Lori Hein: Published Clips

Outdoor Art Adventures

2010-04-10T09:05:00.013-05:00

Published in the April 2010 issue of Boston Parents Paper

Not all art lives inside museums and galleries. Wonderful, whimsical pieces – perfect for exploring with children – pepper parks, playgrounds and public places throughout Greater Boston. Now that spring is here, consider exploring these destinations that have creations to delight all ages.

Art-Filled Acres
DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln features contemporary art indoors and out. Says DeCordova's Victoria Glazomitsky, “Kids and families love the park. It gives little ones 35 acres to run around on while providing a creative backdrop that lends itself to family discussions.” The changing exhibition of about 75 works includes many for kids to enjoy – such as Doug Kornfeld’s outsized Ozymandias figure and Paul Matisse’s xylophone-like Musical Fence. The museum offers many family programs including a kid-friendly Sculpture Park audio tour.
DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln; 781-259-8355; http://www.decordova.org/. Park open daily dawn to dusk, admission charged during museum hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10am – 5pm. Adults, $12; kids ages 6-12, $8; kids ages 5 and under, free.

Water Works
Enjoy sea and city views as you discover art along Boston’s Harborwalk, a public path that runs along or near the water’s edge from East Boston to Dorchester. About 38 of the Harborwalk’s planned 47 miles are completed, with plenty of long stretches perfect for family outings. Pick a route from the Harborwalk Web site, pack a picnic, and set off to find delightful works, including marine animal sculptures, fish-shaped benches and fanciful aluminum panels in South Boston’s Eastport Park. There are also mosaic walls and a spiral tower in Charlestown’s Paul Revere Park and eye-catching, large-scale sculpture at Arts on the Point on the UMASS Boston campus.
Boston Harborwalk, www.bostonharborwalk.com/art.

Outdoor Gallery in Cambridge
The Cambridge Arts Council (CAC) has helped turn Cambridge into a giant gallery of accessible art, much of it outdoors. “Because we serve the public, all of our projects are for a multigenerational audience,” says the CAC’s Lillian Hsu. There are interesting works in a variety of media all over the city, with lots of engaging installations to make kids smile. Check out Danehy Park’s half-mile-long “glassphalt” path by artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Nancy Selvage’s Waterwall in Trolley Square. The exteriors of public buildings, restaurants and stores host vibrant murals like Crossroads, Crosswinds and Potluck that celebrate the city’s diversity.
Cambridge Arts Council, 344 Broadway, Cambridge; 617-349-4389; http://www.cambridgema.gov/~cac/ .

Cemetery Sculpture
Don’t get spooked. Founded in 1848 as a park and arboretum as well as a burial ground, Jamaica Plain’s Forest Hills Cemetery offers a 250-acre oasis of paths, trees, and a lake alive with frogs and turtles. It’s also home to an extraordinary sculpture collection. In addition to elaborate Victorian grave art, there’s a Sculpture Path of contemporary pieces that “children and families enjoy exploring,” says Forest Hills Trust’s Cecily Miller. Favorite pieces include interactive works like Mitch Ryerson’s Poetry Chairs, inscribed with poetry written by teens, and Andrea Thompson’s Knock on Wood, with knockers that make different sounds. Forest Hills’s summer camps host more than 800 children, and July’s Lantern Festival draws people of all ages for Japanese drumming, dancing and the sunset launching of lanterns across the lake.
Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Ave., Boston; 617-524-0128; www.foresthillstrust.org.

Skate Into Spring... On Wheels

2010-03-01T17:14:00.007-05:00

Published in the March 2010 issue of Boston Parents Paper

March is mud season -- not always a good time to romp in the great outdoors. When the weather or winter-weary grass isn't cooperating, burn off some energy at an indoor roller rink. More than a half-dozen rinks across eastern Massachusetts welcome skaters of all ages and abilities. Admission averages about $7 and skate rentals, if not included in the price, are available for about $3. Most rinks offer lessons and birthday party packages. Public skating hours vary by day and season, and some rinks have special sessions for tots, teens and families. Call or check a rink's website for the schedule before setting out.

Family Focus

Colorful murals deck the walls at Carousel Family Fun Centers. Recently refreshed and updated, the rinks provide a bright, safe place for kids, teens and families to gather for fun and fitness. With snack bar, game room, great sound system, a Wednesday night all-you-can-eat family pizza package and frequent themed entertainment, there's something for everyone. Non-skating parents accompanying their kids are admitted free, but parents might want to return on Sunday evenings for the Adult Fitness Skate: the background music's beat ramps up gradually for a cardio workout that really rocks!
Carousel Family Fun Centers, 1055 Auburn St., Whitman, 781-857-1286 and 4 David Drown Blvd., Fairhaven, 508-996-4828; www.carouselskate.com

Super-sized Saturdays

With a Saturday public session that runs from 11:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. and skate rentals that run from a toddler's size 8 to a man's 16, a family can log a lot of miles at Roller World in Saugus. Blacklights make painted images of the planets pop off walls and carpets. Like other family-friendly rinks, Roller World's a social place and can be a good spot for playdates. The rink's Michelle Breen says there are many skaters "of all ages who come two or three times per week, and they've made friends." Parents might want to get a sitter on Tuesday or Saturday nights when Roller World becomes a dance hall hosting ballroom and line dancing.
Roller World, 425R Broadway, Saugus; 781-231-1111; www.roller-world.com

Laser Labyrinth

After they've chased each other around on skates for a while, kids can chase each other through the laser tag mazes at Roller Kingdom's two locations in Hudson and Tyngsboro. Each $4 game is a high-energy, 10-minute adventure complete with pulsing lights and sound effects. A computer prints out individual scores, and players earn tickets that they can cash in at Roller Kingdoms' prize counters. After an exhilarating laser battle your kids might be too pooped to put their skates back on, but some snack bar fuel should reenergize them. Parents accompanying their kids skate free at Roller Kingdom.
Roller Kingdom, 5 Highland Park Ave., Hudson, 978-562-3440 and 355 Middlesex Rd., Tyngsboro, 978-649-3440; www.rollerkingdom.com

More Places to Get Rolling

Roller Palace, 130 Sohier Rd., Beverly; 978-927-4242; www.rollerpalace.net. Has an adjacent soccer facility

Skateland, 19 Railroad Ave., Bradford; 978-372-3050; www.skateland.com. New rock maple floor and jamskating to hiphop

Silver City Skateland, 1 Lawton Ave., Taunton; 508-824-4866; www.silvercityskatelandrollerrink.com. Tiny Tot Sessions include a beginner lesson and free skating for one parent

The Universal Language of Pigeon

2010-02-01T15:20:00.006-05:00

Published in HCI Books' The Ultimate Bird Lover. Book publication date February 2010

Arming your kids with corn and sending them into a flock of pigeons is a surefire way to connect with locals when you travel. Pigeons swoop, crowds gather, international relations ensue. You may not speak the locals’ language, but if they’ve got pigeons and you’ve got kids, you’ve got a lingua franca.

Some of my family’s favorite travel memories involve pigeons. In cities all over the world we’ve used the birds to make connections with people.

Like the bevy of Italian models who interrupted a photo shoot in Venice’s Piazza San Marco to marvel at my then nine-year-old son, Adam, who, by throwing the corn straight up but not out, made the top of his head the site of multiple pigeon landings. The models called him “PEE-jin boy” and took pictures before giving him corn-throwing advice. Italians speak with their hands, and it was interesting to watch a half-dozen drop-dead gorgeous women mime effective grain-tossing techniques to a little boy.

Nearby, our daughter, Dana, then six and already a skilled animal whisperer, had attracted her own fans. She laid a trail of corn and, by repeatedly cooing, “Yo, whitey, my man,” coaxed San Marco’s sole albino pigeon to walk a straight line, pecking each piece as he went, right into her hands.

The summer before he started school I took Adam to Bolivia. He liked the boat ride across Lake Titicaca and thought “Andy’s mountains” were cool. But what he most enjoyed was just hanging out in the capital, La Paz. He liked having his shoes shined by teenage boys who nodded earnestly while he explained the powers of the action figures he carried in his pockets, and he liked eating cotton candy in Plaza Murillo, a popular public space and heart of the city.

One sunny Sunday in the plaza, anchored by grand government buildings and a neo-classical cathedral, Adam spied a boy about his age sitting on a bench with his parents watching the pigeons gathered in the center of the square. We knew what to do.

I bought seven bags of corn from a vendor, gave Adam one, and sent him into the flock. He threw a handful into the air and the pigeons went loco, whirling to get the grain. As they swarmed around Adam’s feet, the little boy stood up and clapped.

I called Adam over and gave him two bags of corn. He went to the boy and offered him one. Then they ventured, the little American in a Pokemon windbreaker and the little Bolivian in a sweatsuit of red, yellow and green, the colors of the Bolivian flag, into the middle of the plaza, where they threw corn, dodged dive-bombing pigeons and laughed together from the bottom of their bellies.

After four more bags of corn had been happily tossed and consumed, the boy ran to his parents’ bench and returned to Adam with a soccer ball. The parents motioned to me to join them and asked if Adam could play for a while.

While the new friends kicked the ball for an hour, the parents and I, mixing simple Spanish and English, talked about life in our respective countries and about the joys and challenges of raising a family. There was little difference between their experiences and hopes and my own.

And, looking at our sons, running and grinning and enjoying the day and each other, we knew there wasn’t much difference between them, either.

Latin: Alive and Well in the Classroom

2010-01-01T14:57:00.002-05:00

Published in the January 2010 issue of Boston Parents Paper

Among the classes that kids take in public and private schools today, Latin isn't the first to come to mind. Many people might say it's unnecessary, a "dead language" that no longer applies to "real life."

Yet, more than 60 percent of our English vocabulary has Latin roots. And, while you may not know the origin of the words you speak, many of today's Massachusetts students do. Latin is alive and well in schools across the state. Long a cornerstone of classical education at many private schools, this ancient language now has fans in a wide range of academic settings from municipal to Montessori, charter to parochial, in grades as early as elementary.

For the past five years, Boston lawyer Gregg Bailey has voluntarily taught Latin to Dorchester tweens and teens attending rigorous area schools where the language is required. He does it through Project D.E.E.P., the Dorchester Educational Enrichment Program that tutors and prepares Dorchester youth for entry exams required by schools like Boston Latin and Roxbury Latin. D.E.E.P.’s been so successful getting kids into these institutions that five years ago it launched Learning Latin to support them in their schoolwork.

Bailey, who holds an undergraduate classics degree, stepped in to teach the program. Once a week he and a group of mostly 7th, 8th and 9th-graders study Latin vocabulary and tackle homework challenges. Enrollment doubled in the first three years and, according to D.E.E.P. assistant director Lauren Hughes, continues to climb.

“Latin,” says Hughes, “is paramount to a comprehensive education. It can expand a child’s knowledge of English as well as help in learning any other Romance language.”

Growing In Popularity

Recent Latin enrollment statewide has held steady or grown, with Latin’s value as a building block of English a key reason why.

Alice Lanckton, a Newton South High School teacher who’s seen Latin enrollment double to about 100 since 2002, says, “Students appreciate the importance of Latin in increasing their vocabularies, both for the SATs and for life. Kids who take Latin enjoy understanding words.”

Claire Planeta, Latin teacher at Easton’s Oliver Ames High School agrees. “People tell me they use Latin more than any subject because it helps them with vocabulary. Most of my students would tell you they learned English grammar in Latin class," she says.

Latin classes start in the 6th grade at many private schools. At Brookline’s Dexter and Southfield schools, for example, middle schoolers take three years of Latin, then decide whether to continue at the high school level. About 50 percent do. “We’ve always had a strong interest in Latin among our student body,” says Lisa Pyne, the schools’ classics department head. “Because they’re exposed early, our students are invested in their study of the language.”

Early exposure means parental investment, too. Lynn Sullivan-Galvin, a Boston mom whose son is a Dexter 8th-grader, says, “Sam’s in his third year of Latin; therefore, I’m in my third year of Latin.” Sullivan-Galvin’s seen Sam read novels without looking up words while his high school-age sister, who doesn’t take Latin, keeps a dictionary close. “I can’t believe how much Latin has helped Sam’s vocabulary. When reading, he can figure out words because of the Latin root, making the reading much more enjoyable. When writing, he’s able to use less common words because of Latin.”

Putting It To The Test

Currently, Latin is taught at about 20 percent of middle schools in Massachusetts' 220-odd public school districts and 62 percent of high schools, according to state education department data. A quarter of those high schools offer Advanced Placement (AP) Latin, built around works of ancient Roman poet Vergil.

A trend toward diligent SAT preparation in recent years may help explain the old tongue’s 21st-century appeal: that Latin-takers outperform peers on the verbal (now Critical Reading) portion of the SAT is supported by 2007 Educational Testing Service data showing average scores of 678 for Latin-takers versus 502 for all students. For younger students, Latin may provide an MCAS edge: a study of midwestern 6th-graders shows those exposed daily to Latin surpass peers in reading, spelling, math, social studies and science.

Hingham High is one local school with a robust, multi-level Latin program. Teacher Ron Urbinati reports “a recent increase in enrollment,” with 160 students in Latin I through AP.

Gail Ryder, who teaches middle and high school Latin in the Dover-Sherborn system, has seen Latin explode beyond the one 8th-grade and one high school course offered when she arrived in 1986. “We’ve built an incredibly successful Latin program,” she says. “We now begin in 6th grade, and this year’s 6th grade class has over 40 students.” Dover-Sherborn has strong 7th and 8th grade enrollment and four high school offerings, including AP. “Many of our students wish to be admitted to top colleges and feel that taking Latin AP is a way to help with admission.” Ryder reports that “usually by the end of freshman year students are reading real Latin regularly: Cicero, Caesar, Pliny and all the poets.”

At St. Agnes, a K-8 Catholic school in Arlington, students start Spanish in kindergarten then, at the end of 6th grade, choose to continue or, as Latin teacher Christopher Bogdanski puts it, “come over to the dark side.” About 35% make the switch to Latin, and Bogdanski notes that some of his students continue in high school where, he says, “we’ve had several go on to earn perfect scores on the National Latin Exam.” The exam, offered at several study levels, had about 6,000 takers when first offered in 1977. About 140,000 turned out in 2009, with Massachusetts delivering 11,948 -- more than any state.

Making It Fun

Ed Foley teaches Latin at Arlington’s Ottoson Middle School, where enrollment’s risen and now holds steady at about 180. Foley thinks new teaching methods play a role in the renaissance. “The old image of Latin as a dull, difficult and dead language is no longer accurate,” he says.

Teachers such as Newton South’s Lanckton use games: I Piscatum (Go Fish) and bingo-like Id Habeo (“I’ve Got It!”). Hingham’s Urbinati uses hands-on projects related to Roman history and mythology. The vast reach and influence of the Roman empire, a multi-ethnic, multi-racial culture, allow teachers to wrap art, archaeology, architecture, politics and philosophy around the Latin language and literature core, furthering engaging and enriching today’s students.

