Category: Travel

Exploring the Camino de Santiago: A Journey of Culture and Reflection

March 11, 2023

It felt like, rightly or wrongly, we should take a trip. Everyone we know was going somewhere. It is winter vacation time for many of our friends as they “get away” from winter.

The winter travelers made me think: what type of past trips have we enjoyed the most, anytime? And the one that stood out was walking the Camino de Santiago in the Fall of 2012. We walked from Leon to Santiago, Spain, a distance of 320 kilometers, in 16 days, following the centuries-old pilgrimage route to the shrine of the apostle St. James in Santiago de Compostela. Thousands of people from all over the world walk it every year.

Although the Camino is often described as a religious experience, we thought more of doing the Camino for exercise, for its physical challenge, and as a cultural experience. Most people we talked with had similar goals, except for a few doing the Camino for reflection, or a pause in life, figuring out their next career move.

To me, the best feature of the walk, which made it so relaxing, was that we lived day to day with no thought of the future, with no thought of doing daily chores such as taking the garbage out, paying bills, and washing the car. We just got up in the morning, packed our stuff, and hit the road, with or without breakfast. Then we walked and walked, and stopped whenever we wanted to rest, eat, see the surroundings, or engage in a chat with locals or other pilgrims, called “peregrinos” locally. There was no past, no future, just the present.

Living in the present is wonderful. After a long day of walking, our challenge was to find a nice albergue, or hostel in English, where we took a hot shower, relaxed our tired bodies for a while, and then enjoyed the “peregrino’s” dinner. After dinner, we sat by the fireplace and socialized with other pilgrims, solving world problems. It was a glorious life!

The walk is well-marked by the scallop symbol because the pilgrimage routes lead to the Galician coast, where scallops are abundant, and pilgrims would often collect these shells as souvenirs

I am not saying it was all fun. When we started in Leon, it was raining hard and we thought of delaying our start, but, who knows, the next day may be the same, so we started with our rain gear on. The first challenge was to find the scallop sign to start the walk, and talking with a local on the street, he suggested we take a bus to get to the outskirts of Leon, where the trail is marked clearly and we could start walking in the country avoiding the industrial parts of the town. We followed his advice and got on a bus with our backpacks; we did not know where to purchase a bus ticket, so we just got on and asked the driver for advice who waved us on to sit down, recognizing foreign pilgrims.

The driver beckoned us where to get off, and we followed the other pilgrims on the road. The road was wet and full of puddles and we got thoroughly soaked that day, but we found a friendly “hospedalier”, or hostel host, in an albergue in the afternoon, where we rented a private room at a slightly more expensive rate than staying in the dormitory. After changing into dry clothes, we put our wet clothes in front of a roaring fire in the living room. Once we took a shower and changed into our dry clothes, we joined other pilgrims for a “fixed dinner” at the albergue. After dinner, we sat with the other pilgrims and exchanged views on the Camino experience and whatever was happening elsewhere.  

Talking with other pilgrims was entertaining, interesting, and comforting. We learned that no matter what part of the world you come from, we all have similar wishes, ambitions, frustrations, and experiences. We met someone from the UK who just went thru a divorce and came to walk the Camino to rethink his life. Another pilgrim from the US was between jobs, assessing his options; he did not want to work in his father’s company. A young woman from Brazil came to see the culture of Spain.

We walked with a Danish woman for a few days on the Canino; we walked at the same speed and spent many hours talking about the social network in Denmark. She was a teacher but got bored with teaching and just took a few months off to travel. She was not concerned at all with getting another job when she returned home and explained that she would always have a job, no matter how often she quit. During one of her breaks in her career, she learned to become a yoga instructor, and she gave us a morning yoga class, a good warm-up, before our walks.

With all fellow pilgrims, we had direct, honest, and meaningful discussions; we all realized the chances of ever meeting again were close to nil and therefore we could open up and talk from the heart. I seldom, if ever, had this type of deep-felt interaction before. Being older than most pilgrims, we felt a bit like the confessional priest as they poured out their stories.

Some people were introverted and did not stop socializing, preferring to be alone with their thoughts. That was all right as well; there was no shortage of people on the road to say hello to. We saw people behind or ahead of us all the time. A few came to experience and find religion. But most people we met and talked with came for the exercise and to soak up the local culture and enjoyed engaging with other pilgrims on the day’s journey.

