Vivien Leigh is here a year before Gone with the Wind as the poor, feisty, petulant, manipulative, and selfish dancer, Liberty. With her own British accent in this one, no southern drawl. Perhaps someone saw this “rags-to-riches London musical” and decided she had the perfect energy for Scarlett O’Hara. Liberty hooks up with street performer Charles Laughton’s Charlie to get off the streets and be part of his act. Laughton is absolutely astonishingly good in every way. St. Martin’s Lane is apparently a street in “seedy Westminster,” London. Look for the young and barely recognizable Rex Harrison as the impresario who takes Liberty to stardom, perhaps foreshadowing his My Fair Lady persona as Professor Higgins. Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” always a favorite of my mother’s, is featured.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them, “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more, you’ll be a man, my son!

Once feels a little more serious because of the movie’s slice-of-life almost documentary feel. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are believable and charming as the down-and-out musicians who find each other. With the exception of Leigh, you feel for all the likeable buskers in both movies and want them to succeed. I really don’t like the Liberty or O’Hara characters, nor do I want them to succeed. Sorry, Mom.

2. Brief Encounter (1945, set in London) and Staying On (1980, set in Pankot, India).
Paired because both movies feature Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.

Howard and Johnson are at their charming and sparkly best in Brief Encounter as Dr. Alec Harvey and Laura Jesson, lonely people married to others who meet in a train station and begin a shy relationship. They’re Tusker and Lucy Smalley, an elderly married couple, grumpy and irritable, in Staying On. Remarkable performances in both movies, made all the more brave because of the 35 years of actual aging the actors do in between. “Staying on” refers to British people staying in India after Indian independence. The supporting Indian actors are fabulous.

3. The Young Victoria (2009) and Mrs. Brown (1997)
Paired because they both portray Queen Victoria

Emily Blunt is radiant as the future Queen Victoria who comes of age and falls in love with Albert of Saxony. This movie won an Oscar for costumes and makeup, though the exuberance of the young actors is also wonderful to watch. Albert died of typhoid when he was only 42, and Mrs. Brown picks up where the widowed Victoria is completely depressed with grief. Judy Dench is the mourning queen, and Billy Connolly is John Brown, the Highlander security man hired by the family to revive her spirits. Wonderful to watch these two vets make sparks fly as mismatched adversaries and then friends. And maybe more, according to some of the horrified family, who watch Mr. Brown get more and more informally tender with the queen, whom they call “Mrs. Brown” behind her back.

4. Out of Africa (1985, set in Kenya) and White Material (2009, in French, set in an unnamed African country)
Paired because they’re both about young white women on African coffee plantations

Out of Africa shows us grand panoramas, is gorgeously shot, and gives us romance and Victrolas. White Material grinds viewers down with the horror of a civil war and the death throes of an entitled French colonial family struggling to hang on to their enterprise.”White material” is the rebel radio station DJ’s slang for white people. Isabelle Huppert’s Maria is unadorned and fierce in White Material, a blunt and harried version of Meryl Streep’s well-coifed and elegantly spoken Karen.

“Sometimes I get a good feeling
A feeling I’ve never, never, never, had before . . .”

Her gravelly vocal statements were answered by a back-up group, and then she launched into “Something’s Got a Hold On Me (It Must Be Love).” And I was born again as a hipster at that exact moment. You can look at several YouTube versions. The beginning shout outs are downright primal and still make my hair stand on end. She was full-throated sex and womanhood.

I am from an L.A. County surfer town, so you might think I would have liked the Beach Boys. So white bread. So ONE-two, ONE-two, chucka, chucka. In 1964 the Beatles hit America, and my high school girlfriends and I were enthralled. I was even in a Beatles group (I was John Lennon). But I didn’t really like the Beatles’ music nearly as much as the soul and R&B I heard on the L.A. radio stations. Miss Etta was, and always will be, my favorite singer.

I was lucky enough to see Etta James perform live one time at Salt Lake City’s Capitol Theater. She had great difficulty walking, sat on a stool for most of the show, yet belted out her soul, pain, rage, and truth like she was young and tortured all over again.