Kids may take Latin to gain academic advantages then find their minds opened to its timeless cultural and societal legacies, topics worth exploring. “Non scholae sed vitae discimus.” (We do not learn for school, but for life. )

The Sauerkraut Cure

2009-10-10T14:17:00.006-05:00

Published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family. Book publication date October 2009

A recent genealogical expedition into my dad’s childhood yielded a folk remedy brought by his grandmother to Brooklyn from her native Alsace. I’d asked my dad to spend a day sharing memories of growing up in New York in the 1930s and ‘40s, and he had tales to tell, the most colorful of which involved Grandma Fink, the tender-tough matriarch of the extended family that shared her six-unit Brooklyn apartment building.

The close quarters of the Lincoln Avenue tenement were, thought Grandma Fink, a breeding ground for germs, critters and other unpleasantness, so she maintained vigilant guard over her clan’s health, administering poultices, plasters, salves and syrups and occasionally calling Dr. Hantmann in for a 25-cent kitchen table consult (the patient laid on the table for examination). And, she did seasonal cleaning, not just of the house, but of her grandsons’ insides as well.

Grandma Fink counted tapeworms among the potential threats to her family’s well-being, and twice yearly she waged war on any that might have found their way into my father and his two older brothers. Her weapon? Sauerkraut.

“One day each spring and fall, Grandma Fink would call me, Henny and Eddie into the kitchen," recalled my dad. "On the stove was a huge pot of water in which cabbage had been cooking for hours, made into sauerkraut. We knew from the towels and blankets covering the pot that it wasn’t for consumption. It was to attract tapeworms.”

The boys took turns standing on a stool that Grandma Fink had pulled to the stove. She’d lift the heavy towels that covered the steaming pot and push the boys’ little heads into the stinky steam. "We," said my dad, "were told to inhale the sauerkraut aroma, which Grandma said would ward off colds but most importantly, lure out any tapeworms growing inside us.”

Grandma Fink knew that tapeworms loved sauerkraut, especially kraut as delicious as hers, made from an old family recipe, and that to get some, the parasites would swim up through the intestines to the mouth and try to jump into the sauerkraut pot.

As the boys sniffed the pungent mash, Grandma stood close by, waiting to pull out any tapeworms that might emerge. “Grandma was ready to capture them,” said my dad, “and we thought she was quite brave, because she told us they could be thirty, even up to eighty feet long.”

As far as my dad knows, Grandma never did catch a tapeworm. “I cannot recall a single one ever coming out of us,” he chuckled. But Grandma never let her guard down, pulling out the pot and firing up the semi-annual sauerkraut boil year after year after year, releasing each grandson from the ritual only when he became a young man and moved, for work, marriage or the military, out of her Brooklyn tenement and into the wide world.

Get Your Family Into the Cosmos: Great Places to Stargaze

2009-10-01T13:26:00.016-05:00

Published in the October 2009 issue of Boston Parents Paper

We’re all shining stars. Really.

That bright star your family contemplated on your summer camping trip? You’re made from bits of one just like it says renowned astronomer Phil Plait. In a video for the British website www.whyscience.co.uk, a collection of thoughts on why science is so important, Plait uses astronomy to show that "science is everything, and it's everywhere, and it's you."

"The iron in your blood and calcium in your bones were created in a star that blew up five billion years ago, seeded a gas cloud with elements, and these elements formed – you," Plait says in the video. "That’s science.”

And that's bound to captivate the imaginations of your kids.

Children are tomorrow’s scientists and engineers. The more skilled they are in the process of wondering why -- the basic tenet of science exploration -- the brighter that future will be.

Astronomy is the perfect science for piquing curiosity and sparking critical thinking. It’s beautiful and mysterious. It’s one of the easiest sciences to investigate, requiring only eyes and, as interest grows, simple optical equipment. And it’s satisfying. Said Joe Doyle, curator of the Bridgewater State College Observatory, “Astronomy is a personal journey, since you’re alone at the eyepiece. You experience the universe through your own eyes and feel a sense of accomplishment when you find an object. The chance of discovery, which is very real, is thrilling.”

Exploring astronomy can make for some unique family outings. Massachusetts is home to many local public stargazing sites -- places where you can view our galaxy and beyond with precision equipment and expert guidance. Both Doyle and Tony Houser, director of the Wheaton College Observatory in Norton, said visitors are awed by magnified views of Saturn and its rings, Jupiter and its moons, and our Moon and its craters. Houser said the Andromeda Galaxy, Ring Nebula, Pleiades star cluster and naked eye objects like satellites, meteors and shooting stars also pack “a big wow factor.”

Check out one or more of the observatories described here and let skilled enthusiasts guide your kids through the universe -- perhaps unleashing their inner scientist. Just remember that stellar viewing requires clear weather, and viewing schedules change, so check an observatory’s website or information line before blasting off for your trip to the cosmos.

College Observatories
Wheaton, Bridgewater, Salem State, Merrimack and Boston University are among the area colleges that share their telescopes with the public on scheduled open viewing nights or by special arrangement. The observatories, some boasting platoons of equipment and others one or two powerful reflectors, are usually manned by physics instructors or passionate students.

Depending on the venue, you may be scanning the heavens from the roof of a science building or from inside a structure whose dome retracts to reveal the night sky. When groups of very young visitors are scheduled, Wheaton even sets up a portable, inflatable planetarium. “The kids – and their parents – enjoy crawling through the dark tunnel to get into the dome, and we have a star projector to tell stories and show star motion in the sky,” said director Houser. Find schedules and visitor information at the observatories’ websites: wheatoncollege.edu/Acad/Astronomy; bridgew.edu/Observatory; nsaac.org/collins.shtml; merrimack.edu/community/Observatory; bu.edu/astronomy/facilities/observatory.html.

Clay Center for Science and Technology
A five-story, state-of-the-art learning center in Brookline operated by the Dexter and Southfield schools, the Clay Center (claycenter.org; 617-522-5544) includes an observatory housing seven professional-grade telescopes. During fall and spring Clay holds weekly public telescope nights for facilitated exploration of planets, stars, the Moon and other celestial surprises. Pre-registration is appreciated. When you’re not gazing upward, enjoy panoramic views of Boston from the observation decks, wander through fiber optic versions of the constellations in the Stars Courtyard and use the Planetary Scales to see what you’d weigh on Mars.

Gilliland Observatory
Most families are familiar with the spectacular Charles Hayden Planetarium at Boston’s Museum of Science. Less well known but just as exciting (on a clear night) is the Gilliland Observatory (mos.org; 617-589-0267), nestled on the roof of the museum’s parking garage. At 8:30 on Friday nights, museum staff invite the public to step up to Gilliland’s powerful Celestron telescope and observe the night sky’s current offerings. Before heading to the observatory, watch the 7 PM planetarium screening of The Sky Tonight, a film that helps you and your kids better appreciate what you’ll see up on the roof.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)
The CfA (cfa.harvard.edu; 617-495-7461) sponsors observatory nights the third Thursday of each month, except in summer. Starry-eyed future scientists can learn a lot from this Harvard University center. Observatory nights begin with a non-technical lecture (intended for high schoolers and older, but children are welcome) and end with telescopic viewing from the observatory roof. The CfA also runs special events like a Kids Academy and Sci-Fi movie nights. For details check the center’s website, which has a kid-friendly, content-rich “Fun Things To Do and See” section.

Astronomy Groups and Clubs
In addition to regular meetings, at which potential new members are welcome, groups like the South Shore Astronomical Society (SSASTROS.org), North Shore Amateur Astronomy Club (NSAAC.org) and Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston (ATMOB.org) share their astronomical knowledge in various ways.

If your child’s school or scout troop would like to hold a star party to investigate and celebrate the abundant wonder of deep space, both ATMOB and NSAAC can provide support and expertise. SSASTROS invites the public to join its frequent Saturday night observing sessions in Norwell’s Centennial Field. Bring the telescope that’s been sitting in your garage and they’ll teach you how to use it, or get equipment advice if you’re considering a purchase. NSAAC helps run the public viewing nights at Salem State and Merrimack College, and its just-launched Young Astronomers Program features an essay contest for 4th- through 8th-graders, with cool equipment as prizes. To view the heavens with NSAAC members, join their Friday and Saturday viewing nights at Veasey Memorial Park in Groveland.

Tips for Parents of Would-Be Stargazers

Local astronomy experts offer these suggestions for sparking a child's interest in the heavens:

Use a laser pointer to guide young eyes through the night sky

Start with a familiar object like the Moon, and look for things kids can relate to, like large craters or the Apollo landing site

Use binoculars, easy and inexpensive, to effectively view many objects

For a good first telescope, consider the $200 Orion Starblast

Experience the excitement and camaraderie of gatherings scheduled around major events like meteor showers

Let kids click their way through the cosmos on websites like NASA.gov, HubbleSite.org and KidsAstronomy.com

Use star charts, like the downloadable tools at Stellarium.org, to identify what’s in your sky tonight

Boston By Boat

2009-06-10T12:16:00.008-05:00

Published in the July 2009 issue of Baystate Parent

Boston By Boat

From craft shaped like swans to machines tricked out like monster fish, Boston is home to a flotilla of vessels that ply the city’s waterways. With peaceful ponds, major river, scenic harbor and island-studded open ocean, Boston offers lots of ways to have family fun afloat:

Swan Boats: A 15-minute ride that’s a 130-year-old tradition. Drivers ease elegant paddleboats around the tree-lined lagoon in Boston Public Garden, America’s first botanical garden. http://www.swanboats.com/; 617-522-1966; $2.75 adults, $1.50 child.

Boston Harbor Cruises: From Long Wharf near the New England Aquarium, this company offers a cruise menu for all tastes, including whale watches, fast ferries to Cape Cod’s Provincetown and harbor cruises that take in lighthouses, the skyline and historical sights. Or ride Codzilla, a 2,800 horsepower beast with fish fangs painted on the hull that flies through the sea at 40 mph, music blaring. Screaming encouraged. http://www.bostonharborcruises.com/; 617-227-4321; prices vary.

Harbor Islands Ferries: From Long Wharf, Pier 10 in South Boston and from three suburban docks south of the city, ferries and water shuttles take you to some of the 34 islands that make up the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Georges Island, with its 19th-century Fort Warren, and Spectacle Island, which offers swimming, hiking trails and marvelous views of the Boston skyline, are among the most popular and accessible. http://www.bostonislands.org/; 617-223-8666; prices vary.

Duck Tours: Travel the streets of Boston in a restored World War II-era amphibious vehicle while a ConDucktor narrates, then “splashdown” into the Charles River. Boston sits on one riverbank and Cambridge on the other. 80-minute tour departs from both the Museum of Science and Prudential Center. http://www.bostonducktours.com/; 617-267-DUCK; $29.95 adults, $20 child.

Tall Ships Poincare and Formidable: The crew serves bottled water and ginger snaps, but you’re welcome to bring your own provisions and libations aboard these identical 50-foot square-rigged sailing vessels that accommodate 40 passengers on a two-hour tour of Boston harbor. Depart from Long Wharf’s Boston Waterfront Marina. http://www.tallshipformidable.com/; 617-262-1119; $25 adult, $10 child.

Entertainment Cruises: Cruise the inner harbor from Castle Island to Old Ironsides while enjoying food, drink and dancing. Spirit of Boston offers a variety of sailings at different times of day, departing from the World Trade Center in Boston’s Seaport District. http://www.spiritofboston.com/; 866-310-2469; prices vary.

Charles Riverboat Tours: Float down the Charles, Boston on one side and Cambridge on the other, taking in sights like the Longfellow Bridge, Beacon Hill and the golden-domed State House, the Esplanade, Back Bay, and the campuses and boathouses of MIT, Harvard and Boston University. Hour-long tour departs from the Cambridgeside Galleria. http://www.charlesriverboat.com/; 617-621-3001. $14 adult, $7 child. Also offers harbor cruises.

Charles River Canoe and Kayak: Paddle the Charles on your own steam. Pick up your hourly or daily canoe, kayak or rowboat rental at Artesani Park in Allston and explore a nine-mile stretch of the Charles River Basin. Guided tours available. Open Thurs.-Sun. in season. http://www.paddleboston.com/; 617-462-2513. Kayak/canoe rentals about $15/hour or $60/day.

Jamaica Pond: Rent a sailboat or rowboat from the boathouse at this 68-acre pond, a glacier-carved kettle depression and a jewel in the F.L. Olmsted-designed Emerald Necklace of Boston parkland. http://www.jamaicapond.com/; 617-522-5061. Rowboats $10/hour, sailboats $15/hour.

Affordable Europe: Travel Tips for the Budget Conscious

2009-05-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

Published in the Spring 2009 issue of Tufts Magazine

Affordable Europe
Travel tips for the budget conscious

Skip summer. Everything costs less in the iffy weather of off-season. Yet a great place is a great place year-round. An October walk on Spain's Mediterranean beaches calls for a sweatshirt, but the sun's still warm enough to let you linger over wine and grilled fish at al fresco cafes. Germany in December is chilly, but it's alive with holiday lights and ornament shops. And a Scottish February's gray sky is the perfect backdrop for ancient castle ruins.

Fly frugal. If the major airlines' off-peak prices are too high, investigate economical carriers like Icelandair and Aer Lingus. Travel midweek. Check airlines and tour companies for air/hotel bundles, often cheaper than airfares alone. Browse discounted packages at sites like Affordabletours.com. Then be ready to combine air travel with other transportation options. Say you've found a cheap flight to London but are headed elsewhere. Grab the flight, then travel to your destination by train, bus, ferry or low-cost intra-Europe airlines like Ryanair or easyJet.

Hotel hunt. Sites like Expedia and Orbitz list some budget accommodations, but a little digging can uncover many more two- and three-star hotels. Start at your destination's official tourism site, which will likely have an expansive list of accommodations, often with links to their websites.

Make contact. Email each hotel you're interested in. Explain that you're looking for budget accommodation for specific dates, and ask for the best rate. If you can write a few words in your potential host's language, do. Bypassing a booking service gives the hotel an opportunity to actively compete for your business and fill a room that might otherwise go empty. And the personal contact can yield surprise perks like a welcome gift, view or upgrade.

Dine midday. Make luscious lunches your day's major culinary event; for dinner, grab something quick or buy groceries and eat in. Eating your main meal in the afternoon lets you indulge inexpensively in local cuisine -- and get enough sleep for sightseeing: European dinnertime is typically nine or ten.

Natchez: A Fish Tale

2009-04-06T14:25:00.008-05:00

Published in Country Roads Magazine, April 2009

Natchez: A Fish Tale
A magical Mississippi moment on a cross-country trek

by Lori Hein

When we rolled into Mississippi a few years back, my kids and I were a thousand miles into a summer-long journey across America. Since leaving our Boston home, we’d taken small routes instead of interstates and spent our time in places where people lived and worked, played and worshiped. Our trip thus far had been a connect-the-dots of a hundred proud downtowns.

When we got to Natchez, we sized it up as a good place to fish, and we drove to Bailey Park early one morning so Adam could spend some quality river time before the day’s high heat and humidity set in. He looked under the seat for his rod and tackle box. “Where are they, mom? I gave them to you to hold.”

