Kodiak Part One

A few posts ago in the comments section of Amanda's fun post on the Russian settlement of Fort Ross in California, she mentioned that she would like to hear about my Kodiak experience. It was one of the great adventures of my life and not only because of what you can see from the picture at the left. Every take-off was towards that mountain and every landing you wondered if you would stop in time. But the story begins a few months before our arrival.

In the spring of 1972, six months into marriage, my husband, a junior officer in the Coast Guard, announced that his orders had been changed and we were not moving to New York City but to Kodiak, Alaska. Needless to say it took some time for this east coast girl to wrap her mind around a move that far from Fifth Avenue to a place so far west that Russia was a bigger influence than the "lower 48"

Two months later, we arrived in Kodiak. Take a minute and click on this link. if you scroll around it will give you a sense of the topography of an island the size of Connecticut. The base is not on the map but is about nine miles west of town on Women's Bay. If you move out you will get a sense of where Kodiak is in relation to the rest of the state, far enough south that we did have a few hours of daylight in the winter.

The Blayneys took up residence in a true diamond in the rough, a two bedroom, one bath cottage with an amazing view of the main runway and the water. High on a hill overlooking the rest of housing, Quarters 24B gave us a much valued commodity -- privacy -- and contributed to our total enjoyment of the two plus years we spent there.

It hardly mattered that our kitchen was original 1950's era when the base was built. Fabulous meals were downright easy when the menu included a constant supply of freshly caught salmon, halibut and king crab. Six of Paul's Academy classmates were assigned to Kodiak, most of them pilots of the C-130's and helicopters that are the backbone of the Coast Guard's search and rescue misson. We entertained all the time. An amazing number of people came through Kodiak and, if they passed through the legal office, we invited them to dinner.

The outdoors was as entertaining as our friends. Kodiak is the only place we lived that I ever caught a fish or even wanted to try. I have a profound love of nature, its pysical beauty and power, but would prefer to observe it from a comfortable chair. Paul is the opposite.

His Kodiak adventures included flying off (literally) after work to find a fishing spot no human had ever seen before, hunting in the Brooks Range where he and his buddy would be dropped off for ten days with no other human contact, a beachcombing trip by plane to find and retrieve a life time supply of whale bone (when it was still legal to collect it). ..

Once I did try an adventure with him -- flying out on a sea plane to collect razor clams. No one told me, until we were airborne, how big a razor clam is -- the size of an adult's hand. When you see an airhole you dig in the sand really fast and then haul it out. So not my thing. I tried to be a good sport but did not catch one. We both learned from that experience and except for some fabulous hikes I (happily) stayed home. Usually my friend, Linda Koloski, and I would worry enough to talk about what we do if our husbands did not come home (and yes there was at least one truly life threatening experience) but usually I did what I enjoyed the most, read books, wrote letters (lots of them), took pictures and, at the end of our stay, cared for our newborn son.

If my blogged about writer's retreat gave me my most recent insight into myself as a aging boomer in the 21st century then Kodiak was fundamental in shaping the adult I am. Not only did it shape our marriage as one where we welcomed the other's intersts but it showed me a life style that was as different from my upbringing as sea ducks are from eagles.

It amazed me that I loved life in a place where there was no TV, little shopping and few restaurants. I learned to enjoy what I did have: a glorious natural setting, friends all around me, a community of poeple in the town of Kodiak whose lives showed none of the east coast influence that had been the foundation of my life

Living in Kodiak was a fabulous experience, research at its most basic. I began writing there. Who knows where my career would have taken me if I actually believed the National Geographic when they reponded positively to my query letter for a story (complete with pictures)on life on Kodiak. I was busy busy busy with other things and thought that the editor was just being nice. Boy, did I have a lot to learn about publishing!

Kodiak was such a great experience that it deserves another post. Next time it will be about the Island and how history shaped it.

Take a minute and share the place that ranks high on "favorite places I have lived" and how they shaped your life.

By the way, Paul was eventually assigned to New York City, on Governor's Island. I loved every minute of that too, for entirely different reasons.

The Dark Hero

I have been thinking about dark heroes lately. As a romance reader, I love them. So many romance writers write them well---I went to hear Ann Stuart speak on this topic at the RWA national meeting. She writes some spectacularly dark heroes (and I root for them even though they have done very bad things), and I searched the web for more on dark heroes. Her name, and her heroes, came up there, too.

