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Where Smokey Bear Is King

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Smokey Bear Museum Capitan

Smokey Bear Museum Capitan

Everybody knows the Smokey Bear of advertising, but do you know there was a real living Smokey Bear.According to Wikipedia:

The living symbol of Smokey Bear was an American black bear three-month-old cub who in the spring of 1950 was caught in the Capitan Gap fire, a wildfire that burned 17,000 acres (69 km2) in the Lincoln National Forest, in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico. Smokey had climbed a tree to escape the blaze, but his paws and hind legs had been burned. According to some stories, he was rescued by a game warden after the fire, but according to the New Mexico State Forestry Division, it was actually a group of soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas, who had come to help fight the fire, that discovered the bear cub and brought him back to the camp.

Originally called Hotfoot Teddy, his name was changed to Smokey and he became a living symbol, ensconced at the National Zoo in Washington until his death in 1976. His remains were returned to Capitan, New Mexico, where there was a museum and a funerary monument in his honor.

The museum is still there, as well as a Smokey Bear Motel and a Smokey Bear Restaurant. We visited in 2003, and plan to drop in again to pay our homage to Smokey. Martine has a special devotion to Smokey. She has a special 50th anniversary stuffed Smokey Bear, as well as a zipper pull. Our refrigerator has two Smokey Bear magnets.

This Sign Appears All Over the Southwest

This Warning Sign Appears All Over the Southwest

There is even an Idaho company called Woodland Enterprises, which Martine has visited and which sells Smokey Bear (and Woodsy Owl) memorabilia. We shop there annually for gifts.

So Capitan, New Mexico, you can expect us some time this summer.

Dreaming of … London?

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50327110. Tulum, QRoo.- Los voladores de Papantla y los Guerreros Mayas, dan la bienvenida a los más de dos mil turistas locales, nacionales y extranjeros, que día a día visitan la zona arqueológica, que es de un kilómetro, donde algunos prefirieren hacerlo caminando o existe a su disposición un pequeño transporte en forma de tren. NOTIMEX/FOTO/FRANCISCO GÁLVEZ/COR/ACE/

Totonac Voladores at El Tajin

Last night I had particularly vivid dreams. Was it because I had eaten watermelon before going to bed? If so, I might be in for more dreams tonight.

Martine and I were in London at a large museum. I noticed that a number of English dressed in red “Beefeater” costumes were flying in the air by their feet just like the Totonac voladores at the ruins of El Tajin in Mexico’s State of Veracruz. I mentioned to Martine that it must be a traditional English Maypole ceremony—though, God knows, the real Maypole does not involve anything quite so spectacular.

At the same time, I noticed that several large buildings in London were aflame. Since the fires were several blocks away, I didn’t particularly care. I was slightly miffed that Martine, as usual, was being too slow and meticulous about seeing all the exhibits. I, on the other hand, wanted to catch a particular train to the north.

Somewhere along the line, my desire to go was also to visit a particular bookstore. At that point, I woke up.

 

 

A Weekend With Dan

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My Brother Dan in the Thousand Palms Oasis

My Brother Dan at the Thousand Palms Oasis

I will be taking the next three days off from posting on this website. Tomorrow morning, I will pick up a rental car and start heading for Palm Desert to spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law. Among other things, I need to coordinate with Dan about our upcoming trip to Ecuador.

Unfortunately, Martine will not be coming with me—at her request. Not only does she hate the desert after spending two years working at the Twentynine Palms Marine Combat Center, but she is now on a super-strict diet regimen called FODMAP.  That’s short for Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols. (You’ll need Adobe Acrobat to be able to read this file.)

Two weeks ago, she finally saw a gastroenterologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and was told to avoid onions, garlic, and virtually all foods that have vowels in their names. She has done a fair job of adhering to it, and she has been free of abdominal pain and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) during that time. I wish her luck, and I very much want one day to travel with her again.

If I have the time, I hope to have some new desert photos to share with you.

 

The Cook

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I Do All the Cooking at Home

I Do All the Cooking at Home

At some point during the 1960s, I discovered that eating out at restaurants all the time was going to:

  1. Eat into my finances
  2. Deprive me of the fruits and vegetables I needed to survive and
  3. Make me tired of eating out all the time

I knew what good food was because I was raised on my Mom’s Hungarian home cooking, supplemented by my great grandmother Lidia’s special dishes. But I made the mistake of never learning from them, though I did help my Mom from time to time, mostly stirring the pot so the food would not burn.

My first experiments were pretty bad: They usually had too many spices (more or less randomly chosen) and relied excessively on rice and pasta as the carbohydrate base. Also I used way too much ground beef, for which I now substitute lean ground turkey.

