Miramar Road Trip: Retreat from the Heat

Sunset on the mighty Pacific, the western edge of America. You can see the last of the sun's rays reflected in a couple of the windows, lower right.

The same view at dawn, next morning. You can see why they dubbed the small bay "Half Moon."

It was really hot this morning when I made the decision to head for cooler weather. The oddest thing I've discovered about California is the lack of air conditioning. "You'll never need it," people say. "The heat here is dry heat."

Dry heat can make you just as wet as wet heat and in the wet-heat-climates, people have sensibly turned to air conditioning (Florida comes to mind). It's not a new thing. It's available everywhere. Except in the San Francisco Bay Area, apparently. They think it isn't green-appropriate. But actually, the most environmentally sound thing to do (in my opinion) is to air condition every house on the planet and keep those machines going full blast twenty-four/seven. That way we'll use up all that nasty petroleum and then be forced to discover greener alternatives.

This is the long way 'round of telling you I headed for the coast this morning. If they won't move the air conditioning to me, I'll just have to move to the air conditioning. It is only 23 miles to the Pacific Ocean from my digs, over a small mountain and into the lovely cool. Everyone else had the same idea, so the road was jammed. But it wasn't Philadelphia jammed. It was just slightly slower than usual. Fortunately, my car has an air-conditioner.

Leaving the Santa Clara Valley it was 100F at 1:00 p.m. and as I--along with the rest of the world--coasted down toward the Pacific, the thermometer dropped to 77F. Aaaah.

I left home with only my toothbrush and without hotel reservations. But it was Sunday and I bet on finding a vacancy.

Miramar Beach with the tide coming in. It is just south of San Francisco.

Within the city limits of Half Moon Bay, but still well outside of town, I dropped out of the traffic on Highway 1, and found a little beach village called Miramar. It was charming and just far enough off the road to be nice and quiet, except for the pounding of the surf. Looking around Miramar, I found an inn right on the beach. The Landis Shores has just eight rooms. Breakfast--made to order at the time of your choice--and afternoon hors d'oeuvres are included in the fare, and, if you come Sunday through Thursday you can make a bargain with the owner and his wife on price. Ellen and Ken Landis are sommelier (she) and chef (he) and they built the inn from the ground up.

The Landis Shores on Miramar Beach, owned by Ellen and Ken Landis.

My room wasn't quite ready, so I had the chance to take a stroll along the stretch of the California Coastal Trail that runs adjacent to the hotel. I'm not big on hiking. I prefer to get my exercise on a treadmill at the gym and do my walking among the counters at Saks. So it takes a really nice trail to capture my attention. This certainly did that.

The California Coastal Trail was busy today, but the people I saw must have been lost in the mist when I took this photo.

It is perched along the cliffs just over the ocean, and this stretch, which runs about eight miles, is surrounded by acres of native coastal foliage. It is paved for strollers, rollerblades, bicycles and people like me who like to walk on flat surfaces. The wildlife was buzzing as I walked along and the sky was full of mist, swirling around from the sea. I could feel the sting of salt on my lips as I dallied, taking pictures of the surf below, the beach houses adjacent, and the trail itself.

A beach cottage along the Coastal Trail.

I've complained about California's distaste for air conditioning, so now let me tell you something California has done a much better job of than has my "other" home state of Florida: preserving its shoreline. In 1972, California voters approved the funds and the plan for this Coastal Trail and the state has been putting the pieces of it together since then. No high-rise condos mar the view along this stunning coast, and everyone can thus enjoy its beauty.

A gorgeous beach house along the trail. I'm sure the upkeep is a real pain in the neck.

The wealthy have low-impact homes along the path, and the working stiffs have easy access to the beaches. In Florida the view would be blocked by enormous high-rise buildings full of concrete condos and if one questioned the efficacy of this, one would hear the dreaded words "private property rights" as a code for unbridled development.


Many of the fences along the trail are of old, recycled redwood lumber, which holds up well in the salty air of the coast.

As if people all over the this great land had not limited those rights repeatedly, for the benefit of the whole, with planning and zoning rules of all kinds. For more than thirty years my home state of California has been getting it right. Florida is beautiful too, but I could never understand why it was so far behind California in this. Air conditioning, Florida has heard of. Coastal preservation? Not so much.

Looking from the Coastal Trail, back toward Highway 1. No big high-rise buildings mar the view.