I thought what she had to say about the dark hero was so interesting and I've posted excepts from her interview (originally posted on All About Romance (see http://www.likesbooks.com/200.html)).

In summary, here's what she had to say:

"My heroes aren't honorable men, at least, not by conventional standards. They have their own moral code that they wouldn't break, and of course half the interest in the book is making him break that code, which is usually the one thing he holds on to.

My dark heroes... tend to be lost souls, men who think they can't be redeemed, men who no longer want to be redeemed. At some point in their lives they crossed some kind of invisible line and they've given up on thinking they have any kind of decency or goodness. Since they're bad, and done bad things, they make sure no tough but vulnerable young woman confuses matters and tries to tell them they're worthy of being loved.

....The danger of a dark hero is irresistible to me. The battle for redemption is on such a huge scale that the triumph is even more powerful. 31 years ago, when my first book came out, the cover copy said " and one was Adam, a dangerous but compelling man who was either trying to murder her - or seduce her. Or perhaps both ..." .... A writer always has to make certain her villain isn't more interesting than her hero. I neatly avoid the problem by combining the two.

Secondly, I write extreme darkness because I think if the hero and heroine can survive what fate throws at them then they can survive anything.

....In the end, what saves my hero, redeems him, is not the love of a good woman. My heroes tend to be charismatic, gorgeous, and good in bed. Most women love them. What saves him is his ability to fall in love. To care for someone, when he's tried so hard, for so long, not to care about anyone. It fascinates me."

I asked her at Nationals what sustains the dark hero? Why is he motivated to be so bad all of his life? She answered usually not of revenge---that's petty and trite...and just not interesting. Their badness is part of their moral code, they live for it and their interpretation of honoring that code keeps them motivated. Pretty complex. And oh yeah, she said, they have killed--as she said above. That makes them as dangerous as they are bad...buts some meat behind the threat.

As a historical author, I don't come across many heroes that have all of these characteristics---they seem to work especially well with paranormal heroes, but I am scratching my brain for one in a historical romance.

What do you think? Can you recall some really dark historical heroes that meet most of the above critera? I'd like to hear about them---and read them!

And now, eels.

I promised--or made a vague threat--to talk about eels and it seemed a natural thing to do after Shakespeare and lavender.

Say Wide Sargasso Sea to me and it makes me think of eels, not Jane Eyre or the first Mrs. Rochester. That's where both European and American eels spawn in the beginning of an extremely odd life cycle of metamorposes. Eggs hatch into leaf-shaped larvae, drift to the coast, and become elvers or glass eels, and take to a fresh water habitat, swimming upstream and even traveling overland before settling into a river, growing and becoming yellow eels. They can live there for several decades before returning to the Sargasso Sea as silver eels where they embrace a salt water environment again, reproduce and die.

Like so many European species, eel populations are in decline. So the harvesting of elvers, in a season that lasts only a few days (the larvae will only enter waters at the right temperature), is now rigorously controlled. Once a local delicacy, most of them are exported to the Asian market.

The Severn, England's longest river, is one of the major elver rivers. Read about chef Gordon Ramsay's elvering adventure here--even though he'd been granted a license he still came in for criticism from environmentalists (and no, they're not eating spaghetti).

As for mature eels, they're mostly eaten now in a jellied form (the eel is naturally gelatinous, or slimy). There are still establishments in London where you can sample the classic Victorian triad of eel, pie, and mash.

For an unbiased account of what jellied eels taste like, you can visit the Desperately Seeking Root Beer blog, written by an expatriate Californian. On the right, at another establishment, the jellied eels are in the foreground, and behind, the pie (a nonedescript beef), mashed potato and the green stuff is called liquor. I'm not sure what it is--it might be some relative of squishy peas, itself a relative of the pea.

There is one working eel fisherman left on the London Thames, now the cleanest river in the industrial world, and you can see yet another Gordon Ramsay segment here; not for the faint-hearted, there are several eel decapitations and many f-words. Gordon then cooks the eels into a "posh fish finger... not even a hint of slime."

