Tonight I'm flying to Minas Gerais for five days, but just because I will be out of the country this weekend doesn't mean I'm going to shrink from my responsibilities as an American. The following story can be read now or saved till Sunday.
In 1999 the Super Bowl returned to South Florida, and the sports editor asked me to write some color stories for the Sun-Sentinel. I was given a pass that didn't entitle me to a seat but allowed me to wander around the stadium.
In the press tent before the game I wrote my first story on a laptop. Dave Barry sat three tables over, and I remember watching him, as I searched for words, typing without pause. He had no notes, and he kept his eyes on the screen as his fingers danced atop the keyboard. I wondered what he was writing and concluded that it was probably his next book, while his wife, a sports writer for the Herald, covered the game.
I finished before kick-off, successfully sent my story to the newsroom, and went in to roam. It was with a feeling of great elation that the electricity in the stadium only amplified. I was positively giddy. Walking down the steps behind one end zone, I spontaneously reached into my bookbag and grabbed my pocket Webster's. (Unused to laptops, I had brought it along as a reference tool.)
"DICTIONARIES!!" I cried, holding it high in classic vendor fashion. "GET YOUR DICTIONARIES HERE!!"
People looked up from the pre-game festivities in astonishment. I felt a small part of Super Bowl history.
The Riverwalk renovations just south of the Performing Arts Center are now done, so you can once again ride your bike - or walk - from The Symphony condos to the old Hyde Park Market (aka Swick Plaza).
The Village Pie on 2nd Street is still coming soon. The parking lot attendant said that they're just waiting for the patio permit. (You don't want to let just anyone have a patio.)
A group of young people who meet at nearby Brew bring food on certain nights and distribute it to homeless people. (Actually, I learned this at a party Saturday night.)
The gondolier who this past summer moved his motorized gondola from the now-defunct Stork's on Las Olas to the New River (between Huizenga Plaza and the River House condos) is from Nice, France.
The grassy lot where Las Olas's most popular establishments used to be - Cafe Europa and O'Hara's - looks woefully empty again now that the Christmas tree is gone.
Noodles & Panini still has the banner announcing that their meatballs were voted the best in South Florida, though the restaurant refuses to change its name to Meatballs & Meatballs.
SoLita (South of Little Italy) has opened in the space that was Mark's Las Olas. An employee heading into work raved to me about the meatballs.
We have gone from a city awash in Italian restaurants to a city awash in meatballs.
Last week Monika said that, arriving into Houston from Paris, she had received a warm "welcome back" from the immigration officer.
A few months earlier I had flown into Dallas from Tokyo and received the same friendly greeting. It always delights me. It lends a personal note to an increasingly stringent bureaucracy and, when "back" is replaced by "home" (as it often is in Miami) it evokes a feeling of unity (almost family).
But I was a little surprised to hear that Monika had received the same greeting. Though she travels with an American passport - having lived in the States for over a decade and become a citizen - she was born and currently resides in Warsaw. She and her husband returned to their homeland after the changes in 1990.
And though she loves this country, and hopes to retire here, I think of her as Polish, and assume that other Americans who meet her do too. Which, the more I thought about it, made the immigration officer's welcome all the more impressive. He (or she) accepted Monika as an American - and entitled to the same cordiality that Americans get - because she carried an American passport, regardless of the way she dressed, or spoke, or even chose to live (though this was probably not evident). It was an example, at a busy airport in the middle of the country, of our unfailing propensity to open our doors, and hearts, to the world.
Thinking about it further, I decided that Monika was more deserving of a "welcome back" than I was. I had merely been born an American; she had chosen to become one.
I got up at 6 yesterday morning, just in time to see the third-set tie-break and the presentation of the trophies.
The beauty of watching Federer at the top of his game is that you get not only to see great shots but - when the match is over and the microphone in place - to hear good lines. All tournament long he'd been brilliant and loose, coming up with responses - to both opponents and interviewers - that defied probability. He repeatedly rose above the relentless bludgeoning (to use McEnroe's term) of modern tennis and the deadening cliches of modern athletes. He was as deft with his quips as he was with his drop shots.
Yesterday, in accepting his trophy, he became the first player in ages to describe his emotions with the words "over the moon."
It was especially gratifying to hear remembering that, after last year's final, he seemed to be on the downward slope, replaced by the indefatigable and barely intelligible Rafael Nadal. This year's Open was a victory for athletic and linguistic grace.
The nice thing about having a library in South Florida is that it never gets disturbed. Most people who come into our condo pretend the books aren't there; at most they'll ask: "Have you read all of these?" To which I usually reply: "Twice." But almost never is anyone tempted to actually examine the collection, let alone ask to take a volume home.
But this week Hania's cousin is visiting from Warsaw, with his wife. The first evening Jurek started talking about travel writing, and mentioned Jan Morris. I said I'd just reviewed her latest book, a collection of vignettes from her years on the road. He asked if he could take it on their cruise. I reluctantly said yes, though I suggested that he should really get a paperback thriller with raised letters on the cover.
I showed him my shelf of Jan Morris books, and recommended "Pleasures of a Tangled Life." What was I thinking? He asked if he could take that too. It's a two-week cruise.
In the Caribbean. I went to my travel classics section and pulled down V.S. Naipaul's "The Middle Passage" and Patrick Leigh Fermor's "The Traveler's Tree," both with chapters on islands their ship will stop at. Jurek said he'd take the Leigh Fermor book; the binding of the Naipaul book was coming loose and he was afraid of causing more damage.
I showed him another book I'd recently reviewed: "Hammer & Tickle: The Story of Communism, a Political System Almost Laughed Out of Existence." He thought he might find this interesting as well.
So now my library, normally pristine, is shot through with holes. I think of Anatole France, who said: "Never lend books. People never return them. My library is full of other people's books." I've read stories of passengers falling overboard and now wonder about books. And I tell myself: "This is not going to be a problem with Kindle."
Years ago I read in the Herald about a man who, driving down Calle Ocho, stopped in a restaurant and asked for a hamburger. "I'm sorry, sir," he was told, "we don't serve ethnic food here."
The other night Javier told me that he went to a Latin American rally last week where he saw a man holding a sign that read: "Gringo go home."