Travel Overview   In this current decade of the Aughties, I find I’ve returned to many places within what I like to call the Euramerican area that we had visited in previous decades. I won’t review the regions of Europe I’ve gone back to in recent years, but a look at the website menu will show that, once I go back this summer (after Africa) to Switzerland for an extensive visit, I’ll have gone back to most of Western and Northern Europe. Although this has also included Russia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, Eastern Europe, including Greece, is still up for revisiting in the coming years.

I have not done this by going down some checklist, but it’s just worked out that frequent travel first here, then there, over a few years fills in the blanks very quickly. Similarly, I never planned on revisiting North America so extensively, but I crossed Canada by rail from coast to coast on the way to Siberia in 2005, cruised the Caribbean in 2004 to reach my Travelers’ Century Club total of 100 in 2004, and went back to Mexico in 2007. As for the United States, once I went back to the Alaskan Panhandle in 2005 on a whim “on the way to Minnesota”, it just worked out that I filled in the US by quadrants. Not forgetting the Minnesota Trilogy of 2003 representing the Midwest, I visited the Northeastern US in 2006 and the Southwestern US in 2007. It now works out that I’ll be visiting the Northwestern US and Hawaii again later this year, so now, in conjunction with the just completed Louisiana trip and having just visited my condominium in Florida, I’d like to talk about visiting the Southeastern US over the years.

Starting with that impulsive Alaska trip to fill in some blanks left from years before, you may remember I adopted the philosophy of the Latin phrase “Carpe diem!” Usually that phrase is translated as “Seize the day!”, implying to “do it now” and don’t put it off. I just came across information that the phrase deals more with harvesting than with seizing. That reminds me of the recently (2008/4) quoted Spanish word “disfrutar”, based on “fruta”. “Disfrutar” is to enjoy in the sense of “take the fruits of”. Similarly, rather than talking about seizing, which implies at least mild violence, I’m pleased to find that “Carpe diem!” actually means “Harvest the day!”. That’s much more pleasing.

Before I discuss five specific areas in the South, I want to first fleetingly mention some places of pleasant memory all over the East that we visited over time: Mackinac Island in Michigan and the Macinaw Bridge connecting the Upper and Lower Peninsulas (always say “Mackinaw”, even though the island uses an older, rather unusual spelling from French); Chicagoland, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park; Saint Louis and its Arch, and riding the elevators to the top; the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas; Goodspeed Opera House in Haddam, Connecticut, with its nearby associations to Nathan Hale; the Victorian village of Cape May, New Jersey, with its ferry connection to Delaware; crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, over bridge then through tunnel; in North Carolina, the Wright Brothers’ memorial at Kitty Hawk, and also restored Old Salem village in Winston-Salem. There is just so much material in the background that’s just too much to discuss.

Southeastern United States   But I’ve chosen five specific areas or trips to single out.

WILLIAMSBURG The restoration in Virginia of the colonial capital of Williamsburg is the standard bearer of all such restorations, especially one of the “living museum” type, where street theater is practiced. The modern town still exists around its historic core, but the relatively little bit of 19C and 20C that had developed were essentially removed from that core, which was restored to the way it looked in the mid-1700’s. There was a particularly large number of historic buildings remaining, and others were rebuilt, such as the Governor’s Palace. The roads are now either cobbled or dirt, for authenticity. But it’s the street theater that provides “time travel” for the visitor.

Beverly and I first visited in 1969, as part of our tour that year through the East which included the two “Evangeline” stops. We went back twenty years later, in 1989 taking our two mothers, the one and only time the four of us traveled together like that. We took a round trip on Amtrak’s Colonial out of New York.

But it was on the first trip that the time travel of the street theater impressed me most. For instance, while waiting on line to get in to one of the buildings, a bewigged man in 18C costume came up to chat to people on line. Beverly spoke up and answered him that we had driven down from New York. Well, he picked it up from there and told how difficult it was for him to “travel” from Williamsburg to New York by coach, given the dusty dirt roads and the necessary ferry crossings, having to change horses and stop at inns—it took forever and ever for him. Doing this interplay you get a deeper feeling for the period.

