Scout Moves

Husband and I are back from Alaska, but I personally haven't quite recovered from the trip. Jet lag has kept me up late at night and had me sleeping in, and I'm eager for my internal clock to adjust back to eastern time. At least the laundry is done, the cats are home where they belong, and I made dinner last night for the first time in two-and-half weeks. It has been nice having other people do that for a while. For me, vacation means having someone else cook for me. It's a treat. So, Alaska. Here's how the trip went. We flew to San Francisco and spent a couple of days with No. 1 and her boyfriend. Then we boarded the ship, the Sea Princess, and sailed on a sunny day on the Bay, which is a pretty rare occurrence. Our state room was at the very back of the ship, and this is the view from our balcony: We spent the first two days at sea—there were lectures by a geologist who talked about the details of Alaska (gold mining, glaciers, history), movies, music, food, reading,...

In today's edition of Small Town Newspaper : Tomorrow is World Alzheimer’s Day. With dozens of nations participating, it will be a global event intended to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and to remind policy makers around the world of the serious impact the disease will have as the population ages. In France, an “Alzheimer’s Train” will tour the country; in Australia, general practitioners will participate in training workshops; and in Iran, schools and cultural centers will hold seminars. In the United States, the Alzheimer’s Association has sponsored Breakthrough Riders, a team of bicyclists traveling from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. They have been collecting signatures of people who want Congress to make Alzheimer’s a national priority, and tomorrow they will arrive at Capitol Hill armed with nearly 100,000 signatures calling for “yes” votes for the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act. This event is global because this disease is global, and it will only grow in its thre...

In today's edition of Small Town Newspaper: Lady Bird Johnson once said, “While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because our neighbors are so many.” Decades later, I have harbored a general sense that despite her admonition, we have lost a spirit of neighborliness all together, regardless of our growing numbers. I read articles about how we have become a nation plagued by loneliness, even within families, as we live more and more isolated from the larger group. We build houses on the biggest lots we can afford, designing them without the front porches that once made neighbors accessible to each other, and sealing them off with large garage doors that close out the world at the push of a button. We spend more and more time on the Internet or watching television and less and less time interacting with others. I hear about increasing cases of road rage and listen to people complain about the loss of...

In today's edition of Small Town Newspaper : Over the summer, while excavating the site of the future World Trade Center, workers unearthed a rare find, remnants of an 18th-century ship buried 30 feet below street level. It isn’t unusual to find odds and ends when digging down deep in New York because all kinds of rubble was used as landfill in the early 1800s, but this wasn’t just scrap wood. It was a ship, not quite whole but enough to warrant rescuing. After a few pain-staking weeks of careful removal, the ship was taken to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory for further investigation. Historians and archaeologists are now hard at work preserving the remains of the ship and studying it for clues about the people who made it and the society in which they lived. We already know quite a bit about life in 18th-century America as the literate people of the day were hardly shy about writing down their thoughts and documenting their activities, but archaeologists point ...

I have just finished reading a book, The Blessings of the Animals by Katrina Kittle. Interesting story about how I came to have the book: In July, I posted a newspaper column about To Kill A Mockingbird to the Open Salon blog where I keep my columns, and it was selected as an editor's pick and posted on the front page of the site. A kind-hearted publicity manager at HarperCollins read the column, liked it, and wrote to ask if he could send a new novel to me just because. Of course he could. As I understand it, Kittle wrote the novel while living out her own low-budget State-side version of Eat, Pray, Love, although the plot line is not autobiographical and isn't similar to that story. This book is about Cami Anderson, a wife, mother and veterinarian with a farm where she keeps a menagerie of animals. Her husband, Bobby, is a chef with a restaurant and is a depressed and sulky sort of man whom she has tip-toed around for most of their married life, lest he fly off the handle ...

Yes, I know I went to Romania this summer on a trip of a lifetime, except that I intend to repeat that trip next summer, but Husband and I are heading out. He has been working long, hard days all year long and has been itching for a vacation, so when I got back from my service trip, we planned a vacation trip, one where you just sit if you want and read if you want and sip martinis if you want and do absolutely nothing if you want. People make the beds and cook the food and sing and dance before your very eyes. Sounds like a cruise, right? Well, a cruise it is. We're going on an Alaskan cruise, leaving San Francisco next Thursday and sailing north for a 10-day trip. We'll be traveling on the Princess Line Sea Princess, with four days at sea and five stops. We'll visit Ketchikan, Juneau, Haines, Victoria, BC, and a stop with glaciers, as I understand. We have taken several cruises, and I've learned something about the excursions they offer—you don't have to do them. ...