Etta James died today at age 73 after lifelong drug and health problems that followed her rough beginning: a too-young mother, an absent father, and abuse throughout her life from men and the music industry. She claimed the pool pro Minnesota Fats was her dad, and maybe that’s so. The 2008 movie Cadillac Records spotlights some of her life, though all those intimate close ups with Adrian Brody and Beyonce (as Etta) were a little too creepy for my taste. Maybe that is how it was, but still. I have her autobiography Rage to Survive, and now I just may read it. And perhaps Beyonce’s brand new baby girl was a sign that a spirit was passing.

Rest in peace, Miss Etta.

I live in a little town where there are great breakfast places. This is probably because it gets so freakin’, Baghdad hot in the summer. And, since most tourists come to Moab in that freakin’-hot summertime, they want to get up early, eat, and GO; thus, the breakfast places. As I work my way through all the breakfast places here, I’ll share my list of good-for-breakfast diner requirements:

1. A round-lipped coffee mug, preferably with the diner’s logo on it. Hats and T-shirts with the logo are attractive extras, and sometimes I’ll buy something. I bought the Mom’s Cafe (Salina, Utah) and Midvale Mining Cafe mugs because I liked the logos. Accompanied by small pitchers of half-and-half.
2. Comfortable booth upholstery. No cracks, no four-inch-wide openings between said cracks, and no duct tap repairs.
3. Great service. I’m not too picky here. I don’t care if the wait person writes or doesn’t write down my order. I don’t need lots of smiling and asking how I like the town or the weather or the local high school football team, etc. I don’t need flashy or pretty or charming. I do like efficient and, well, servile. So, say, when I ask for ketchup, the ketchup should arrive within five minutes with no reminders.
4. Reasonable checking in on. I don’t need a “How’s everything here?” every two minutes. Maybe every ten. Do keep an eye on me. I like about two full cups of coffee in my rounded-lip mug every breakfast. That’s about three top-offs worth.
5. Good, well-stocked, clean restrooms. I’ve been in non-franchise restaurants with restrooms down the hall, out a door, up the stairs, and across from the Olympic-sized pool. When I’m full to bursting, I don’t want that.
6. Parking where I can see my car. That’s not a strong requirement, but, since I’m usually on a road trip when I choose a Denny’s for breakfast, I like to check that my darling honey Honda Pilot is alright. On a road trip, my Pilot is my knight in shining armor, my love and companion, serving my every need. It may be the heated seats that make me go on like this, but those of you who’ve taken long road trips know how attached you get. Any Denny’s usually meets all six of my criteria.

Some minuses with diners are loud TVs and poor heating or A/C. Moab’s Red Rock Bakery shows a TV football/soccer game all the time, but with no sound. And please set your thermostats for extreme comfort for us travelers. We might have just come from our condo where the wintertime thermostat is set at 58 because we’re cheap. Or we’ve just come from pumping gas in 120-degree heat, and we’d like some respite before going out again.

Denny’s started in 1953 in Lakewood, California, as Danny’s Doughnuts. The name changed to “Denny’s” to avoid confusion with Doughnut Dan’s, another doughnut place. Denny’s has won awards for hygiene (nice to know) and it’s open 24 hours. A friend of mine goes there at all hours when she can’t sleep. Tom Waits writes about it. A dependable, safe, predictable eating place open 24 hours is a precious thing. And I’m talking as a short old lady who often travels alone. Sometimes you don’t care if the food is fantastic, you just want a warm, dry, safe place.

As a former waitress, I get to talk long and hard about service. I hated waitressing. Actually, at Hermosa Beach’s Taco’s Bill’s, it was greeting, seating, taking orders, cooking, busing tables, and cleaning up. And putting up with know-it-all Agnes. Hard work with little thanks. I remember getting a dime for a tip from a couple who came in everyday for large taco salads with extra olives. Everyday. I’d see them coming and start their order. For a dime. Now I shamelessly over-tip every waitress. A waitress would have to do an absolutely crap job to get no tip from me.

An old boyfriend used to say how he loved going to pool rooms because no one knew who he was; it didn’t matter that he had a law degree or several angry ex-girlfriends or little money. He was accepted as is. That’s something I like about diners, too: I’m anonymous and equal, just a body at the counter or in the booth. The only clue to me is my good manners and a debit card. Maybe that soul bareness is why I’ve written so many country-western songs in diner booths.

