Pinar del Río, Cuba. February, 2012

Honest food. That’s pretty much what I look for both home and away. At home, I’m much more likely to find it at the wealth of ethnic restaurants that abound in Boston and Cambridge. And away, well, I try to avoid the tourist restaurants and look for the places where the natives eat. In Cuba, that’s somewhat difficult. Especially for an American. To travel legally in Cuba, I pretty much had to stick with my sanctioned tour group, eating planned meals at scheduled stops and attractions. Not to worry. Here in the middle of a rainforest northwest of Havana, we were served platters of baked chicken, roast pork, yuca and -- surprise! -- beans and rice. Always some salad. Always some bread. Always good. (And always a mojito, whether we wanted it or not.) Honest food.

Watertown, MA. July, 2012

Bread pudding. Lemon. With a meringue topping. This was my favorite thing that my mother would make when I was a child. I miss it. I miss her. And I wish she had given me the recipe that I asked for countless times. Finding it mysteriously on the day of her funeral, I tried to make it a few times, always with unsatisfactory results. Fortunately my good friend Nick is a pastry chef and he was able to “refine” the recipe so that even a child could make it, as they say. (In fact, he’s including it in his latest book, Nick Malgieri’s Bread, out next month from Kyle Books.) Here’s my recent take on Nick’s take on my mother’s recipe (which, as it turns out, she must have found in an early Joy of Cooking.) Lemony, tart and sweet, it still brings back childhood memories and big smiles.

Gloucester, MA. September, 2012

In addition to pals my own age, I have a number of friends in their 20s and 30s. And one of the pleasures of their company is to observe how they approach social situations differently from my contemporaries. For example, some seem to be more casual about RSVPs, some about thank-you notes. An age/cultural thing? But what amuses me most is their seeming dependence on hand-held devices -- iPhones, iPods, iPads, etc. At our La Noche de San Juan event earlier this summer, six of the nine amigos in attendance were all on their smartphones at one point. With each other, I wondered? Here are Kevin and Rich at our Boat Party this past weekend. Fireworks were blossoming overhead; the boys were captivated by something on their iPad. WTF? When I questioned Kevin afterward, he said, “I was watching the fireworks on YouTube.” Was he kidding? These days, I never know.

Jaimanitas, Habana, Cuba. February, 2012

As I write this, I’m currently reading Tom Miller’s excellent book, Trading with the Enemy. A Yankee Travels Through Castro’s Cuba. Unlike so many other books about the fascinating island, it does not mouth the party line, doled out by publicists and government spokespeople (both American and Cuban.) Instead, Miller traversed the island, meeting the people, living and speaking with them personally and reporting what he learned. Among the many details that resonate so strongly with me, his take on Cuban Spanish, which, he says, “has no vowels and no consonants.” You laugh. My first experience with Cuban Spanish was with the prostitute-neighbor in Almodóvar’s Volver. The letter S vanishes. Vamos becomes vamo, and so on. Add to that a rapid-fire method of speaking and ¡Ay, caramba! On several occasions I asked my new Cuban friends there to “speak to me as if I were a baby.” It worked. Sometimes. (Printed Spanish in Cuba, as in the understandable warning above, follows normal rules. Mercifully.)

Santiago de Compostela, Spain. October, 2009

Wouldn’t you like to hang out in a bar with such an appealing name? This little hole in the wall (literally) off the beaten path in the pilgrim town of Santiago de Compostela was deserted by day, packed to the rafters by night, patrons smoking and singing until the wee hours. Some Spanish bars allow smoking, some not. This one does and proudly announces its status on the door: In this place one can smoke. I wonder if bar owners have to choose which status they want to obtain. And do they decide by their own personal philosophies or by a supposition based on the clientele they want to attract?

Springfield, NJ. Autumn, 1972

My parents used to call me from their New Jersey home every Sunday morning. Just to check in. One Sunday, toward the end of my mother’s life, I wasn’t at home for her call. And I had forgotten that my outgoing answering machine message was my own impression of Maya Angelou reciting William Waring Cuney’s poem, “No Images.” My mother’s understanding of even the most basic technology (like an answering machine) was, to be generous, almost non-existent. So when she heard my performance (“...If she could dance naked under palm trees and see her image in the river,” etc.), she didn’t know what to make of it, and unbeknownst to her, her astonishment was recorded as a message on my machine: “It’s not Sandy,” you hear her say. “It’s some colored woman talking about palm trees.” As things turned out, that was the last time she would hear my voice. And the last time I would hear hers.

Gloucester, MA. September, 2010

The Bose-os! Look at all my Bose-based friends, assembled here at our annual end-of-summer party in Gloucester. There’s Eileen, front and center, just one of our colleagues who’s moved to Arizona (Ted, upper far right, is the other) and won’t be joining us this year, alas. The occasion: Gloucester’s Schooner Festival, every year on Labor Day weekend, the Saturday night of which features a Boat Parade -- G’ster boat owners dress up their craft in costumes, festoon them with lights and zig-zag them through the harbor. Fireworks follow. We’re never sure who (or how many) friends will show up. Somewhere between 15 and 50, the guest list changing every year, but always providing lots of love, lots of laughs.