So he did, back in Vicksburg, where I’d laid them down to take a picture. I felt worse than bad. Adam had been looking forward to this. Up in town, there was a K-Mart next to the Natchez Market, where the day before we’d spent a few fun minutes watching red plastic shopping carts roll through the downhill-sloping parking lot and bump into shoppers’ cars. I told Adam I’d replace his equipment as soon as K-Mart opened. But that was over an hour away, and I had ruined this perfect fishing morning. Adam was decent about not rubbing it in but did utilize his keen eye for opportunity: “Since I’m so devastated, can I have a root beer for breakfast?”

Two men in a pickup backed down the cement boat ramp pushing a Bass Tracker. “How you doin’ today?” asked the driver.

I pointed at Adam, sucking down his 7 am root beer. “Well, right now we’re trying to get over the fact that mom left his fishing rod in a park back in Vicksburg.”

John and Mac immediately became everything good about Mississippi that we needed to know. Our chance meeting meant they couldn’t solve the rod problem (“If I’d a known these kids was gonna be here, we’d a brought some rods – Mac’s got about ten,” sighed John), but they found other ways to show the kids a fine Mississippi River time.

They hoisted Adam, then 13, and his sister Dana, 10, into the bass boat and opened coolers holding yesterday’s catch. Three catfish, a whiskered one and two flatheads, each about six pounds, sat on ice. They looked huge to me, but Mac dismissed them as small, unprofitable fry he hoped he’d be able to sell. “The best eatin’ catfish are about eight to nine pounds. Size matters. Caught a seventy-six-pounder once. Nobody’d buy it. Bad eatin’. Too much fat.”

Then Mac pointed to a spot in the Mississippi and shared “evidence” of an alleged 110-pound flathead on the loose, a monster capable of turning the who-eats-whom tables. “Right out there. Eat a man whole.” As Adam listened to the fish tales, I imagined him wanting to get to K-Mart as soon as possible to retool so he could reel in one of these leviathans. And he probably envisioned me emptying the cartop carrier and filling it with ice so we could haul the thing around for a while.

Mac did most of the talking while John got ready to launch. He was crossing to Vidalia on the Louisiana side to check some catfish lines he’d sunk near a spot where a new hotel was going up, and he offered to take us along for the ride. It was tempting to go out on the Father of Waters and watch a Natchez fisherman at work.

But I couldn’t. While intuition sounded the all clear, on this trip I needed to err on the side of too much caution when it came to safety. Traveling alone with the kids required keeping my guard up, even if it meant missing some experiences. I had a fitting but truthful excuse.

“Thank you, but I’m afraid of the water.” Mac, either sharp, sympathetic or both, said he understood my fear. “So’s John’s girlfriend. She won’t get in the boat.” He paused, lowered his head, then added, “This river’s taken a lot of my friends.”

But he loved it. “I been on every inch of her. I’ve camped on all these sandbars, me and my wife. We got a generator and TV.”

The signature steel bridge that connects Natchez with Vidalia began to shimmer with heat as the sun assumed its position over the Mississippi. Mac and John told us that about four years back the water level was so low you could stand on the bridge and look down on a pile of cars and trucks, dumped into the river when a barge hit the bridge in 1945. “River’s got stories,” said Mac.

By now, John had an overdue date with some catfish lines, and K-Mart was open and ready to sell us new fishing gear. We shook hands. John looked at Adam. “Take care of your mama.”

We felt happy as we drove away. The whole day and the whole country were ahead, and everything we’d left behind was good. “Just think, Adam. Some kid in Vicksburg is catching catfish right now.” Adam smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Lori Hein is the author of Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America (from which this story is adapted). Her freelance work has appeared in such publications as the Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit her at LoriHein.com or her world travel blog, RibbonsofHighway.blogspot.com.

Travel/parenting: New York For Families: The Big Apple Shines at Holiday Time

2008-12-29T16:27:00.008-05:00

This article was published in The Dabbling Mum ezine in December 2008

New York For Families: The Big Apple Shines at Holiday Time
by Lori Hein

A frosty afternoon at Central Park’s Wollman Rink; time for the annual showdown. My kids lace up their rental skates and take off around the icy oval, Adam in front and determined to beat his sister, Dana, who’s threatening mightily from behind. My husband and I sip hot chocolate and take in the contest―and the Manhattan skyline rising beyond the park’s edges―from spectator benches.

We go to New York often, and some of our best visits have been in that crisp period between Thanksgiving and New Year when the city sparkles with holiday spirit. It’s a wonderful time to be in New York, as many families have discovered. Said Leslie Sullivan, a mom from Hingham, Massachusetts, “Being in New York around the holidays really gets us into the Christmas spirit. There’s an energy as well as a serenity. There are crowds, but somehow the place feels friendly and peaceful. We loved our first family holiday trip so much that we’ve made it into a tradition.”

Whether tradition or one-time event, enjoy these holiday sights and activities:

Skating
There’s Wollman, and there’s Rockefeller. The rink at Rockefeller Center is small, but skating around it, under the 1934 gilded Prometheus sculpture and the eyes of a thousand spectators, is a cool experience. Lasker Rink, in Central Park's far north, offers public skating without the crowds. Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers, a sport and entertainment complex on the Hudson River, has afternoon public skating. Or skate at Riverbank State Park, a 28-acre, multi-sport recreational facility, also on the Hudson. For budget skating that packs a full dose of the Manhattan experience, head to Bryant Park, tucked behind the New York Public Library. Ice time is free, and skate rentals are available. The rink is small, but the cross-section of locals and visitors, vendors selling interesting things and the midtown Manhattan skyline above your head make it big fun. For an uncrowded rink in a beautiful setting, head to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

Tree-spotting
Typically lit the week after Thanksgiving, Rockefeller Center’s holiday tree, a must-see, has some competition. Twinkling trees tower over Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and South Street Seaport (from where you get an amazing view of the Brooklyn Bridge). The American Museum of Natural History's Origami Tree is adorned with a thousand folded decorations, each representing an object in the museum’s collection, and paper cranes grace the Peace Tree at the soaring Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Window-hopping
You’ll find brilliant decorations and window displays all over the city, but some of the best are at a half-dozen midtown department stores: Barney’s and Bloomingdales; Fifth Avenue’s Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Lord & Taylor (my favorite); Macy’s, on 34th Street. If you visit them all, and on foot, you’ll earn the added fitness bonus of a roughly two-mile walk.

Holiday Fairs And Shows
Catch the Rockettes and their famous high kick line in the annual Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, an art deco gem. Browse the vendor stalls at Grand Central Terminal's holiday fair, and take in the half-hourly laser light show projected onto the station’s magnificent, refurbished central ceiling. Head up to the Bronx, where you’ll find family activities at a light festival at the New York Botanical Gardens and a winter wonderland of lights, ice sculptures, music and reindeer at the Bronx Zoo.

Other Treats
For a special tour of Manhattan from the water, splurge on a lunch or dinner Spirit Cruise, departing from Chelsea Piers. Enjoy a kid’s-eye view of over-the-top Christmas gifts―think nearly life-sized stuffed horses and giraffes―at FAO Schwarz, the venerable Fifth Avenue toy store, or ride the Ferris wheel inside the Times Square Toys ‘R’ Us. Take the elevator to the Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, and enjoy the mindblowing view including, if you go in the evening, the Empire State Building floodlit red and green for the holiday season.

One of the best ways to get around New York is by bus and subway, and a 1- or 7-day Metro Card, available at most subway stations, gives you unlimited rides on both. For New York hotel and visitor information, check out NYCVisit.com.

So who won the Wollman Rink showdown? We all did. As the kids cruised down the home stretch, Adam in the lead, he got a touch of holiday spirit and slowed to let Dana catch up. The race ended in a tie.

Family/inspiration/parenting/running: A Can of Peas

2008-09-19T14:35:00.008-05:00

This story was last published in Radish Magazine in September 2008

A Can of Peas

One summer day a dozen years ago, I stood at my living room window and watched two women walk by on the sidewalk. They were both young mothers, and each pushed a stroller holding a toddler about the same size as Dana, my then two-year-old daughter. It struck me how alike the women looked – heavy and slow, with untucked, oversized T-shirts covering ample butts and bellies. Then my window became a mirror, and I saw myself. I looked just like them.

In that instant, as I stood there in my untucked, oversized T-shirt and elastic waist shorts, I knew I had to make some changes. God was hitting me over the head with a giant foam hammer: "This is an epiphany, Lori. Run with it." And that, more or less, is what I did.

I’d always been a tiny person, able to exercise never, eat whatever whenever, and remain trim and petite. I’d even come out the other end of my first pregnancy smaller than when I went into it. I’d had a hard time just holding onto my first child, a boy. After seven months of nausea, projectile rejection of almost all food save Cheerios and Dannon yogurt, and a stint in the hospital hooked to a nasogastric tube that delivered protein drink through my nostrils to my stomach, my Adam greeted the world two months early. Four pounds and able to fit in the palm of my husband’s hand. When we took our tiny fighter home after his stay in intensive care, I weighed five pounds less than I’d weighed in high school.

Dana stayed in the womb a week beyond the due date. While I carried Dana, she and I ate. About every 20 minutes. With Adam, I felt sick if I ate. With Dana, I felt sick if I didn’t. I embarked on a nine-month, nonstop eating orgy. Steak, peanut butter, baked potatoes with sour cream, hot fudge sundaes. Deli meat, frozen pizza, Cheez-Its by the boxful. Oreos, burritos, chocolate and butterscotch pudding smothered in Redi-Whip. I slept with a loaf of bread next to the bed.

When Dana was born, healthy and beautiful, I was big. And stayed big. And pretended I wasn’t. Had God sent the two strolling mothers any earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready to receive the message. Being in denial awhile had allowed me to keep eating donuts, corned beef hash and bacon while rationalizing the weight gain as a normal, perfectly acceptable stage of motherhood.

Upon my epiphany, I resolved to effect a wholesale, cold turkey conversion. I knew exactly what I had to do: eat less, eat well, move more. Forever. And it’s the forever part that made the whole thing easier to swallow.

Were I to put myself "on a diet," I knew I would fail, ultimately if not right away. I needed to replace "diet," a short term, emergency-infused concept, with "life," hopefully long and good. I would never be on a diet. I’d be on life.

A diet would address only what I took in. But life offered the chance to play with energy, experiment with taking it in and burning it off. A diet held no challenge: Here, eat this measured thing. Life said, "Have some fun. See what happens when you eat a little and burn a little. Or eat a lot and burn a little. Or eat a little and burn a lot. Or eat a lot and burn a lot." What fun! Like being a scientist.

So I banished "diet" from my mindset and lexicon and focused on life. I resolved to do three things: center my meals around plants; choose healthy calories over bad or empty ones; move for at least 20 minutes a day.When time came for my first post-conversion meal, I opened the fridge. I wanted to plant-center my plate, but there wasn’t a fresh fruit or vegetable in that whole Kenmore. I opened the cupboard and took down a can of peas. I found an onion, sautéed it in olive oil, threw in some chopped garlic and lemon juice, and folded the mix into the peas. I poured a tall glass of OJ, sat down on my deck, and tucked into this humble, healthy lunch that would change my life.

The next morning, I dug out an old pair of sneakers, pulled on my elastic waist shorts and oversized T-shirt, and went outside to move. I started out walking, but soon found myself lifting my feet high enough off the ground to approximate a rude form of entry level shuffle-jogging. That first day, I made it once around the block. I felt like I was going to die, but I knew I’d run the race of my life.

Now, after years of salads, fruit, fish, chicken, whole grains and the occasional Oreo or Dairy Queen cone, I wear high school-size jeans and have long since given away my elastic waist shorts.

And that energy experiment? My favorite take in-burn off combination is "eat a lot and burn a lot." That’s what I do when I train for a marathon. I’m preparing for my ninth.

Travel/family/parenting: Intergenerational Travel: Finding Family Harmony

2008-04-13T15:31:00.005-05:00

This article appeared in the online magazine The Dabbling Mum in February 2008:

Intergenerational Travel: Finding Family Harmony
Lori Hein
All materials copyrighted

It’s a sweet, indelible image: My dad, six-foot-two and lean as a green bean holding hands with my then two-year-old daughter, clad in a puffy turquoise sunsuit. My dad’s long arm reaches down, my daughter’s tiny one reaches up, and they look into each other’s eyes as they make their way, laughing, down the hill from our rented beach house to the ice cream store in town. That simple, joy-filled walk that Dana took with her Pop-Pop was one of many special moments shared by three generations of our family during a week-long vacation together.

Traveling with multiple generations of family can be rich and rewarding. It’s an opportunity to reunite, reminisce, discover, celebrate.

But friction can develop, too, as family members who don’t live together in the real world try to live together in the vacation world. Whether you rent a ski chalet, cabin in the woods or motel rooms near Disney World, some honest pre-trip discussion and planning can help ensure that everyone enjoys your multi-generational journey.

Before leaving home, discuss:

How close the quarters? Chris and Dave Blelloch, a Boston-area couple with three grade-schoolers, have taken several vacations with extended family. Some have been less than perfect, others a joy. The difference? Space. For a reunion trip to North Carolina, the clan, which included aunts, uncles, grandparents and a gaggle of cousins, rented one large house. “It didn’t work,” said Chris. “Too close.”

For a more recent trip to Cape Cod, the group booked separate, side-by-side condos. Each family had its own living space, and the resort’s beach and play area with barbecue pit served as common gathering ground. Harmony reigned.

What are the ground rules – and floor plan? It’s easier to set behavior and etiquette guidelines before a trip than to fret and feud while on vacation because, for example, teenagers come in late, make noise in the kitchen and wake the family. Mom and dad may be used to this at home, but grandma and grandpa aren’t. And mom and dad may need a break from it. It’s their vacation, too.

Set ground rules and devise plans that address issues like curfews; accommodation of early risers and night owls; babies’ naptimes; uses of common space; control of amenities like TVs, computers, sound systems, sports equipment and rental cars. The payoff for your negotiations will be a vacation haven that’s truly a peaceable kingdom.

If you’ll be staying in a vacation rental, knowing the property’s floor plan and layout can help you make advance decisions on potentially thorny issues like bedroom assignments. Who gets the biggest or quietest room, the room nearest the bathroom, the ground floor room, the room in the attic two flights up, the room that faces a busy street? Vacation rental sites like Interhome.com, CyberRentals.com and vrbo.com (Vacation Rentals by Owner) have photos and property descriptions and, with the latter two, you deal directly with the owners and can email them with questions.

Whose turn to dry? You may not want to think about work while on vacation, but jobs will need doing, especially if you’re vacationing in a rental property without restaurants or maid service. Who will shop, cook, clean, watch the kids? If the men golf in the morning, should the women get a few kid-free hours at the pool or gym in the afternoon? Grandma may love hosting family holiday feasts, but she may not want to spend her vacation cooking. Talking in advance about the division of leisure and labor will lighten everyone’s load.

How much togetherness? You’re traveling together, but you’re individuals and separate families, and it’s likely you’ll want and need time apart. Interests, habits, age, finances and health will steer each person and family toward different pursuits. Will you eat in or out? If out, how often? Or will each family do its own thing at mealtime? Should you have several vehicles available so people can go different places? Some of you may want to take daily road trips or climb mountains while others want only to sit and read. Establishing a different strokes for different folks policy gives everyone guilt-free freedom to partake in or pass on outings or activities.