My dad loved Denny’s. He was a filmmaker and took many road trips around the country to meet with clients and do location shoots. I remember turning my nose up when he’d talk about how he “could count on Denny’s” to serve the same things. His assertion that food safety, clean bathrooms, and dependable menus were important seemed so boring, so dad. And then I was the one driving long distances through parts–and eating at places–unknown. The Cortez, New Mexico, Navajo taco food poisoning event brought my nose back down pretty quick. I will not say that my father knew best, since he could also be brutishly inattentive to the work his mother and my mother put into family meals, but he did seem to know some things.

There were many times in Paris I got so tired a the cute little bistro with great food, hard and narrow chairs, euro-coin-sized tables, nice paintings on the walls, and the requisite huffy ignoramus waiter. I wanted a wide, smooth bench seat in a booth at a warm, convivial Denny’s. Where a table big enough to spread out my road atlas comes with the hash browns. Denny’s is also the largest corporate sponsor of Save the Children, a nice circular benefit since my son Sam’s fiancee works for that fine organization. And Heinz ketchup–Pittsburgh’s finest–is right there on the table. No need to ask.

I have other favorite diners: the Y Cafe (Carlsbad, New Mexico), Waffle House (Ft. Collins, Colorado), Belgian Waffle (Sandy, Utah), The Outlaw (Wellington, Utah), Mom’s Cafe (Salina, Utah), and Moab faves Eklecticafe, Moab Diner, and The Jailhouse. But if I’m pulling off an interstate in the American hinterlands, I like a bit of predictability, a private booth, and a warm bathroom. I prefer a non-franchised breakfast place, but it is nice to know Denny’s light is lit 24 hours everyday and is but a short walk from my house.

You’ll next see me at a Yuma, Arizona Denny’s bent over a road atlas and a Grand Slam on January 10.

A personal crisis can happen without warning. A death, a lawsuit, domestic abuse, a sudden household move, a birth with complications, hospitalization, a divorce, home fire, or an episode of mental illness can bring us to our emotional knees in a moment. And whether these crises happen to you, a family member, or a co-Leader, the aftermath can bring up difficult and uncomfortable questions, often directed to a District Advisor (DA) or the Area Coordinator of Leaders (ACL). Discretion, patience, and active listening skills are the watchwords.

The ACL–or another Area Department Coordinator (ADC) or Area administrator–may get the call or email that asks immediate action be taken. What should I do? the Leader might ask. Should I take a leave of absence? Do I need to tell everyone what’s going on or keep this to myself? Retire?

The DA or ACL can encourage the stressed Leader to take care of her own health and family first. The Leader can then contact the ACL again when she feels she can talk. A Leader may not identify–and certainly is under no obligation to identify–the nature of the crisis. You can assure her that no immediate action needs to be taken. Your ear and nonjudgmental presence will help her explore leadership options. An ACL can also help the Leader with a response phrase, such as, “She’s taking a break,” or “She’s going to concerntrating on her family for a few months,” whatever public script she’d like to use. Our volunteer work certainly doesn’t need to add to the problem. And, because you will be thinking more clearly and analytically than the Leader in crisis, you can help her immensely by sorting through the LLL issues. The following are some open-ended questions you might ask.

Who are the affected La Leche League parties? Sometimes a Leader will only need to stop leading meetings for a while. Sine this will only affect her co-Leaders, it’s possible that the ACL will never hear of the crisis. Co-Leaders might collaborate and rearrange responsibilities in a way that does not affect anyone beyond the leadership circle.

A lone Leader can pull back to the most basic of responsibilities, and even those can go on hiatus. When I was training to become a Leader, my sponsoring Leader moved away and the Group continued with “breastfeeding support meetings,” led many times but he mothers themselves. This option is certainly open to a group of mothers when an LLL Leader is unable to continue. A Leader not affiliated with a Group may ask that her contact information be taken off phone lines and Web sites.

If the Leader-in-crisis is working with a Leader Applicant, she will need to inform and review options with the Applicant. Many training sessions can be done long distance by email or phone, where previously they were done in person. The Coordinator of Leader Accreditation (CLA) or other LAD representative can also help the sponsoring Leader with options.