The California Coastal Trail, near Miramar Beach.


California Coastal Trail

Landis Shores Oceanfront Inn

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Winchester Mystery House Part II: The Horror! The Horror!

The Winchester Mystery House is a Bay Area curiosity, but until I wrote my recent post about the plan for an upcoming Winchester Mystery House movie, I had never been inside it. I decided it was time to go exploring.

The first thing you notice about the old house is that, alas, it is trapped in the middle of San Jose's considerable urban sprawl, bounded on one side by a freeway, on the other by a mega-movie-complex, with high rise office buildings on the third side and the Winchester Ranch Mobile Home Park on the fourth. There are just 4.5 acres remaining of the original 162 acre estate owned by Mrs. Winchester. Down a palm-lined lane, through a charming gate, it isn't.

The Victorian gables of the Winchester home are a sharp contrast to the modern buildings just across the boulevard.

It spite of all this, the house is striking even as you come upon it in its unusual setting. Parking, at least on this weekday in June, was easy and entirely free. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places, which gives it a bit more gravitas than the average tourist attraction. Sarah Winchester, the heir to much of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company fortune, did live here and was the odd home's eccentric designer.

It was an eight-room farmhouse when she bought it in 1884 and began her curious program to placate the spirits of the dead (who had been killed by Winchester weapons) by continuously building on the home for 38 years. When she joined the spirit world herself in 1922, she left a home with 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, 47 fireplaces, and three elevators. If you plan to visit and take the tour--be sure and wear comfortable shoes.

The towers, which brought the home to seven stories, collapsed in the 1906 earthquake, which also briefly trapped Mrs. Winchester in her bedroom. The towers weren't replaced and Mrs. W closed off the 22 damaged rooms and started building on the other side of the house.

The really scary thing about this house, I discovered, as I took a guided tour for $26.00, is its chock-a-block architecture and its wretched decor. Forget the doors to nowhere, the staircases that end at ceilings, and the repeated use of the number thirteen. The design is ghastly!

Mrs. Winchester put bars on the window of the Seance Room. To keep what out, exactly?

Small rooms. Low ceilings. Expensive and terrible wall coverings. Mrs. Winchester's own furniture is long gone, but has been replaced in some rooms by really awful Victorian, machine made, over-carved junk, which is said to resemble what she had here. The house is almost entirely built of redwood; but, she didn't like the way it looked so she had the redwood painted to look like Birdseye maple. The horror! The horror! To think this rich old lady could have afforded the best. It really does make you shudder.

And yet, in the midst of it, there are some remarkable details, and most of these are in the windows. Why she put spider web windows in one of her bathrooms, we may never know. But they really are beautiful.

The spider web windows of the bathroom. One was found in a closet which housed the hot water heater.

When she died, they found several windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany in a storage room on the first floor. Whether she had them installed and removed them during the never-ending construction, or whether she intended to install them and never got around to it, we don't know. But they are stunning, and with the resurgence in interest in Tiffany's work, ought to be in a museum.

This window, with the spider web theme she loved, was designed by Tiffany Studios for Mrs. Winchester at a cost of $10,000. It would bring millions on the market today.

Another window, believed to be of Tiffany's favril glass, found in a storage room in the mansion.

Seeing some of these beautiful details was almost worth the trip. Still, where were the spirits said to haunt the place? Weren't they part of the tour too? All I saw around me as we trudged through the house was the occasional interesting touch, generally obscured by the overweight Americans thundering along behind our diminutive guide.

Then, when I returned home, I did find one curious photo among my pictures. A distortion of the light, I'm sure, and yet ...

My digital camera captured this optical illusion with all those little sparkly dots. At least I think it is an optical illusion.

Sara Winchester interited $30 million, before the creation of income tax, back when $30 million was a real fortune. Perhaps spirits do haunt the place, and if so, they may be crying out against all the costly artistic sins committed within the walls of old Sarah's home. Looking around, it is a little scary. All the wasted millions. All the lost architectural and decorative opportunities. They shall not pass this way again.

The photos for this article were all taken by Robin Chapman, except the historic one (courtesy of the Winchester Mystery House) unless that was taken by me in a previous lifetime.



