New Orleans. March, 1991

Happy birthday to my best and oldest (in a good way) friend, Nick. We’ve been pals since we met at our high school’s 1962 auditions for Macbeth, an auspicious beginning. Here we are almost 30 years later in pre-Katrina New Orleans. Nick had been teaching in nearby Jackson, Mississippi, and I’d always wanted to visit NOLA, so we met up there. (Actually we met up at lunchtime in a popular little restaurant run by some local newcomer named Emeril, who sat us at the bar that overlooked the kitchen; he put plates in front of us and kept giving us little tastings of things he was cooking for others. Why the special treatment? I suspect because our luncheon companion was a woman, well, in his good graces at the time.) We had a great long weekend, visiting the Irish Channel, the Garden District, the French Quarter, of course, and every single Tennessee Williams reference point I could think of. We even went to a gospel concert at Tulane and out for soul food afterwards with some local friends of friends. Through many years, many trips, our friendship endures and strengthens. And, on this, my favorite of days, Nick becomes two years older than I am...at least until my own birthday three months from now.

Barcelona. November, 2010

You may have noticed that most of my Barcelona photos are of food. Not an accident. There were just so many things we needed to try. And to photograph. Here, a tapas afterthought. One of many during our time in the Catalan capital. Typically, we’d make our initial selection of tapas for lunch...then, having polished them off, we’d wonder if maybe we should have a little something more. Instead of dessert. In this case, how could we leave the cozy El Xampanyet without trying the fabled Spanish ham? And that little item on the right is a slice of rolled-up omelette wrapped around some cheese and hot pepper condiment. Mmmm. ¿Gracias por nuestra visita? De nada.

Somewhere in Italy. October, 1986

I love seeing movie posters in Italy. Especially if they feature the Italian translations of English titles. My all-time favorite was one I saw as I walked aimlessly through the streets of Reggia Calabria: an announcement for the American Danny DeVito vehicle, Getta la Mama dal Treno. And each time I’ve been to Rome, the 1959 Monroe-Curtis-Lemmon film A Qualcuno Piace Caldo seems to be playing somewhere. I love that film, too, but even now, many decades later, the Italian filmgoing audiences won’t let it go. Of course, like Film Sexy Movie here, there are always provocatively named adult flicks showing somewhere, their titles oddly always in English. I remember walking through the architecturally beautiful while marble arcades of the Piazza dei Signori in Vicenza one afternoon and seeing posted a porno film (just steps from the sedate Basilica Palladiana) with the succinct and efficient simple title, F*ck Me (asterisk mine.) Some, it seems, like it very hot.

Waltham, MA. September, 2010

Bread, bread and more bread. It seems like I’ll use any excuse to try yet another kind. This time, a trip to Rincon Guatemalteco, a panaderia in nearby Waltham. The señoras were a lot of fun and kind enough to practice my Spanish with me as they showed us the many different kinds of pan and pan dulce they make there, including one ring-like confection that was a vivid red and somewhat off-putting. In the end, I settled on some of their wonderful linked-together rolls (top) and two kinds of pan dulce -- a concha (right) and a star-shaped one, whose elusive name I asked for twice and I still didn’t get it. No problem. I’ll just ask on my next visit. Which could be as early as tomorrow. When I left, I thanked them por practicar español conmigo and suggested that maybe I should get a job there. “Detrás” one of them said with only half a smile. “In the back.”

Üsküdar, Istanbul. June, 2007

When you take the ferry from busy Eminonu across the Bosphorus to Üsküdar on the Asian side of the city, this is the beautiful vista that welcomes you. Sunshine on clear water. Few if any tourists. Friendly Istanbul people who greet you with legendary Middle Eastern hospitality undiminished by centuries of demanding foreign vacationers. Just saying. First known as the ancient land of Chrysopolis (City of Gold), perhaps because of its wealth, or because the setting sun bathes it in such beautiful light -- there is rarely only one backstory to legends in these parts. Today, it’s Istanbul’s oldest established suburb with an enviable slower pace than that found on the European side. The waterfront boasts many cafes and many more fishermen (seen lined up toward the right.) More than 180 mosques here, including two waterside buildings by the famous Sinan that flank the ferry port. The famous Maiden’s Tower on a small island offshore was once used as a Bosphorus tollbooth, now it’s an upscale restaurant. And this is where Florence Nightingale served during the Crimean War. But all that aside, it’s also just a beautiful place to walk around quietly, to take in the uncrowded welcoming beauty.

Tucson. April, 2010

“Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above...don’t fence me in.” Cole Porter wrote that song for Roy Rogers (who, we later learned, was an ultraconservative of the most extreme and self-repressive, fenced-in kind), but he may as well have been writing about any number of natives of Tucson, my favorite town in the American Southwest. I’ve always sensed a kind of lawless spirit there that informs everything from driving style to personal expression to sexual identity and beyond. You can get away with so much more in Tucson than you can in other places. For example, artists and musicians flourish there, unbound by conventions imposed elsewhere. Just take a look at this inspired fence on University Blvd. that I passed not long ago on my traditional walk from A Mountain to the galleries at the U of A and back. Bed springs. Out in the elements. Rusting beautifully. Welcoming cactus behind, entwining vines throughout. So wonderful. So fitting. So Tucson.

Watertown, MA. September, 2010

September 28, 2010. The 2010 MacArthur Fellows were announced today, the “genius” awards for exceptional, non-traditional-thinking individuals, mostly. One such recipient, theater director and actor David Cromer, who, in a New York Times profile earlier in the year, observed, “My mother’s been saying it to me since I was a child, and it remains true to this day: if I do not want to do something, I will not do it. There is no force on earth that can make me. I never did my homework, ever. I would say I was a very unpopular kid. I didn’t have a lot of friends. In high school somehow I found like-minded people, sort of interested in the arts, sort of enlightened nerds, and I found living in that community to be the most interesting thing.” Interesting, indeed. And now award-winning. I wonder who lives in this non-traditional different-drummer “garden” apartment seen here. I pass this building almost every day and smile when I think of the road less traveled by, its differences, its blessings.