What are her current responsibilities? If she’s answering phone calls, perhaps her name and number need to be delisted from Web sites and help lines. Might she want to be taken off newsletter of blog listings? Is she scheduled to lead some meetings and needs to ask for substitute discussion facilitators? Was there a workshop or conference sessions she needs to step back from? I remember being in the middle of putting out the Area Leaders’ Letter (ALL) when my father died. Finishing that ALL felt very healing and used a non-grieving part of my brain that appreciated the exercise. You might be surprised at what a Leader wants to keep doing through her crisis. Never assume you know her feelings or her wishes.

What kind of LLL support does she wants? Her personal support is her own business, but you may need to help her sort out her continuing or to-be-discontinued LLL support and involvement. Perhaps she wants to stay on the Area’s Leader chat list but not go to the upcoming workshop. Or maybe she wants to keep going to your Group’s breastfeeding cafe at a cozy coffee shop, just not lead Series Meetings. You can reassure her that those decisions may change week to week, and that you’re not keeping track; her support is her business and may not look like another Leader’s support. Perhaps she wants to meet you for tear of lunch, just not involve her co-Leaders for whom the details of her challenges are well known. She might also want to be surrounded by La Leche League friends even more or in new ways as she works through her situation. She may choose not to involve you at all.

What kind of timeline might she like to set up? Does she feel a deadline for some kind of decision about her LLL status would be appropriate? Would she like to be contacted in, say, three months to have another conversation? My brothers, their wives, and I went through different grieving timelines when my mother died. Some had grieved more during the illness and were ready to clear out and sell the house once she died. Others had held in their grief till the funeral and took much longer to want to be active. Give this Leader plenty of time and options. On the other hand, you may be surprised at their continued LLL involvement or how fast she wants to be involved again. Assure her that you’ll check back with her on a mutually agreed upon date.

Does retiring from LLL feel like her most comfortable option? Assure her that she will not be judged for retiring. Retirement takes courage. You can help the Leader discreetly detach from LLL lists and contact sites. You can also remind her that reactivation is a future option and may not even be necessary if retirement has been less than a year.

Even in the most difficult of circumstances, however, a Leader’s belief in LLL’s mission and philosophy usually remain intact. Leaders may have had a fairly trouble-free nursing experience, but knocks in later life humble them in new ways. Dealing with difficult personal crises can fortify a Leader so that she has even more to offer mothers and co-Leaders. Some Areas keep retired Leaders’ contact information (with their permission) and occasionally involve them in activites, such as World Breastfeeding Week Celebrations, so that is another option you can offer. LLLI’s Alumnae Association is also active and published a newsletter Continuum.

Be aware, however, that a Leader’s statement that she wants to retire may be based on the perception that this is what she thinks she’s supposed and expected to do. Let this Leader trust her instincts, and help her sort through whether staying on or retiring are appropriate in her case. Perhaps she could just attend but not lead meetings for a while, or she could attend meetings in another Group where she’s less well known.

Would she like to do some extra reading? In general, explore options that can soften the blow of the personal distress. Suggest she reread sections of the Leader’s Handbook, especially if direct dialogue is too painful right now. The Introduction, Mother-to-Mother Help, Managing the LLL Group, and Additional Opportunities for Leaders may be particularly helpful sections. Might some self-help books like Difficult Conversations give her some ideas for problem solving?

Remember that if and when you are the Leader in personal distress, you will also depend on the caring, helpful ear of another Leader as you sort through issues with information and empathy, not advice. Leader Department representatives can help transition a hurting Leader away from and then back to fulfilling LLL leadership. We can also help you with dialogue, questions, and approaches if you are the support person sought out by that Leader. Resources and understanding can be a phone call or email away.

The blustery drizzle of a January morning had thrown palm fronds on the ground and live oak leaves at my feet along winding dirt paths as I made my way away from the dry, quiet gift shop. And there it was, a building and a name that had guided my volunteer life for over 29 years. I entered the small, white-washed building with the red tile roof. As I now stood alone in the little room and many candles flickered with each stray gust of wind, I reflected on La Leche Leagues history and my own mothering journey since reading about this little shrine in my Leader Applicant days in the early 1980s. And now I was actually here. Giving myself the January birthday gift of two weeks of warmth and a Key West writing seminar, I had flown into Jacksonville, Florida, USA, and rented a car the day before. But St. Augustine and a bit of La Leche League history were my first stops.