Of course, we needed preparations for our trip. One was by walking longer and longer distances at home, which helped me to get used to the daily walks on the Camino, which averaged six hours. We stopped walking in the early afternoon to make sure we had a nice auberge to stay overnight.

In the light backpacks that we purchased, we carried a change of quick-dry clothing, toiletries, rain gear, and digital equipment. We minimized the amount of clothing we took with us to reduce the weight of our backpacks. One of the best recommendations received was to have hiking boots that are well-worn and comfortable, and we had those. 

We put the winter clothing that we needed to travel from Ottawa to Leon, Spain, in a suitcase, and sent it on the train from Leon to Santiago, where they held them fro us at the station storage area.

We also carried silk liners that we purchased in Vietnam; we used them at the albergueswhere they provided beds and covers. By using silk liners, we tried to protect ourselves from bedbugs. One in our walking group acquired such an acute case of bedbugs that she visited a doctor and delayed her trip by a week to get over the itching.

For information on the Camino, I found the slim book by John Brierley the best. Using his book, we identified rest stops where we would look for albergues for overnight stays.

When we were tired of bunk beds provided in the albergues and wanted some comfort, we went upscale to a hotel with a private bathroom. Another reason for taking a hotel room was that although the albergues gave some sort of breakfast, it was minimal and we had to leave by 7 a.m., a not-always-pleasant early departure. In one albergue, they shut the lights off at nine p.m., and locked the entrance door, which I found strange and scary; I looked for an exit in case of fire that I could not find. Locking the door for safety made sense to me, but we should have been able to open the door from the inside. That was not the case in this situation.

But most of the time, we found the albergues clean and hospitable, offering excellent dinners at a reasonable price, and providing the opportunity to meet and socialize with pilgrims from all over the world.

Our lunches included cheese, bread, and fruit, which we purchased the evening before. We learned early to buy our food supplies at the first available store; many of the small villages we crossed had no stores. Many of these villages looked abandoned or occupied by few people, perhaps because of urbanization that drew people to the cities for jobs, like what has been happening in North America.

We bought the fixed menu “peregrino’s” dinner offered in most towns, or at the albergue, frequently accompanied by other peregrinos we had met that day. These dinners were terrific, often freshly caught fish, always served with a bottle of wine on the table that was refilled when emptied, and dessert.

In Galicia, we enjoyed the locally famous “pulpo” meal of octopus, freshly boiled in front of us and served on a wooden platter cut into small disks, with a jug of wine and bread. It tasted a bit like chicken. We went back twice; the octopus was so good!

But the Camino is more than great food, genuine hospitality at the albergues, and meeting people on the Camino: it was a walk across various and attractive landscapes, from flat to hilly terrain, that was occasionally challenging.

Along the way, we visited unique architectural works that I found interesting being an architect. For example, the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is a Romanesque-style cathedral, which was our destination. It is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the world and is believed to be the burial place of Saint James the Great. The cathedral’s crypt is beneath the high altar and is believed to be the burial place of Saint James. A striking memory of the Cathedral is the way it is lit up at night when we can see all the rich sculptural details of the building.

The Cathedral in Santiago made an impression on me in another way as well. I am Catholic and my memories of Catholic churches in Hungary as a child did not compare with what I experienced in Santiago. We attended a service that was in Latin and performed by three priests. Right after, they burned incense in a large basket hanging from the ceiling, forty meters above the transept, halfway down from the ceiling. The basket swung back and forth, and the burning incense generated a cloud that enveloped the upper part of the church. I found that the sun coming through the windows from the sides of the transept created a mysterious effect, burning through the incense. Some people in the audience cried. I was so taken by the experience that we came back a couple of more times to relive this supernatural feeling.

In Astorga, we encountered the unique neo-gothic “Palacio Episcopal”, or the Bishop’s Palace, designed by Antonio Gaudi. every bit as fascinating as the works by him we had seen in Barcelona, characterized by curvy, flowing lines.

It was an educational experience to stay overnight at a monastery, converted to an albergue, where we slept in a cell with bunk beds designed for monks previously.We had one enormous bathroom per floor, like some college dormitories at home, and a common kitchen where all the pilgrims fixed their dinners. It was an opportunity to socialize again.

