A Romantic Thought

Scarf', my friend in Greece, has an aunt in her 70s. Even at that age, she still has man trouble.

Her pearl of romantic wisdom?

"It doesn't get any easier as you get older. It just gets weirder."

Monumental Day in Kuwait

Women are voting for the first time in Kuwait. They make up half the electorate.

That's great. Let's not go into the expat vs. citizen thing here; only citizens can vote, and to be a citizen, you pretty much need to be born lucky. But what's important is that women are running for Parliament and going to the polls.

Hope the queues are inside. It's real hot in Kuwait in June.

Publicity Ops

I'm responding to an email from the publicist who will work with me on Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik.

She has her own list of places to contact, and I'm sure it includes all major US travels mags, major newspapers that cover travel books, and literary outlets.

I'm supposed to respond with my own ideas. So far I've mentioned these:

-Heidi MacDonald's The Pulse
-Warren Ellis
-a Uganda monthly magazine called "The Eye" that reviews Uganda-related books
-the Intrepid Travel newsletter
-my local paper (extremely local as the NYTimes seems somewhat ambitious, not to mention I'm sure the publicist knows of its existence)
-the Staten Island Advance (who printed a lovely article on MariesWorldTour.com--I was a cub reporter there when I was 19).
-QE2 and Cunard (it was part of my trip)
-getting an excerpt on Amazon
-getting copies to Australian papers (Peter Moore supplied a great quote for the back cover)
-GoNOMAD.com
-PerceptiveTravel.com
-UK's Wanderlust magazine.

Does anyone have any useful ideas aside from the totally obvious? Of course I'd like to spill the untold backstory to an international audience on Oprah but I think I lost her number.

Hello Balloon?

I liked this shot I took in 2001, because it looked like the elephant was waving to the balloon. But it also reminds me of the Maasai warrior outside my tent at 4:30 a.m. chirping "Hello Balloon?" He was my alarm clock for my balloon ride.

Geburtenkontrolle und Bier

I had a hankering to hear a song I have on an LP, by Two Nice Girls.

My LPs are all in the basement and being lazy, I thought it would only take a minute to find it somewhere in the cyberworld and then my butt would be able to stay put in the chair I work from.

But I got distracted instead by a site that offers lyrics... I almost clicked off when I noticed a button on the bottom of the page.

"Translate this song!"

Funny. Is it really a public service to offer "I spent my last ten dollars on birth control and beer, My life was so much simpler when I was sober and queer" in Chinese? Russian? Japanese? Does it even rhyme in Greek?

Reality Dawns

Life begins at 40.

I've only been 40 for 65 days, but I think I must have missed something important.

Minnie is a Tramp

I worked on a three-part reprint of a Mickey M*use story from the 40s and it was a great read.

In it, Mickey has been out of town for a bit too long, so Minnie takes her revenge by getting a new boyfriend. The new "man" is a rich rat with a fancy car. Minnie prances all over town with him while Mickey is depressed.

Mickey gets a new girlfriend and then Minnie acts like a jealous idiot, being outrageously rude to Mickey's new date and acting like an absolute cow. She encourages her rat boyfriend to make Mickey look stupid in public.

For reasons unclear to me as Minnie is obviously playing a lot of control games and on a power trip, Mickey still wants her back. Lucky for Mickey, the rat-guy turns out to be a rat-bastard. Mickey exposes rat-guy in public as not really being rich. (The horror!)

Minnie is then devastated that not only is her rich boyfriend not rich or cool, but her old standby isn't pining away and waiting by the phone for her.. Good thing Mickey is such an understanding guy, right?

Wrong. Mickey is a fool. Minnie's behavior was appalling. What strange lessons for children these were. Then again, I guess the couple did make it through another sixty years so maybe Minnie was just temporarily insane...

The Giant Cat

This 19-foot fiberglass cat in a Santa hat lives two blocks away from me, on top of a clock maker's garage. The cat has been on this roof since 1978 and the rest of the residents on the block have probably been there that long too. It's a block where no one moves in or out, and everyone has time for a neighborly chat. Except for the dogs that guard the cat. They like to make their ownership clear.

A friend of mine once wrote an article about the giant cat. I'll see if I can find it.

Hiking Garbage Island

Thunderstorms were creeping in as Roberta and I held a hurried conference on her building's stoop.

"Should we go? Should we try the hike?"

I called Michael Kraiger.

"How long do you think it will be before it rains?"

"How would I know? Let's go."

We went. We weren't going far, only to the Meadowlands. It's normally where you go for a concert or sporting event. Once, years ago, I took a date pal to a golf driving range there as a kind of a gag. Another time, it was a different date outing to the racetrack. And now, having given up on dates and manmade fun, I was headed to the Meadowlands to experience nature with my friends.

CONCEPT
Reclamation of a 3.5 acre illegally filled "garbage island", incorporating wetland and upland habitats, educational facilities and other site amenities.

Hmm, okay. Scratch that. This nature is manmade too.

"Um, it's not really a hike, is it?" Roberta realized this almost immediately as we scooted along the plastic boardwalk above the marsh, each with one eye on the overcast sky.

Not really. It's an easy, flat mile-and-change walk. But as we walked through the reserve, looking at egrets and muskrats, we were within spitting distance of the New Jersey Turnpike and the Pulaski Skyway. Garbage island and the surrounding marsh—one section made of 400,000 plastic soda bottles—house migratory birds as planes fly in low overhead, aiming for Newark Airport.

We had just finished the Marsh Discovery Trail and part of the Transco Trail, when we came across the mile-long Saw Mill Creek Trail. The rain, threatening for so long, hadn't started yet. We got cocky.

"Let's try it."

We were about 50 meters into it, when the skies opened. We ran, laughing, for the car.

Ring Around the Mulberry Bush

It's man-versus-mulberry season in downtown JC.

These pesky squishy berries fall out of trees at a rate of about one purple mini-bomb per three seconds.

The first year I was here, there was a guy upstairs who fought the good fight against the berries. He also landscaped the backyard. I teased him, thought he was being ridiculous.

"They're just berries. Make a pie from them. Berries happen."

He bought a net and strung it up across the yard. I soon learned (as did all my neighbors) the error of my ways in mocking him. These berries were relentless and if you trod on one, you soon tracked purple into your apartment, not to mention our new deck would get stained. The net was the only solution.

The guy is gone now, having taken profits from the insane escalation in JC real estate values. I missed the boat by wallowing in Namibia and numbly licking my wounds instead of coming home and selling, and am now left sitting on an unattainable theoretical profit of more than $200k, except that since condo sales are as stagnant as the foul pile of berries by the fence, I ain't got squat. A purple-stained white elephant.

"At least it's not a purple hippo," I tell myself.

The guy's replacement tried hard, trimming the tree and stringing up the net as best he could.

Unfortunately, the net has to hang from the second story condo window to do the job properly. And the new woman who moved in there went to see her boyfriend in Bavaria (my upstairs neighbor has a Bavarian BF--what are the odds?) so we can't get into her place. The net is half-useful, and I've spent my mornings wearing dollar-store gloves, patiently picking up purple berries off the deck.

Here's a before and after look at our backyard, pre and post landscaping. You can see why I don't want it to turn purple.