A Blue Long Gone...

I hadn’t seen it, this color blue, for many, many years. But there it was squiggling over and across the waves, taking me back in time, back to my youth, back when I noticed things like this color blue.

I was on a snorkeling trip out of Kanantik Jungle Resort on the southeast coast of Belize and was sitting on the starboard side of the snorkel boat as it bounced along briskly, and I guess it was the polarity of my cheap clip-on shades but as I looked into the waves we cut over, dancing on the surface were these delicate, long lines, strings of them, a blur of blue that I suspect was a prismatic play on the sky’s reflection, but these squiggles on the water were the same shade of blue I’d seen as a child.

These long, wavering thin blue lines reminded me of that blue long gone, a blue I’d not seen since, a blue of precisely this tone that jogged my memory back to it instantly. Not a sky blue or cobalt blue or cerulean blue. It was deeper than powder blue, sharper, leaning toward but not quite violet, not as intense as purple. It was the color of my favorite crayon as a child, a color that just seeing again made the smell of the crayon come back, almost a candy-chemical scent and the feel as well, the feel of the paper around it, not smooth, not coarse, but a texture in between that every one long remembers. I don’t recall seeing that precise color crayon ever again.

But it was there, this color in velvety strands skipping along the waves moving as fast as the boat was, as fast as childhood escapes those who deserve it most and don’t know how fleeting it is until enough time has paced to lend perspective to what’s been lost and yearned for. The sight of that color brought my soul back to a time of innocence and huggy aunts and grandparents and Sunday afternoon meals that melted into night and black-and-white football on TV, a time when a mother’s soothing “It’ll be all right” meant that it would be all right.

I was going to retrieve my camera and take a picture, but feared it wouldn’t reproduce the magic adequately, and I didn’t want to leave the deck and lose the feeling and leave that color behind for an instant, I just wanted to embrace and enjoy it for as long as I could

And then the clouds scudded across the sky and the color was gone and we got to the snorkeling place and I soon forgot about that blue. Again.

I miss it. Again.

Catching Olympic Gold Fever

Lake Placid’s population has held steady for years, hovering around 3,000. But on Feb. 22, 1980, it was every American’s hometown.
“This place seats 7,700 but that night had about 10,000 or 11,000,” says Sandy Caligiore, former director of communications for the Olympic Regional Development Authority, overseer of all-things Olympic in Lake Placid, including the Herb Brooks Arena in which we stand. “But to listen to people who said they were there, there would had to have been a million here.”
It was here on that night the much underestimated United States hockey team defeated the powerhouse Russians in what Sports Illustrated deemed the greatest sports moment of the 20th century. They later beat the Fins next to capture the gold and America’s heart. I’m a total hockey freak and had come to this hallowed hall with my son, another huge fan, to embrace it all.
I have seen “Miracle on Ice” footage a million times, and every single time that Al Michaels roars “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” I get goose bumps that won’t quit. Walking into the arena where it happens and the memories linger thick in the air, those goose bumps are the size of goalposts.
My son, 20 when we visited in 2008, and I stand above the corner where U.S. goalie Jim Craig, draped in an American flag, mouthed the words “Where’s my father?” looking into the stands for his dad. It is an iconic moment indelibly etched in the minds of Americans who lived during that time and recall the game as being as much a political statement and patriotic shot in the arm for a country in turmoil – the Cold War, gasoline shortage and Iranian hostage crisis were all in full swing - as it was a mere hockey game.
The Olympic Center where it happened is nestled in the heart of picturesque Lake Placid, and is a remarkably open place. You walk into the arena, named for the legendary coach, the late Herb Brooks, who lead the upstart American kids to improbable victory, and just stand and let the chills warm you from the inside out. Check out the Olympic museum, where Craig's goal, stick and flag are on display.
But the hockey gold isn’t the only memory to share here. Outside on the oval ice track is where Eric Heiden took five golds in speed skating in 1980, the last time long-track speed skating was held outside, a track now flooded and frozen in winter for the public to enjoy. Also here is the Jack Shea Arena, named for a man who in the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid took two skating gold medals. His grandson Jimmy won gold in the skeleton event at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
We also wander over to the Olympic ski jump center a few miles outside of town, where the 120 meter behemoth defies logic as you look straight up 365 feet and wonder how the hell anyone has the guts to slide down this thing and into thin air. Take an elevator ride to the top to check out a view that will take your breath away. In summer and fall, try the 1980 bobsled run, a half-mile, 40-second blast of jarring, jolting thrills, near-vertical cornering and g-force straightaway speeds.
Having seen all that, my son and I wander to the Herb Brooks arena one last time. Little has changed here since 1980. It still has the original seats, the original scoreboard, the original locker room number seven where the American kids dressed, and the original magic still pervading this most American of sports venues.
We stand quietly, reflecting and remembering, and trying to get those goose bumps down to a manageable level. We can’t, and really, don’t want to. Ever.