In Rabanal, we visited the 12th-century chapel, where a choir of Benedictine monks performed Gregorian chants in Latin, a unique experience in an appropriate historical building. The Knights Templar built the 12th-century Romanesque chapel and protected the pilgrims as they traveled the Camino. The chapel could not seat more than a few dozen people and smelled musty. It was dark inside, but the sound of the choir created a mysterious atmosphere, making us feel as if we were back in the 12th century.

Walking through a part of Galicia, we came across Celtic Crosses – like what we see in Wales and Ireland and learned that the Galicians were also Celts; in fact, they have their language and to this day many in the country do not speak Spanish.

While going on a cruise or spending time in warm climate resorts has appeal,there is no comparison in my mind to the satisfaction that I get from a walking tour such as the Camino, which combines physical challenges with cultural experiences; truly, to me, a very satisfying way to spend a few weeks. We walked the second half of the Camino, although we met one couple who had walked from Germany. Others divided it up into several blocks to enable them to finish the whole trail.

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Sistine Chapel Exhibit Review: A Mixed Experience

Janury 27, 2023

Three Views of the Sistine Chapel

I was underwhelmed viewing the Sistine Chapel touring exhibit, produced by Entertainment Events Inc. (EEI) of Hollywood (showing only the ceiling frescoes painted by Michelangelo). The first showing of this exhibition was in Montreal in 2015, after which it toured the world and arrived in Ottawa in December 2022.

 In Ottawa, EEI presented the exhibition at the EY Convention Center, in a large, industrial type of space, like an airplane hangar. It just did not have the aura for showing biblical scenes painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Chapel. What frosted me was the advertising for yoga classes at high prices, taught in front of the paintings. I found the combination of appreciating renaissance paintings with concurrent yoga exercises jarring. But the receptionist told us the yoga classes were fully subscribed; I could not see myself putting my body in yoga poses with great effort and appreciating the artwork simultaneously.

There were no brochures or handouts to describe and explain the paintings, this was Covid times. Instead, you had to bring your cell phone, to which you could download, via a QR code, the explanatory comments. Once we figured out the technical challenges, we found the commentary useful.

Before looking at the pictures, we listened to an introduction to how Michelangelo accepted a commission from Pope Julius II and built a scaffold to paint the ceiling at a height of sixty feet in the Chapel. Michelangelo used vivid and colorful paints on wet gypsum and completed the work between 1508 and 1514. EEI used high-definition photographs to reproduce the paintings in full size.

The full-size biblical scenes were twenty feet above the floor at the EY center, enabling viewers to see the pictures, including brush strokes, in granular detail; that was a major benefit of this show according to EES, compared to seeing the same pictures sixty feet above the ground in the Sistine Chapel.

This exhibition was attractive to art buffs and religious historians, especially those familiar with the Bible; but to me, it does not compete with seeing the real Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, which we visited in 2015. The comparison is like watching a football game on TV versus attending in person. It is hard to describe the excitement of walking through the Sistine Chapel with hundreds of people, all sighing with wonder at the pictures, even though they are sixty feet above you, and seeing not only the ceiling but also the walls, painted by other renaissance artists. But at the touring exhibition, one could take time to study the Michelangelo painted frescoes at a close distance without a crowd.

Although the excitement was tangible within the Sistine Chapel, there were detractions: some people took photos despite being warned not to do so. And the guards kept hushing people to be quiet. As well, when we went, the crowd filled the Chapel wall to wall, and the guards nudged us to move on to let the other visitors come in.

I found the best way to see the Sistine Chapel (if you have internet access and a computer), is to log in to https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/tour-virtuale.html This site provides a virtual tour. You can look at all sides, plus the floor and the ceiling of the Chapel. If you want to see more details, you can enlarge the pictures. You may miss the excitement of being in the Chapel, but you do not have to travel to Italy, line up with hundreds of tourists at the entrance and have a limited amount of time to look at the paintings.

Walking through the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and looking at stories told by the colorful frescoes, made an everlasting impression on me. I found this quote that reflects my sentiments: “Without having seen the Sistine Chapel, one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving” (Johann Goethe, August 23, 1787).

 Having seen the original work, the touring exhibition was disappointing for me but would be attractive to people where the touring exhibition goes. If your city is not on the touring exhibition schedule and you do not have the time and money to visit the Vatican, the website above provides an excellent way to see the inside of the Sistine Chapel.