But my main point in telling about Williamsburg involved one of the most thrilling “time-travel” experiences we had. We walked around to the back of one of the larger houses to find a talk already in progress, so we joined maybe a dozen spectators. A large, black woman was seated under an open lean-to on a bale of hay, paring apples into a wooden bowl. She was wearing a bandana and the floor-length work dress of the period, and was explaining that she was an enslaved person that worked for the family in this house. She kept on watching her paring work and spoke in a vernacular “black” dialect. She continued for maybe another ten minutes telling about her own family, her relationship with the family she worked for, and life in Williamsburg. It was just fascinating. She was so good in her narrative that you forget time and you were seemingly truly living in the 18C. If you’ve ever seen an actor on a stage in a theater and you felt yourself transported by the play, that’s what this was, except you were in the middle of everything! (See “In medias res” below.)

That alone would have been a memorable experience that would have stayed with me over time, but it got even better. When she finished what she had to say, she stopped paring, looked up—and broke character.

She suddenly started speaking highly educated English, and explained that she was a university professor of Black Studies at a local college. She said she also worked at the Williamsburg Restoration in order to accurately portray the role of blacks in the formation of the city, state and country. As she looked at us, she pointed out that enslaved people of the period knew better than to dare to look free people in the eye when speaking to them, which is why she had been staring at her work during her entire narrative. Although one could argue that it’s more authentic to maintain the character, her juxtaposition of the 18th and 20th centuries suddenly side-by-side had an even more powerful affect on our experience. Getting the audience involved in a scenario and then suddenly tearing them out of it for the stronger affect it gives is very Brechtian. Well, as I say, it worked quite well to have kept the experience in my mind for four decades.

COASTAL SAILING Again I’m going to have to blend North with South. In the 1980’s we found out about American Cruise Lines, which sails small ships along the east coast of the US. We sailed on two of them which now are no longer in use, the Savannah and the Charleston. It was so enjoyable that writing about it has made me now consider doing some repeats in the near future.

In the North, for a week in July, 1984 we sailed on the Savannah on what was then billed as their New England Cruise. It started out on the Connecticut River, at East Haddam, Connecticut, opposite the Goodspeed Opera House. I clearly remember the fun of sailing from that lower part of the river onto Long Island Sound. We visited three islands, the first in Rhode Island, the other to in Massachusetts: Block Island, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard. It also stopped in Newport RI and saw the palaces that the rich of another era casually referred to as “bungalows”.

Then in the South, for a week in April, 1988 we took the Charleston on their Historic South Cruise, up the coast on the Inland Waterway. We started in Jacksonville, Florida on the broad estuary of the Saint John’s River, then stopped shortly afterwards at the charming town of Fernandina Beach at the very northern tip of Amelia Island. We liked Fernandina Beach so well that we came back another time and stayed in a beautiful Victorian bed and breakfast in the good-sized Historic District. Then it was up the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, stopping at Brunswick (we made sure we tasted Brunswick stew), Savannah, Hilton Head, Beaufort, and Charleston. Both Savannah and Charleston were marvelous. Sailing on the inland waterway is like going up a river. To the left was the mainland, and to the right were the constant long, narrow barrier islands that constitute the east coast of North America, just like Amelia Island above.

GEORGIA, TENNESSEE, ALABAMA In 1996 we drove from Tampa north to Nashville for Thanksgiving with relatives. I remember joking at the time that we were, oddly, going north to visit our “southern” relatives. It was probably the last car trip where Beverly did her half of the driving, because I started seeing some erratic driving behavior on her part on that trip, and from then on, I did all the driving, all the time.

Our first stop was a hotel, but not just any hotel. We had arranged to spend the night at the Windsor Hotel in Americus, Georgia, registered as one of the Historic Hotels of America. The Victorian structure resembles a stone structure, has a huge central atrium and takes up a whole block. It had once been the crown jewel of South Georgia, but it ended up closing in the 1970’s and had only pigeons for guests. It has been restored to its former grandeur. This is a common route for historic structures, and I refer the reader to the similar stories of the Louisiana Plantation Houses.

Very close to Americus is Plains, and we saw the boyhood home of President Jimmy Carter. Also nearby is Andersonville, the infamous Civil War prison in which so many prisoners died from hunger and disease. It now has a National Cemetery.

We had been to so many Roosevelt sites, both Franklin (also Eleanor) and Theodore, in New York, and this time stopped in Warm Springs, Georgia, where FDR went for physical therapy for his polio. You can visit the pool in town where he swam with local kids, and also the Little White House, where he died.