Best - and only - rum punch in Belize Airport

A must-sip stop in the world of airport bars has to be Jet’s Bar in Belize City Airport, run by the diminutive, Beetlejuice-voiced Jet, a tiny Belizean with a towering personality – particularly toward women.

It is a hole-in-the-wall kinda place, with a few stools at the short bar, tacky decorations all around, a wall of police patches from the world over and an abundance of photos of Jet and women. The airport is typical Central American, tiny, requisite stores selling tourist kitsch, hot, cramped and making for thirsty waits.

Enter Jet, who’ll roam the crowd, croaking “Who wants the best rum punch in Belize?” until he finds a taker, and for five bucks you get the best rum punch in Belize. Well, Belize City Airport anyway. I’m pretty sure it’s the only bar in the building.

And he’ll haunt you to buy a hot dog (“Best hot dog in Belize”) or a ham-and-cheese sandwich (ditto) until you break down. I did and son of a gun, the ham-and-cheese wasn’t bad, so for less than a sawbuck, I got food, drink and a few minutes with the seeming mayor of Belize City Airport. This is the guy who can call your gate so the agent will call back and let you know when your plane’s boarding, in case you want to stick around Jet’s a little longer and suck down more rum punches and soak up Jet’s infectious personality.

“Here, says it all here,” he growled to me when I asked how he got the name Jet, plopping a framed news story in my hands.

Turns out Jet (I don’t know his real name and don’t want to, the nickname’s cool enough for me) was an airport worker for years with a reputation for moving fast on the job, hence the name. And seeing his slick schmooze with any woman he meets – whether they buy the best rum punch in Belize or not – he’s still living up to the name.

Airborne Musings

(Written aboard a flight to Belize in January 2010)

I’m writing this on a flight to Belize out of Miami that I almost missed. I thought for sure seven hours ago I’d have missed the first leg of this journey out of Boston by being stuck in a typical Boston traffic jam which, combined with a driving rain that a descending rain/snow line turned the former into the latter the closer we inched toward Logan Airport, meant I just boarded my 8:25 a.m. flight in time only to sit for the next one hour and 20 minutes waiting for the de-icers to show up followed by waiting for the push-back dudes to show up with their push-back gear.

So then I’m in the air trying to calculate how much effort it would take to make my 1:50 p.m. Belize flight out of Miami if we’re not landing until 1:20. A lot, it turns out, the thought of which made an unreachable knot between my shoulder blades feel like someone boiled a golf ball in nuclear waste and then pounded it into my spine with a nine iron.

So we land in Miami and I hump it over from terminal E to terminal D, and my gate is not D-1, or D-2, or D-3 or anything in the low, merciful range. No, my flight to Belize leaves from D-51 – 51!!! – Absolutely the last gate in the terminal.

So I huff and puff and walk fast and gasp through the 20s, pant through the 30s, start realizing why they call these things a “terminal” as my chest aches through the 30s. Then in the mid-40s, bearing down the homestretch, sweaty, hauling one laptop/camera bag on my shoulder, a small but very tightly packed soft bag in the other, I hear the PA system boom with not my flight number and reasonable request to board, but “Will passenger Paul Kandarian please report to gate D-51. This is the last call.”