Disappointing Impressions on my Return to Ottawa from Charlotte, North Carolina

January 5, 2023

Driving along Merivale Road, in Ottawa, my neighborhood looked run down and dirty at the end of December. Yes, the melted snow was dirty gray bordering Merivale. And the road was full of potholes. As well, it was overcast and gray and the designless and helter-skelter development that has sprung up over the years along

Merivale showed its age and need for updates.

I felt depressed and found the contrast with sunny Charlotte with its clean, well-maintained streets and shiny new shopping centers dispiriting. I left Charlotte the day before.

Ottawa’s infrastructure has deteriorated, and maintenance declined over the years. For example, the snowplows cleaned a wide swath of roadbed years ago compared to the narrow lane left today after the snowplows drive by.

Has the quality of my neighborhood gone down? You be the judge. I’ll just describe what has been happening in my neighborhood, along with my biases.

First off, we have “cash marts” stores just around us, stores I consider cater to people who are hard up and must cash cheques to survive on a day-to-day basis. Sure, there are people like that, but I thought my neighborhood was a more stable, middle-income area with expensive homes.

A block from us, a cannabis store opened and there are a few more of them, less than a mile away. Again, there must be a market for such outlets, but I did not think my neighbors were into drugs. Maybe I am getting old and out of phase with today’s reality.

I do not cotton to cash marts and cannabis outlets in my neighborhood, especially when we also have bottom-feeder consumer outlets like “dollaramas” and used clothing establishments like “value village”. Should I go further?

There is nothing wrong with cash marts, cannabis outlets, and hand-me-down clothing stores. There is a market for those. But coming back from well-maintained Charlotte where I did not see any of these (cannabis stores are not allowed in North Carolina), driving along Merivale Road, with the dirty snow along the road and navigating around potholes on a rainy, gray day, was a downer for me.

But wait, are there any bright spots? I drove by a plethora of ethnic food establishments, which I like, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Mexican, and Italian, besides traditional English fare. The neighborhood also boasts two sports pubs and takeout places for pizza and chicken. And we have several food store chains near us, three in walking distance (Walmart, Loblaws, and Food Basics). These are great conveniences, along with a Starbucks and a couple of fast food/hamburger places (A&W and Harveys). None of these outlets are fancy; they are run-of-the commercial chains. Maybe I should not say that these are bright spots, but I cannot complain about the lack of eateries or grocery stores in my neighborhood.

But beyond the food scene and the usual gas stations, banks, and a couple of gyms, there are no upscale retail stores or cultural/entertainment facilities at all. The area just does not, or could not, attract fashion, electronics, furniture, or other upscale stores over the years. I am not sure why.

Is my neighborhood on the downslide? Maybe not. Maybe it is in transition; the low-slung, decaying buildings are probably rented at reasonable rates, therefore many family-run ethnic outlets can thrive.

But we also have a sea of parking lots and with the growth of the city, further development via densification will happen. We’ll be looking at mixed highrise buildings, with commercial establishments on the lower levels topped by residential units above.

Last fall, I joined zoom meetings with developers and Ottawa city planning staff, reviewing development proposals. In this process called “public engagement”, the City attempted to draw out public opinion on private proposals. In the proposals we reviewed, there were thousands of residential units in highrise buildings, within walking distance from my place, all containing commercial uses at the lower levels.

I drove home and after thinking about the planned developments I saw in Charlotte; I decided I much prefer those to the haphazard, aging, and messy character of my neighborhood. Unfortunately, my area will change, and I am not sure it will be for the better. I am afraid unaffordable rents in the future may squeeze out my favorite small mom-and-pop food operations, unique in my neighborhood. On that gray day after my return from sunny Charlotte, I felt in the dumps driving along Merivale Road.

US/CANADA Border Crossing Regulations for Covid End Next Week

September 29, 2022

The federal government just announced that Covid-related regulations crossing the border will end next week. It has been a nightmare to cross the border for the past couple of years. The danger of people coming to Canada with Covid infections led the government to introduce the ARRIVECAN system, mandating people to fill out a complicated form on a cell phone before arriving in Canada. The Americans responded in kind, but strangely, traveling by air into the US was allowed with a negative Covid test while traveling by car was not permitted (unless you were an American citizen). 

Resulting from the different border crossing policies, I experienced the most bizarre situation last summer. I could not drive with Kathy to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (driving from Ottawa, one has to cross the border). Since Kathy is a dual Canadian/American citizen, she drove to Dulles airport near Washington, DC while I flew there the same day. Coming home was different; we drove together and entered the country as Canadian citizens. And, of course, we had to fill out the ARRIVECAN form before crossing the border.