When Martine came to live with me in the early 1990s, I also had to learn to cook to please her. This is not easy. Martine cannot eat spicy food, and there are too many ingredients that she flat-out doesn’t like. Also, as she suffers from recurring bouts of irritable bowel syndrome, I have to be able to turn on a dime and cook something especially bland at a moment’s notice. This week, for example, despite the heat and humidity, I made a pot of vegetable soup.

Tonight, I plan to cook Ree Drummond’s spaghetti with artichoke hearts and tomatoes. I like her recipes because they are well conceived, simple, and lavishly illustrated. Her cooking column is called “The Pioneer Woman.” I haven’t found a clinker yet in the lot.

Why do I do all the cooking? Well, for one thing, Martine is notably maladroit at cooking; and her mother prepared the most vile dishes I have ever eaten. (Her vegetables were greasy!) Secondly, I like to cook. It makes me feel good about myself. Every once in a while I experiment with a new recipe that I have to throw out, but essentially I have a fairly decent repertoire of healthy dishes that I can rely on to see us through.

I’ve cooked the spaghetti with artichoke hearts and tomatoes two or three times before with good results. I just have to make sure the tomatoes are chopped up fine because big pieces of tomato are one of Martine’s bête noires.

Back from Mexico Lindo

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At Cabo’s El Arco

At Cabo’s El Arco

We just returned from Cabo San Lucas a few hours ago. It was everything I hoped it would be: I got a good rest just before the rigors of another tax season. For Martine, it was not so good. She was so frightened of getting traveler’s diarrhea that she was overcareful of what she ate and drank. Also, her problems with sleep came down to Mexico as part of her luggage. I tried my best, but some other solution will have to be found for her. I suspect the ultimate solution for her as-yet nameless ailment will be either chiropractic of acupuncture. AMA-style medicine just gets her into trouble with bad prescription drug reactions. Getting her to agree to either will take some doing.

Fortunately, we stayed at a nice resort on Solmar Beach called the Playa Grande Resort & Spa. We ate most of our meals there, making occasional forays into town to have great seafood dishes for which Cabo, as a fishing town, is famous.

“Are You Comfortable in Bed?”

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I’m More Comfortable Than HE Is, As I Don’t Sleep on Rocks

I’m More Comfortable Than HE Is, As I Don’t Sleep on Rocks

In my last batch of spam e-mail, I got one entitled “Are You Comfortable in Bed?” As my answer is yes, I did not see fit to open the e-mail, which probably sold vigara [sic] or cialas [sic] or something like that. Thankfully, I am not suffering from electoral dysfunction. Which is to say, I usually vote Democratic.

Getting eight hours of sleep a night is important to me. That is challenged by my massive intake of iced Baruti Assam tea this time of year, but I usually manage to sink back into sleep quickly after draining my lizard. Occasionally Martine and I make like buzz saws, but curiously it doesn’t bother us much. I actually feel reassured that Martine is asleep next to me; and she graciously refrains from kicking me when I start sawing wood.

Every once in a while, I have a difficult time dropping off to sleep because my mind is racing in an infinite loop. I find that the only way to deal with that is to get up and either a bit of a TV movie (the only time I watch TV) or read a book. That somehow closes the infinite loop and allows me to doze. The one thing that does not work in that case is to twist and turn for hours. Better not to even try!

I am appalled when I hear of people getting by on five or fewer hours a night. Sometimes Martine can’t sleep because of her back pain. Frequently she wakes at five in the morning and twists and turns until morning light (or later).

We have an extra firm mattress which helps Martine somewhat. And our living room sofa is similarly firm. These things help (and they don’t bother me at all), but I would be happier if Martine’s back pain abated to the point that she could accompany me on my travels. It’s a lot more fun having her with me.

With Martine at Huntington

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My First REAL Weekend After Tax Season

My First REAL Weekend After Tax Season

After the beginning of February, Martine and I really didn’t go places. We pretty much stayed at home, me to psychologically prep myself for those horrible Monday mornings in tax season, after having worked both Saturday and Sunday, Martine to endure. Then, no sooner did tax season end than I found myself in the emergency room at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital with an Addisonian Crisis. This weekend, we finally went somewhere, to the Huntington Gardens and Museum, of which we are members.

It’s a good thing I wore my hiking shoes, because we put in several miles walking through the Chinese and Japanese Gardens, not to mention the herb and cactus garden. And in between, we saw the rose garden and relaxed by the lily ponds, looking at ducks and turtles.

Afterwards, I took Martine to her favorite restaurant in Southern California, Sevan Chicken in Glendale at the corner of Glenoaks and Kensington. It’s not particularly famous, but it has the best Armenian rotisserie chicken around, beating even Zankou Chicken for the honors.