So now I break a full trot that leads into a canter and then a full-out gallop (as much so as my 56-year-body will allow, anyway) and my fast walk huff-and-puff turns into a defibrillator-needed pounding-the-ground. Breathlessly I make the gate and the agent says, “Oh, there you are,” like a disappointed hostess awaiting the guy running late with the crab dip.

So we take off on time and as my breathing has just returned to normal, I have my usual mid-air weird thoughts because what else is there to do, I can’t read comfortably on an airplane and I certainly can’t sleep with this golf ball throbbing like a cheap romance novel between my shoulder blades, so I wonder things like:

--Why can’t we use cell phones in flight? Will the plane blow up if we send a text, check our email, download an app? Is it that dangerous a proposition? If it were, don’t you think they wouldn’t even let us bring them aboard in the first place? I mean, really, do they trust us that much? This is an industry that doesn’t trust us to carry more than 3 ounces of liquid in one bottle, for Chrissakes.

And really, how dangerous can it be? Every time there’s a chance of an airline disaster, or worse, a real one, don’t people always turn their cells on and call home for the last time? And are you, like me, really pissed when the news stations play those recorded messages of people who’ve called and couldn’t reach their loved ones?

--How come you can use your cell phone after landing but no electronic device? And what the hell qualifies as an electronic device? Isn’t a cell phone an electronic device? What happens if you do use an electronic device? The plane flips into a ditch?

--It is absolutely guaranteed the more of a hurry you’re in to leave plane 1 to rush to plane 2, the further back of plane 1 your seat will be and the larger and slower the enormous, plodding woman in front of you will be and the gate at which plane 2 is located is the dead last one of that terminal.

--When the price of fuel skyrocketed, airplanes started charging for bags. When the price of fuel dropped, the charge for bags did not. Interesting. And you still can’t get a bag of salted dust (technically pretzels, but we know better) for free on flights anymore where pretty soon during the safety demonstration, they’ll say “before you put on your oxygen mask, swipe your credit card through the device attached to it to start the flow of oxygen. Sorry, we do not accept cash.”

Walk the R.I. Walk - 10 of Them

(THis story ran in the Boston Globe Travel section)


By Paul E. Kandarian
Globe Correspondent

Rhode Island is a small state custom made, it would seem, for putting shoe to ground and walking, by the ocean or through the countryside or down city streets. It seems natural to hoof it here at a slow, steady pace, enjoying the state’s many sights and sounds, particularly at this colorful time of year when the air is crisp and clean.

So while you could perambulate anywhere in Rhode Island and have a good time doing it, consider these 10, some off the beaten path but all paths so very worth walking.

The Narragansett sea wall is a half-mile walk by the sun-dappled ocean that can be a bit chilly when the wind whips off the water. Start out by the last remaining section of the Narragansett Pier Casino, also known as The Towers, which back in its day was more high society than Newport. Walk south on Ocean Road about a mile and hit Black Point Park, a popular fishing spot and home of the Malcolm Grant Trail, a winding, wooded dirt path that opens to beautiful ocean vistas including the Newport Bridge on the far horizon.Be careful on the rocky, steep shoreline: Three have died here in recent years, the rocks can be slippery and the ocean usually turbulent.
Narragansett sea wall, 35 Ocean Drive, Narragansett

For a short walk long on history, take a trek around the 22-acre Conanicut Battery National Historic Park in Jamestown. From 1776-1783 this was an earthen fortification built by colonists and later occupied by the British and likely the French after that, a fortification that is now a beautiful, wide-open meadow. In World Wars I and II, there were six Army command posts here that, among other things, controlled minefields in the east and west passages of Narragansett Bay, of which the battery had a commanding hilltop view. The six in-ground cement stations are still visible, buried in the earth, narrow observation slits sticking up above ground. Walking trails are well marked with information on the history of the site.
Conanicut Battery National Historic Park, Jamestown, Battery Lane, off Beavertail Road, just south of Fort Getty Road.