In Nashville we visited again the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s estate. After Thanksgiving, going back to Florida, we stopped in Birmingham, Alabama, and then Montevallo, whose story I’ve treated extensively (2004/23), then in Montgomery to see the Civil Rights Memorial and related sites.

Crossing into the Florida panhandle, we spent the night in Apalachicola (“Apalach”), at the historic Gibson Inn (1907). The town is famous for oysters, and I remember we had oysters Rockefeller for the first time at the Gibson. Walking around town, through serendipity we came across the museum home of John Gorrie, the physician who, in 1850, while trying to find ways to lower the temperature of patients’ fevers, discovered and patented the first refrigeration unit, ancestor of the air conditioner, so essential to the later development of Florida.

BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY The drive north from Tampa to New York in 1999 was not only enjoyable and interesting, but significant. By this point I was doing all the driving, but in the week or so in which we slowly made our way north I regained the confidence that we could do major traveling again, even given Beverly’s condition. Then, in September around my birthday on the 1st, we went with my sister and her husband on the Nordic Empress for a week to Bermuda, both Hamilton and Saint George’s. We were quite mobile in Bermuda, not as mobile as we had been years earlier when we had flown to Bermuda and rode all over together on a moped, but we had fun nevertheless. Coming back on the Nordic Empress to New York, the full day at sea got me started thinking again about ocean travel, and that maybe we should try it again, which led directly to our resuming European travel the next year, 2000, crossing on the first time on the Queen Elizabeth 2 and returning on the Deutschland, and we/I have kept up international travel regularly now in the Aughties. But I digress.

On the way north, rather than zooming along on Interstates, or even US highways, I decided it was time to travel slowly north along the Blue Ridge Parkway, making major stops along the way over a the period of a week. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs along the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachians. It is quite unique, since you stay consistently rather high in the mountains. It was started in 1935, partly to create jobs for laborers, and wasn’t completed until 1987. It zigzags, but generally runs SW to NE through two states, North Carolina and Virginia. Its 469 miles / 755 kilometers makes it the longest and narrowest National Park in the US. It is also the most visited National Park in the system. It thus seemed quite intriguing as a slow, casual route north.

As beautiful as it was, it turned out to be the biggest travel miscalculation I’d ever made, but after enjoying it sufficiently, we were able to shift plans in midstream and save the trip as an enjoyable experience.

What could go wrong with such beauty? Picture a child with a big box of chocolates. Instead of just taking one, maybe two, he decides to eat the whole box. But after the first ten he abandons the project and never wants to see another chocolate again. Too much of a good thing.... That was us.

Coming up from Florida through Georgia, we first stopped in Tennessee, in Chattanooga, a favorite, going way back to my first cross-country trip (2004/22). We then crossed through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, into North Carolina, where the Blue Ridge Parkway starts. We were headed for Asheville for a couple of nights first, then continued northeastward.

The parkway is two-lane, not only because it’s up along the top of the mountains, but also because that was the style when it was designed in the 1930’s. I remember a speed limit of 35 mph / 56 kph, pleasant enough for the country road atmosphere, especially given all the curves, although it was difficult to pass when necessary.

This is how it worked. Even without stopping at the many overlooks, you would look to the left and see the Most Beautiful Mountain-and-Valley View in the World. You would then go around a bend, look to the right, and again see the Most Beautiful Mountain-and-Valley View in the World. Another curve, another MBM-VVW. And another. And another. “Say--let’s skip that next overlook, since you can see its MBM-VVW from the car anyway.” Before very long the brain turns to mush and sees nothing at all. It’s that box of chocolates syndrome all over again.

And you get the feeling that you can’t escape. This being a road along the mountaintops, the only time you can leave it is when there’s an exit to another road that happens to cross the mountains perpendicularly. These can often be few and far between, maybe 40-50 miles / 65-80 kilometers apart, where you have to continue driving at a slow pace. And at an exit, you are still up in the mountains, and a considerable drive to food, lodging, or gas down in the valleys.

