

That was luxury.

To this day, no matter how much money I have had, I have never done that.

And I can't figure out why.

Because in my "little kid eyes", it's still got to be the best thing in the world.

Cuba In 1981, Log Eight - The Beach Village

I ventured away from the resort one morning after breakfast and out into the tiny village.

Quiet houses lay nestled closely together along sandy streets, beneath which lay pavement that was old.

The houses were cottage-like, small and simple.

In front of them, in sandy yards, women gathered on chairs, to talk and laugh and be okay.

There was a rough sidewalk along the edge of one little street, and what I saw there really took me by surprise.

Little girls, dressed in little cotton dresses and wearing nothing on their brown feet, were playing Hopscotch. I couldn't believe it.

The board was roughly scratched out on the sidewalk with the edge of a stone. It had all the numbers in the squares, scratched there by a childish hand.

They used flat, smooth pebbles to toss onto the squares, in the game.

As I watched, they did exactly what I did, back in the village where I grew up, on the school's front sidewalk, when I played with the other girls at recess.

These girls laughed, and cheered each other the same way we had, back in the 50's.

They took shy peeks at me, and because I adore children and love their games, I asked in English if I could try.

Because they didn't understand, I gestured. That they got.

A girl handed me her game piece stone, and grinned up at me. The others gathered around giggling and whispering and making me laugh.

Across the street, a group of mothers watched, poking each other and smiling.

I tossed the stone way up the board, and saw it land right where I wanted. Then I started to hop along the board the way I remembered.

They clapped and laughed, and when I reached the end, they cheered.

I had more fun in that moment than I did during my entire stay in Cuba.

The mothers were applauding across the street, and I swear I blushed with joy.

I knew "gracias" and so I said it.

And that got more applause.

I didn't want to leave, but I'd wandered for an hour or so already, and no one knew where I was, so I said goodbye and left.

It makes me smile just to write this story, to remember those little girls and their cotton dresses and their mothers, but mostly I remember their happy spirits and the simple things they did to get them.

Cuba In 1981, Log Seven - The Beach

The bus, with the Canadian tourists and a Cuban loaf of bread, left Havana and took us on an hour ride through some of the most luscious countryside I have ever seen.

So green, so rolling, so perfect.

Miles and miles of tropical trees, flowers, vines, and grasses, farmland, and horses.

We were headed to a beach, an isolated area with a resort on white sand and a tiny village nestled behind it.

The resort had a three-story building, an old building with old wooden architecture, where quaint tiny rooms were centered around a courtyard. It reminded me of an old Clark Gable movie in black-and-white I saw years ago, and wish I could see again.

I was not fortunate enough to have a room in this building.

Across an expanse of sand and a stone path, beyond many trees, another newer building stood on four floors. As if to make up for being shunted here, I was given an entire apartment on the third floor, the entire third floor.

There was a living-room, a kitchen, and many bedrooms. But just one bathroom. Now that wouldn't have mattered, except for the fact that some men had the other bedrooms, men who spoke an unrecognizable language. Men who used the bathroom.

For some reason, they remained mysterious to me, because they came and went only during the night. I rarely saw or heard them for the entire week I was there.

Facing the beach, a large balcony with a scant railing was bliss in the heat of the day and the late cool evenings.

Meals were in a dining-room on the main floor of the old building. It had a massive patio facing the beach, with walls surrounding it and stone steps leading off it.

The beach was beautiful. The water was warm and clean. The weather was constantly perfect.

There was no entertainment. None was needed. We just lived. We visited, made friends, walked, slept on the afternoon sand, looked for treasures, and read books during drowsy evenings.

It was peaceful and friendly, just the way you'd want a country, that welcomes you as a tourist, to be.

Mediterranean Cruise, Log Eight

Our ship left Naples and moved north along the Italian coast to dock at Civitavecchia, beyond the city of Rome.

I had noticed at Pompeii, a man from our cruise, looking pale-skinned and extremely ill, and when someone asked him what was wrong, he said he was awfully sick but refused to miss seeing Pompeii, it meant so much to him.

Before we reached Civitavecchia, I became extremely ill too, and I knew that I had what that man had, even though I had been nowhere near him.

Half of the ship's passengers became sick at the same time. It hit fast and powerful.

The English doctor, who was young, male, blond, and handsome, loved to drink, so I refused to see him. The steward, on our state deck, ushered in a female doctor who was run ragged seeing so many people day and night, giving shots to put them back on their feet.

The buses left, for the tour of Rome, the pier of Civitavecchia without me on one of them.

I did not see Rome! I was so looking forward to the ruins and watching my high school history come alive. That made me sad.

I slept for two days and couldn't get better, so the flush-faced Englishman was brought in by my steward and I got a second dose of medicine.

By the time I could stand, the ship had sailed north past the island of Corsica, through the Tuscan Arch and into the Ligurian Sea, and had docked in Nice, France.

