Yippee

This week has been an active one. I received notification that my true short story A Heart Betrayed had been picked as a finalist in the Reader Views Literary Contest for stories about transformation. The story will be published in Loving Healing Press.

Today I just received word that Tears and Tales: Stories of Animal and Human Rescue is a semi-finalist in the 2006 Reader Views Literary Awards. The finalists will be announced in early April. If you visit http://www.insidescooplive.com you can look for and listen to my Internet radio interview.

To top everything off, I have placed Tears and Tales at the Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center gift shop where the four original copies sold out in five days. Their second order was for six books. And Bluegrass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, contacted me. They want to place autographed copies of Tears and Tales in the airport gift shop AND in the bookstore upstairs. The manager thinks the book will be popular because most of the flights out of the airport are commuter flights and people are looking for short books or books of short stories.

Yippee!!!!!

Still in Corsica

Corsica: We were brought to a local winery high in the mountains with gorgeous stonework and a beautiful view of the water below. They offered a white and a red wine and a non-alcoholic lemon drink. Citrus fruits abound on Corsica. Virginia has to add sugar to her lemon drink because it was really sour. Still, something different.

I had red wine and them sampled a white as well. I wish I could say one was better than the other, but frankly I didn't like either. The town was laid out in terraces, with a lower and higher level. I thought about climbing a long flight of stone stairs, but I had been having some muscle cramping problems and decided I had been doing well enough on the hills without tempting the fates. In other words, I chickened out and let my wife do the stairs. She chickened out three-quarters of the way up.

We also visited a local church in the town of St. Antonius. Everything was very ornate even for a Catholic church. They celebrate a lot of Holy Days in Corsica with long processions winding up the steep roads. The people must be in very, very good shape.

On one of the mountain tops there was a shepherd's cottage, completely made of stone, packed on the interior with mud to keep out the draft. Actually it was quite warm inside even though there was a stiff breeze outside. And, of course, it was dark. Too dark for photos. It was at that point I wondered if they had poisonous snakes on Corsica.

I had to climb a wire fence to get a look inside. It was a national historic site and the guide said it would be all right just to take a quick peek. Funny but when you go into places liek that you get a sense of time and dimension you don't feel in the present. I could almost feel the vibrations of those who had lived there, a simple dwelling, a single room, a singular purpose in life, merely to survive from day to day.

I cannot say we were unhappy to leave Corsica because without time and a car the tourist is limited to the small village. Still, there were enough stores with most unusual items to keep one happy and the market itself was a hodgepodge of stands and rows with all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables. One of the fruits, the prickly pear, I had not seen in years. It is the fruit of the cactus. They were in bloom all over the island and I well remember them from when I was a child.

The fruit is beet red in color, shaped like a small football with blunted ends and black pebbles all over the skin. I remember the pebbles because if you grabbed the pear in your hand it gave you a nice set of stingers that took forever to work themselves out. The wound felt more like an abrasion than a sting. So you grabbed the fruit by the ends and peeled it with a sharp knife, discarding the skin, and then enjoyed the pulpy, juicy fruit within. Not to worry though. If you forget and grab one in your hand, you won't do it a second time. Promise.

And it is a tasty fruit and worth the risk. Sweet, a little pulpy and blood red inside. Occasionally I would see them in supermarkets in New Jersey, but I have never seen them in Kentucky. And before I forget, we saw the prickly pear on just about all of the islands we visited, some just there for the taking except they weren't ripe just yet. It depends on the temperature etc.

The markets had all kinds of cheeses, fruits and each merchant had something open that you could sample. It brought back a lot of memories seeing that because in my yesteryear (around nine or ten years of age) I visited a lot of grocery stores and markets with my maternal grandfather. He was a businessman selling imported products to them.

The merchants always cut a slice of something for me. It might be a baloney or prosciutto (ham), Genoa salami or provolone cheese so sharp it made your glands hurt when you bit into it. It wasn't so much a custom to see if you liked their wares but rather a kind of pride these men took in giving you something that was, in their opinion, a part of their heritage.

So, they sliced something with great pomp and artistry and waited while you sampled it and signaled satisfaction. And, of course, they had to give you a crusty slice of Italian bread along with it to augment the tasting experience. Odd, and sad, that such a wonderful art should be lost in our high speed world today.

There may be such places still in Europe today. I hope there are. Despite the fact that we enjoy technology, it would be sad if all the old world things that really mattered were suddenly to be no more. And perhaps, here and now, I am recording for history, something that was ... and may never be again.