Here's an authentic sixteenth century recipe for Fish and Fruit Pie and an account of cooking it here:

With that, Fish Pies: to instruct the person who will be doing this job--because not everyone is a master of it--he should get his fish, that is, good bellies of tuna, good big filets of carp, good big fresh eels--and of all that he should get the quantity that is needed for the number of pies that he is ordered to make; take all of it and cut it into good-sized pieces and set it to cook in a good clean cauldron appropriate in size for the amount you have; when it is cooked, take it out onto fine tables which are good and clean, and cull through all your fish to remove any scales or bones, then chop it up well. Get good candied figs, prunes and dates and slice these up small, to the size of small dice; get pinenuts and have them cleaned thoroughly and get candied raisins and clean them well so there are no seeds left; of all of this take an amount proper for the amount of the fish filling you are making, wash it well in white wine, then mix it in with your fish in a fine pan. Then get another pan which is good and clean in which you will clarify good fine oil; when it is clarified put enough of that oil into your filling for that amount of it, then set it on hot coals to heat up, and stir it continuously with a good spoon. Then get good spice powder and put in a reasonable amount of it, and a lot of sugar. Then order your pastry cook to make large or small pie shells for you, and they should be covered.

Have you ever eaten eels in any form? Or something else strange and authentic?

Summer Ramblings from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

As you’ll know if you’ve seen my Twitter updates, I spent the last week in July at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. H0me for more than a week, and I confess a good portion of my brain is still in Messina, River City, the Globe Theater, and assorted other settings from the plays we saw. I blogged about some of plays the last two weeks on my own website, and as the posts touched on story-telling and history, I thought I'd repeat them here.

My good friend, fellow writer, and plotting partner Penny Williamson and I have been going to OSF together for years (that's us above at the Howard in Edinburgh, since I didn't have a scanned picture of us in Ashland). When we're not in the theater on our Ashland trips, we're usually discussing and analyzing the plays over brunch or drinks or dinner or while strolling in and out of shops. Over dinner the last night of our trip, we found ourselves discussing the heroes of two of the plays we'd seen and the transformations they undergo.

Benedick begins Much Ado About Nothing tossing off clever repartee and exchanging witty insults with Beatrice. Then, in the midst of the play, after Benedick has been tricked into admitting his love for Beatrice and she hers for him, the story takes a dark turn. Beatrice’s cousin Hero is falsely accused of infidelity on her wedding day. Benedick’s friends, Claudio (Hero’s fiancé) and Don Pedro, believe the story without question, turning Hero and Claudio’s wedding into tragedy. Even Hero’s father condemns her at first. Of the major male characters, only Benedick questions the truth of what has happened. Eventually, he trusts Beatrice’s faith in Hero’s innocence enough that he challenges Claudio to a duel and discontinues his service to Don Pedro. When Claudio and Don Pedro try to joke with him later in the play, it’s Benedick who reminds them of the gravity of the situation. Benedick shows his mettle and the strength of his commitment in the second half of the play. In the end, when he and Beatrice—still bantering—are betrothed, you truly believe the marriage will work.

Harold Hill in The Music Man also undergoes a transformation. He begins to woo librarian Marian Paroo under the mistaken impression that she’s a “sadder’ but wiser girl,” planning to skip town before the residents of River City can discover that he’s incapable of leading the boys’ band he’s sold them on. But even as Harold transforms starchy River City (wonderful evoked on the OSF production by the costumes changing from shades of gray to vibrant color), he is also transformed. When he realizes Marian has fallen in love with him, knowing full well that he is an impostor, he becomes the man she believes him to be. Watching the OSF production, I was struck by the amazing emotional shifts Harold undergoes in the latter part of the story. From realizing Marian loves him but thinking she’ll hate him when she knows the truth, to his wonder at the revelation she loves him for who he really is, to his realization that with this he loves her and can’t run. In the end Harold stays in River City to face the music (which at that point looks as though it will be decidedly unpleasant), a moment beautifully captured in the this production when Harold holds out his hands to be handcuffed. And then there’s his stunned amazement when Marian hands him a baton to lead the boys—and girls in the OSF production—band, and the young musicians manage to scrape together enough notes to delight their parents.

Benedick’s and Harold’s emotional arcs were brilliantly catpured in the OSF productions by David E. Kelly (as Benedick) and Michael Ellich (as Harold). The audience saw both men grow and change over the course of the plays, and that growth made the endings to both plays ring with heart-warming truth.