We finally “escaped” from the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway somewhere in northern North Carolina and found other things to do and see, then proceeded north on more traditional US highways north. It was particularly enjoyable riding again on US 11 in the gorgeous Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, since that was the one my family had taken in the early 1950’s on that Chattanooga trip. This current trip did turn out very well, and I am of course exaggerating for effect. The mountain experience was wonderful, even the MBM-VVWs. But this road needs to be taken in severe moderation, like chocolates. Try it for just a couple of exits and bring a picnic for the roadside. Also consider bringing along a supply of insulin in case the many MBM-VVWs start getting to you.

As mentioned, we stopped in Asheville, North Carolina. We had booked a bed and breakfast in a handsome Victorian house in a historic neighborhood, something we liked to do as often as possible. Driving around the city, we came across (but did not visit) the Thomas Wolfe house and memorial, so I continue to associate Asheville with him. The title of one of his novels has always been highly intriguing to me: “You Can’t Go Home Again”. I quote that line frequently, not as a title but as a fact of life. You can’t really revisit the past, at least not the way you remember it. The past he refers to is not an external past, since you can always go to Williamsburg, for example, and attempt to relive someone else’s past. It’s your own past that you can’t go home to. This covers personal events, such as childhood experiences, but also—most applicable here—travel experiences. As many times as I’ve gone back to an ever-changing Mainz (2005/17), it’s always fun, but never the same as when a group of twenty-somethings spent a year studying there in 1961-1962. As a matter of fact, it’s not the same as ANY of the previous visits. You can’t go home again.

On the other hand, it could seem that Proust might say you only have to put a madeleine in your mouth (2007/14) and voilà! instant past life, but that’s not entirely so. Consider where he waxes nostalgic with the phrase we discussed: Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu’on a perdus. That’s just the same as: You can’t go home again.

Am I not digressing again? One goes to Asheville to see the Biltmore estate, and there is nothing like it. Built from 1888 to 1895 by one of the Vanderbilts, at 250 rooms, it’s the largest privately-owned home in the US at 175,000 square feet / 16,258 square meters. It used to have even more acreage around it, but a lot of land went to develop a National Forest (!!!), visible from one of the upper terraces. The remaining property covers 8,000 acres or 12 square miles / 32 square kilometers. Call it a home, but it equals or surpasses any castle in Europe. It’s in the style of a French Renaissance château, and looks like it was carried off from the banks of the Loire.

This not really being intended to be a travelog, I’ll just point out the room that impressed me most, the Banquet Hall. It has a 70-foot ceiling (21 meters), and is unbelievably grand. Even more impressive was the fireplace area at the end of the hall. Picture a walk-in fireplace, with cauldrons and spits, all under the open flue above. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? But it gets better. There are THREE of these walk-in fireplaces, side by side, at the NARROW end of the hall. That’s Biltmore House for you.

When we finally “escaped” from the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina we cut back over to Tennessee so I could take advantage of a Carpe diem! moment. Ever since that early travel to Chattanooga in the Fifties, I was aware of the quirks of the town of Bristol, and I was now finally going to see it.

Bristol is technically two towns lying astride a state line, which runs down the center of Main Street. Bristol, Virginia is on the north side of the street, and Bristol, Tennessee on the south. There are numerous embedded studs on either side of the center line down the street, half indicating Virginia, half Tennessee. It was a trivial thing to want to do, perhaps, but fun nonetheless.

We had plans and hotel reservations further north in Virginia, most notably in Charlottesville, where we revisited Jefferson’s Monticello and his University of Virginia, James Madison’s estate, Montpelier, and the fabulous Michie Tavern from 1784. But in southern Virginia, not going slowly up the Parkway any more, we had some extra time after the escape to Bristol, so before going up to Charlottesville, I squeezed in another Carpe diem! moment, the Cumberland Gap.

I had always been interested in seeing the Cumberland Gap, and even though it lay due west of where we were 100 miles / 160 kilometers each way, we decided to do it. The Cumberland Gap was the first great gateway to the West. It’s a 12-mile / 19-kilometer pass through the Cumberland Mountain area of the Appalachians. At 1600 feet / 488 meters it’s not particularly high, which is precisely why it was so useful, becoming the chief passageway through the central Appalachians. Daniel Boone helped widen the trail in 1775, and it was widened again in the 1790’s to allow the passage of wagons by pioneers journeying into Kentucky and Tennessee. Between 200,000 and 300,000 migrants passed through it before 1810.