Here, I missed the evening bus ride to Monaco, up winding mountain roads in the treacherous dark, the tour of the world-famous casino in all its opulence and grandeur, where only the super rich came to gamble.

By the time I could once again be a fairly normal passenger, the others had all recovered, so when I quietly walked into the dining room, I heard cheers and applause of welcome, because I was the last one to get better. Food tasted good again.

By then, we were sailing across the Mediterranean Sea, east towards Majorca, an island tucked between the two small islands of Minorca and Ibiza, a vacation spot for the British back then.

The ship tucked in at Palma, a beautiful city on a wide, curving bay of water. We went to a nightclub, a huge theater of Spanish entertainment on stage. It was packed and exciting and became my last great memory of my cruise.

Then the long cruise back to Malaga and the dead hills that surrounded the airport, and it was over.

Our plane flew in from Toronto and was serviced without its engines being shut down. We boarded and went home, back across the Atlantic Ocean and the east coast of Canada, and back to reality.

Mediterranean Cruise, Log Seven

Our ship sailed from Palermo, Sicily northwards to Naples, Italy. Seagulls flew overhead, calling to each other, swooping across the ship, hoping for tidbits tossed into the air.

The Tyrrhenian Sea was beautiful and exotic, every single day I was on it.

In Naples, we took a bus through the countryside, on roads whose edges were piled with black lava rock, until we reached Pompeii, the old city that was buried a long time ago in volcanic ash, cinders, and stones when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79. Molten lava did not cover Pompeii, but poisonous gas did.

Archeologists, while digging to uncover the city of 20,000 people, found empty shells, hollowed-out molds of people, which they filled by pouring plaster into them. I saw many of these forms at Pompeii, even ones of dogs, and they were all a terrible sight.

There were acres and acres of excavated city that we walked through.  Stone sidewalks ran along lava-paved streets. Large stepping stones allowed the citizens to cross the streets without soiling their shoes and clothes in the refuse in the streets left by horses.

Laid-open buildings showed plumbing running up the walls, a surprise to us who believed that ancient times didn't have such amenities.

There were tall, carved columns standing, and houses and statues, and doors covered in colorful glass tiles, as beautiful then as they must have been in the original days.

So many things were made of stone, such as high walls and buildings. There were bronze sculptures and marble columns standing beside nothing.

Vesuvius, in violently erupting, destroyed the nearby cities of Stabiae and Herculaneum as well as Pompeii, changing the makeup of the region forever, eliminating all that it was.

In the heat of the sun, over grass and dirt and ruins, it was easy to picture myself in a white robe and sandals, living in Pompeii when it was a thriving city of wealth, merchants, and manufacturers.

It was very quiet there. Tourists were awed by what they saw and believed.

Massive temples rose above the ground and stood majestically, facing the sun.

And in the distance, the enemy, the cause of death and destruction.

Mount Vesuvius, bold and cold and undisturbed.

Less than a mile away.

Awesome.

How A Stretch Limo Is Made

How A Stretch Limo Is Made

What Is A Baby Boom?

It's a boom in babies after World War II. An explosion of babies in the US and Canada after the two big explosions in Japan.

Baby Boomers is what you call the product of the explosion.

Kind of weird.

Home School aka Home Education

I got the concept before we even had a baby to adopt, the idea that educating my own children would be a good route to take.

I knew what I was going to do because I am a trained teacher, trained the old way at a Teacher's College for two years back in the `60s.

I also knew about all the flak I'd get from my family and my friends who didn't believe in it, but what really caught me by surprise was the ugliness from complete strangers.

I have always believed that people should mind their own business, and have always known that they rarely do, but still. My motto is: if I don't tell you how to raise your kids, then don't tell me how to raise mine.

Some examples of remarks are:

"Why don't you put those kids in a real school where they belong?"

"They'll never be able to cope in the real world."

"Give them up to strangers like the rest of us do in the real world."

"The real world" is that often ugly place where children are ignored, discouraged, pushed beyond their emotional capabilities at having to deal with nasty adults and nasty children, but sometimes they'll come away well-educated and well-adjusted, if they're lucky.

No thank you. These are my children, not the system's children, and they do so much better in the "real world" because they have spent their entire young lives growing, experiencing, learning, copying, and maturing in a safe and loving environment.

They therefore are capable of recognizing right and wrong, stupid and clever, from a balanced point of view. They are not unduly influenced by the irrational and irresponsible followers of society.

They think for themselves and they do it well.

Therefore, I would hope and expect them to not only survive in the real world, but to prosper and succeed and maybe even lead.

They are happy and peaceful. So am I.

And these qualities are not exclusive. Most home-educated children turn out to be well-adjusted, capable adults, unless their education experience is under par and their parental guidance is as well.