Re-Read Robin's Part One on the Mystery House

Mystery House Web Site

Louis Comfort Tiffany at the Morse Museum

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A Landmark Worth Saving

The U.S.S. Macon headed into Hangar One at Moffett in the 1930s.

Hangar One at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California is something you can't miss if you have ever come in to or out of any of the San Francisco Bay Area's airports. Built in 1932 to house the observation dirigibles of the U.S. Navy, this one building covers eight acres and is large enough to hold ten football fields. From the air, you can't miss it. And from the ground, driving around the Bay Area, you still can't miss it. It rises 198 feet above its base of reinforced concrete set on pilings so strong, eight decades of earthquakes have rumbled beneath it to little effect.

Its doors weigh five hundred tons each. The structure is so big, military pilots who have flown in and out of the base over the years say it has its own weather in there.

The dirigible fad came and went quickly in the 1930s. The airships were designed to be used for naval observation and to launch small planes call Sparrowhawks, but they turned out to be problematic at best. The U.S.S. Akron visited Moffett Field only once, in May of 1932 before it returned to its base in Lakehurst, New Jersey and went down in an Atlantic storm in 1933. Only three of its seventy-six crew members survived. The U.S.S. Macon was based at Moffett after its delivery in 1932 and cruised the West Coast until it was lost off the California Coast near Point Sur in 1935. In that accident most of its crew survived. But it was the death of the airship.

The U.S.S. Macon out over Moffett and Hangar One, 1930s.

In 1940, future President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, starred in Murder in the Air featuring scenes at Moffett's Hangar One. In a foreshadowing of his proposal for a missile shield, Reagan's "Brass Brancroft, American Secret Agent" uses the super secret Inertia Projector to shoot inertia beams at an enemy airship that stop it cold. What a great idea!

The U.S. Army Air Corps--later the U.S. Air Force--used Moffett Field for training during World War II and the hangar to safely store its planes. Actor Jimmy Stewart took his flight training in the shadow of Hangar One before he went off to help win the war in Europe as a bomber pilot.

Since World War II, Hangar One has been a friendly landmark for visitors and residents and a white elephant for the government. Who should maintain it? What should be done with it?

Hangar One at Moffett today.

For some time in the 1980s and 1990s, people who owned remote-controlled airplanes had club meetings in there and flew their miniature aircraft all over the place inside the hangar. That ended after September 11, 2001 when NASA/Ames, which now operates Moffett Field, suddenly discovered there were PCBs in Hangar One's siding, and closed the inside of the hangar to the public.

The latest proposal is to get a HazMat crew to removed the PCB siding and to leave Hangar One as just a skeleton. What a silly idea that is. It is a hangar and it should look like a hanger.

That is my father and me at Moffett with Hangar One in the background, in a photo taken earlier this month.

You can visit the hangar, at least its exterior, if you drive to the gate at Moffett and tell them you want to go to the Historical Museum there. A group of terrific volunteers operate the museum and will be glad to walk you through the hangar's history, and the latest efforts to preserve it.

With all the "stimulus" money flowing out of Washington, you might think removing the contaminated siding and replacing in properly would be just the kind of project to keep Silicon Valley's economy stimulated during these troubled times. Hope somebody figures it out.

Hangar One needs preserving for the sake of Brass Brancroft, his inertia projector, hero Jimmy Stewart, the crews of the airships, and all the dreamers who managed to get those airships floated. America is the land of impossible dreams, made possible. Every big, creative idea here, whether success or failure, leads us on to the next. The airships and their stupendous hangar were just such a dream: a big idea that has left us an astounding monument to cherish.



All photos courtesy of the Moffett Field Historical Society.

Santa Clara Valley History

Moffett Field Museum

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Some Thoughts on Father's Day

Dad remembers me when I was this size--post baptism--and the rest is just a blank. By the way that is Dad, happy. (Note we're posing in the shade of an apricot tree with an orchard of them across the Los Altos, California street.)

Have you seen the movie Father of the Bride, the old one (1950) with Spencer Tracy as the father and Elizabeth Taylor as the bride? It is a story about the perfect American family, the one MGM executive Louis B. Mayer never had. The one most of us never had. That's probably why the movie is so attractive. If you were going to insert yourself into a movie--the way Woody Allen had Mia Farrow do in the Purple Rose of Cairo--you would definitely want to the join the Banks family in MGM-ville. The worst problem the Banks have is winnowing down the wedding reception invitation list so they can fit everyone they know and like into their lovely living room.

