Update 12-20-05

Hi,

A handful of quick notes, then that predicted filler.  And Happy Hanukah and Merry Christmas to all.

From Terri Donohue Calamari:  I meant to get this note to you earlier this week, but alas working nights has me completely disoriented.  If you would please include the following in the newsletter for the next four weeks, I'd appreciate it.  Hope you all are well and the season is merry and bright.
    The new and improved ALUMNI WINTER BREAK:  Please join us in Naples, Florida on Sunday, January 15, 2006, at noon, to board the Naples Princess, a luxury yacht, for a luncheon cruise up Naples Bay to the Gulf of Mexico ($39.70 including tax and tip).  When you disembark from the Princess, beautiful, downtown Naples and the beach will be only steps away.  After sightseeing or a swim, join other alumni and faculty for an open house from  3:00 PM to 8:00 PM at my house before your ride home.  For more information, please e-mail me at:  terrcal@cs.com

From Andy Dolich:  I hope you have an enjoyable holiday season.  Also, just curious -- how will the fifteen dollar per person fee be used by the fledgling alumni association?

[Rich -- as I wrote Andy:  I'm hoping for scholarships.  That's what Emily Kleinman Schreiber seems most interested in, and that's what the alumni associations at Central and North mainly seem to use their money for.  Also for financing little projects around the schools that their budgets can't accommodate.  But at the moment a lot is still being developed, and it depends on what comes out of the association meetings.  Which we'll know more about as they continue.  How's that for hopeful but unclear?]

From Robert Fiveson:  I was wondering if any of our classmates have a bead on the following people:  Barry Rubin, Arlene Charney, Alan Beiner, and Carol Kauderer?

[Rich -- As I wrote Robert:  No sign of any of those people yet, but I'll put their names in the next newsletter as a reminder.]

From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  I am having a very senior moment.  I am sure that I received an announcement for the January 11th 50th Anniversary Celebration at South, but I cannot find it in my e-mail.  Eek, did I delete it?  If you happen to have it, could you please send it to me, as I need it pass it along to Sara Cohen, my former neighbor on Jasmine Lane and class of '69 or '70.  Both of us are giving very strong consideration to attending the party as long as it doesn't snow.  Double eek!

[Rich -- I don't think there has been a formal announcement yet, just what we heard at the 40th reunion party from Principal Steve Lando, along with informal follow-ups from Paul DeMartino and Emily Kleinman Schreiber.  But if I'm wrong, and anyone has that announcement, please send it to me, and I'll pass it around.

Also, speaking of Emily:  any of you who are listed on Classmates.com, whether you ever visit that site or not, probably just got a message from them with a notation that it was from Emily.  Just in case you've gotten so irritated with Classmates hard-sell policies that you simply let its messages go directly to your spam folder as I do, let me guess that the Classmates note contained the same information about the alumni association that Emily has been sending to us over the past few months.  She was just trying to blind e-mail those folks who don't get our newsletter.]