St. Augustine is about an hour south of Jacksonville, and stretches north-to-south along Florida’s upper Atlantic coast. The Nombre de Dios Mission, Prince of Peace Catholic Church, Nombre de Dios Museum, and the shrine itself are on 20 acres of grounds in the northeast “uptown” end of this coastal stretch. Many antique shops line San Marcos Boulevard, so this area is also called “antiques row.”

This quiet, humble little sanctuary houses a modest status of Mary nursing baby Jesus, and, inspired a bas relief replica medallion that Dr. Gregory White used to give to his obstetrical patients in faraway Franklin Park, Illinois, in the 1940s and ’50s. As I had sat in my rental car in the gift shop parking lot, I reflected on how I’d told the story so many times and at so many Series Meetings. Now I stood alone in the room with guttering votive candles along the walls, my own La Leche League story, and this sweet little statue.

The Shrine, the Name, and the Inspiration
Starting with the original shrine (also sometimes referred to as a chapel) built after 1565, many reconstructions have been damaged in hurricanes and military attacks and then rebuilt. The present shrine was constructed in 1915.

The Shrine of Nuestra Senora de La Leche y Buen Parto–”Our Lady of Plentiful Milk and Good Childbirth” in the loose English translation–inspired the LLL Founders when they were looking for a name that did not include “breastfeeding” (thought to be too graphic a word for the 1950s). Dr. White suggested the alliterative, shrine-inspired “La Leche League.”

This first and smallest Marian Shrine in the Americas is the jewel of the Nombre de Dios Mission grounds. Espaliered boxwood on the white outer walls and red tile on the roof protect the small stained-glass windows, which allows the Sunshine State’s rays to cast a swirl of colors on the whitewashed inner walls. Plain wooden benches and individual wooden seats stand along the walls. Though able to house perhaps 25 visitors, I recommend finding time alone in this small and intimate setting if you can arrange it.

St. Augustine and the Nombre de Dios Mission
Juan Ponce de Leon (Hwan POHN-cey day lay-OWN) was the first European to discover Florida in 1513 on an exploratory voyage from Puerto Rico. The Timucuan Indians who lived there stood 6 to 7 feet (1 to 2.1 meters) tall, so, compared tohis own 4-foot-11-inch (1.5-meter) stature, de Leon may have thought he had found the legendary Fountain of Youth and height. In 1565, a Spanish expedition, led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles (day ah-vee-LAYCE), landed and stayed. With that second expedition was Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoz Grajales (called “Father Lopez), who conducted America’s first Catholic Mass, founded the Nombre de Dios (Name of God) Mission, and began work on the first shrine. St. Augustine thus became the first permanent European settlement in the United States.

The statue
The present Nuestra Senora/Our Lady of Leche statue is 18 inches tall (45.72 cm, including the crown), was created in the 1970s, and has been recently cleaned and renovated. It sits in a carefully spotlighted niche on the south wall of the shrine. Two older versions of the statue are housed in the nearby museum. Director Eric Johnson commented that the `930s statue seems to show the most skin. The bookmark I bought in the gift shop appears to show the 1970s statue.

The Lagoon, Bridge, and Grounds
The shrine grounds are bordered by Hospital Creek on the east, Ocean Avenue on the north, San Marcos Boulevard on the west, and Pine Street on the south. The current incarnation of the La Leche Shrine was built in 1915 but has its roots in a fourth century grotto in Bethlehem in what is now Israel. This “Milk Grotto” is maintained today by the Franciscans.

A 208-foot (63.4 meters) “Great Cross” stands on the shores of Hospital Creek and is an artwork second in height only to the 630-foot-tall (192 meters) Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Near the cross, a statue of Father Lopez reaches to the sky, one of several statues scattered throughout the grounds.