If you as parents know what you're doing and are capable, go ahead and home-school your precious children. I guarantee you won't regret it. And generally, neither will they.

The US Of A, Chapter Six: Hollywood

Number one on the list. Absolutely, of course.

Bus tours in Beverly Hills, sweet, sweet houses of actors and actresses back in 1975.

Rodeo Drive, beautiful shops, ultra-expensive apparel and perfumes, mostly for women.

Walk of the Stars, those stars sunk into the sidewalk named to the actors and actresses, honored for their work and their success. Some had their footprints and hand prints sunk into the cement beside the star and name.

Best though was deciding which movie studio to tour, which took hours to do. I chose Universal.

Trams and guides took over. No cars were allowed once inside the gates. I saw how movies were made, shown their secrets and tricks, so unbelievably simple some of them were, when explained.

Acres of windowless buildings held television "sets" for situation comedies broadcast to the countries.

Revolving stages were living-rooms, kitchens, and any other rooms used in the taping that were set up as homes. All around the curved front of the stages, seats, in tiers and rows, held audiences for live tapings at night.

Free tickets to be a part of the tapings were offered by the guides.

The studio provided a wonderful insight and view into the magic of Hollywood, and memories of a monster with a stake through its neck boarding a tram to scare whoever wasn't aware that it was there, memories of a shark rising up out of water, blood dripping from its gaping jaws, of a tram whose lower half disappeared into the water and came up on the other side, keeping you dry and safe, of rushing water suddenly pouring down a gulch, threatening to drown the people in the tram.

Memories of Hollywood, wondering if you'd missed your calling to be a director, a set decorator, or a make-up artist or a wardrobe artist, whenever you thought of that day back then, in California where the sun shone and the air was clean in 1975.

The US Of A, Chapter Five: Coast Ranges

I saw the tallest trees in the world, California's redwood, so tall that it hurt to stand beneath one and look up to see its peak. And the giant sequoia trees are so wide they put a road through one and didn't even kill the tree doing it.

Then south along the coast, driving highway 101, was so scary in places that I'd wished I could get off and head inland, but I couldn't. There were no roads off.

It is a fabulous rugged coastline of mountains and valleys and seals and their cubs sunning along tiny patches of beach sand, wild and free.

There were dead hills and green hills and miles of the highway visible up ahead, winding, curving and swooping down and climbing back up, bridges and mist and such a massiveness of land and sea that no words can describe the beauty and awesomeness of this part of California's coastline.

I vowed never to drive that highway again, because just remembering to breathe was too hard.

The road curved in to San Luis Obispo, where near there, the land swept up high, so high it seemed to rest in clouds, and way up there sat the Hearst castle, glorious and rich, screaming of the era of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and such opulence as ancient works of art, even a Roman temple.

Los Angeles loomed ahead, waiting to show off all it had to offer to any tourist willing to take the time to explore it.

Squirrel Girl

An excerpt from "Patches".

She is there.
Lens pointed and still,
135 mm, focused on the cement steps.
Blue shorts, slouched back in a
foreign t-shirt,
bare skin quivering in anticipation

They always come.
The one called Stumpy,
and the tiny one who forgot to grow.
Dinky.
She named them.

Stumpy was a baby when she first saw her
cowering in fear and pain,
up by the house in the sunshine,
her tail cut off and a front paw bleeding.
She threw her paws over her eyes.
If I can't see you, you can't see me.

And all the compassion in the girl's heart
couldn't take away the baby's fear.
She knelt to whisper to it,
but it turned and scampered away,
leaving behind bloody stains, from the missing tail,
on the patio

The other squirrel she called Dinky,
 because it was deformed,
with awkward legs and a twisted body,
and some days the baby thing could
barely walk.

It hobbled to the front steps, thin and haggard,
ragged fur and twitching ears,
to nibble the seed and the dried corn
and the acorns the girl set out for it.

Weeks of watching and feeding,
camera waiting,
sitting cross-legged on the doorstep.

Dinky filled out in time.
Grew a bit.
Has an unbearably sweet head now
and eyes that watch the lens,
the friendly lens and the black hair behind it.

Stumpy is assertive,
has escaped the clutches of the hawk,
the teeth of a barking dog.
She is fat and determined
and sits and stares into the windows from
atop the wooden fence.

Dinky is happy,
unafraid -
loves the camera.
A Canon T2i.
Loves the tiny seeds in his paws
and the crisp sunflower pods
and the patterns of acorns
laid out in front of him.

He is not afraid of Stumpy.
He is not fat like Stumpy.
He is sweet, like the girl
who cares for him.

Stumpy eyes the tiny enemy,
chases him off, an inch or two.
Turns her back on the lens
then pretends not to notice
the enemy eating right beside her again.

Click and whir.
Focus and still.
A lifetime, a gallery,
for the Squirrel Girl.