On an intergenerational vacation, planning and communication help smooth the way for wonderful shared experiences.

Like holding hands and laughing all the way to the ice cream store.

Travel: Apricots and Vermentino

2007-11-13T12:54:00.002-05:00

This story was published in Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover's Soul. The title is one of four volumes in Chicken Soup's "Flavorful" series, released in November 2007.

Apricots and Vermentino
Lori Hein

Signorina Marina checked us into our rental apartment in the clifftop complex she owned with her brother, and, as she completed the paperwork, waved toward the window and her brilliant stretch of the Italian Riviera. She gave us our key. And two bottles of wine.

One red, one white, in unlabeled plastic carafes with tiddlywinkish stoppers. Language is no barrier against communicating the truly essential, which anything involving wine is, and our Englitalian exchange established that this was literal house wine, made on the premises from grapes on the premises – we’d seen the vines climbing the slope next to the driveway and crawling the arbors erected as sun screens over the parking lot and adjacent ping pong table and bocce court. Our check-in bottles were complimentary. When we emptied them, we were to bring them to reception, where they’d be refilled for about three dollars. Welcome to paradise.

We turned the key in the door of our unit, and paradise got better. We found ourselves in a sun-filled aerie with a tiled terrace that hung over the Mediterranean. Below us, mahogany boats skipped over silver waves, thin people browned themselves atop rocks that poked from the sea, vineyards, orchards and olive groves marched up every mountainside, and Moneglia, a medieval hamlet turned tourist town, buzzed with beachgoers, shoppers and cafe-lingerers. There was no reason to move. We could take in this whole sun-drenched swath of the world from our hilltop perch.

My husband Mike and I quickly fell into a routine of sitting, sipping, staring, and little else, while our kids, Adam and Dana, explored the complex and its grounds and polished their ping pong skills, often playing with a German girl on holiday with her parents. Their unit sat behind ours and looked onto the parking lot and ping pong table. In Moneglia on a month-long stay, they’d chosen to economize and forego the sea view.

We made short work of Signorina Marina’s free check-in bottles and, while we enjoyed the red, it was the white we presented most to reception for refills. Pressed from Vermentino grapes that grow in the steep, sea-kissed vineyards that arc from Genoa southeast to Santa Margherita Ligure – an arc that includes Moneglia and Signorina Marina’s family vineyards – the wine’s crisp kick partnered perfectly with the slice of sultry dolce vita we feasted on from our terrace.

I went off-campus once a day, to buy a chicken. A store in Moneglia sold whole roasted birds, and I’d head down into town about four to get today’s and reserve tomorrow’s. I’d supplement the chicken, which we’d pick on for a full day, with bread and olives from narrow, ochre-colored shops that lined Moneglia’s pedestrian zone.

"Mom, there’s a bag of stuff hanging on the door," said Adam one day as he left to play ping pong. I investigated and retrieved a plastic sack filled nearly to bursting with fresh apricots.

Nearly every afternoon for the rest of our stay we’d find a bag of apricots dangling from the doorknob. "More apricots!" Adam would shriek as he laid the newest delivery on the kitchen table. The kids loved them straight up and on the run. Mike and I assimilated them into our languorous sea-viewing sessions, pairing them with our landlady’s young, label-less Vermentino. Ahhh, Moneglia. Glorious view; happy children; open spigot of almost-free wine; tasty chickens cooked by somebody else; juicy fruit delivered by anonymous produce fairies.

I decided the Germans were the apricot-gifters. They had no terrace and no view, so no reason to hang around their apartment. Each morning about ten, they’d set off to hike, sporting backpacks, boots and serious socks. We, in bathing suits, would look up from our terrace onto the mountainside planted with orchards and vines and see the family ambling amidst the agriculture. I figured they’d befriended a landowner who let them pluck his apricots and they were using the fruit to pay Adam and Dana back for playing so much ping pong with their daughter.

Near the end of our stay I saw the German father in the parking lot, and I thanked him for the fruit: "Danke sehr fur die Aprikosen." He shook his head: "Nein, nein! Nicht von uns. Von der Schwester!"

Signorina Marina, the "sister," had delivered the apricots. We learned she owned not only the vineyards that produced our free-flowing Vermentino, but all the groves and orchards we’d been looking on. She owned the mountainside.

And she enjoyed sharing sips and pieces of it with her guests.

Travel/History: Worms: A Storied Past

2007-11-13T12:35:00.001-05:00

Published in the October/November 2007 issue of German Life magazine

Worms: A Storied Past
Lori Hein

I looked out across Heiliger Sand (Holy Sands), a field of headstones engraved in Hebrew, some a thousand years old and listing backward or to one side, and settled my gaze on the towers of Dom St. Peter, the cathedral of Worms. The ancient Jewish cemetery and the mighty Romanesque church, both witnesses to the city’s rich history, were draped – graves of Talmudic scholars and statues of saints equally – in the thin, white cloak of a late autumn snowfall.

The dusting lent an air of calm to this old German city whose history has at times been turbulent, and I went looking for pieces of its past. As I explored, Worms, which sits on the Rhein 28 miles south of Mainz in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, offered glimpses of Celts and Romans; a once thriving Jewish community; Holy Roman Emperors; the seed-sowers of the Reformation; a wine-growing culture with 2,000-year-old roots.

Four-towered Dom St. Peter has been the signature landmark of Worms for over a thousand years. The amber-red sandstone colossus sits atop the old city’s highest hill and dominates the skyline, dwarfing buildings old and new that have been built around it. Though early Christians of the late Roman era built a church on the site in the 7th century, it was in the 11th century under Bishop Burchard that the foundations of a Romanesque cathedral with today’s grand dimensions were laid.

As the centuries marched on, masons and laborers of the medieval cathedral guild rebuilt and restored, eventually adding gothic flourishes to the church’s Romanesque core. The result is a soaring space with strong Romanesque bones and lighter gothic limbs – carved portals, stained glass, airy chapels. Added to the mix are baroque and rococo elements installed after the cathedral’s interior – along with most of the city of Worms – was torched in 1689 by Louis XIV’s army during the War of the Palatinate Succession, a sweeping expansionist bid by the French king. The most striking of these later cathedral constructions is the opulent gilt altar designed by 18th century architectural wunderkind Balthasar Neumann.

Worms was a key administrative and ecclesiastical center during the Holy Roman Empire, and St. Peter’s Nicholas Chapel was the setting for sessions of the Imperial Diet, a Catholic court and legislative body. Of the many Diets convened at Worms, that of 1521 stands apart in the history of the city and the Christian world. Called before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and top figures in the Catholic hierarchy, Martin Luther stuck to the words and spirit of the 95 Theses he’d nailed four years earlier to a church door in Wittenberg. He refused to recant his protest that biblical scripture, not papal power or decree, holds the key to salvation. The Diet labeled Luther an outlaw, and the Reformation got into gear.

A huge monument to Luther and other protestant reformers sits near Dom St. Peter in a park where the city’s moat once flowed. While the cathedral remains Catholic, most Worms residents are Protestant, and some half dozen architecturally and historically significant evangelical and Lutheran churches, notably the baroque Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity Church) welcome visitors.

While Worms is a key stop along the "Luther Trail," the string of German cities with connections to Martin Luther, Worms also holds some of Germany’s most important ancient Jewish sites, and historian Dr. Gerold Boennen, director of the city archives since 1996, confirms that many people come to Worms expressly for these: "Visitors to the city are searching for authentic places with a long history, especially concerning the very important Jewish part."

Contemporaneous with budding post-Roman Christianity, Judaism existed in Worms as early as the 10th century, and from the Middle Ages until it was extinguished under the Third Reich, Worms’s Jewish community was one of Germany’s largest and most active. Striking pieces of this community – the old Jewish quarter, the ancient synagogue, the haunting cemetery where I’d watched snow settle on scholars’ stones – are places that invite, indeed cause, reflection.

The Jewish quarter is tucked in the curved embrace of medieval city wall remnants north of the cathedral. Restored multi-story houses line narrow streets, and in the center of the quarter sits what was the community’s focal point: the synagogue and attached yeshiva, or religious study hall, called Rashi Chapel after eminent Jewish scholar Rabbi Salomon ben Isaak, known as Rashi, who studied in Worms around 1060.

The entire quarter is a restoration atop previous restorations, as varying degrees of destruction visited the Jewish community and its buildings during the Crusades, 14th and 17th century pogroms, and the period from 1938 to 1942. Major restoration, using original stone and brickwork where possible, was done in the 1970s and ‘80s, and the city funds ongoing preservation. While the city maintains the synagogue, its legal owner is the Jewish community of Mainz, which absorbed Worms’s tiny remaining Jewish population into its congregation after World War II. The combined community holds services once a month in Worms’s historic synagogue.

While the temple complex has been rebuilt and altered since the original stones were laid in 1034, the buildings visitors see today together comprise, as did earlier iterations, the community infrastructure prescribed by orthodox Judaism: a place to worship; a mikva, or immersion pool for purification baths; a study house for religious instruction. The fourth component, a cemetery separate from the synagogue, is filled by Heiliger Sand, Europe’s oldest Jewish cemetery, which sits outside the city walls south of Dom St. Peter.

Heiliger Sand was never destroyed, and its 3,000 gravestones, the earliest dated 1076 and the most recent, according to Dr. Boennen, dated 1937, survived even Nazi destruction. Some guidebooks and Internet articles cite then city archivist F.M. Illert with having saved the cemetery during that period, but Boennen knows of no documents or evidence to support this and feels the story may be "really a legend and cannot be proved." But he acknowledges that visitors "are interested every time in how was it possible that the cemetery was not destroyed." A divine hand, perhaps?

Both the archives office and a Jewish Museum managed by the archives are located in Rashi-Haus, built in 1982 adjacent to the synagogue. Boennen described the richness of the treasures his department tends: "We are responsible for a great and increasing collection of documents, beginning with a charter by King Henry IV for the city of Worms from 1074, the oldest document of a German king given to the people of a city. Despite all the wars and ups and downs of Worms, we preserve a collection which can normally not be expected by a relatively small city like ours." The archives also hold a collection of 300,000 historic photographs.

Having learned a little about some of the players in the eventful, millennia-long pageant that is Worms’s history, I left the city and headed north toward Mainz on the B9, a small road that runs aside the Rhein. As it did in the city, light snow dotted the scene, a tableau of rolling hills planted with recently harvested Riesling vineyards. This is Rheinhessen, Germany’s largest wine-growing area, and viniculture here dates to Roman times.

Just outside Worms the gothic Liebfrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) sat on its hill surrounded by a vineyard from which monks once made sweet wine for thirsty medieval pilgrims. This "Liebfraumilch" gained fame over time, and wine merchants not tied to the church’s vineyard began selling wines with that name, as they do today. Two wine exporters, Langenbach and Valckenberg, own the original Liebfrauenkirche vineyard, and their wines are labeled "Liebfrauenstift Kirchestueck" to denote that specific provenance.

Flat, black barges plied the Rhein as I passed through ancient towns, many with centuries-old grape-growing traditions. Two neighboring villages, Oppenheim and Nierstein, stood out as particularly pleasing for modern pilgrims in search of scenery, history and good wine. Each offers hillside hikes, stunning medieval architecture and wine estates that have been in the same families for as long as 11 generations.

Practice makes perfect, and these vintners turn out world-class Rieslings. With my head full of history, I thought this a fine place to stop and toast the past.

More information:
Worms Tourist Office: Neumarkt 4; www.worms.de; touristinfo@worms.de
Dom St. Peter: http://www.wormser-dom.de; http://dombauverein-worms.de; www.wormser-dom.de (German only)
Nierstein and Rheinhessen regions: www.nierstein.de/start.htm; www.rheinhessen-info.de (both German only)

Travel: Apple Tea and Crazy Eights

2007-11-13T12:12:00.000-05:00

This story was published in Chicken Soup for the Tea Lover's Soul. The title is one of the four volumes in Chicken Soup's "Flavorful" series, released in November 2007.

Apple Tea and Crazy Eights

Lori Hein

We’d spent the morning driving through the rocky, hardscrabble beauty of the Bey, a range of Turkey’s Taurus Mountains. Erhan, our driver, maneuvered our microbus up and down the February snow-spattered mountain swells and through the streets of terra cotta-roofed towns like Derekoy and Karamanli. Cows grazed in yards, men in plastic chairs lined sidewalks, smoking and rubbing prayer beads, women in billowy pantaloons called salvar stooped to sweep porches with handleless brooms, and boys walked fields of just-turned black soil, casting seed from flax bags slung across their shoulders.

Our group was small. Besides Erhan there was Yesim, our guide, who’d been married a year but had been on the road leading so many tours that she’d spent only 60 days total at home with her husband. Her charges this trips were me, my son, Adam, then seven and proudly sporting a Tintin in Istanbul sweatshirt, Bob and Estheta, a retired couple from Long Island, and Jan and Rose, puckish seventysomething friends from Pennsylvania who’d been globetrotting together for 30 years. They delighted in just about everything and enjoyed pinching Adam’s cheeks. We were a well-traveled, glass-half-full lot, and we bonded quickly.

Up in the mountains, the bus door had jammed open, its hydraulic workings kaput, and Erhan had roped it shut against the February chill. This worked for us but violated the tour company’s safety code, and it fell to Yesim to get the door fixed.

"Toilet stop," she said, as Erhan eased the bus into a tiny paved lot in front of the Kulcuoglu Restaurant. "We’ll be here for fifteen minutes." We weren’t fooled. Yesim told Erhan to take the bus to a repair shop in Denizli, the nearest city. It was 11:30. At three that afternoon, Erhan would reappear, door still kaput – he couldn’t find an open garage – to collect us.

The restaurant was technically closed. Tourist season began in March, and we were a month early. The owners, an extended family of grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and teenagers, were busy readying the place, washing floors and windows, scrubbing toilets, mopping halls and stairs. They weren’t prepared for guests, but, consistent with the hospitality we’d been shown since landing in Turkey, welcomed us as if we’d been eagerly awaited.

We weren’t five minutes inside their door when the first tray of hot apple tea appeared. One of the owners’ black-haired daughters came from the kitchen bearing a metal tray of small, clear glasses filled with the steaming, honey-colored beverage. We stood in the hallway sipping the sugared drink, toasting serendipity.

While Yesim stayed downstairs and worked her cell phone, rearranging our itinerary to accommodate what she (and we) knew would be a sizable delay, we followed the father up a worn wooden staircase to a cavernous dining hall, empty except for stacked tables and chairs and a squat iron stove, quiet and unlit, that sat in the middle of the room. The father pushed a table and six chairs next to the stove, then fed it from a woodpile by the stairwell. We knew wood was scarce here, and his kindness warmed us before he struck the first match. As the blaze began to hum and crackle, the black-haired daughter mounted the stairs with the second of what would, before the afternoon was out, be a half-dozen trays of apple tea.

The family got on with its cleaning, and we sat, in coats and hats, wondering how to entertain ourselves. Adam, veteran of several global circumnavigations and no stranger to having time to fill in strange places that move at slow paces, rummaged through his Lion King backpack and produced the tiny deck of playing cards he’d been given on the British Airways flight we’d taken from Boston to Europe.