Do realize that Tennessee was originally an extension of North Carolina that eventually became a separate state. While most people realize, because of the name, that West Virginia was once part of Virginia, few people are aware that Kentucky was also a westward extension of Virginia. Both “Virginia” and “Carolina” were much larger concepts in colonial days.

As we approached the Gap from Tennessee, we saw on our map the contemporary road that went over the historic passageway, but suddenly WHOOPS we were through a tunnel that didn’t show on our map and in Kentucky before we realized it. We then found out that the Cumberland Gap Tunnel had just been recently built to bypass the Gap, primarily because the modern road was not particularly safe, but also to preserve the historic trail. I now read online that the original trail, free from traffic because of the tunnel, has been restored.

While we were there we drove some distance from the Visitor Center up to the lookout above the Gap to see the view down on the not-yet-fully-restored trail. The view was quite attractive (although mercifully not a full-fledged MBM-VVW), and included looking down on the charming town of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.

When recently discussing quadripoints such as Four Corners (2007/14) I also referred to tripoints, such as the one here at the Cumberland Gap. Remember that it all used to be just Virginia facing Tennessee (as in Bristol), but then Kentucky was separated from Virginia, with the border falling right here at the Gap. Virginia at this point forms an unbelievably sharp acute angle pointing west. As you wander the lookout area above the Gap, you know three states meet right here, but it isn’t marked. I’m sure the actual tripoint is somewhere down the inaccessible hillside.

FLORIDA And then there’s Florida. It’s in the South, but most of it is very different from the rest of the South, since so much of it (the peninsula itself) is very “northern” and international in feeling, with nuances of Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean.

I’m centered in the Tampa area (2007/4) on the Gulf Coast. Going north from Tampa you come to Homosassa Springs, where you can watch from glass-fronted underground viewing rooms huge manatees swimming underwater. Beyond that is Cedar Key, a beautiful area projecting into the Gulf where we’ve gone just to dine several times.

North of Cedar Key the Suwannee River, coming down from Georgia, flows into the Gulf. We’ve strolled along its banks, and have visited the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, where his music can be heard. Foster wrote “Old Folks at Home” in 1851, usually referred to as “Swanee River”, which has become a world symbol of longing for family and home. At the time it caused a tourist movement to Florida to visit the river, especially from the North. It has been until recently the Florida state song. Yet how that particular river was chosen is quite unusual, at least according to legend.

Stephen Foster never visited Florida (he was from Pittsburgh). When he was writing “Old Folks at Home”, he wanted to find a Southern river to evoke the proper atmosphere. His brother suggested the Yazoo River in Mississippi. I suppose the line could have been:

That fit the meter, but was rejected. Then his brother suggested the Pee Dee River of South Carolina, so it could have been:

And that was quickly rejected. Finally, his brother consulted an atlas, and in Florida he found the Suwannee. But Foster needed only two syllables and the Suwannee had three. So, he used poetic license and clipped the U from the name in order to drop a syllable, also unnecessarily dropping one N:

And the rest is, as they say, history. Listen to it while viewing the river on the first segment of this YouTube video: Stephen Foster: Swanee River (Sung on the Suwannee River) Note how he is “Still longing for the old plantation / And for the old folks at home.”

As a digression, I’ll mention that it’s quite unusual that this extremely popular song by a 19C master shows up in other, later songs by 20C masters, perhaps as a sort of hommage. In 1911, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was Irving Berlin’s first hit song. It includes the line saying you should come and hear the band “if you care to hear the Swanee River played in ragtime”. It being a current popular song, it was among the songs famously played on the sinking Titanic the following year, 1912. Then, in 1919, George Gershwin published the song that he went so far as to even title “Swanee”. It was first associated with Al Jolson, later Judy Garland. As with Irving Berlin, this, too, was Gershwin’s first hit song, and proved to be the biggest selling song of his career. Gershwin considered this song a sort of parody of the original, but it retains the same longing for family and home, albeit in a jazzed-up version:

Listen to a recording by a young Judy Garland from 1939 on YouTube: Judy Garland: Swanee

East of Tampa is Orlando, with a laid-back downtown, and beyond that is Winter Park, another pleasant town. An unusual feature are the train tracks and railroad station running right through the middle of the park in the town center. It’s strange to look out the window when Amtrak pulls into town and see oneself in the middle of a park. The Morse Museum in Winter Park has an excellent collection of Tiffany glass, the most extensive anywhere, and includes the famous chapel made of Tiffany glass and Tiffany mosaics.