Finally, that pleasant filler from my traveling friends Melody and Ken Eckhart:  We feel a bit like we've been in hibernation and are overdue for a note.  We've been out and about, but with no time to write.  Melody usually gets it started, and then I play editor, and so it goes, back and forth.  I said I'd grab the ball this time, and then she could take over.  During the Singapore National Day holiday, we decided to escape to Laos for five days.  Off we go.
    Most of the guidebooks you read describe Laos as the closest thing going to the romantic image of Southeast Asia.  Bordered by Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, China, and Vietnam, the country is landlocked.  With strong rural traditions and a deeply spiritual culture, this is a place for peaceful, laid-back travel.  For centuries, the country was used as a pawn in a strategic game between neighboring states and, later, world powers.  Despite all this, and perhaps due to the devout Buddhism and tolerance of its people, nationalist aspirations were slow to develop, and the shaping of Laos as a quasi-modern nation-state can only be traced back to 1945.  Japan's occupation of French Indochina kick-started the drive for independence from France in 1949.  Laos then became a microcosm for the global struggle between the left and the right, with the United States and Vietnam funding and supporting opposing sides in a contest for the country's allegiance.  After the Vietnam (or American) War ended in 1975, the revolutionary movement set up the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and it remains the authority to this day.  We frankly think it smacks of a unique communist structure, but they say "no."
    What a place.  We jumped a flight to Bangkok and then took this little boutique airline north to Luang Prabang, the original heritage capital until it was moved to Vientiane in 1650.  We land at the local airport (Luang Prabang has a metropolitan population of 40,000) in the northern high country where this great little town is located on the Mekong River.  This is like stepping back into the 1950s.  Single story buildings, narrow streets, few cars (mostly tuk-tuks and small trucks) and people everywhere -- locals and gobs of Europeans, particularly the French, for obvious reasons.  We check into a 24 room hotel that was converted from a French colonial estate, and it is like an old, comfortable favorite chair.  We throw our stuff on the bed and head out by foot to explore.  There are vendor stalls with everything you see in this region, but also with some very nice, high quality merchandise, particularly the silk.  At night, they block off the main street and people come from the interior to hawk their goods.  Although they have kept the old quaint feel, they are also paving streets and bricking sidewalks to make it more tourist friendly and have managed to dodge the commercial feel of nearly everywhere else in Southeast Asia that has a classification bigger than a village.  At the end of the day, we head back to the hotel, jump in the pool, have a drink, and then grab a few winks before showering and heading out for dinner in the dark.  At night, there's a whole different feel.  The driver goes down along the Mekong, but we can't see much, just hear the rushing water.  We turn right, up two blocks and stop at L'Elephant, a great local French restaurant, and so begins the story of "Mel and Ken eating their way thru Laos."  Great fish from the river.  The first of our many-to-come champagne bottle purchases, which runs about 70 United States dollars and is double the price of all the food we have, including the dessert.  After an excellent meal under a ceiling fan on the porch and a tuk-tuk ride home, we sleep like babies.
    Saturday morning.  The best day of the trip.  We are picked up, ride less than 5 minutes, and get dropped off high on the river bank and head for water level.  We then begin a 2-hour journey upriver in a 65 foot long, 4 foot wide, old wooden "vessel" with the guide and captain in what turns out to be an exhilarating adventure.  The Mekong (pronounced "makong") is the 12th longest river in the world and one of its most untamed waterways.  Before the completion of a bridge to Thailand in 1993, not a single span crossed this 4,000 plus kilometer long river, and it still doesn't have one dam in the entire country.  Our adventure took us to several villages and a cave.  The villages were the most fascinating and getting there was an event in itself.  They don't exactly have walkways with steps, so getting out of the boat was tricky.  Most of the banks were pure mud (it's the middle of the rainy season) and at one village, we thought we were going to lose our guide, who sunk up past his ankles in the stuff.  The villages continue this same theme with mud walkways/streets and bamboo or wooden houses where each family has a business they conduct.  The first one we encountered was a whisky producing still, the final product a bottle of whisky with a scorpion, a snake, or a centipede in the bottle.  Needless to say, we did not sample the product.  Walking on a little further, we encountered what was to be the first of many young entrepreneurs, girls between 6 and 8 squatting in front of small footstool-type stands and selling hand-woven bracelets for the equivalent of 20 cents American.  Well, how does one walk by anything this cute?  At the end of the day, and 3 villages later, we were the proud owners of 25 to 30 bracelets.  The family businesses, however, are more serious.  Every woman in these villages either did weaving from her own personal loom, and made beautiful scarves and shawls, or did embroidery work, and created fantastic handmade bedspreads and pillow covers.  I bought a beautiful scarf for $1.00 American and wished I had picked up a dozen.  On to the Pak Ou caves.  These are a series of rooms in a limestone cliff that house a thousand Buddhas.  Don't ask us why, but it was pretty incredible.  Then, on to lunch across the river to a restaurant where chickens were running freely by our table while we ate local food at giveaway prices.  Another boat ride downriver in half the time to Luang Prabang.  That evening, we found another great restaurant owned and managed by a displaced Englishman.  Then it was back to the hotel to fall into bed exhausted.
    Sunday, we had a scheduled trip with our guide to the Kuangsi Waterfalls.  He said we could swim, but when we arrived at the falls area and actually dipped our toes into the water, it was freezing, so we passed on the swim.  The walk to the top of the park was treacherous, through running water in spots, but once we arrived, it was truly a beautiful and spectacular sight.  We took a few photos and headed down to the truck.  Back in Luang Prabang, which we had not explored except for restaurants, coffee houses, and markets, we visited  the Royal Museum and Wat Xieng Thong.  Since the royal family/history is too complicated, and you've heard enough from us about Buddhas and wats to last a lifetime, we will spare you the details of these last two places.  OK, you know the routine by now -- back to the hotel, shower, rest, and on to another place for dinner, this time on the balcony of an old colonial hotel.  Champagne, dinner, and dessert.
    Monday morning, swim, breakfast, and then off to Vientiane via Loa Airlines -- we're getting more boutique as we go.  An hour later, we are in the capital and quickly check in at the Setha Palace, a beautiful hotel frequented by diplomats.  Great lunch and off with the guide.  Usual sights and temples and the most famous landmarks in the country.  Very different from up north.  More people, looks and feels like a smaller Southeast Asian city, but not as crazy as B'kok and Ho Chi Minh.  Hit the markets as well, but the best part was a visit to Carol Cassidy's.  She's an American woman who opened up the Lao silk industry, as Jim Thompson did many years earlier in Thailand.  We went to her shop/store and saw 25 to 30 women working looms by hand.  The products were incredible, and we bought a Naga (dragon) wall hanging that is simple and beautiful.  Back for dinner in another great French restaurant, and the next morning we are up and on our way back to Singapore.
    A great getaway and we would highly recommend it to all, especially to change the scenery and let the time go by.  As we get closer to the end of our time in Asia, we will keep trying to find these gems, and there's still so much to see.  Warm greetings to all and hope this finds you well.