Jan and Rose beamed with simultaneous delight when they saw the cards. They clapped and rubbed their palms together. "Gin rummy!" said one or the other or both. They reacted to the lilliputian cards printed with winking, bulb-nosed cartoon airplanes fished from a vinyl Disney bag by a seven-year-old as if a vision of Our Lady of Atlantic City had just descended into the dining hall of the Kulcuoglu Restaurant. "Gin. We’ll teach you," they said, reaching for the deck.

The gin rummy experiment was short-lived, as Adam had the attention span of, well, a seven-year-old, plus an already-established favorite card game: "Let’s play Crazy Eights!" I gave Adam a big thumbs-up, Bob and Estheta laughed and told him they loved Crazy Eights, and Jan and Rose pinched his cheeks and told him to deal them in.

For three hours, we huddled at a table by a snapping stove fed with precious wood by a gracious host, playing Crazy Eights with teeny weeny cards and enjoying sweet swallows of hot apple tea, raising a glass now and then to bus doors going kaput in unexpected places.

Human interest: From a tiny seed, a great gourd grows

2007-10-24T18:46:00.000-05:00

Published in the Boston Globe, October 21, 2007

From a tiny seed, a great gourd grows
Norton 16-year-old nurses a giant pumpkin for fall weigh-off

By Lori Hein, Globe Correspondent/ October 21, 2007

Before dawn on Oct. 6, a group gathered in 16-year-old Alex Noel's yard in Norton to lift a gargantuan pumpkin into a truck, the first leg of its journey to the Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off at Frerichs Farm in Warren, R.I.

It was the day Alex had worked for since April. To guide a pumpkin from mortal to titanic proportions requires spending lots of time with it, nurturing it (on cold days, Alex wrapped it in a blue baby blanket), and tending to the 50-odd vines that together form a single giant pumpkin plant.

His motivating mantra on tough days: "World record, world record."

And then off to judgment day at Frerichs.

At day's end, Alex's 1,224-pound pumpkin placed not first, but a respectable sixth. His 903-pound giant squash did take a blue ribbon. Together the ponderous pair of gourds earned Alex $500 and a handful of medals and trophies - and further recognition in the world of giant vegetable producers.

Alex started growing giant pumpkins at age 12. He had, the year before, been inspired by monster produce he saw during a visit to the Topsfield Fair. His first giant pumpkin tipped the Topsfield scales at 370 pounds, and he was hooked. Each year since, Alex has grown progressively larger vegetables - except for 2006, when he used a chemical spray he described as "a big accident - I killed all my plants."

When Alex started growing giants, he would spend every available minute in the pumpkin patch, forgoing extracurricular activities at The Wheeler School in Providence, where he's a junior. "You spend all your time with it," he said of his first giant. "No sports. You just come home and be with the pumpkin."

Now, as an experienced grower, Alex can afford some nonpumpkin activities. He worked part time this summer at Sharon's Moose Hill Community Farm, and he's playing fall football at Wheeler. "I know all the basics and a lot of the particulars," he said, "so when I'm with the pumpkin, I'll be doing some task, not just muddling around."

But it still takes a lot of time. "The end of June is toughest. I was spending eight hours a day in the patch."

July requires about six hours of daily labor, early August four or five, and late August and September, if all is well and the orb has mushroomed into a robust behemoth, one or two hours daily. On its peak growing day, which occurs in August, a giant pumpkin can gain 60 pounds. As picking time nears, if nights are warm, it can pack on 10 pounds a day.

Alex sows his pumpkin seeds in April in an indoor germination box. A few sprouts declare themselves early as having the wherewithal to go all the way to greatness, and Alex devotes the next five months to these plants.

A pumpkin in the 1,200- to 1,300-pound range - like his entry this fall - is indeed considered world class, he said, "and bringing it the extra couple of hundred pounds you need to make world record is more or less luck. And you have to make zero mistakes." Rhode Island's mistake-free Joe Jutras set the current pumpkin record, 1,689 pounds, last month at Topsfield.

Over the course of raising his giants, Alex's patch can yield odd sights: When the pumpkin was wrapped in its blue baby blanket, it looked much like a large child asleep in the sea of leaves. Passersby stare at Alex, in rubber gloves and gas mask, applying pesticide or Alex working at night under a spotlight, headlamp on, flashlight in hand."They'll just stare," he said. "This must be one of those things that people think it's OK to stare at."

Giant pumpkin growers are an agricultural brotherhood. They meet online, at pumpkin club get-togethers - Alex belongs to three clubs and is a director of one - and in each other's patches to exchange tips. Norton grower Don Langevin, an expert who has published books on giants, has shared his pumpkin wisdom with Alex over the years.

Growers routinely trade proven seeds from giant pumpkins that have produced other progeny - sister seeds - that spawned giants. Serious growers generally sow only proven seeds. Alex stockpiles promising ones and has several thousand in his room. He's proud that the seed for this year's giant came from a 720-pounder he grew in 2005. Alex trusted the seed's pedigree because last year, before the killer chemical incident, he'd coaxed a seed from the same pumpkin to impressive heft.

Alex grew a second giant this year, from an unproven seed donated by an Ohio grower who had statistically calculated it to be, according to Alex, "the best seed in the world, on paper at least." Alex had room in his patch, so he gave the seed a go.It grew like crazy until August, when it developed a split, disqualifying it from the Topsfield and Frerichs weigh-offs. Alex picked it early and took it to the Marshfield Fair, where rules require only that the pumpkin be "sound." At 1,054 pounds, 14 shy of the winner, it took second place and earned Alex $400.

Each year after the fall weigh-off, Alex transforms his pumpkin into a jumbo jack-o'-lantern at his Barrows Street home. "I try to do a better, more elaborate carving every year," he said. "People love it."

After Halloween, when his creation gets mushy and starts to collapse, Alex takes an axe and chops it into 40-pound chunks, which, he said, "rot away and make really good compost." He'll use those bits of pumpkin past to help next year's patch bear enormous fruit.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Essay/Travel: The last paddle

2007-02-15T22:09:00.001-05:00

Published in WaveLength Magazine, fall 2006

The Last Paddle
Lori Hein

Foliage is long past peak and many trees are already barren. The graying leaves that still hang on quake with age and inevitability. I push my kayak into the water and paddle over and around the stumps revealed each fall, when my lake is peeled back to show things unseen in summer.

Fishermen and weekenders have gone. Time to pull the stopper, inspect the dam and make needed repairs. By late autumn, the lake in its shallowest parts will be a ripe mud pool. In its deepest, a meandering, watery ribbon.

It’s the season’s last paddle. The low water can no longer host powerboats, and even the most committed bass men in their silvery, shallow-hulled craft have quit the lake until spring. When the lake is down, my kayak shows me things no one else is looking for in places no one else can reach.

I wear sunglasses. Burnished light glints off the ripples through which I ride. I tilt my face toward the sun, remembering how it felt in summer, and I try to soak it up and store it.

As I glide through this spare autumn waterworld, I discover a rock jetty, hand-placed a century ago, running long and low off an island’s tip. The line along the shore where earth’s fecund layer of forest soil ends and its granite underpinnings begin. Decaying logs and slender water grasses that house creatures, some who show themselves and some who scuttle away. I peer into their murky homes and breathe the deep, cloying smell of exposed algae. Hello, turtle. Let me sit and examine the pattern on your shell.

Like spotlights, the stillness and bare branches let me see or sense any moving thing. A few year-rounders putter about their cottages, canoes on shore, lawn furniture still arranged. Two fishermen are closing their place, pulling up docks and securing windows. Their dog explodes from the woods when he sees my blue boat, a burst of movement and color in this muted, going-to-sleep world, and he bounds along the shore next to me until dense trees stop him.

I eavesdrop on a couple in a birch bark canoe. They’re a quarter-mile away, but I hear their conversation—speculation about which yard a moose had called home for a while—as clearly as if I were sitting between them. Were I to confirm, in my normal voice, that they’d indeed found Lily Moose’s bed of now shrivelled flowers, they would hear me, crystal clear.

Dennis the dentist has been spending less time on teeth and more on the lake of late, and he poles around on a homemade raft, collecting slimy, untethered logs that poke from the mud near his dock. He’s a fit man with Ralph Lauren hair sharing raft space with dripping, brown butt ends of rotted trees.

When the water is down, the docks left standing in the muck become long-limbed flamingos, skinny legs and knees exposed. Can-can girls. Frisky ladies pulling up their skirts. The docks that have been hauled out and tied upright to trees show their shiny plastic barrel bellies.

Anything that can blow away has been stored away. Gone are wind chimes and floats, umbrellas and beach chairs. Lonely picnic tables, too heavy to move, dot beaches and yards. They’ve begun their slow, cold wait for weather that will again pull people back outside to sit.

At the marina, docks and boat berths are pulled out. The gas pump is gone. White shrink-wrapped motorboats sit on land like so many Sydney Opera Houses. In the extreme silence, my ears track the progress of a car as it travels from the lakeshore up to the top of a wooded mountain.

On this last paddle, I do things I don’t do when the water is high and others are about. I cross the lake at its widest point, slowly. Today, no need to rush. No worry about powerboats overtaking me before I reach the other shore. I cross and recross. I stop paddling and float with head back and eyes closed, stamping this serene time into my memory.

The loon that lives with his mate in a reedy shallow wants to play. He dives under my kayak and emerges, finally, twenty yards off its other side. The waterfall whose hums and trills are muted in season by the competing sounds of summer activity now has top billing. From my gently rocking seat, I take in its performance.

As I head home, the day’s last rays kissing the earth, I look down the lake and think of what’s ahead. Winter will soon bring its wonders. Like the long skate. If you catch it just right, after the lake freezes but before snow has buried it, you can skate on glass for seven miles.

© Lori Hein, who splits her time between Boston and the New Hampshire woods and is the author of Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America (www.LoriHein.com). Her freelance work has appeared in publications across North America and online. She publishes a world travel blog at http://RibbonsofHighway.blogspot.com.

Travel: A salute to the skyscraper

2007-02-15T21:41:00.000-05:00

Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 2007

A salute to the skyscraper
By Lori Hein
For The Inquirer

NEW YORK - "Skyscraper Museum? Sorry, no. Ask that guy over there. He might know where it is."

After hearing four variations on that theme, I approached a female construction worker in a neon-pink hard hat. "Sure," she said, "right there," and pointed around the corner, past a line of people waiting to board the Circle Line boat to the Statue of Liberty, to a building at Lower Manhattan's 39 Battery Place.

It seemed fitting that a person who builds for a living knew where to find this celebration of the city's architectural heritage and ever-evolving skyline.

The first new museum to open in Lower Manhattan since Sept. 11, its simple exhibits weave powerful stories of man's ability to create - and to rebuild. As one of the 15 members of the Museums of Lower Manhattan, the Skyscraper Museum "is involved in the efforts to reinvigorate downtown," founder and director Carol Willis said.

The museum was founded in 1996 and relocated several times before it opened six blocks south of ground zero in spring 2004 in the building designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It glistens with stainless steel floors, walls and ceilings; glass showcases rise like towers, and the space itself seems to soar. For the visitor, the mirrorlike environment intensifies the exhibits and reflects the dreams, risks, brawn and bravado that are as much a part of a great building as the bricks and beams holding it together.

At the top of a shiny entry ramp, visitors find a photographic timeline of towers that runs the length of a wall and chronicles the evolution of high-rises, from 284-foot Trinity Church, built in 1846, through 500-foot beauties of the early 1900s and monumental glass towers of the World Trade Center era, to recent colossi such as Taiwan's 1,671-foot Taipei 101.

The museum has two main parts, one showcasing mostly items from its growing permanent collection and one that hosts a large, themed exhibition, which changes every few months. "GIANTS: The Twin Towers and the Twentieth Century," runs through April 15.

While text describing the exhibit acknowledges that "September 11 defines our memory of the Twin Towers, and the profound proportions of that tragedy continue to reverberate in New York and beyond," the exhibit is about the towers' creation, not their destruction. It seeks to explain "the significance of this project in the evolution of skyscraper history," Willis said.

Before entering the "GIANTS" gallery, visitors are treated to a rich collection of material on early-20th-century towers that established New York as the world's preeminent skyscraper city and continue to define its unique spirit and culture. A montage of vintage postcards trumpets skyline stars such as the Woolworth and Flatiron Buildings and the Brooklyn Bridge.

A film shot during construction of the Empire State Building puts visitors high above Manhattan, face to face with workmen as they create the 112-story stone and steel symbol of New York. A typewritten daily log lists tasks that each group of tradesmen - "Stone Cutters; Derrickman; Excavators-Rockmen" - were to complete. "Stenciling E.S. on windows" was a job for the "Carpenter Helpers."

Structure and size differentiated the Twin Towers from earlier skyscrapers. Improvements in materials and mechanical systems allowed construction of buildings that were not just tall, but big, with interior volume measured in millions of square feet.

The "GIANTS" exhibit is a trove of photographs, aerial views, architectural models, interactive displays, and video and audio clips that bring the design, construction, operation and enjoyment of the megastructures to life.

In a mirrored room anchored by light columns that reflect endlessly in the silvery walls and ceiling, evoking the dramatic power of the Twin Towers' distinctive exterior box columns and window bays, a mother said to her young son, "Honey, I want you to hear this." She put headphones on the boy's head, then looked at the parade of light pillars while he listened to a 1982 South Tower public-address recording that prepared visitors for their elevator ride to the 107th-floor Observation Deck: "It takes approximately 58 seconds at a speed of 20 miles per hour to reach the deck," says the voice from 25 years ago.

There are also displays of the new towers that will rise above ground zero. Models and drawings show the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, now under construction, and three companion towers planned for the WTC site.

The Skyscraper Museum is a small place that celebrates big things and honors man's capacity to keep reaching for the sky. As you leave the museum and step onto the sidewalk, you can't help but look up.

Skyscraper Museum

The Skyscraper Museum's home at 39 Battery Place, Lower Manhattan, was designed pro bono by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in space donated by real-estate developer Millennium Partners. It is on the ground floor of the building that houses the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, across the street from the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City.
Phone: 212-968-1961
Web site:http://www.skyscraper.org/
Hours: Noon-6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
Admission: $5, adults; $2.50, students, seniors.
Group tours and family-friendly Saturday events available.
By subway: Line 1, R or W to Rector, Whitehall or South Ferry or Line 4 or 5 to Bowling Green.
Subway and bus maps at www.mta.info.

On the Web
http://www.lowermanhattan.info/
www.museumsoflowermanhattan.org
www.nycvisit.com

Travel: More to Milan than Da Vinci

2007-02-15T21:26:00.000-05:00

Published in International Living and sister publication, The European, December 2006

More to Milan than Da Vinci
by Lori Hein

Call it the Da Vinci Code effect. Viewing Leonardo’s Last Supper at Milan’s Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie can require a minor miracle. Reservations are mandatory, and tour companies buy blocks of tickets, reducing the number available to solo travelers. And, even if you score reservations, expect big lines and long waits. If you can’t see the famed fresco, head instead for Milan’s historic core for the best of the rest of Lombardy’s lively capital.