South of Tampa is Sarasota, with excellent dining, and the home of the Ringling Museum, the legacy of John Ringling of the circus family. The Ringling mansion on the grounds (1926) has a name in Venetian dialect, Cà d’Zan. It means “John’s house” (more often clumsily translated as “house of John”, which is not normal English). In standard Italian the name would be “Casa di Giovanni”. South of Sarasota is Fort Meyers, location of the (Thomas) Edison & (Henry) Ford Winter Estates, which are next to each other and offer insights, not only into two historic characters, but also into another era. Further south is Naples, a beautiful town, also with great dining.

Everglades National Park at the southern end is a must-see. Less known is huge Lake Okeechobee in the center of the Florida peninsula, which actually is the beginning of the water flow known as the “River of Grass” that feeds the Everglades, an area in reality much larger than the actual park itself. Since Lake Okeechobee floods easily, there is a levee all around that circular lake.

Over the years, Beverly and I frequently drove from Tampa to Miami on the Tamiami Trail, which crosses the Everglades just north of the park between Naples and Miami. It opened in 1928 and never was a trail, but a US highway from the start. Officially the Tamiami connects Ta(mpa) and (M)iami, but for all practical reasons it was the first cross-state, east-west road in southern Florida. I recently drove it again between Tampa and Miami with friends, and it’s an enjoyable ride through the Everglades. In Miami it becomes SW Eighth Street, a portion of which comprises the Cuban neighborhood named after that street, Calle Ocho. Miami has become so sophisticated, and Miami Beach, again on a barrier island, comprises the South Beach (“SoBe”) area, including the Art Deco Historic District, the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world. Miami surrounds a number of enclaves, most interesting of which is Coral Gables, possibly the prettiest city in Florida. On our recent visit, we were driving down Bird Street in Miami, which looked pretty humdrum. I warned my passengers that we’d be passing through Coral Gables, and they’d know just when as soon as everything got pretty. Sure enough, we crossed Red Road and were surrounded by overhanging trees, beautiful villas and charm in general, up until we crossed back into Miami. Coral Gables is also the location of Norman’s, arguably the best restaurant in Florida, run by chef Norman van Aken.

When you drive south of Miami you enjoy one of the most unique experiences, driving 160 miles / 257 kilometers along the Florida Keys on the “highway that goes to sea”. This will be discussed more fully in an upcoming Series. The keys are the home of the tart Key limes, from which the famous Key lime pie is made, although today the Keys are so developed that most of the limes come from elsewhere. The keys are also the home of the miniature key deer, which live on Deer Key, shortly before Key West. Adult Key deer are about the size of large dogs. We would always pull off the highway and drive around a bit, looking for the deer on lawns and in driveways.

What was, and is, Cayo Hueso (“Bone Key”) became Key West in English. This folk etymology change was discussed in 2007/2 under “Spanish Spelling Quirks”.

Key West is unique. It has Bahamian architecture because of early immigration from the Bahamas, and laissez-faire culture of its own, much influenced by its large gay community. It is the southernmost city in the continental US. We’ve stayed in some very nice Victorian bed-and-breakfasts. I just read that Norman van Aken, who started out in Key West before opening “Norman’s” in Coral Gables, has now also come back to Key West with a new restaurant. Truman’s Winter White House is located in Key West and can be visited. Ernest Hemingway wrote there and his house can be visited. Tennessee Williams also wrote there, but his modest house is today privately owned. John James Audubon visited the Keys and Key West in 1832, where he sighted and drew 18 new birds for his famous “Birds of America” folio. The house he stayed at is now a museum, and the garden is believed to be where he conceived many of those drawings. Famous Duval Street is the main thoroughfare in the Old Town, and from Mallory Square every evening people watch the sunset.

There’s the vacationers’ (tourists’) Florida and the travelers’ Florida. Both points of view are valid, but you know which path I follow. The distinction is simple. Vacationers visit a place passively. Vacationers go to relax on the beach, or poolside, and might be there to “party”. Their location is secondary to having “fun”. They also may take a stroll through Disney World, which has its merits, but Disney World isn’t Florida. If they’d built Disney World in Texas instead, you couldn’t tell the difference of where it was located. Travelers on the other hand visit a place actively, and want to “grow” because of the experience. They may visit Fernandina Beach, the Suwannee River, Winter Park. If they visit Miami Beach, it might be more to see the Art Deco Historic District, and only then stop to stroll along the strip on Ocean Drive or cross the street to the beach itself.