Mount Hope Farm in Bristol is one of those best-kept secrets that are hard to hide and fun to find in such a small state. This site is historic – here is the Governor Bradford House built in 1745 by Isaac Royall, then one of the country’s wealthiest men and which is now a private inn - but all around it are 200 heavily wooded acres, and streams, fields and ponds, connected by a myriad of walking trails, many of which open to sprawling water views of Mount Hope Bay and the Mount Hope Bridge spanning the bay and connecting Bristol with Portsmouth. The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with purposeful patriotic timing, on July 4, 1976.
Mount Hope Farm, 250 Metacom Ave., Bristol, mounthopefarm.com, 401-254-1270






Benefit Street on Providence’s richly historic East Side was created in 1758, it is written, “for the common benefit of all,” mainly to relieve Main Street congestion. Built along a path of gardens, orchards and family burial plots, Benefit Street today is known as Providence’s “Mile of History,” famous for its colonial and early federal buildings built shoulder to shoulder, handsome, well-kept historic homes that are an eyeful on a lingering walk, particularly in fall when the tree-lined street explodes with color. Particularly notable are structures like the First Baptist Church, built in 1775, its steeple inspired by St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and the Providence Athenaeum, one of the nation’s oldest lending libraries and where amid the towering stacks, Edgar Allen Poe wooed his lady love, Sarah Helen Whitman, a woman some claim was Poe’s inspiration for his poem of love lost, “Annabel Lee.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Rhode Island’s state parks, and rather fittingly, state authorization to purchase the first park, Lincoln Woods, in Lincoln, was given on Feb. 12, 1909 – President Lincoln’s 100th birthday. This 627-acre park five miles from Providence is a sprawling gem of the park system, and one of its busiest, with 2.3 million people visiting last year who took advantage of the chance to hike, bike, jog, swim, ride horses, ice skate, ice fish, just-plain fish, rock climb, boat, picnic or just plain sit around and admire the place. Fall is phenomenal here with radiant reds and glowing gold reflecting on Olney Pond and walkers hiking the occasionally hilly, two-and-a-half mile Les Pawson Loop, named for the Rhode Island man who won the Boston Marathon in 1933, 1938 and 1941 and used to train here.
Lincoln Woods, 2 Manchester Print Words Road, Lincoln, riparks.com/Lincoln/htm, 401-
723-7892

Where to walk on Block Island? Where not to walk on Block Island is more likely, with an island so small – three-by-seven miles – you could conceivably walk around the entire place in eight hours. But one of the most popular places is the Mohegan Trail on the island’s southeast side, home of the spectacular Mohegan Bluffs that rise sharply some 200 feet from the beach below, and the Southeast Light, an historic lighthouse said to be one of the brightest in the east that was once visited by President Ulysses S. Grant. Hiking here gets a bit physical, with the trail following hilly swells and dips, and especially so at a long, zig-zagging staircase allowing you access to the coast and a crisp October walk of up to three miles if you can handle it. Dress for it, wind off the water here is especially chilling.

Fifty acres isn’t a big hunk of land, but at the Emilie Ruecker Wildlife Refuge in Tiverton, they make the most of it. This parcel, once a farm owned by its namesake and donated to the Audubon Society in 1965, is particularly gorgeous in fall, with flat, well-marked trails winding through woods and salt marshes along the Sakonnet River. All manner of feathered creatures can be found here, including great egrets, snowy egrets and glossy ibis; there are blinds here for observing and photographing birds. The 1.5-mile network of trails takes less than two hours to hike. Lingering longer is a worthy option.
Emilie Ruecker Wildlife Refuge, Seapowet Avenue, Tiverton, asri.org/refuges/emilie-ruecker-wildlife-refuge.html, 401-949-5454

You think walking in Newport and what springs to mind? Cliff Walk, sure, but try out a Newport Harbor walk, put together by Friends of the Waterfront, particularly the north walk that covers the historic residential Point Section – the original colonial center of the city that remained relatively unscathed when the British broke up the docks and burned them for heat in the Revolutionary War. There is much to see, including Gravelly Point at the end of Long Wharf where pirates were hanged and President Washington once landed on what was then named – and still is – Washington Street. Historic homes on the less than three-mile walk include Hunter House, used over the years by Tories, the French Navy, doctors and boarding nuns. At the end is Battery Park and one of the best sunset views in the city.
newportharborwalk.com