On the footbridge over the lagoon, couples and families were taking photographs. Herons, egrets, ducks, pelicans, and wood storks alternatively preened themselves along the banks, stretched in the sun, dove for fish, and perched on the bridge railings. Frequent rain, dew, and tropical humidity ensure a lush landscape and constant pruning of tree limbs and picking up of fallen palm fronds. The cedars, various palms, ferns, and live oaks draped with Spanish moss provide an intense green setting for the little white shrine.

Gift shop, museum, and church
Friendly clerks sell many religious items in the gift shop including sterling silver and aluminum medals; silver, crystal, and wood rosaries; La Leche statue replicas in bisque, plaster, and resin; memento boxes; bookmarks; Mother’s Manual prayer books; and postcards. The Nombre de Dios Museum opened in September 2010 and houses two older Nuestra Senora statues. The Prince of Peace Catholic Church actively serves the parish. As I looked at the gift shop’s many religious items included with the La Leche medallions, I was struck again with admiration at the courage it must have taken for the Founders to decide to make La Leche League a nonsectarian organization.

My quiet contemplation in the shrine that day was soon broken by the voices of other tourists and parishioners, so I reluctantly went back outside into the wuthering, swirling weather. As I took photographs to share with my co-Leaders back in Utah, I slowly walked the paths outside and around this modest little shrine. And, perhaps without realizing how much I needed this journey, I felt that my own paths and my own way through motherhood and offering mother-to-mother support had been rekindled and rejuvenated for a lifetime.

Being a La Leche League Leader takes a lot of time and dedication. We all have it; it’s why we do what we do. Imagine, however, the amount of time and dedication it takes to remain active with the organization when you’ve moved 16 times in 26 years! Kathy Grossman has.

Now the New Leader Secretary of LLL Utah, Leader Support for LLL USWest Area Network, and the Managing Editor of Leaven, Kathy has had many jobs with LLL over the years at the local and Area level since becoming accredited as a Leader in 1985. Though the nature of Kathy’s involvement changed with the upheaval of each move, her continuation with La Leche League was always “a given” as far as Kathy was concerned. Sometimes Kathy would call ahead to the new Area to set up contacts, and sometimes she would arrive in a new place and wait until she and her family felt fully settled before jumping in to her local Group.

But Kathy says she always saw LLL “as a part of my life that I needed to make time for.” And make time she did. “Every move has its own signature,” Kathy tells me. “Each place is so special and unique; there’s always a person waiting to be my best friend.” She goes on to say that there’s always an LLL Group so grateful to get a co-Leader or a place that really needs a Group to be started.

Having two brothers and three sons, Kathy says the sisterhood of LLL is what drew her to the organization. Kathy loves being involved with other women, both as a mentor and a mentee. The sense of connection Kathy knew she would find becoming involved with LLL in each new location kept her sane, she says. She also admits, “I’ve never been involved with anything I felt so appreciated. That’s hard to give up.”

Aside from her work with local Groups and moms, Kathy’s jobs with LLL have included mainly writing and editing. In addition to her work with Leaven, some of her jobs have included Area Leaders’ Letter Administrator (ALLA), Publications Coordinator for USWest, and Editor for the USWest publication Connections. She also was the cartoonist for Leaven for ten years and hopes to someday compile the 60 “Slice of LLLie” cartoons she’s accumulated into a book. As you can see, she’s found a real niche writing and working with writers. An English major with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in communication, Kathy feels it’s important to La Leche League and to our culture at large, to encourage people to write about all of the interesting things they are doing.

As we spoke on the phone, Kathy said she is already gearing up for her seventeenth move. She’ll be moving to a small town in Utah where there is currently no LLL Group. Now at 63, Kathy admits she’s going to have to really consider whether she’s up for starting a whole new Group in a whole new place. Her love of writing and literature will keep her active with Leaven in her new home, but as for the rest, Kathy’s going to give it some time and see how she feels when she gets there before she determines her next move at the local level.

Pulling up to the sari store was our tour guide Punam’s sudden decision. Unlike fabric stores across the US, this merchant offered at least one tailor and salesman per customer. But then, this store catered to tourists who weren’t taking cloth back to homes and apartments to sew. We wanted fast saris.

Eighteen women pulling out bolts of fabric all at the same time would stress any large shop in the United States, but here we were in a modest store a day away from Agra and the Taj Mahal. We all knew exactly which colors looked best on us; for my roommate, it was rusts and browns. For me it was the bolt of powder blue. My choli (the cropped top that exposes the midriff) was plain blue, while the sari part, the nine-yard-long wrap was blue with silver stripes.

