The Blog Page

The night before Jim and I departed Florence, I reminisced about our two-week adventure by reviewing photos wondering why my heart beat a little faster with some and why I wasted camera space with others. Why did I dig into my purse for photos of a construction site and only one of two monks conversing in Santa Maria Novella?

My love affair with books began before I could walk. The best part of the day was when my father would read to me. He’d help me turn the pages of a cloth book with buttons to button, shoelaces to tie and fuzzy creatures to touch. I was always more interested in my father’s questions than manipulating what was on the pages

On our fifth day in Florence, the sun shone bright and hot. Jim wanted to find a bench and read. I wanted to prowl and photograph. Across the street, half a block away I saw a walkway that led to a door, slightly open. I’ve never been able to resist an open door and peek inside. This time I went in.

By day two, our dream vacation to Italy felt more like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown than a romantic interlude in our favorite city.
After almost an hour of Dominique’s grand tour of his Tiny Tim apartment, the moment had arrived for the presentation of his gift arrangement: a bottle of wine…

“We did it!” we cheered, relieved to be on our way to the apartment we’d selected after careful scrutiny. We looked forward to meeting Dominique, our host who’d greet us at the front door, give us a mini-tour, hand us keys and let us begin our vacation. Our driver sped the narrow-cobbled streets like it was the Indianapolis 500, but we were too busy being in the city we loved.

The first stop after landing was the document drill followed by watching a parade of suitcases on a carousal go around and around. The lucky passengers grabbed their bags and departed. The unlucky passengers held their breath wondering what it would be like to begin their vacation wearing the clothes they traveled in.

Finally, the day arrived. We hugged our dogs, took one last look at the spacious house and newly landscaped backyard with an aviary, pizza oven and cabana we’d be leaving for a 500 square foot apartment with a dish rack, living room sofa and teensy loft bedroom.

March 1983, I was preparing a quiche for the informant, Scott Fraser, who gave Detective John St. John the piece of critical information he needed to arrest The Freeway killer, Bill Bonin. As I poured the cheese mixture into the dish, smoothing the dough at the edges then crimping those edges, I wondered what it would be like to walk into the same room where Fraser smoked one Camel cigarette after the other and Bonin drank his non-alcoholic beverage of choice: Raspberry Kool-Aid with one ice cube.

There’s nothing like coming face to face with a drooling, snorting, pile of shaggy black fur that looked like a primitive rug from Tibet. Instead, this creature was living on a ranch just an hour and a half from a glitzy gambling mecca: Reno, Nevada.

I can’t remember the year or even the season when I looked out the passenger window onto a grassy field on the outskirts of Calpine (another mountain town) and saw my first Yak. Jim and I were on the home stretch of our two-week vacation on the log cabin we owned in the Lakes basin, tired from a ten-hour drive with our five furry passengers who’d been grumbling and growling, into and out of my lap, thirsty and hungry and generally miserable for all that time.