We leave Corsica this trip and head to the Italian Riviera I'll discuss in my next blog. Hope you are enjoying the trip along with us.

More about Corsica

I was speaking about Corsica and got into meeting our little friend, George. Obviously this is a well-trained animal with quite a bit of hair.

We went into the little shop where George was being displayed (he was outside; the shop was inside) and did a little sampling of cheese and olive oil. One thing I have learned is that all olive oil is not the same. Some is more sweet; some more ascetic; some tart. The olive oil on most of the islands we visited was more sweet than tart. Most of the cheese was made from goat's milk, but was milder than some of the goat cheeses I have sampled elsewhere.

What else does one do in Corsica? Ah, he finds the object of a nine year search ... a bathing suit. Not that I am a swimmer but I needed something less than thirty years old to use at the hot tub on the Seabourn decks. My old Catalina was just that ... old ... with the interior supports pretty well worn to pieces. So there we were searching for souvenirs when Virginia ducks into a doorway, comes out a few seconds later and motions me with her finger. Motioning me with her finger is always a sign she has found soemthing and so she had.

They had -- on sale no less -- two beautiful swimming suits just in my size. Actually, if it hadn't been for a very nice lady behind the counter who did not think I'd fit into the suit I originally picked, my eyes would have been bulging on the first try. But she was very kind and helpful, spoke perfect English and even gave us a discount for buying two.

I love them both but you aren't reading this to learn about my quest for a bathing suit ... or are you?

Corsica has a rugged terrain as do most of the islands we visited. Everything seems to be rocky and uphill. One thing the island has that most of the other islans do NOT have is water. Right! I said water. So Corsica exports water. Drinking water mostly. (Brand name Zilia.) They bottle it under their own brand name and sell it either to the mainland or the various islands. We were given water on the ship so we didn't sample any of the local water except in Sicily -- where it was delicious and wholesome. It had taste.

The towns in Corsica are quaint and charmingly narrow. The seascapes entrance you at first glance. And one comes away from Corsica understanding why the rich and idle spend their idle time on islands such as this. They sail into the harbor or fly into the private airport and then limousine to their million dollar homes. Tourists like us ride the bus. But then, the rich don't get to meet George either.

We did visit a Corsican market. Purchased a piece of Corsican cheese which was made from goat milk and was delicious. We'd nibble on it as we ducked in and out of little shops. I think the real fun was being able to buy things and spend money even without understanding the language. All the merchants we met were extremely courteous and helpful.

In my travels I have found that if you make an attempt to speak to the natives in their own language -- no matter how poor your French, Italian or Spanish may be --- they bend over backwards to help you. I think it's the fact that one shows respect for the country he is visiting and they appreciate it. Lord knows, Americans do not have a good reputation abroad, but if you act like a human being and with respect, you find a wonderful friend at the other end of your efforts.

The roads on most of the islands curve and wind around the island, sometimes so narrow the tour bus had to back up to let another car pass. We did visit several towns and one Church but the Church was closed because of construction. Not that we lacked for visiting Churches. In some of the churches they have a three-masted schooner hanging from a pole above the altar. This was an offering to God to bring the seamen home safely. Most of these islanders traveled a good deal by boat because it was the only means of travel until air travel emerged.

All of the islands have ferry service and these boats are large enough to carry cars as well as people and cargo. They sit prettly low in the water and there are usually two kinds on the wealthier islands: one is a slow version of a ferry and the other is a faster catamaran type that really moves. We saw both as we were mooring in the harbor and on the way out, the dolphins raced us for quite a distance, thought we were too far away to get a picture. I think it would be truly exciting to travel from island to island on the ferries. Kind of like island hopping on a tramp steamer.

There is an enchantment about travel, an excitement. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but it is as if one has traveled in another time or in another place and now, has returned again. I felt it on Corsica, Elba, Sardinia, Tunisia, but no where did I feel a sense of having come home more than when we visited Segesta and Erica, Sicily. Perhaps it was the roots of my home country, the place where my grandparents were born and married. Perhaps it was a reincarnation of self. Perhaps some genetic part of me recalled the family that took its donkey into the house every night so it would not be stolen. I just had an eerie sense that I had seen some of Sicily before.

I think we all experience deja vu at one time or another in our lives. For me, it was Sicily. I must admit I had trepidations about returning there. What would it feel like? How would I fare in a place where I did not speak the language? Would there be thieves and robbers? Would there be someone waiting for me from a long dormant vendetta?

Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself again.