With measuring tapes in their teeth, several small, quiet, patient men took our stats, calling out the numbers to their assistants, who wrote down the numbers in small spiral notebooks. We paid for the saris, cholis, and the promised tailoring with our credit cards, then got back on the bus for our hotel. The shopkeeper gave us a group rate on the dresses and told us all 18 saris would be delivered to our bus by the next morning at 7 AM in time for our departure. I felt sick to my stomach, but not because of anything I ate or drank. Those tailors would probably stay up all night sewing. Or maybe it was their wives and daughters who did the overnight work. Meanwhile my group dined on central Indian delicacies and listened to a young woman play the sitar at yet another restaurant.

The next morning, we rolled our luggage to the bus, and the sari store man arrived with plastic-wrapped bundles of fabric: all finished, all hand-tailored, all ready to wear. The one British woman on our trip said, “Only American women would have had the guts to descend on a shop and get saris made. A group of Brits,” she assured us, “would never have done that.” Because they’re shy? Not as impulsive? Or a tiny bit guilty about the whole we’re-better-than-you, under-our-thumb, we’re-white-and-you’re-not raj thing? I’ve seen Ghandi.

Hours later, several hotel staff people helped us pleat the long sari fabric around our waists and adjust the cholis. I had my choli back to front, and there was much laughter and confusion between sips of complimentary watermelon juice.

The Taj Mahal experience itself was a curry of poor toothless cart drivers, puppet and postcard buskers, and drop-dead beauty. And you had to take the whole mix; you couldn’t just opt for the beauty. Our cart driver made a point to tell us in great detail about his wife and children. Then, as we strolled the grounds, T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing Indian teens laughingly demanded we stand with them for pictures. The slim towers were closed to the public now because of the many suicides by jumping. The Taj is romantic and tragic.

My romantic, impulsive, fast powder-blue sari lies folded in my closet now, waiting for its next trip to India. Or perhaps dinner at The Bombay House, Star of India, or A Taste of Punjab.

If you’re a man, this is what you need to teach your daughters and expect your girlfriends and wives to do. If you’re a woman, this is what you need to teach yourself and expect your daughters and girlfriends to do.

PIT STOP 101
* Learn where the release latch is for the gas cap door . . . no matter whose car you’re in.
* Know the grade gas the car owner (and that might be you) thinks best for the vehicle.
* Pump the gas.
* Pay the bill.
* Check tire pressures.
* Inside at the mini mart, buy snacks and gum, coffee, good maps: whatever the driver needs.
* Be friendly and courteous with mini-mart clerks. You need these people.
* Wash the windows, front and back headlamps, and license plates. Evil, dark streams of residue may drip from your cleaning, but maybe rain will take care of that later.
* Get a blue (don’t know why they’re always blue) paper towel and clean the side and rearview mirrors. Better, carry some Windex sheets.
* Learn how to pop, keep open, and drop a hood safely.
* Check the fluids. Buy a quart of oil if you need to. Buy some windshield washer fluid if you need to. Better, carry some of both in the car you’re riding in (and that might be yours). A roll of paper towels is useful for checking the oil and cleaning everything.
* Walk the dog, check on the cat, take children to the restroom whether they say they need to or not. Everybody needs to start each driving leg with an empty bladder.

ON THE ROAD in the PASSENGER SEAT 101
* The driver is god, serve the driver. Navigate, find and change CDs, pour coffee, slice apples, or manage the driver’s hamburger so god can keep his/her eyes on the road. Whatever god needs.
* Clean up and organize the front seats, foot wells, door side pockets, and dashboard. No errant golf balls, food wrappers, water bottles, wads of old gum, or friendly dogs should distract god.
* Check, clean, and maintain the glove box. Is the registration there? Insurance card? Some actual gloves?
* Maybe the passenger seat isn’t where you’re most useful to god. Sitting in a back seat can be enormously helpful to a driver, especially if there are children (and they can be any age), contentious or high-maintenance adults. If you’re not driving, you’re not god or the queen.
* Bring maps, use a compass or GPS, learn to navigate, communicate well to the driver.
* If god is a car slob, leave god’s car better than you found it.