Milan’s most glorious sight is the duomo (cathedral). Rising like a great Gothic wedding cake from its namesake piazza, the colossus, which Mark Twain called “a poem in marble,” brims with belfries, buttresses and towers. A slow walk around the exterior puts you in the middle of a riot of arches, vaults, statues and tracery. Inside, magnificent floor-to-ceiling stained glass will dazzle you, and you can ride an elevator to the roof to a forest of intricately sculpted stone spires. Although the cathedral’s brilliant facade is half-hidden behind scaffolding as major restoration work continues, you can still spend hours here.

Renovation’s always going on somewhere in Milan, so don’t let it keep you from visiting. Roberto Peretta, who runs the website www.ciaomilano.it, says of the restoration, “In Milan, the saying ‘lungo come la fabbrica del Duomo’ or ‘as long as the building of the duomo,’ means that something never ends.”

Nearby, the soaring Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a glass, stone and wrought iron confection begun in 1877 and arguably the world’s most elegant mall, attracts Milanese and visitors. Look for the floor mosaic depicting a bull under the galleria’s central dome: Tradition says that a twirl on the bull’s nether parts brings good luck.

The galleria’s side portal opens to the venerable La Scala Theater. A facelift has the 250-year-old grande dame looking good, and her acoustics are perfect. The adjacent museum’s collection of costumes, sets and instruments is a journey into La Scala’s rich past. Backstage tours can also be had.

A few blocks west is the red-orange Castello Sforzesco, the Renaissance fortress that served as seat of the Sforzas, Dukes of Milan and now houses an impressive art collection that includes a Michelangelo Pieta. In good weather people relax in the green Parco Sempione outside the castle walls.

Some of Milan’s best sights move. About 20 tram lines serve Milan and environs, but several historic liveries with some 150 vintage trolleys run through the old city on iron rails laid into the pavement. Buy a hop on/hop off tram pass, settle into the shiny, varnished wooden seats, and enjoy a rolling tour of Milan’s historic heart.

What to see:

For Last Supper reservations, visit www.cenacolovinciano.org or call +39 (0)28942-1146. Closed Mondays, entry: 14 euros.

The Duomo is open daily 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. No shorts, short skirts, or sleeveless shirts.

La Scala performances can be booked via www.teatroallascala.org. La Scala Museum hours: 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays, backstage tours Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Castello Sforzesco (www.milanocastello.it) is free and open daily. Entrance to the museum, open 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. except Mondays, is 3 euros.

Touristic Tram Tour tickets are sold at the tourist office on Via Marconi, Piazza del Duomo. 20 euros for an all-day pass.

www.ciaomilano.it and www.hellomilano.it have information on hotels, restaurants and sights.

Travel: Nairobi by degrees

2006-08-31T14:25:00.000-05:00

Published in Perceptive Travel Magazine, May/June 2006:

Nairobi by Degrees

by Lori Hein

From the top of a high building in the city center, Lori Hein surveys Kenya's capitol through the eyes of the janitor.

The security guard and the building information officer both quizzed and vetted me before handing me to Daniel, a janitor at one of Nairobi’s tallest skyscrapers. I’d asked permission to ride the elevator to the roof for a panoramic view of the city. We agreed on a price, “to be paid later,” and Daniel was tapped to be my guide.

Daniel stashed his broom in a corner under a stairwell and smoothed his bright red cleaner’s smock, torn under both armpits. He led me to the elevator, packed with workers making their way to the offices and cubicles nested inside the tower. Daniel pushed them gently aside to make room for me, then stood in the middle of the elevator, arms crossed over his chest and small, content smile on his lips.

As the elevator rose and stopped, the other passengers left to go about their business, leaving me and Daniel to ride to the top floor. There, the elevator door opened to reveal a crude ticket booth. I handed the pre-negotiated 200 shilling fee to two giggling Muslim girls in gray headscarves who sat half-hidden behind the opaque Plexiglas of the makeshift kiosk. In unison, they nodded an okay to Daniel, who grinned big and broke into a sprint. “This way, please,” he yelled back to me as he bolted up a concrete staircase to the rooftop helipad, round and high and open to the blue African sky.

On the roof, Daniel became a bird, his cotton smock feathers and his arms wings as he moved around and across the circular helipad, mouth laughing, eyes dancing, soul savoring this release from pushing his broom. He jumped from one thick neon-yellow landing sight line to the next, arms outstretched, whirling like a top, canvassing the 360 degrees of Nairobi splendor and squalor laid out below and beyond.

He came to rest, like the arrow on a board game’s spinner, arm pointing toward Mount Kenya in the northeast. Serendipity or stagecraft? We began our 360-degree tour with this jagged exclamation mark – wild, raw, powerful, like Africa itself. “On a clear day, one can see both Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro from this point,” said Daniel as he tilted his head to the right to find snow-capped Kili, just visible under the heavy spindrift haze that hugged its summit.

Over the next hour, one of wonder for me and freedom for him, Daniel moved me counterclockwise around the roof, degree by degree. Each new eyeful triggered talk and tales. The more he could say about the beauty and baseness, majesty and mud, coffee and corruption that ran through Kenya’s veins, the longer he could leave his broom under the stairwell.

Daniel, once a teacher, reveled in the immense embrace of his land. Sharing it gave him great pleasure. He spoke of its problems and possibilities with equal passion.

From the terra cotta roofs of City Hall and the precise, gray walls of the Anglican cathedral, we looked northwest toward the rich purple Ngong Hills. Daniel talked of the vast tea and coffee plantations there, flanked by wealthy white suburbs. We took in the expanse of Nairobi National Park, whose location hard by the sprawling airport and industrial sector belies its role as a key migratory corridor for big game.

In a street directly below us, a mass of people made its way from Uhuru Park to the office of Kenya’s president and, with a booming collective voice and hand-painted banners, boldly demanded an end to the corruption that creeps into so many corners of Kenyan life. Tourists in bathing suits stood at the railing of a luxury hotel’s rooftop pool and watched the scene.

Daniel and I looked down at the place where the American embassy once stood. A park now marks the site of al Qaeda’s depraved handiwork. Daniel remembered the day of the terrorist bombing. He sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and recalled the horror and “the hundreds of Kenyans who will not be there again.” He told me of the “thousands injured and many left deaf or blind,” and of a passing bus lifted ten feet in the air, killing all onboard. “A noise I never want to hear again,” whispered Daniel, as echoes of the blast rolled through his bones.

Before we came full circle and again faced Mount Kenya, Daniel’s arm swept over the teeming slums of east Nairobi. Land dominion in the north, west and south is held by wealth, wildlife or commerce, so Nairobi’s poor spread eastward. Daniel guided my eyes to the city’s cruelest slum.

“That is where I live,” he said. “With my two young daughters.” He talked about the realities of his life. His neighborhood has no running water. His daughters are in school, but Daniel struggles to keep them there. Some of his 200 shilling per month salary goes to corrupt teachers and school officials for fake fees and books that never appear. If Daniel doesn’t pay this “money for nothing,” his daughters pay consequences meted out by people a link above him in the food chain. People with just enough power to make a poor family’s difficult life harder.

Clouds began to hug Mount Kenya. Daniel made a last spin around the helipad, his red smock flapping. He tilted his beautiful face upward and smiled at whatever god had granted him this hour’s relief from mop and bucket. I handed him a tip, money likely to become money for nothing, and we rode the elevator down to the building lobby.

After a few minutes, I left the building and walked across the plaza, heavy with sober law courts and supersized statue of Jomo Kenyatta. I looked back toward the tower. There was Daniel, outside in the soft sun, smiling and sweeping the cobblestones.

Essay/Inspiration: United we ran

2006-08-31T14:19:00.000-05:00

Published widely in newspapers and magazines nationwide and online, fall to winter 2001

November 7, 2001

United we ran

By LORI HEIN
GUEST COLUMNIST

I know where hope lives. I know where strength, endurance, passion and pride live. They live in New York City. On Nov. 4, I ran through 26 miles of these affirmations of our humanity.

This New York City Marathon was not about athletes turning in impressive times. It was only about going the distance — the distance from profound sadness and loss to a point where collective human goodness and hope carry us toward a finish line we still can’t see. In a city pierced through its core by hate and pain, hope is alive and well. There is no doubt it will triumph.

Thirty thousand runners came to New York to fuel that hope. We came from all over the globe to tell New York it doesn’t stand alone. Runners from Kansas and Denmark and Japan and Algeria and California and Scotland and Venezuela came to show the people of Brooklyn and the Bronx and Long Island and New Jersey and Staten Island and Manhattan and Queens and Yonkers and White Plains and southern Connecticut that their pain is shared. When pain is shared, it is eased.

In turn, the 2 million spectators who lined the 26.2 mile five-borough route fueled the runners with something far more nourishing to a spent body and mind than any energy drink or quick-acting carbohydrate. They carried us through the neighborhoods, up the hills, over the bridges, past the buildings, down the avenues, around the corners and into Central Park with their humanity. To say we connected is to understate the pure human goodness that permeated every inch of every borough. When we slapped palms with kids in Brooklyn and exchanged high-fives with teenagers in the Bronx and looked into the eyes of young mothers in Queens and smiled at old men on kitchen chairs waving flags and raised defiantly clenched fists to the firefighters watching from their engines and station houses, we said, together and loudly with no words, " We cannot be beaten. We will overcome. We are united. "

Go to New York if you can. You will hear occasional sirens and see a few haz-mat trucks roaring down the street. You will likely make the unspeakably painful pilgrimage to Ground Zero to try and take in the enormity of the loss and grief. You won’t be able to and you will walk away numb. You will see billboards and walls with the faces of young people gone forever. You will see the tired eyes of cops operating on adrenaline and resolve. You will see fire stations wreathed in purple bunting and covered with drawings from school kids in Lubbock, Texas and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

But keep walking and looking and you will find hope. You will check into your hotel and be given both a key and a smile that thanks you for coming. You will ask an elevator attendant how he’s doing and he’ll thank you for asking. You will eat dinner in a Turkish restaurant with an American flag painted on its window. You will see the Christmas lights strung across Mulberry Street in Little Italy, lighting the hopeful faces of waiters beckoning you to try their pasta tonight. You will see the pulsing neon of Times Square and the lacy spires of St. Patrick’s and the holiday window dressers already at work on Fifth Avenue. You will look from the Chrysler Building’s gleaming art deco cap to the Empire State Building, doing justice to its role as New York’s tallest building by beaming its red, white and blue floodlit top like a beacon to the city and the world.

I know where hope lives. It lives in New York City. And it lives in all of us.

Travel: Looking down on St. Moritz

2006-08-31T14:01:00.001-05:00

Published in German Life magazine, Dec. 2003:

Looking Down on St. Moritz
by Lori Hein

"Look," I said to my husband and kids. "We have all of St. Moritz at our feet." We were standing atop Muottas Muragl in Switzerland’s beautiful Upper Engadine. The nail polish-red Muottas Muraglbahn had deposited us at the over 8,000-foot mountain station and had already begun its descent, leaving us to gaze over a spectacular alpine panorama that included the towns of Celerina and St. Moritz, a chain of bluish-green lakes, and the powerful peaks of the Bernina Massif.

The July day was cloudy and cool. To get to Muottas Muragl, we’d driven alongside the Sils and Silvaplana lakes, where the windsurfers all sported wetsuits. The day before, in medieval Bellinzona, we’d shared an outdoor lunch table with Horst, a German mathematician living in Zurich. When we mentioned our plan to overnight at the mountaintop Berghotel Muottas Muragl, he said, with certainty, "It will snow above 2,000 meters." We’d just smiled, shading our eyes from the blistering Bellinzona sun.

Now, we were on top of a crisp mountain world, and the possibility of snow in July didn’t seem so farfetched. Muottas Muragl’s treeless summit was green, with delicate lichen and pink and yellow wildflowers flourishing between the rocks. Tempting hiking paths unfolded in several directions. But ice-covered giants towered just beyond, encircling us like a crystal bracelet, and a light fog blanket had started to climb from the valley floor.

We checked into the sherbet-colored hotel, which sits at the mountain’s edge. From our room, we looked down at St. Moritz on its lake. We could also watch the shiny red Muraglbahn make its frequent trips between the summit terminus and the Punt Muragl station below.

There’s much to explore on the mountaintop. We hiked part of the Hochweg, a trail that leads down to the resort town of Pontresina, a three-hour walk away. The Muraglbahn delivered several groups of hikers. Many were seniors, fit and sturdy like noble trees. Off they went with their packs and walking sticks.

While Muottas Muragl offers splendid hiking in summer and uncrowded skiing and sledding in winter, many people come simply for the breathtaking, unparalleled view of the Alps. The Piz Rosatsch and Piz Julier ranges frame the Upper Engadine Gap, which holds St. Moritz and the string of lakes stretching to Maloja. From the hotel’s terrace, the massive, glacier-studded Bernina peaks look close enough to touch.

The hotel’s rustic Panoramic Restaurant offers local specialties until 11 p.m., and those not overnighting at the summit can ride the Muraglbahn up for lunch, sunset cocktails, or dinner and enjoy the spectacular vista as a side dish.

At night, while my family slept, I sat at our window, trying to etch the view in my mind so I could carry it home. The sky was cobalt blue, and lights twinkled everywhere. There were stars above and the glow of St. Moritz nightlife far below.

Then, a heavy cloud rolled past the window, swallowing the hotel, and flakes began to fall. Next morning, we woke to the Horst-foretold "snow above 2,000 meters." The kids ran across the frosted mountaintop, tossing snowballs, amazed by snow in July.

Before we left the Engadine, we explored the area around Muottas Muragl. We drove an eye-popping stretch of the Berninastrasse from Pontresina to the Bernina Pass and waved at tourists riding the famed Bernina Express, among the most scenic of Switzerland’s celebrated rail routes.

I noted four parallel lines: the majestic wall of the Bernina peaks, glaciers spilling down their faces like half-melted ice cream; the mint green Inn River, from which the Engadine takes its name; the tracks; the road.

Later, we walked the steep streets of nearby Guarda. From the town’s spectacular setting high above the valley, stunning Alps tower in every direction. It was market day, and vendors in Guarda’s square offered cakes, wurst, sauerkraut and handmade crafts. The town is filled with centuries-old gabled houses decorated with designs and family coats of arms. An afternoon in Guarda is the perfect finish to a visit to the Engadine.

Contact the Berghotel Muottas Muragl, in Samedan, by phone (41 81 842 82 32), fax (41 81 842 82 90) or e-mail (mmb.rest@skiengadin.ch).

Travel/Family: Into the fire zone

2006-08-31T13:09:00.000-05:00

Book excerpt published in the Cortez Journal (CO), March 2004:

March 13, 2004
Tourists journey into fire zone
By Lori Hein
Special to the Journal

EDITOR'S NOTE: The summer after Sept. 11, a globetrotting writer from Massachusetts and her two children traveled 12,000 miles of American back roads and byways. "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America" (Booklocker.com, 2004) by Lori Hein (lorihein.com) is the story of the trio's road odyssey. In this excerpt, the travelers visit Cortez and Mesa Verde National Park at the height of wildfire season:

The parking lot of our Cortez motel gave onto a postcard Rocky Mountain view, so I parked New Paint so she could look, enjoy and be rejuvenated. When I went out the next morning to begin the tasks required before daily takeoff, New Paint sat in the early sun facing the Rockies, and a white truck marked OJIBWE Wildcat Firefighters sat next to her, its driver drinking coffee and working a cell phone.