I have been crossing the border for dog ages; early on, when I went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from Vancouver, I drove south to California and then across the US on Route 66. But even before, I remember our drive to Seattle from Vancouver with my father, who informed the American border guard he’ll stay in the US as little as possible. That comment did not sit well with the official who hauled us in for questioning and then had the benefit of trying to decipher my father’s heavy accent before letting us go.

I have always had some innate fear of talking with government officials, especially police and border guards, who brought back memories of the Hungarian secret police and the aura of the heavy hand of government officials. Border crossing was a chore for me those days, not immersed in the philosophy the police and similar organizations serve you, the citizens of Canada.

I was apprehensive when, with a friend of Italian origin, we drove to Seattle with my newly minted citizenship card in the 1960s. My friend warned me that border officials would haul him in and question him because of his Italian name. Surprised to hear that, I wondered if government officials had prejudices against nationalities, including Hungarians. And so it happened; we were subject to thorough questioning, but I escaped detailed scrutiny, and they let us go. Although this incident confirmed my apprehensions, my discomfort with government officials waned in time, especially after I had joined the government in 1973.

It was easy to cross the border into the US in the old days; all you needed was identification like a driver’s license, which, of course, I always carried with me. The reverse, crossing into Canada, was the same. But sometimes you did not even need a solid piece of ID, as when my son’s friend, a recent Russian immigrant to the US, came to visit us in a rented car with neither US citizenship nor a valid driver’s license. He successfully talked his way into Canada at the border and confirmed the ease with which one could enter Canada.

Many of our family border crossings started with camping in New York State. An hour’s drive from us in upper New York State, the pine-treed campgrounds were not only cheaper to stay at than comparable Canadian facilities, but were also less crowded. And, we found wine cheaper down there and the challenge was how to import wine to Canada. Some people suggested I should fill up the water tank of our tent trailer with wine coming home, but I resisted; the water container would have had a taste of having been filled with wine, not the taste of choice of family members. (The limit for importing wine was two bottles per adult). Then we discovered ‘two-buck chuck”, the wine distributed by Trader Joe’s, the retailer in the US.

A case of two-buck-chuck, even paying the customs duties was much cheaper than anything we could buy in Canada. Most of the time, the Canadian customs officials just waved us on when we told them we had a case of wine worth US $24, altho once they told us to go into the office and fill out all the customs papers. This experience cost us ten dollars, but I found it to be a real bother and time-consuming affair as well.

My good luck of never having trouble at the border rossing nto the US ran out when I arrived at the border with my carpentry tools in the car. They immediately sent me inside and took apart my car, checking all the tools. I was going to build a deck for my son’s house, but the border officials were suspicious that I had other intentions. They were afraid that I would take jobs away from Americans. It took over an hour to get on my way; I pointed to my gray hair and said I was retired and had no intention of working and taking a job away from the locals. Further, I explained to them I had lived in the US for years but came home to Canada for my career, which was over.

Complications arose when I mentioned I had an expired draft card with a 5A rating. The younger officials knew nothing about draft cards and I tried to describe the Vietnam war and how Americans were drafted for service. This entire episode came to a hilarious end when an older border guard burst out in a boisterous laugh and explained to the younger officials what had happened in the sixties. The bottom line was that they took away the draft card I cherished and carried with me all the time when I worked in Norfolk, Virginia, in the sixties.

But the border is a two-way street and I never forget the incident when I bought a bottle of liquor at the duty-free shop coming home and the Canadian border guard asked how many ounces were in the bottle (there was a limit on how much one could bring back home). I looked at the bottle for information but could find none. I told the official I bought it at the duty-free store and had to be a size permitted for import to Canada. But he would not budge and I was ready to consume part of the bottle when he suddenly decided to just let us go, looking at the lineup behind us. As soon as we crossed the border, I felt some corrugations on the bottom of the bottle, and lo-and-behold; I found the information I had been looking for.

But next week we will go back to the old days, and a passport will be sufficient to enter Canada. The US is already open with a Canadian passport. Hurrah! Were the heavy-handed regulations preventing the entry of people with Covid useful and worth the cost of losing the tourist business? We’ll not know unless the government undertakes a study of it.