But a place like Key West is unique, and appeals to both travelers and vacationers. You can both “vacation” and enjoy a sense of place in Key West. In 1977, Jimmy Buffett wrote what became his signature song, Margaritaville. It describes someone who’s happily living a laid-back lifestyle in a tropical climate, backed by a steady flow of margaritas. Margaritaville is not an actual location, but a state of mind; beyond that, it could be any one of many places in the Caribbean. But since Buffett wrote the song in Key West, the name Margaritaville is most often associated with that city. Here he sings it on YouTube: Jimmy Buffett: Margaritaville

In medias res   The Latin term “in medias res” has a literary meaning, but I like to use it to refer to travel experience. It translates as “in the middle of things” and refers to a story that starts in the middle and then goes back to the past via flashbacks. Therefore, I like to use the term in reference to “time travel”, which I discussed earlier (2004/23). “Space” travel, meaning linear travel from A to B is a reality. Time travel not being possible, the concept is a fantasy, but a common one, achievable by travelers (usually not vacationers). We use illusion, such as the theatrical illusion given by actors in places like Williamsburg, to give us that fantasy of flashbacks back in time. But, given the right venues, we can do it ourselves. I think of staying at the pousada in Évora last summer, which was housed in a 500-year-old cloister. The rooms and hallways evoked the period, as did the dining venues. I think of staying in the Victorian mansions in Asheville and in Fernandina Beach just described, having breakfast in the elegant dining rooms. Here’s an interesting contrast in Asheville—objectively looking at how the Vanderbilts lived at Biltmore as opposed to subjectively time traveling by taking a bath in a Victorian claw-footed tub at the bed and breakfast. Or staying at the Windsor hotel in Americus, Georgia, just described, or staying in Durango, Colorado, both in the historic Strater Hotel and walking the streets and riding the historic train. Again, the experience at Madewood Plantation (2008/4) was ideal, since I not only lived in the master bedroom, but had wine-and-cheese in the library, dinner in the dining room, sherry in the living room, and breakfast again in the dining room. Such experiences will fantasize you right into the past.

Disease Names   In preparation for the Africa trip in June I’ve had to get innoculations. I’d already had one for yellow fever, valid ten years, since the Siberia trip, and I had my flu shot last fall, but I went last month to Tampa’s Immunization Clinic for additional ones for Africa. I’d decided I needed shots for hepatitis A and tetanus/diphtheria. Instead of a typhoid shot, I got the newer series of four pills, taken over a week, which is valid longer than the shot is. I also got a prescription for malaria pills, which I’ve already filled in preparation for the trip. You have to not only take a malaria pill every day while in an affected area, but also for two days before arriving and seven days after leaving. I decided against some other possible options for Africa as not being necessary for my situation, but mentioned in that list were cholera, polio, rabies, and hepatitis B.

The innoculations were a good prompt to write a piece I’ve had in my head for years, involving the names of several diseases.

First, there are two diseases with Italian names. Not only that, but the names are based on Italian superstition. Any ideas? Both were mentioned above.

There is one malady whose name is based on the superstition that it’s caused by the influence of the moon. That phrase in Italian is l’influenza della luna, which gets shortened to influenza, and then further shortened in English to flu. Most of us realize that “flu” is short for “influenza”, but are totally unaware when we say we have influenza that we’re saying we have “influence”. Here’s some irony: in English, being “under the influence” involves alcohol or a controlled substance, and not the flu.

You know the Italian word for “air”, and probably don’t realize it. Look at it this way. In English, you can poetically call a song an air; for instance, the other name for “Danny Boy” is “Londonderry Air”. Keeping that in mind, it should be less surprising that an aria in an opera not only refers to a song in that opera, it’s also the Italian word for “air”. In Italian you can sing an aria or breathe aria. Now let’s bring superstition into the matter. People sometimes talk about air being harmful. For instance, people warn about closing bedroom windows at night to avoid the “night air”. Now combine this “air” superstition with the Italian word. It was thought that a certain disease was caused by “bad air”, so it was named “malaria”.