As part of each morning's pre-departure ritual, I'd dump the melted ice from the coolers and send the kids to the motel ice machine for new stocks. There was no way I could throw water away in front of this man, so I hauled the coolers to the room and dumped the old ice in the bathtub, and still felt plenty guilty.

A wildcat firefighter in our motel parking lot meant fire was near. We'd come to Cortez, and Colorado, for Mesa Verde, and, when we got to the park, parts of it, including Cliff Palace and Balcony House, were closed due to fire threat. Wildfires had now affected us personally.

The only way to see anything was to go with a group on one of the tours they'd patched together and were still allowing to go out. The Park Service wanted everyone in one place, to count heads and ease evacuation should fire start. Both temperature and tempers were high as rangers dealt with frustrated tourists who'd traveled the country and world to get here. We were assigned to a 10:30 departure on a yellow Dolores School District bus to Spruce Tree House on Chapin Mesa. We killed time in the Visitor Center watching a film of Cliff Palace, the closest we'd get to it, and joked with a couple looking through postcards in the gift shop that it would be hard to find one of something we'd actually see.

But Spruce Tree House was magnificent, and the tour had an unusual edge to it because of the tense, frightening circumstances. The minute our school bus filled and the driver pulled away from the Visitor Center, all of us on the bus became a club and started talking. We sat next to a family from San Francisco whose two daughters, baby Hailey and 11-year-old Amanda, both fell in love with Adam. He gave them equal time, bouncing Hailey on his leg during the bus ride, and climbing into an underground Spruce Tree House kiva with Amanda.

All the tour kids went down into the cool, dark kiva. I sensed a silent contest taking shape down there after the smallest kids had come up. The older ones stayed in the hole, and I was tempted to ask the other parents if they wanted to wager on whose kid would win the test of wills and be last up the ladder. I'd have put my money on Adam to win and Dana to place.

Sure enough, after the other kids had caved and climbed out, a conversation like this was going on down in the pit:

"You go ahead, Dana."

"No, Adam. You go."

"No, you go up first. I'll follow you."

"Adam, you're just doing this because you want to be last."

"I do not."

"Yes, you do."

"Be quiet, Dana."

"Thanks, Adam."

Dana capitulated, and Adam was last man standing in the kiva.

Our tour group connected quickly because we had similar thoughts. We felt lucky to have nabbed a tour spot. (Becoming rarer by the hour, I imagined tickets being scalped in the parking lot in whispers to families in RVs.) We were optimistic that Spruce Tree House, not the first choice of anyone on our bus, would be "worth it." We were strangely titillated by our flirt with fire. We trusted the rangers, people we'd we never met, to protect us. And, we couldn't wait to see the cliff dwellings, then hightail it out of Mesa Verde.

None of us had missed the hellish landscape on the 15-mile mountain drive from the entrance up to the Visitor Center. Charred, eerie remains of a year 2000 fire covered the mountainsides. Black limbs and trunks. Gray, leafless trees reaching up like skeletal hands. Almost counterintuitive, this already-burned landscape was, in fact, a safe zone. It had no fodder or fuel left, so wouldn't ignite again. It allowed us safe passage into Mesa Verde, and it was safe passage out, should trouble flare.

Copyright © Lori Hein (lorihein.com) 2004. Excerpted from "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America" (Booklocker.com). Reprinted with permission.

Essay/Inspiration: Bumps in the road

2006-08-31T12:39:00.000-05:00

Originally published in MetroSports Boston (now New England Sports), June 2002:

Bumps in the road
by Lori Hein

I answered the phone, lost my job, and in one swift, silver lining moment, realized my recent string of running injuries and layoffs had been a gift.

When my boss called to say the company I’d worked at for 20 years was downsizing and my last check was in the mail, I discovered, as I stood there in the kitchen with the phone to my ear, that I was oddly and confidently prepared to handle this news and, in that instant, saw my running setbacks for what they really were – strengthening exercises. Lessons that could help me navigate the bumps in the road that is my life.

As I listened to my job evaporate, I got it. I suddenly knew what all the effort, discipline and disappointment had been about. “You’ve been an asset,” said the telephone voice. As the platitude pile grew, so did my epiphany. Those injuries and training heartaches had made me stronger. They’d tested and toughened me, and they’d taught me how to take the long view.

I'd been running a long time. For years I'd go out and do my four miles, often feeling I could go on forever. One day I did, turning in a joy-filled, lactic acid-laden thirteen. I mentioned that outing to my son's basketball coach, an avid runner. "So, you did a half marathon,” he said and, with that m-word, planted a 26 mile-long seed in my head. Before a week had passed, I was contemplating the possibility of going the whole distance and visualizing myself in a marathon t-shirt.

I signed up for a fall race and trained hard. Too hard. After a month of living by the training schedule hanging on the fridge, tendinitis got me.

I found out what a physical therapist does and made a mental note to always have one on my holiday card list. I learned the art and science of proper stretching, strengthening and buildup. My therapist healed me fast and got me back out there with seven weeks to go before the race. I'd cross-trained through rehab and had maintained a decent level of fitness. With work and a little luck, I could be ready.

On the first run of my resuscitated training program, I fell off a curb and suffered a third-degree ankle sprain that looked like a ripe eggplant. My family iced the elevated lump while I cried.

Before the end of this new layoff, I’d registered for a May marathon. With physical therapy, my ankle healed just in time to start training. A bitter winter set in, but I savored every crystalline run. I used an indoor track on icy days and spent one 20-miler running for three hours in a circle, direction changes the only relief.

Spring came. The long runs turned from frigid tests of will to sun-soaked communions with nature. I was mentally and physically ready. On my last truly long run, three weeks before the marathon, my left leg caved in. The physical pain was intense. The emotional pain of knowing it was over, again, was unbearable. I didn't need the official diagnosis of stress fracture to realize I wouldn’t see the starting line.

When my daughter came home from school, she found me, leg propped on pillows, sobbing. Having seen variations on this theme, she knew what it meant and what it meant to me. She hugged me, took my hand, and said, “Don’t worry. There are other marathons. You'll just try again, right mommy?"

Perspective is a wonderful thing. My thwarted efforts to make it to a marathon had taught my daughter something about persistence, patience, focus. And faith. The busted leg didn't hurt so much anymore, and the wounded psyche felt a little hope massaging its sore spots.

I healed and started over. Six months later, I finished my first marathon. While finishing was euphoric, just being there was life-changing. Toeing that start line was a personal best that will never be trumped.

Fast forward to my kitchen. Phone in hand, I let my boss finish telling me how sorry he was about the job loss.

But I was already thinking about the future. I knew I’d land on my feet and toe the start line of some new challenge. As there are other marathons, there are other jobs.

The world brims with possibility. Once you're confident about your potential, there's no race you can’t run.

Travel: Sky-high: The stone villages of Provence

2006-08-29T15:55:00.000-05:00

Published in Go World Travel Magazine, March 2006:

Sky-high: The stone villages of Provence
by Lori Hein

We plucked Provence’s high stone villages like rich olives, savoring each in its turn, appreciating its flavor and character. Each day was a new tasting.

We’d rented an apartment in Menton, a Riviera beauty spot famed for its fragrant lemon trees. A half-hour drive east from Nice, Menton sits near the Italian border.

Most mornings, we’d wake to sun, sea and the sound of shore birds and head off in our rental car for a half-day outing to one or two of the old villages that dot the Maritime Alps above Menton. The distances were small, usually no more than 15 miles, but we kept an unhurried pace on the high, twisting roads and absorbed the views of mountains and Mediterranean that greeted us at every bend. Each brief, beautiful road trip delivered us to another tiny, stone town. We explored them slowly and on foot, allowing each to reveal in its own way and time, some bit of its essence.

In Roquebrune, the woodcarver chiseled, calf-deep in shavings, while passersby climbed the narrow, medieval street and peered into his tiny atelier. Dana, my smallest sprite, conversed with Roquebrune’s cats. They slunk from the warren of passageways, and, as they rubbed themselves against the rock walls of ancient houses, she bent to their level to talk.

In the village square, music from a folklore festival pulsed from speakers hanging in the trees, and the DJ threw candy to a crowd of dancing kids. My Adam didn’t catch any, and he stood in the frenzy and cried. A Roquebrune boy took Adam’s hand and shared what he’d caught. International entente au caramel.

On the day we visited Ste. Agnes, workmen in cornflower blue overalls were rebuilding the chateau ruins on the town’s highest precipice. When they tired, they’d lean on their shovels and look out over the world that fell away below. They looked south to sparkling Menton on the sea, then east, following the Mediterranean’s broad arc toward Italy.

A local artist was showing his vibrant work in Ste. Agnes’s cultural center. Kids on a field trip, backpacks bobbing and fingers pointing, crowded the gallery. The village was filled with art lovers who’d come for the exhibition, and the cheese shop enjoyed a brisk late morning rush.

We sat on centuries-old cobbles and ate yogurt and bread in Gorbio’s sun-splashed medieval heart. Laundry flapped on clotheslines strung about the town’s high altitude neighborhoods. Cats played in the arcaded passageways, and Dana chased them up the short flights of ancient steps cut into Gorbio’s alleys, under arches and eaves, past tiny shops, into skinny rock tunnels that wind through the town.

One day, we set out to find medieval Peillon, one of the Alpes-Maritimes’ most spectacularly-sited villages. Near Drap, a tiny sign with a yellow arrow pointed the way up a narrow strip of asphalt. The rich aroma of roasting beans from a small coffee factory filled the air as we climbed sharp switchbacks. I inhaled the caffeine scent, and it kept me alert as I eased the car upward into the mountains.

Peillon, a stone island in the sky, glowed creamy brown in the sunlight. We climbed the staircase streets to the town’s castle ruins and honey-colored church, accompanied by a collie who seemed to know Dana was coming. He bounded out of Monsieur Mariani’s sculpture studio and moved to the rhythm of Dana’s small stride. He yipped commentary in canine French. Dana translated: “He says to go this way. ”

One bright morning brought us to Saorge, an amphitheater of jumbled beige and ochre buildings framed by olive groves. The town spread itself like a fairytale across the breadth of its perch above the Roya River. When we reached it, Saorge was closing itself up tight for the afternoon hours of dejeuner and rest.

Shopkeepers moved crates of onions and tomatoes inside. They pulled their shades. Hunched women in thick black shoes disappeared behind narrow doors and locked them. We learned townspeople’s names by reading brass plaques affixed to their ancient houses. Here and there a lace curtain moved, and we’d look into a pair of watchful old eyes. Even Saorge’s birds retreated from the noon sun, and we were utterly alone in the crushing silence of the stone town. Had we not seen Saorge locking itself up, we might have thought it abandoned.

I led my spirited children to the top of the village. At the Place de l’Eglise, we hid from the sun, silence and old eyes in the 16th-century church, its lilac interior smelling deeply of mold. When I opened the church door and released Dana and Adam to the empty, sun-beaten square, they ran and chased and hooted. I worried and whispered, “Shhhh” and looked for the parting of lace curtains. The kids’ eyes twinkled as they ran away.

I found them in the square’s far corner, looking up at the only residents of Saorge not indoors for the afternoon. Two brown-eyed boys, standing on the top step of a staircase hewn from rock, were busy throwing colored water balloons into the empty stone streets below. As each balloon burst, splashing the silent alleys and doorways, four kids belly-laughed with pure delight.

A lace curtain parted. I saw old eyes. And a pair of smiling lips.

If you go:
The seafront city of Menton, 13 miles (21 km) from the airport in Nice, makes a good base from which to explore the villages perched in Provence’s Alpes-Maritimes. Find information about the many villages at www.provenceweb.fr/e/alpmarit/villages.htm. Interhome, at www.interhome.com, has extensive listings of rental apartments in Menton and surrounding area.

Inspirational/Human interest: Art and optimism

2006-08-29T15:18:00.000-05:00

Published in the Easton Journal (MA), Dec. 2004:

Art and optimism

By Lori Hein/ Correspondent
Friday, December 10, 2004

It was the afternoon of game three of the 100th World Series, and the Red Sox would face the St. Louis Cardinals in a few hours. Easton's Bob Coe was dressed for his interview in a Red Sox jacket, and his dog sported a bright red Sox t-shirt. Positive, optimistic members of the Red Sox nation.

Positive attitudes and optimism are part of the fabric of Coe family life, and 28-year-old Coe, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), has so much of both that he uses art canvases to catch what spills over.

This year, his painting Sun Plasma became part of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Art Collection. The work, a beautiful burst of blue, black and yellow, is on permanent display at MDA national headquarters in Tucson, Arizona.

Founded in 1992, the MDA Art Collection highlights the achievements of artists with disabilities and shows that creativity transcends physical barriers. More than 1.6 million people have viewed the collection, which travels periodically to host locations beyond Tucson. Pieces from the collection have been exhibited in major museums and galleries nationwide.

Coe attended the Massachusetts Hospital School for the physically challenged until he was 22. He played football and motor soccer in his wheelchair. He taught himself to play the dulcimer. And he discovered art.

" I had a great art teacher," he said. "She really made you like it."

But it wasn't until he was about 25 that Coe began painting regularly.

" About three years ago," he recalled, "I was sick a lot during the winter. I don't like to sit still. I looked around my room and said, 'I want to do something different in here. I want to have the whole room filled with Caribbean colors to brighten it up for the winter.' "

So he started painting.

DMD is a genetic, degenerative muscular disease that primarily affects boys. Diagnosed at age 5 and able to walk with braces until 14, Coe now has use of only his head and right thumb, which he uses to drive his microchip-controlled wheelchair. Most artists have an idea, then pick up a brush and put paint to canvas. When Coe has an idea, he has to figure out how to get the paint to the canvas (or Plexiglas or vinyl tablecloth).

"Bobby improvises so much," his mother, Paula said. Sometimes he holds the brush in his teeth. Sometimes he lets his chair do the painting, rolling his tires through paint and approaching the canvas, spread flat on his driveway. "I drive my wheels over it and design a painting through the tires," he said. Sometimes his personal care assistants hold the canvas and apply the paint as Coe directs.

Of the muse that inspires him, Coe said, "I'll either have a painting where the whole image will pop up in my head all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, or sometimes I sit and think about it for a while. You just really have to let yourself go. You go on a feeling. Sometimes I'll paint every day for a couple weeks in a row, and sometimes I'll paint once every three weeks or so."

It takes Coe five to six hours to complete a painting, and he works perhaps 10 minutes at a time. "I have to break it up," he said. "It takes me longer now to finish one."

Much of Coe's day revolves around keeping his lungs clear and checking that his heart isn't racing. His wheelchair holds machines that help him breathe. "Every day there are a lot of treatments," he said. His team of some 12 personal care assistants rotates shifts and spends about 10 hours a day with him. "You have to be proactive with your treatments and take care of yourself. Then, you can help other people," Coe said. And when he's not painting or tending to his treatments, Coe helps other people.