Tomorrow, Martine travels to Sacramento for a few days to see her dentist and visit the grave of her mother and brother. I wanted to make sure she had her favorite dark meat rotisserie chicken before setting out.

 

 

Bad Luck With Restaurants

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Sambar and Idlis

Sambar and Idlis

Los Angeles has its very own India community in Artesia, just off the Pioneer Blvd. exit on he 91 Freeway. Martine and I decided to eat lunch there and shop at the nearby Stater Brothers Supermarket. So we went to Woodlands Restaurant, which specializes in South Indian (or, to be even more specific, Keralan) cuisine. I knew I was taking a chance with Martine, because she prefers standard North Indian cuisine. While I was having a great meal with sambar (a kind of spicy vegetarian soup) and idlis (little rice “flying saucers”) and a tasty glass of salt lassi, Martine was trying all the dishes that worked for her at her favorite North Indian restaurants. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for her here: the chicken was cold, the rice pudding was hot and watery, and so on and so forth.

Add to that the fact that, not being a cook and having any real food sense, Martine usually has difficulties in the dishes she selects at restaurants. At any given restaurant—and only if she were well familiar with it—she will typically select only one, or at the most two, dishes. Since I have more food smarts, I can usually please myself at places she winds up hating. It’s a pity, because I would like to go back to Woodlands one of these days to try their uppamav, a delightful South Indian dish made with Cream of Wheat!

 

Re-Orienting Myself to Peru

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Spanish Colonial Architecture in Peru

Spanish Colonial Architecture in Lima, Peru

Because I place such a high value on traveling with Martine, I thought nothing last December of ditching my plans in an instant to visit Peru so that we could go to France and Italy. At that point, nothing was firm yet—I planned to go in September or October. (I frequently plan in advance by so many months that all my friends think that I have already gone and returned.) But continuing problems with her back, especially where soft beds are concerned, induced her to cancel the European trip.

There is never any guarantee when staying at strange hotels that your bed will be firm or mushy. Fortunately, I can tolerate a fairly wide range; but Martine’s range of acceptability is much narrower. It’s a pity, because her half-sister Madeleine in St-Lô (near the D-Day Beaches of Normandie)  is ailing and cannot travel herself.

In the meantime, I am resuming my Peru reading program, which consists primarily of:

  • Novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru’s only Nobel Prize winner in literature
  • Novels and poems by other Peruvian literary notables, such as César Vallejo
  • Histories of the Spanish conquest of the Incas
  • Other Peruvian histories on subjects including the War of the Pacific, which Peru lost to Chile in the late 19th century
  • A biography of Simon Bolivar and possibly José de San Martín, the two principal liberators of South America

I don’t know how much I can read before the departure date, which has not  been set yet, but I will do my best.

All this preparation is, for me, a kind of courtesy. I do not believe in visiting another country without knowing enough of its language, culture and history to be conversant with the locals. That has helped me considerably in Argentina and Iceland. Plus, it is a pure pleasure for me to prepare a trip far enough in advance—especially during tax season, when there is little else to forward to. I have little truck with those travelers who believe in being “spontaneous” at the cost of making their fellow Americans look like dunces.

Traveling Alone

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It Looks As If I’ll Be on My Own

It Looks As If I’ll Be on My Own

Martine and I had decided that, if she felt well enough to travel, we’d go together to France and Italy. If she felt unable to travel, I would go by myself to Peru and possibly Bolivia. At the end of January, we took a little test trip to the Anza-Borrego Desert in San Diego County. Although we had a firm bed, it wasn’t firm enough for Martine’s back. Fortunately, we had an air mattress that was firmer, so Martine slept on the floor. This option would not work as well for overseas travel, as both of us travel light.

On the plus side, Martine is getting better slowly; but she still depends heavily on a super firm couch and a super firm mattress for her comfort. Without these, she would be awake most of the night for all the days of our trip. Understandably, under those circumstances she would prefer to remain behind in Los Angeles.

I, on the other hand, have this great yearning for travel. The pity of it is, I will be deprived of my favorite traveling companion. I am used to this, as I have been alone in Iceland twice (2001 and 2013) and in Argentina once (2006). We will probably travel together to Southern Arizona by car—with the firm air mattress—so that Martine doesn’t get a case of cabin fever.

In the meantime, I am continuing my Peru reading program in preparation for a three week vacation there in September and October. As Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem, “The Winners”:

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Most memorably, in Josef von Sternberg’s film Morocco (1930), Marlene Dietrich, writes these lines with her lipstick on a hotel room mirror before ditching Adolphe Menjou.

So I will travel faster, but I’d rather not be alone.