No more useless women on road trips. There’s lots to do and lots of place to go.

“A triumph!” “Provocative!” “Visually spectacular!” “One of the year’s 10 best!” (best what is not specified) were the blurbs on the back of this film I got from the library. The exclamation points alone should have tipped me off that this was going to be outrageously bad, and famously Bostonian Matt Damon and Casey Affleck should have been ashamed to have had anything to do with this crap. Shame on them that they shared writing credits with director Gus Van Sant. I’m guessing the three of them were driving out to Wendover one July with beers in their laps, looked around and thought, “Wow! A guy could get pretty lost out here!” and then somebody started writing stuff down, and voila, this drek.

Plot: Uncommunicative Eastern idiots, apparently in good enough shape to survive without water for several days, get lost and make lots of bad decisions (like hiking away from wood and water sources onto salt flats) in an unnamed hostile Western wilderness

Film title: Gerry (supposedly after the pet name they each they call each other, but that wasn’t too clear)

Theme: Eastern US men’s idiocy

Setting: A nameless western wilderness that includes Elko, Nevada, and the gorgeous wastes of Death Valley and Bonneville flats, Utah.

Genre: Hikers being incredibly stupid noir (and I’m being generous with the noir part)

After a lot of sitting silently in a car, Damon and Affleck inexplicably start hiking a trail marked “Wilderness Trail.” Why the BLM or a state or national park or wilderness area would post that generic title on some trail which probably had a perfectly good actual name I can’t say. They might have had maybe a bottle of water when they started, but otherwise no backpack and maybe one sweatshirt between them. I could have watched this disaster a second time to catch more details, but I didn’t want to writhe in twisted agony a second time.

I wondered if this was Van Sandt’s first trip beyond New Jersey or wherever he’s from. I promised myself I wouldn’t Google him or look at any information about Gerry before writing this.

After walking through high desert scrub (maybe the Elko, Nevada, part) and then leaping to Death Valley barrenness (I recognized those dried popcorny mud hills immediately), and then venturing out onto our iconic Bonneville Salt Flats, these two Eastern ignoramuses realize they’re pretty, well, lost. Why they left the areas where they could get lots of dry wood I don’t know. I kept waiting for a Blair Witch-kind of scene going nuts with each other when they realize how screwed they are, but no. How they knew how to build a fire I don’t know. Maybe that’s hardwired into even an Easterner. Maybe they’d been Boy Scouts. Not great Boy Scouts, but. Why they walked out onto barren land when they were already dying of thirst I also don’t know. Why nobody was looking for them after finding their car parked at the trailhead . . . well, you get the dismal cinematic picture.

The end has a Brokeback Mountainy kind of scene where I guess Matt Damon was choking his friend to death rather than dying together on the salt flats. Damon then walks away from Affleck’s body, sees I-80, gets picked up by a guy and his son in an SUV, and sits expressionless in lots of sunburn makeup till the end credits. That’s when I saw that the scrub brush hiking must have been near Elko.

I end this pan with the words written on the film case by the three men’s agents or maybe their girlfriends, “. . . this uncommonly compelling and starkly visualized film is a must-see motion picture that has earned the overwhelming praise of critics nationwide!” Again with the exclamation point. I’d never felt like more of a Westerner looking down my nose.

Elfinwild should have been closed for the winter, or maybe the township could’ve installed a monocline. Winter Elfinwild was Sleepy-Hollow dark with threatening leafless trees; it was snaky and narrow; and that steep left turn onto the street at the top with poor visibility was a test for a confident driver, let alone a new or cautious one. Many a time, I wouldn’t have been surprised to look in my rear view mirror past the bags of Giant Eagle groceries in the back seat to see a headless horseman.

And don’t we all have our own private Elfinwilds? The tricky relationship? The narrow, windy career? A neighborhood full of bright sun and dark shadow where you don’t exactly trust the knock at the door over a barking dog? Or the family situation that could benefit from getting closed off from Thanksgiving through Easter just to give everybody an emotional break? The tricky, the serpentine, the alarming, the painful: the situation that wears out your clutch.