The other point about disease names is the manner in which their original serious meaning becomes trivialized. The black plague was one of the most horrible diseases in European history, and repeatedly would wipe out huge populations. Yet today it can be used with a total loss of its serious meaning and “to plague” refers to simply bothering or annoying someone. In other closely related languages the name for the plague is also familiar looking and is either “pest” or “peste”, and that, too, in English has developed to mean just a bothersome person, a pest. It’s also an element in “to pester”. In a sentence such as “He’s such a pest—he plagues me day and night and never stops pestering me”, not only do three words indirectly refer to disease, but it’s the same disease again and again.

People with different ethnic backgrounds often have what I like to call “heritage words”. These are words that may be used within the family, mixed in with English, but which later generations know how to use, but don’t really know the meaning behind them. I, and many others, first became aware of words or expressions like this in Alex Haley’s “Roots”. Haley reported that aunts and other family members of his would use a word like “ko” or an expression like “Kamby Bolongo”. Upon Haley investigating these expressions he found out that they were words in the Mandinka language of Gambia in West Africa, to where he eventually traced his family’s roots. Apparently “ko” is a form of “kora”, the name of a stringed instrument, and Kamby (Bolongo) refers to the Gambia (River).

After thinking about such “heritage words” I decided I have a couple, other than names of foods, on both the Italian and Russian sides of my family. I’ll discuss the Italian one at another time, but the Russian one is appropriate now.

For some of us in our family, whenever something bothers you—you spill something, you drop something--you say a word which I always assumed was, and will therefore spell, “holyetta”, or “ti holyetta”, or “ach, ti holyetta”. We kids didn’t know why, it’s just what you said, and was very useful.

Only when Beverly and I started studying Russian (Swedish Beverly adopted this word, too) did we realize that once again, it was a disease we were talking about, one that was losing its deep meaning and was being trivialized like “pest”. Any ideas?

The entire problem is in the stress. In English, “cholera” is stressed on the first syllable, but in Russian, холера (kholyera) is stressed on the middle syllable kho.LYE.ra, which was enough to make the word totally unrecognizable to us kids, similar as it otherwise was to English. Beyond that, it was easy to hear the KH at the beginning as an H and the Russian rolled R near the end and picture TT. So “holyetta” is really ‘kholyera”, and we’re once again invoking, and trivializing, the name of a deadly disease. The whole phrase would be “Ах, ты холера!” (Akh, ty kholyera!), and would be EXACTLY parallel to saying to someone “Oh, you pest!”, except it means “Oh, you cholera!” and is more frequently used with a thing or event than a person. Just realize that both expressions refer to diseases, in trivialization.

So do as I do daily and use this heritage phrase with either one, two, or all three of the words, as is your wont, at random, in situations like these:
When you forget your car keys in the house: Холера!
... break a dish: Ты холера!
... spill hot coffee all over yourself: АХ, ТЫ ХОЛЕРА!!!!!!
It relieves stress and soothes the soul.

Metropolitan Diary   I’ve twice before quoted from the Metropolitan Diary that the New York Times publishes every Monday, a section of letters from people describing life in New York. In 2002/7 the story involved a banana on the subway. In 2005/4, one involved Japanese names and the other a deli. Here’s another recent pair, one for language, one for travel.

I was walking uptown at 85th and Third Avenue around noontime on one of our warm days several weeks ago. The street was lined with men selling fake watches, purses, scarves and so forth. I decided to remove my heavy sweater and enjoy the warmth of the sun, and as I passed these men, I heard one of them shout, “Leave it on! Leave it on!”

Feelings hurt, I hurried to the corner, and realized the man was merely shouting about his wares: “Louis Vuitton! Louis Vuitton!”

And once again on the subway:

It was the evening rush on the No. 6 heading uptown. The doors opened, and a young woman got on lugging an oversize, round-back, black leather, beautifully padded chair (quite a nice design, actually).

She proceeded to position the chair in the center of the car, plop herself down and open her book, all the while plugged into her iPod, just as if she were at home in her living room.

One would have thought she was oblivious, until the doors opened a few stations along the way and a blind woman entered the subway car. the young woman looked up from her book, got up from her chair, and escorted the blind passenger to her carry-on seat.

Only in New York.