It makes sense that most of the state-owned Great Swamp Wildlife Management Area, much of which is in South Kingston and partly juts into Richmond, is wetlands, 2,262 acres of it in a preserve of less than 3,500 acres. But you can see lots of it with well-maintained trails coursing through the spongy freshwater low-lying land which erupt brilliantly in fall in a place dominated by red swamp maples. The state-owned area is extremely popular with bikers as well as hikers; the South County Bike Path brushes by its northeast corner.
Great Swamp Wildlife Management Area, 277 Great Neck Road, West Kingston, 401-789-7481

You have your Narragansett Bay and in Watch Hill, a cozy village in Westerly in the farthest southwestern corner of the state, you have Little Narragansett Bay, a waterway best seen by walking along the half-mile long Napatree Beach. At the end of Fort Road is a nature trail that takes hikers out to historic Napatree Point where they can see the ruins of Fort Mansfield, an old coastal artillery post. Resorts and beach cottages dotted this area in the early 20th century – until the Hurricane of 1938 wiped them out.

Revolution, Rhode Island style

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(This story ran in the Boston Globe Travel section)

PAWTUCKET, R.I. – The American Revolution against England was a battle in which much blood was shed.

The American Industrial Revolution, begun here at Slater Mill on the banks of the mighty Blackstone River in 1793, had its own blood lost in the pursuit of mechanized freedom. The belts, wheels and cogs, unfettered by federal regulations in the late 18^th century, would sometimes lop off fingers, break arms and legs, or occasionally fatally crush a child who’d been sent into whirring machinery to clean or fix things.

It is all part of the rich, literal fabric of American technological history at this site where English expat Samuel Slater created water-powered textile machinery that revolutionized the way the new America made things.

This National Historic Landmark is one of the state’s most popular tourist destinations, with some 40,000 visits a year by people from 150 countries, including school groups that in spring number 100 or more children a day.

This area was once clogged with mills, and while many remain that have been converted to office or residential space, the Slater Mill complex is three buildings on five and a half acres in the center of the state’s fourth-largest city. Costumed interpreters take groups through the buildings imparting their history, and private tours are available.

In the main building is mostly replica machinery showing how cotton is spun from raw materials coming to the mill in tightly compressed 500-pound bales. Wispy, cloud-like cotton is carded and spun and woven into tight, strong strands that are fed into clattering machinery whipping it all onto bobbins, machinery that when jammed meant sending someone small enough into it to fix – a child. Quickness was a virtue to avoid getting caught in heavy sliding parts.

Upstairs is the Jencks Education Center which includes the Community Guild Studios, begun in November 2008. It is Rhode Island’s first fiber-arts center, said Steven Chandler, development and marketing manager, offering a wide range of classes and programs, including chair caning, basket making, weaving, spinning and quilting. Local groups use it for meeting space, including the Industrial Revolution Quilt Guild.

In the stone Wilkinson Mill is a replica waterwheel, a 16,000-pound wooden behemoth that was the backbone of any water-powered mill – and where ghosts have been sighted. Ghost tours are held at Slater Mill, and The Atlantic Paranormal Society last year aired an episode of its popular “Ghost Hunters” TV show that was filmed here.

The wheel powers a hub that feeds upstairs to the Slater Mill machine shop, where drills, lathes and sanders are powered by a series of heavy leather belts on pulleys, another source of lost fingers and broken bones back in the day. In one portion of this area is the “Apprentice Alcove,” where children – quite safely – can operate their own mini-machines.

Also at Slater Mill is the Sylvanus Brown House, an original late 18^th-century house with sparse furnishings in chilly rooms and a small garden in back. It is an original building that had been moved here from elsewhere in Pawtucket for preservation.

While visitors may be from far-flung places, many are locals who have never been here or had been ages ago.

“Those are two common responses from people visiting,” said Andrian Paquette, curator. “They either grew up near here and never saw Slater Mill, or haven’t been since they came with their second-grade class. We’re targeting those folks to get them to visit for the first time, or again.”

Slater Mill

67 Roosevelt Ave.

Pawtucket, R.I.

Open weekends March and April, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; May through October, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; tickets $8-$10.

401-725-8638

www.Slatermill.org