Another highlight of our trip was the world premiere production of a fabulous new play called Equivocation by Bill Cain. I mentioned Equivocation last week in the comments following Lauren's great post on authors as characters in fiction.

Equivocation begins with James I’s minister, Robert Cecil, demanding that Shakespeare write a play about the Guy Fawkes plot, adding almost apologetically “The King wants witches.” Shakespeare, called Shagspeare or Shag in the play, is torn, seeing the impossibility and dangers of writing the play, seeing also the risks of refusing. The members of the Globe Theater company are torn as well, but in the end agree he should take the commission. Then Shag begins to investigate the Gunpowder Plot and to question if the official version of events is really the truth.

In addition to the actor who plays Shag, four actors play members of the Globe company and also play Cecil, James I, the conspirators, and various other characters. The one other actor plays Shag’s daughter Judith, with whom he has a fraught relationship owing to the death of her twin brother and the fact that, in his words, “We both know I wish she was the one who had died.”

Equivocation is a brilliant play on a number of levels. It’s exciting storytelling as Shag attempts to unravel the truth behind the Gunpowder Plot. There are fascinating philosophical layers about power, forgiveness, the nature of truth, the nature of theater. Much of the dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny, but there are also moments that make you gasp at the tension, and the end had me in tears. One thing that struck me in terms of Lauren’s blog is that the portrait of Shakespeare really seems like the man who might have written Shakespeare’s plays and that he thinks and talks like a writer. (I felt the same about the Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love).

The actor characters in Equivocation also ring true. There’s a wonderful scene early on in Equivocation where they’re rehearsing King Lear and complaining it doesn’t make any sense (everyone’s mad or pretending to be mad and no one’s listening to anyone else). Richard Burbage says “if we got through his comedies-don’t-have-to-be-funny period, we can get through whatever this is.” .

A sampling of some other favorite lines:

Robert Cecil: “What’s the word for a person who waits till the last minute? A…”
Shag: “Writer?”

Judith: “Lear’s about an old man who causes the death of his three daughters and, when it’s over, everyone feels sorry for him.”

Shag: “He [Cecil] insulted me. He said my work would last fifty years.”

Shag [to one of the young actors]: “Anyone who has the looks, energy, needs approval as much as you do and doesn’t care about anyone but himself–can be a great actor. A rare combination, but you have it.”

The actors in Equivocation (Anthony Heald, Richard Elmore, Jonathon Haugen, John Tufts, Gregory Linington, and Christine Albright) did a fabulous job of bringing this complicated story to life (Equivocation, like The Music Man, was directed by OSF's new artistic director Bill Rauch). Even though of course you knew most of them were playing multiple parts, the characters seemed so distinct that it was almost startling in the curtain call to remember there were only six of them. There were many moments in Equivocation and other plays we saw when I wished I could find the words as a novelist to capture the emotions being so eloquently brought to life on stage.

Going back to my comments on Benedick and Harold Hill, do you have favorite characters, in plays or books or movies, who change and earn a hard-won happy ending? What makes the change particularly believable?

Do you have favorite plays or books or movies that depict writers and/or actors? What makes them work?

Writers, do you find theater inspiring?

Lavender: Then and Now

If you are traveling in Provence, you will perhaps admire the purple haze of lavender fields. Lavender (lavendula angustifolia), known as “l’herb de Provence,” is a small aromatic perennial shrub grown for use in sachets and soap and for lavender oil which is used both as a medicinal and as a perfume. Fresh, crushed, or dried the herb is used as a tea and as a stimulant, sedative, antiseptic, linen-closet freshener and moth repellant, in bathwater, to treat burns and bites; “wands” of stems can be tied in bunches and burned as incense sticks. There is even lavender-flavored lemonade.

Historically, lavender (from the Latin verb “lavare,” to wash) dates from ancient times. The ancient Egyptians used it for cosmetics and for embalming; Tutankhamen’s tomb contained jars of lavender-scented unguents. The Greek philosopher Diogenes anointed his feet with lavender oil so that it “envelopes my whole body and gratefully ascends to my nose.”