I say this as a prelude to a Father's Day confession. My father was always a distant father to me, until he began to lose his mind. In fact, the people in my family were always so distant from one another, in both triumph and disaster, that I decided our Chapman Family Motto must be: "Every Man For Himself."

Anyway, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, or so they say.

People who have not experienced this think you must be kidding. My friend Kathy, for example, is so incredibly well-adjusted and seems to have come from such a happy family that she has always fascinated me. Her parents loved her. They sent her to Stanford University. They gave her a big wedding. She's had a healthy marriage, a successful career, a loyal (not to mention rich) husband, and three intelligent, happy children. She never brags about this because she is too nice to brag. She's a kind friend.

I always wondered what planet she was from. Where is this planet anyway?

My Dad does love children, and when my sister and I were children we did have some fun together, though he had little enough time for fun of any kind. He worked long hours at the office. Then, he worked long hours at home to maintain the house and yard to the standards my mother set. He was in the Army Reserves. He worked after-hours to get his Masters Degree. At the dinner table, he said almost nothing.

Dad at his engineering office in San Francisco, probably about the year I was born, the last year he now remembers very clearly.

In fact, one of the most interesting things about his dementia now is that he talks so much! I believe he's talked more in the last year, than he did in all the other 88 years of his life combined.

And the things he remembers are so odd. He talks about my sister and I being born and then, poof, nothing. He doesn't remember our vacations together, though they were few enough and short enough as it was. He doesn't recall taking my sister to Chico State. He doesn't seem to remember how I excelled in high school and college. I don't think he knows anything about my career in television news, though even when that brought me accolades he didn't' say much about it.

His memory seems to be frozen at about the time he got out of the army from World War II and married my mother.

You might think he doesn't want to remember the rest. My friend Anne, who is a psychiatric social worker and facilitates a support group for Alzheimer's families, thinks dementia patients have some ability to look back to times they want to remember, or times they want to review and to ignore the rest. It is true that for most of my life my father wasn't emotionally present, or didn't seem to be.

But, we recently took him for a CAT scan to see what might be causing his dementia. The test showed that his brain is actually shrinking from some sort of neurodegenerative disease--many kinds of which strike people when they are old. Doctors don't really think it is possible for patients like my Dad to choose what they want to remember. But who really knows?

It doesn't appear that he can make any thoughtful choices now. Yet, I am still able to do so. And on this Father's Day, I just want to say that the reason my father and I are close now is that I decided we would be when he became ill.

It is the first time anyone in my family has ever needed me. I decided to come out to California and be a loving parent to him while he is ill. And it doesn't really matter whether I'm trying to be the kind of parent to him that I never had, or whether he was a present father, or whether he ever said anything at the dinner table, or whether, for whatever reason, he occasionally had a violent temper, or not. We only have him now for a very short time.

And I've chosen to love him. Because I can't think of anything else to do.

I carried this photo of my Dad--circa 1970--around in my wallet so long it has a big fold in the middle of it.

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Cutting 'Cots in the Santa Clara Valley: A Guest Post at Apricot Time in California

Robin writes: The scent of the apricots is what I remember best. That, and the first taste of a sweet, warm 'cot, sun kissed and right off the tree. The Santa Clara Valley, just south of San Francisco, is one of the few places in the world where this rare fruit grows to perfection. And though many of the old trees are gone, some remain. Here, as the 'cots ripen and ready for picking, my friend from childhood, Lisa Gutt Arnold, looks back at the joys of growing up in the shade of her family's apricot trees.

Guest Post
by
Lisa Gutt Arnold

The fruit of Prunus armeniaca, like the plum and peach, is a stone fruit, or, as Archibald MacLeish would say, “globed.” It is self-pollinating and sets after white flowers blossom. Formerly considered a native of the Caucasus and Armenia (hence the species name armeniaca), current studies suggest that India is its country of origin.

Brought to California by the mission fathers in the early eighteenth century, the apricot tree now graces California hillsides, loving the temperate climate and living from 50 to 100 years.

Our apricot orchard on Summerhill Avenue in Los Altos Hills was small: thirty-two trees dotting the hillside behind and above our home. As a child I imagined the trees to be an army of men protecting my family. With stiff, bowed arms they undressed in winter and wore the lace of their betrothed in spring. When they came full fruit they were transformed magically into trees, their gray, rough bark contrasting with the bright green, heart-shaped foliage tinged with red.

