Souvenirs. Tourists spend oodles of time and money in gift shops, wine shops, pottery studios and local artisan jewelers’ shops to find the right thing to serve as their tangible memory of a place. On our last trip to southern Italy, it wasn’t something that we bought there, but instead something we had delivered to our home that was the greatest reminder of how our trip changed us.
It’s that time again: Thanksgiving is just around the corner with Christmas right on its heels. Like hardworking squirrels storing away nuts for the future, I find handling Christmas expenditures is best if planned for in advance and not looked at as an unexpected expense; after all, it comes every year.
Twenty-five years ago this fall, as a scribe for The Flint Journal, I was immersed in the unlikely rise of Michael Moore’s documentary about Flint, Roger & Me, to national prominence. The film made for great copy, especially as our readers were so polarized over it. (Much of their hatred for Moore seemed to subside once he turned his camera to other subjects and GM’s corporate betrayal of Flint was duplicated, as he had warned, by other perpetrators in other locales.)
If you read my column with any regularity, you know that I love to cook, and November is the month when I get to prepare my most favorite meal: Thanksgiving dinner. Like most folks, I cook a traditional turkey dinner, but what makes it special to me is that each dish I serve is a reminder of Thanksgivings past.
As the destination for many a Ribner family outing, Michigan’s Little Bavaria played a big role in my childhood. My brother and I would become filled with excitement each time the family car turned north onto M-83 on its way to our destination: the Bavarian Inn. In addition to its delicious chicken dinners, our father, the son of Slovak immigrants, loved the old world charm of the restaurant’s Austrian and Alpine rooms. Perhaps this is why I long to live in a fachwerk, a timber-framed, stucco house set inside a deep and enchanting forest…
During my time with Lori and Julie, I felt the weight of the burden that they carry around every day. “The jail is a dark place, a sad and sometimes evil place,” said Lori, who admitted that some days she wants to despair and give up because what she sees is just too painful. Despite those moments of hopelessness, she said, “I can feel the presence of God walking with me, and I know his work has to be done here.” The women have such a sincere love for their patients that it wrings the heart. “I look at every single one of them as if they were part of my family,” Lori told me with tears in her eyes. “This person could be my mother, my brother, my child who’s been broken by this world. Are we just going to abandon them? We’re all brothers and sisters.”
Upon first look, Antwerp, Belgium is as charming as the postcards found in souvenir shops throughout its twisting passages and nonsensical medieval streets. The sounds of the Flemish-Dutch language echo in the bars over pints of more than a hundred kinds of Belgian beer. The facades of the tall, thin, Amsterdam-style canal houses are stately and magnificent, and when experienced for the first time … you almost believe this is a little slice of Amsterdam.