Lavender is mentioned in the Bible as “spikenard,” from the Greek name for the Syrian city of Naarda). “Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.” (Book of Luke)

Christian legend tells us Adam and Eve took lavender from the Garden of Eden; the fragrance came later when Mother Mary laid the laundered clothing of Baby Jesus on a lavender bush to dry. Many early Christian households hung a cross of lavender over the door for protection against evil.

The first written record of the healing uses of lavender is attributed to the Greek physician Dioscordes in 77 A.D. Working for Emperor Nero, this physician collected plants and experimented with their use in washing and in repelling insects. Roman soldiers took lavender on campaign with them to dress war wounds and treat skin ailments. Romans at home fumigated sick rooms with it and sweetened the air by either strewing it on the floor or painting their walls with a lavender infusion. The Romans also perfumed their hair, bodies, clothes, beds and baths. Women hung lavender next to their beds to incite passion. A bunch of lavender was placed under the bed of newlyweds.

Lavender is thought to have been first domesticated in Arabia and, with the 7th century Arab conquest of the Middle East and Spain, the use of lavender spread throughout Europe. Arab physicians and researchers such as Avicenna (980 A.D.
to 1037 A.D.) in particular studied medicinal uses of the herb.

Nuns and monks in the dark ages preserved herbal lore by copying ancient manuscripts (originally translated by the Arabs from Syrian and Old Persian). The Holy Roman Empire in 812 A.D. charged monasteries with growing medicinal plants and flowers. Lavender is first mentioned in England in 1301, in the records of Merton Priory where it was used to raise money for King Edward I. In the 12th century, Hildegard von Bingen noted lavender’s effectiveness in treating head lice and fleas.

When Henry VIII dissolved the English monasteries, lavender culture moved to domestic gardens. Traditionally it was planted near the laundry, and washed clothing was laid over the plants to dry with an enticing fragrance. Mixed with beeswax lavender made furniture polish.

Queen Elizabeth I drank a lavender tea to treat her headaches and was so enthusiastic about the plant she encouraged the development of lavender farms. Charles VI of France stuffed his cushions with lavender. Glovemakers in France were licensed to perfume their gloves with lavender because it was believed to prevent cholera.

Queen Victoria loved lavender! She appointed a special “Purveyor of Lavender Essence to the Queen,”and lavender came to be fashionable among her ladies. Street sellers in London sold lavender dried; it was then put into muslin sachet bags for wardrobes and between bedsheets. Young women wore small sachets in their cleavage to attract suitors. London became the center of lavender oil production.

In America, Shakers were the first to grow lavender commercially. Later, when the founder of modern-day aromatherapy, Rene Gattefosse, burned his hand while working in his laboratory, he used lavender oil which stopped the pain and healed the burn with no infection or scarring.

Provence is now the world’s primary lavender producer; prior to World War I, the French government (and perfume-makers) saw lavender production as a means of keeping people from leaving the area of southern France, so the almond orchards were cleared to plant lavender. Today, lavender farms thrive in California, Texas, Washington, and even upstate New York

The plant can be propagated from cuttings or from seed, requires good drainage, likes chalky soil and lots of sunshine and needs no fertilizer. Extracting the essential oil is by steam distillation, just like brewing whiskey in a still. One acre of lavender yields 300 to 1800 pounds of dried flowers or 2 gallons of essential oil.

The Author as Character

Right now, I’m working on a book in which Jane Austen appears as a recurring side character. I hadn’t originally intended to put Jane Austen in a book (that does sound a bit macabre, doesn’t it? like stuffing her into a box), but with my characters gallivanting around Bath in 1803, I eventually gave in to the inevitable. When I mentioned this to friends, the usual response, after the laughter and squealing noises, was a firm admonition not to make Jane Austen too nicey-nice. As my college roommate complained, the impulse all too often seems to be to conflate Jane Austen with the wimpier of her heroines, when, in fact, one imagined she’d the sort of person standing on the side of the Pump Room making snarky comments.

It’s true. When you read Austen’s letters to her sister, there’s a wonderful, barbed humor in there, nothing like the bonnets and gloves nicety we ascribe to her simply by virtue of her posthumous reputation.

All across the bookshelves of America and the UK, long-dead authors are finding themselves turned character, in works of fiction ranging from the more traditional quasi-biography-with-dialogue (in the Austen context, one of my favorite of these is Syrie James’ Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen) to departures under various subgenres, such as Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen detective series, in which the intrepid author goes about solving a series of crimes. I’ve even heard rumors that Austen is about to appear in a colleague’s work as a vampire slayer. Buffy, eat your heart out.