An army of apricot trees marching down the hillside on the property of the Packard Foundation in Los Altos Hills.

As it ripened, the furred fruit seemed to dance, exuding a fragrance reminiscent of the blossoms. In late June, when the heat began to rise early in the day, our mother would pluck just enough fruit to bake apricot nut bread or pie (which we served instead of cake at my wedding on the summer solstice). After the first flush of harvest, we began to pick the fruit in earnest.

When all the fruit is a soft orange color it is ready to pick.

My father returned from the hillside with buckets of fruit, pouring the ‘cots onto a wooden tray. My siblings and I sat at each of the corners, taking knife in one hand and fruit in the other. Finding the golden seam in the center, we cut in one gesture around the curve. Succulent juice rose from the pores as we tossed away the stone. Setting each half on the tray, we watched our own triangle of cut fruit grow to meet the others.

For the tray to be a success, each ‘cot must touch another on every side. The feng shui of the tray slowed the passage of time. Our mother, watching from the kitchen window, brought us cold drinks as we shifted to sit under the shade of the mulberry tree. Closing in on the space in the middle of the tray, we left it for Mom to place the vital centerpiece, the largest of the ‘cots.

After a tray was complete, Dad carried it to the hillside. When all the fruit was cut (about 200 pounds), Dad set up the sulphur house, sliding the trays inside. Then he lit a can of sulphur that burned all night. The fumes of sulphur dioxide circulating inside killed any parasites. In the morning Dad removed the trays and set a ladder beside the house.

We helped him carry the trays to the roof where the apricots lay to dry, exposed to the sky night and day. After a week the ‘cots were ready to eat, shriveled in size, shape, and weight, but sweeter than a robin’s song.

Lisa Gutt Arnold
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Out of Control Pop

If only life were like the old family album where everyone is always smiling. This is Dad and Kimmy (the taller one) and me at the Grand Canyon one summer at dawn.

With dementia patients, you find some sort of routine that works and, just as you do in your life, you toodle along assuming what works one day will also work the next. And just as in life, it doesn't always do that. You come up against the perversity of animate and inanimate ofjects, the curvature of the earth, the unpredictability of the dice and all sorts of other things.

In short, what works one day with my 89-year old demented father, does not work on another. And I end up in tears because I don't know how to fix it. I did that today.

At one of the Alzheimer's support groups I have attended, a man had to put his wife into skilled nursing because he was unable to care for her, with her dementia, any longer. This so angered her damaged brain that he could no longer visit her in the nursing home. If she saw him, even in the hallway, she would go berserk and yell that he had put her in "this prison" against her will and she would be out of control like that for at least 24 hours. The nursing home people asked him not to visit.

There was just enough of a grain of truth in his wife's reaction--just a grain, not actual truth--that the man was wracked with guilt. Yes, he knew he had done the right thing, and yes he knew that going into a nursing home would upset practically anyone. But no, her reaction was not that of the loving wife he had known for sixty years. Her brain was not the brain he had known. So, he would sneak into the nursing home to keep track of her care, but he would have to stay away from her room. His daughter could visit and his wife would be okay with that, but he was devastated that he could not see her himself.

Another person in a support group of mine had been married to her husband for more than fifty years. He had had a brief first marriage that lasted less than two years before they had met. But as his dementia worsened he would confuse his second wife with his first and tell his present wife (as if talking to his first wife, if you follow me) that no, he had not loved that "second woman" and wished the first wife and he had never divorced. He would find his divorce papers and brood over them endlessly. The woman cried as she told us she had had to put her husband, who had Alzheimer's, in assisted living because she could not longer handle the stress.

My own father was like that this morning. He was mad from the minute I entered the kitchen with the pancakes he always enjoys. Mad because I had sent (with his permission) an Ascension Island cap to his old friend-from-the-Army Herb, who is himself in skilled nursing. I had sent a note to Herb's wife Ursula because I wanted to let her know I had been in touch with a woman on Ascension who was going to call her to seek out historical information on World War II U.S. Army sites there.