How College Students Spend Summers – Then and Now

August 3, 2022

This is not a scientific poll by any stretch of the imagination. But I reflected on how three of my college-age grandchildren spent their summers this year and compared it to what I and my friends did for summers while attending college over sixty years ago.

We had one goal: to get a job to pay for tuition, room, and board for next year at the university. My grandchildren had loftier goals: do something interesting, educational, and even exciting, while making money. Big difference in aspirations! Is this true? You be the judge.

OK. So what did I and my friends do when we were at college? To pay for the cost of attending university the next year, we took the first job we could get. The emphasis was on getting a job, any job. We did not think about fun activities.

Looking for a job in my first year at university, I had a couple of false starts. One was strawberry picking on the lower mainland of British Columbia, where the stench of the accommodation and backbreaking work all day finished my enthusiasm in one week. The other false start was my unsuccessful career selling Collier’s encyclopedia in small towns along the Fraser Valley to poor people. After these attempts, I was successful in getting a sustaining job: I settled into a summer of dish-washing at the Essondale Mental Hospital. Boring as dickens but steady and paid well. The mental patients ribbed me about seeing me doing “women’s jobs”. But I lived at home and could save all my earnings.

Other jobs followed in subsequent years. I was happy to be hired by a survey crew where I did machete work in the wilderness of Vancouver Island’s interior, memorable for the cloud of deer flies and mosquitoes. When I complained, they assigned me to work inside, where I experienced the most boring job of my life: drawing cross-sections for a highway from survey data. Each drawing took a few minutes; plot seven dots on graph paper and connect the dots. I decided never to be a draftsman for a survey crew.

One highlight of this job was that I learned to like and drink beer (in retrospect, this may not have been a positive highlight). We drank beer in the hotel pub at night, having nothing else to do. I learned to gulp down a glass of beer by holding the glass with my teeth and knocking my head backward while opening my throat. Most nights ended with the natives joining us and getting into a rumble that I avoided at all costs.

I left the survey crew in a haste on my last day, after hearing the crew members talking about teaching the “college boy” about real life by stripping me and inserting my private parts into an anthill.

So what do college kids do today? My grandson Cedric showed up at the cottage in Elgin, ON, after a 3000-mile bicycle ride from Portland OR. He is an engineering student at Oregon State University (in Corvallis) and decided to cycle coast to coast before taking on a summer job. What a great physical and educational adventure! And potentially dangerous, too.

Among his many observations he related, he found the prairie people more friendly and curious than west coast people and discovered coffee at Tim Hortons in Canada much hotter than McDonald’s in the US. He avoided places where people looked at him with suspicion, but also met many friendly folks who let him camp overnight in their yard.

He used the “warm showers community” website in his travels, where people offer a welcoming hot shower and a place to bunk down, to cyclists. What first-hand experience learning about your country!

My thoughts circled back to Cedric and his financial situation and how he could afford to spend six weeks cycling and not working. I recalled that last summer he did fire-fighting in Idaho and saved money: accommodation and food were provided in tents in the wilds of Idaho. They were paid for sixteen-hour days and there was no place or time to spend money. They worked in fourteen-day stints, then were off for two days before another fourteen-day session started. For Cedric, it was another amazing educational and well-paying experience as well.

Here is another example of what students do for a summer job today. Not satisfied with repeating a job as a cashier in a grocery store, my granddaughter, MaryKate, created her summer job. With friends from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where she is a student, they secured accommodation from the friend’s family to stay at their cottage in upstate New York. Then they took training in whitewater rafting and obtained a job with ARO, an adventure class white water outfit in Watertown NY. Another great experience! When MaryKate did not work at the white water center, she worked at the local grocery store. She created her job!

One final example is how another grandson, Alec, parlayed three seasons of fun-filled sailing camp experience in Ottawa, Canada, into teaching sailing to disadvantaged children on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. All I heard from Alec during the summer sailing camps was the fun they had turtling (turning the sailing boat upside down), but obviously, they also learned to sail!

Alec negotiated his accommodation in New Orleans by sleeping on a boat belonging to a friend. It had never entered my mind that summer camps can provide skills making you able to get into the workforce.

Yes, three examples do not form a valid sample. Despite that, my cohort, over sixty years ago, had much more pedestrian jobs. Why? I can only speculate that the children today live more in the present and try to maximize their opportunities. As well, they have more confidence. What are your thoughts on this subject?