It’s not just Austen, although she seems to be the favored target. A few years ago, I read a mystery in which Virgil had been pressed into service as detective in Augustan Rome. To be fair, this is nothing new. Dante also used Virgil as character, conscripting him as guide through the layered landscape of hell. After that, a bit of light detection must have seemed a piece of cake to the old poet.

Given that I’m writing a book with an author in it (the extra author is for extra flavoring!), it seems hypocritical to complain about the practice. But there’s something about the author-as-character trope that, while it intrigues me, also makes me uneasy. Part of it has to do with the dividing line between the role of author as observer and author as person. In writing, authors serve as method actors, piping words into the voices of their characters that they themselves would never speak, crafting worlds which are meant to stand on their own, with no relation to the author’s own. In taking the author as character, do we, as my friends complained, make the mistake of confusing the author with her creation?

Nowhere was this made more clear for me than in a French movie about the life of Moliere, cleverly titled Moliere. Rather like Shakespeare in Love—only French—the film followed a young and dashing Moliere as he stumbled through the plotline of Tartuffe, only then, of course, to write Tartuffe. It was great fun (who doesn’t love long-haired men in seventeenth century costume with a few of Moliere’s one-liners thrown in?), a wonderful series of literary and seventeenth century in-jokes, but, in its own way, seemed to belittle Moliere’s creative genius by equating the worker too closely with the work, as if to suggest that the playwright must have lived it to write it. Of course, that wasn’t what they were trying to do; it was all done in good fun, very obviously intended as a literary never-never land. Fiction, in fact. But one wonders what Moliere would have thought.

What are your feelings on the idea of author as character?

My Writer's Retreat

Doreen could not fit in a post today so I offered to sub for her. My original thought was to write about the history of copyright, a subject that came up in the comments section of Tracy’s post last week. Wow, did I have delusions of intellectual grandeur. You can check out this website if you are interested in the subject. http://www.asmp.org/tutorials/brief-history-copyright.html. For those not inclined to click I hope to ask a copyright attorney to sub for me sometime and he/she can tell you all about it.

For the last ten days I have been on a fabulous writer’s retreat. Actually I’ve been house/dog sitting for friends. They live in the country, at the crest of a hill surrounded by woods. It’s quiet here. Really, really quiet. My only company has been two very self-sufficient dogs.

There is no cell phone service but thank heaven they do have hi-speed internet access.

It has been great for my writing, reading, and TV/movie addiction. To my surprise I easily lasted four days before I felt any inclination to leave. The day the cleaning lady came I left the house to her and went to town, about twenty minutes away. I worked at the local library, had lunch and dinner and checked out houses for sale (just for fun)

My friends are coming back tomorrow. So today I went out again to buy some welcome home flowers and stopped at the ice cream shop for a sundae. Ten days with only two visits to the outside world. Anyone who knows me would be amazed.

I know myself and I’m amazed! This house sitting experience has to rank as one of the eye-opening experiences of my life. I never thought I could last this long with so little social interaction.

Last night as I was trying to figure out what a noise was (very lightly ringing wind chimes) it occurred to me that the Internet is what made this hiatus possible. Email and Twitter have been the mainstay of my contact with the outside world.

Now I am fascinated by the concept that something that brings people closer also makes it possible to keep them at a distance.

Well over two hundred years ago people settled the town near here with no such contact. They relied on people passing through to tell them what was happening in the world. And the occasional letter for family news. This made me wonder how mail was delivered before there were post offices in every town. Check the Postal Museum site for more information on this: http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2_exhibits.html.

Yes, it’s been eye opening for me. How interesting that at my age, with grown children and a retired husband, growth in self-awareness is still possible. I suspect that as long as society keeps changing, as long as new technology is being invented and as long as I am open to new possibilities there is more growth on the horizon. I can’t wait.

I post again next Monday and I will write about a much earlier mind expanding experience (which had nothing to do with drugs). A move that changed my life and will, hopefully, have more to do with research.

By the way, it never occurred to me to bring my camera or I would have included pictures of this corner of the world.

Tell us about your most recent eye-opening experience