Somehow, my poor father got it in his head that I had been corresponding with his old friends behind his back. Yesterday, I had showed him my correspondence with them, and today he said he hadn't read it and I should have showed it to him. But I didn't have it with me. It just got worse from there. His total deafness doesn't help: he is so tuned into faces, because he cannot hear, that if you make any kind of face that shows exasperation it makes him angrier and angrier. He slammed his hand so hard on the kitchen table today I was afraid he might hurt himself. I figured a retreat, under the circumstances, was the only sensible thing to do.

These things become a tangled web because your loved one responds in the same tone of voice, and with the same gestures and manner than he once did when he actually had something to be angry about. You are now seeing the same picture of an angry parent: only this time you have to keep telling yourself it is not the father you knew. But that is tough, because he is sitting right there, looking almost just as he did, and definitely sounding as he once did when you came home late from a date, or told him to buzz off when he wanted you to eject the rock and roll tape from your radio.

Added to the fun is the other parent who can't seem to face the fact that it is time for Dad to be in skilled nursing, for his own safety and for ours. She likes to pretend everything is as it was. Certainly, that helps her survive, and I do understand that. But it does not move us toward the next steps we need to take in this truly difficult struggle.

My Dad is still well enough to feel sorry hours later when he realizes he has been irrational or difficult. But that isn't the point. I'm sorry we can't do more for him. The trouble is ... doing more for him is never enough.

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Who is Reading This Blog?

Ever wonder who is reading this blog with you? We've now reached almost 5000 hits since we first started tracking with Google Analytics. That's a hefty number for a blog that is not yet a year old.

Who is reading us out there?

People from 69 different countries for one thing. We had a nice note from a reader in Scandinavia who liked the vintage postcards we often use as illustrations on the site. And we have some loyal readers in India, one of whom sent this note regarding an article Robin wrote about leaving her Florida home. (The article included a picture of her living room): "I had read about some of the writers' rooms. Today I am educated a little bit more !!!! (After reading your article on your room). Here is the link describing the room of Virginia Woolf : http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/13/writers.rooms.virginia.woolf Sincerely, N.L., Ahmadabad, India"
(Miles to Go Before I Sleep)

We recently had a nice comment on our (admittedly tongue in cheek) post about the differences between Florida and California. (The post is several months old but that is one of the wonders of the blog. People find you by Googling a subject you may have written about several months before.) The note read: "We are from California now living in the Keys. Your comments are so right on but you did not mention the beautiful sunsets in California due to the pollution content the more smog the prettier the sunset." Well hey, we like the Florida Keys too! It's like living in the Caribbean only with U.S. money and better food.
(Sunshine State Vs Sunshine State)

Articles written by screenwriter Steve Latshaw for our blog have elicited comments from his wide range of friends including Dean Torrence of the classic surfer duo Jan and Dean. His articles on Roy Rogers have been read in dozens of countries from Chile to the Netherlands. Even Dustin Roy Rogers (Roy's grandson) wrote in response to the encouraging comments: "We cannot do it alone. It will only happen with a posse whose numbers are as strong as Roy's fan base. I encourage all Roy & Dale fans to join Carole in "shouting as loud as they are praying. Dustin Roy Rogers"
(We Need a Posse to Help Roy and Dale)

Reviewing an indy film called In Search of a Midnight Kiss , we mentioned that in spite of all its awards, we found it boring, vulgar and dreary. Not to mention the lead actress, in her twenties, appeared to be headed for the land of double chins. Someone in Hollywood agreed with us in this letter from Anonymous: "Actually, Sara Simmonds is 30-years-old and she already does have a double chin...ha! I loved your honest review of this film. It is one of the first I've read that I agree with. The entire film from the writing to the acting,...shall I say, "STINKS!"" (Here we must interject the advice of Trady Lords' mother in Philadelphia Story: "Don't say 'stinks' darling. When necessary say 'smells' but only when absolutely necessary.")
(Sunshine State Vs Sunshine State)

We don't want to spend too much time patting our own back. We are just pleased and astonished that we've had this much luck bringing in readers to our general interest blog.

To you, our readers, from all over the globe--from Australia to the Netherlands and from Spain to Ireland, we salute you. Only one little complaint. We've had readers from every state in the United States--except South Dakota. Where are you S. Dakota? Anybody out there amidst the Badlands?

We promise you more fun, travel, books, movies, commentary and amusement in the months ahead. Hope you will stay with us. And bring your friends down, ya hear?

A vintage postcard we love.

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