Since 1998, he's been a student liaison in the Massachusetts Hospital School performing arts program, helping physically challenged kids and young adults feel their worth and accomplish things they thought impossible. He coaches the students in music, dance and drama. "I guide them into it," said Coe.

Each spring, the students put on a musical that also serves as a fund-raiser. The show raises money for the Canton school, but it also raises the confidence and self-esteem of the young performers, and Coe's guidance and inspiration play a key role.

"The thing is, (the kids) see him. He's a role model," Paula said. "(The Massachusetts Hospital School) wanted him because they wanted someone to show these kids what's possible. He never had any barriers. He wouldn't let anything stop him. The younger kids needed him."

For three years, Coe's been a volunteer greeter at Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton. He works at the front desk, talking with patients and visitors and helping them find their way around the hospital.

And he goes to college and runs a business. Coe's enrolled in Massasoit Community College's art program, "to enhance my art skills," he said. He's learning strategies that will help him market his work. "I'm going there to be an exhibition artist," he said.

Coe has begun marketing his work through Creative Endeavors, a business he runs with his girlfriend, Nicole Warren. Coe and Warren met while students at Massachusetts Hospital School. They've been together for five years and started Creative Endeavors a year ago. They sell original works and copies of their art made into greeting cards, plaques, t-shirts and other items.

Coe noted that many of his favorite works have already found new homes. He gives paintings - "the real nice ones" - to family members. "And Nicole has two or three."

To contact Creative Endeavors, call Coe at 508-238-4125. Locally, Sara Petipas' On The Cusp Gallery has carried the couple's greeting cards. Coe read about the gallery in an Easton Journal article and contacted Petipas. "It was very generous of her," said Coe, of Petipas' support.

In September, Coe was a guest on WCVB-TV's broadcast of the 2004 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Natalie Jacobson asked about his inventive nature and artistic talent. He responded with characteristic optimism: "Sometimes with MD, you're not that strong physically, so you want to be strong in other ways... Sometimes, when you can't do something, you have to figure out a new way to do it... I think of having MD as a positive thing because if I didn't have it, I might not have been as creative. Because I have it, it's actually a blessing."

If there's a guy in this world who sees the glass half full, it's Bob Coe.

"He fights the battle every day," said Paula. "He's the most positive person in the world."

Many of Coe's paintings hang on the walls of his room. Some pieces were covered by full-page newspaper clippings showing jubilant Red Sox trouncing Yankees and Cardinals. Priorities.

A red and black abstract full of action and form seemed to leap off the wall. "I had a great time making that one," said Coe. Rain Splash, a large blue, green and aqua work, is his personal favorite, and he related its genesis: "It was on a rainy day, and it was to give the impression that, as soon as the raindrop hit, it splashed... "

Muscular dystrophy is not for the weak. And there's no stronger advocate for living a rich, full life with MD than Coe. " (MD) sort of forced me to come up with new ways of doing things, " he said. "There's no sense in giving up. Maybe things will be a little harder, but you have to keep trying new things and not sitting around feeling bad for yourself. That's a waste of time. I always think of the positive."

Travel: Wonder alley

2006-08-25T20:15:00.000-05:00

Published in July 2005 in The Traveler and May 2004 in Go World Travel Magazine:

Wonder Alley
By Lori Hein

I hopped on jammed Bus Number 1 and took the six-cent ride down Beijing's Jianguomenwai Dajie, one of the city's busiest boulevards. I held my position on the bottom step just inside the door, my nose on the glass if I faced out, in the sleeve of a dirty Mao jacket if I turned inward. The bent old man on the step above mine rested his chin on my head.

I got out at the Forbidden City and walked south through the endlessness of Tian An Men Square's benchless concrete. I found a curb and sat to eat a can of sardines, attracting a crowd. In turns, people stood behind me, in couples or in groups, while friends snapped pictures of them with the foreigner. Some crouched next to me and put their hands on my shoulder or their arms around my neck while I ate. I could feel their huge friendship grins as they mugged for the camera. Between forkfuls, I smiled, too, and the crowd grew bigger.

On to Qianmen Dajie, bustling, and choked with vendors of cheap plastic goods and t-shirts reading "Nike Polaris" and "Today Is Casual." The brash routine of the main drag drained me. This was Beijing's medieval Dazahlan quarter, and it was filled with knock-off cassettes, cigarette lighters, and ties for a buck and a quarter. I was empty and lonely and a million miles from home.

A thin, nameless street not more than 20 feet wide caught the corner of my eye. A lifeline, it pulled me in. I slipped into its narrowness and disappeared down Wonder Alley.

Its length was a full journey. Had I traveled three-quarters around the earth just to walk this tiny passage whose name I never learned, I would have left Beijing enriched.

Wonder Alley pulsed. Life spilled from every doorway and window into the dusty street and swirled around every vegetable, bicycle, chicken, amah, and noodle maker. As in all of Beijing, people stared, but in Wonder Alley, I stared back. China and I inspected each other with mutual curious glee as I inserted myself into the fabric of this tucked-away world.

We'd stare until I broke the standoff with a "ni-hao." Then, the shopkeepers and bicycle riders and fishmongers would break into wide excited grins, gesture wildly to the cobblers and seed roasters, and let loose a string of Mandarin. I didn't understand the words, but I understood the welcoming tone. Smiles broke out down Wonder Alley as human telegraph transmitted the message that I was here and that I'd said - or had tried to say - "hello."

For a magical spot of time, when I needed it more than they'd know, Wonder Alley's residents shared their street and their world with me. They shared their smiles and their gnarled hands, busy and active. They shared looks and nods of surprise and delight. They shared unspoken acceptance. And, they held out remarkable foods, hoping I'd stop to buy a bag of seaweed or crayfish or cabbage.

There were steamed buns sitting like wet baseballs, some in covered bamboo baskets. Pancakes and wontons. Noodles stretched, boiled and served in what seemed like a single long motion. Great charred woks and steaming cauldrons. Rusted barrels sitting on hot coals, lined with skinned chickens hanging from the rims. Live roosters, ducks, and tiny restaurants with aquariums for menus. Stiff rows of half-frozen fish, long, like gleaming silver swords. Towering pyramids of rice. Foot-long beans. Mounded heaps of animal guts sitting in the hot sun that pounded windowless butcher stalls. Ladies with plastic bag and coat hanger flyswatters making intermittent passes over the meat. Cloven pig hooves in neat chorus line rows. Black, brown and blue eggs, and tubs of jellied green yolks. Gorgeous piles of plump bean sprouts and strawberries. Herbs, onions, beets and yams. Creamy blocks of tofu, some shaved as I watched into boiling soup water.

Wonder Alley's people sat, spit, rode bicycles, chinked bells, pushed strollers and wheelchairs, bought, sold, fixed bike chains, soldered metal, walked arm-in arm, made coal bricks, massaged each others' feet and temples, rattled abacuses and resoled shoes. They crouched, padded, stared, shouted, cooked, worked and grinned.

I came to the end of Wonder Alley and turned and retraced my steps, passing again the pigs' feet, birds in bamboo cages, lady barbers in white lab coats and surgical caps. I listened to the sweet chink-chinks of bicycle bells and watched expressions of surprise melt into delight when I met someone's eye. People sat on kitchen chairs in the narrow street, Wonder Alley their living room. The little one-lane world provided commerce and conversation, fresh air and sun.

Before returning to Qianmen Dajie's chaotic predictability, I stopped in a neighborhood latrine. The hutong's community toilet had no stalls, and modesty no place. Four holes in the floor and no partitions or doors. I squatted next to a young Chinese woman. We tried not to look at each other, respecting our shared desire to eke out some small privacy in a place where everything is public and revealed.

I left Wonder Alley and fell in with the crowd on Qianmen Dajie. I bought my husband a tie for a buck and a quarter and reboarded jammed Bus Number 1.

Culture/Human Interest: Students' Peruvian adventure

2006-08-24T13:27:00.000-05:00

Published in the Easton Journal (MA), Journal Cuzco (Peru) and InfoCuzco.com, fall 2004

Students back from Peruvian adventure
By Lori Hein/ Correspondent

Friday, September 24, 2004

"I think we all felt a general sprit of adventure throughout the trip," said Debbie Salisbury. "These feelings were punctuated by feelings of dread at the prospect of another bus ride."

It's fall, and Salisbury's teaching social studies at Oliver Ames (OA) High School. Roberta Anderson, Marcus Hammett, Morgan McCafferty, Jonny Monnin and Marisa Pushee are OA seniors.

Colin Basler, an OA graduate, is a college freshman. While all are busy with new pursuits, they share a common bond - a month-long immersion trip this summer to Peru. They're home now, doing their own things, but they're united by an experience that will stay with them for a lifetime.

The trip, organized by Britain's World Challenge Expeditions, sought to build participants' self-confidence and leadership skills. The OA group hiked and traveled, usually by bus over endless miles - and hours - of dusty, mountain roads, with a school group from Deerfield, Massachusetts, and the total contingent was 11 teens and three adults. They slept in tents and hostels. On a rotating basis, the students served as leaders of the day, charged with handling food, transport, lodging, budget and diary entries.

"The jobs changed daily," explained Salisbury. "All students experienced the challenge of having to make transportation and accommodation arrangements in Spanish at some point during the trip. They all felt the pressure of being the leader ultimately responsible for meeting the day's objectives, making sure that those assigned to the various tasks fulfilled the mission."

For much of the trip, the group was based in Cusco, the 11,024-foot former capital of the Inca Empire. In Cusco, traditionally thought to have been founded in the 11th century by Inca Manco Capac and taken by Francisco Pizarro in 1533, history sits on history, with the churches and residences of Spanish conquistadors built atop expertly crafted mortarless Inca walls.

Salisbury had visited Peru in the late 1970s.

"One thing that surprised me was how little bus transportation had changed in 25 years," she noted. "I was also taken aback by how much Cusco had grown. It was maybe 10,000 people in 1979, but was 350,000 in 2004. I was also pleased to see increased prosperity."

The trip had both challenges and rewards, and the OA team learned to handle the former and savor the latter. Salisbury described a difficult 22-hour bus ride through the Andes on the trip's second day as "probably our most difficult challenge." Unfamiliar food, switchback mountain roads, stifling heat, and odor from the bus' bathroom made most of the group sick.

"There were no planned stops," said Salisbury, "so relief was hard to find."

But teamwork kicked in, and, continued Salisbury, "While the worst was coming up in most, the best was coming out in the few who were not sick. There were three or four who, for some reason, were not affected and rose to the occasion. They helped the others. They certainly went above and beyond the call of duty."

Once recovered, the travelers looked forward to a five-day Andean trek that was to have been a trip highlight, but the weather had other plans. For three days, rain fell, making for cold, raw conditions and confining the would-be trekkers to their tents.

"How many card games can you play?" quipped Salisbury.

Disappointment was added to discomfort and boredom when the trek was canceled.

"The rain came down as snow in the mountains," said Salisbury. "There was four feet of snow in the mountain passes, making the trek too dangerous to complete." Salisbury said that for most team members, the group decision to forgo the trek was the trip's "lowest point."

But there were highs, as well, literal and otherwise. Of Cusco, their lofty home base, Salisbury said, "We all loved Cusco for its friendly atmosphere, great shopping and interesting eateries." And, she said, "I think we all felt fascination and wonder at Machu Picchu," the fabled Inca citadel perched at 7,000 feet on a rocky outcrop surrounded by soaring green peaks.

At the end of the trip, Salisbury asked each student to describe his or her favorite experience. "They all had different answers," she said.

For example, Anderson enjoyed doing community service at a village school outside Cusco. McCafferty "really enjoyed the jungle fishing" in Kiteni, a mountain village in the Urubamba River valley.

All enjoyed meeting and interacting with Peruvians. "We loved the people," said Salisbury, "especially the concierge at our hotel. She and her family took care of us when we staggered off the bus our second day. We regard them as friends."

Sometimes, technology helped build bridges between cultures and languages.

"I have fond memories of Roberta at the bus station in Quillabamba showing the Peruvian children her digital camera," Salisbury recalled. "She would take their pictures and then show them the image on the screen. They were amazed. Even their parents were amused."

Salisbury and the Easton students had a rich, sometimes challenging experience that showed them another land and another culture and made lasting memories. But the trip's biggest reward may be what they learned about themselves.

The trip stressed teamwork and leadership, and each student contributed to the journey's overall success in his or her own way. "I was very proud of the students," said Salisbury. "As I expected, each one added something special to the trip." Before they left home in July, Salisbury had said, "These kids are all good at something. They all bring something to the table. I don't even know if they appreciate themselves how good they are."

Trip completed, she shared some of the skills and qualities the OA students demonstrated on their month-long odyssey: "Marcus contributed a great sense of humor, while Roberta and Colin exhibited especially strong leadership skills. Jonny did an outstanding job as the group's accountant. And Morgan contributed greatly with his Spanish. Marisa provided first-rate observation and analysis of each day by capturing the essence of each experience in her journal. We marveled at her entries."

Before they left for Peru, the students had shared what they hoped this trip would bring. Marcus Hammett talked of confirming "how blessed we are and how lucky we are to live in America..."

Indeed, our blessings include things we sometimes take for granted. Salisbury described a comfortable moment on the trip when all the travelers "heartily agreed" with Colin Basler's remark that it was wonderful to simply feel "clean, dry and warm, all at the same time."

( Lori Hein can be reached at 508-230-3766 or www.lorihein.com. )

Travel: Dead Sea: A day at the beach

2006-08-24T13:06:00.000-05:00

Published in The Traveler, July 2006:

The Dead Sea: A day at the beach
By Lori Hein

The Dead Sea is dying. Dams and agriculture are shrinking the liquid treasure, site of so much history and heritage, and the fresh water aquifers that line its perimeter are receding into subterranean salt deposits, causing the land above to collapse into great sinkholes. Groups like Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) work to promote cooperative efforts that Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority can take to save the sea.

A winding road from Karak, a dramatic walled city that rises from the floor of the Jordanian desert like a great stone ship, brought me to the Dead Sea and its stark, bleached shoreline. The steep road carried me down past a string of potash factories. The mineral emitted a cloying stink, forgotten when the storied, cobalt water came into view. Ringed by sandstone and white-hot salt cliffs, the Dead Sea is a harsh, beautiful vision.

I followed the coast, its bluffs sculpted in salt. Was it post-year 2000, or was it two thousand years ago? Mud villages built under the shade of spreading trees that seemed old enough to have provided oasis in biblical times; Jordanian children running barefoot through date palm groves and stony farm plots; eggplant and tomato sellers squatting by the road in hooded caftans; men riding donkeys, slapping the asses’ rumps with sticks; encampments of black goat-hair Bedouin tents, here two, there 20; women stoking wood fires; men herding bleating goats and sheep. And next to it all, rippling beneath an unforgiving desert sun, the ancient, salt-encrusted sea.

I wanted to float in the saline water, Earth's most buoyant. Years ago, I’d seen a photograph of a man reading a newspaper while drifting in its brine. I planned to ask someone to take a picture of me reading my guidebook while floating and began looking for a beach where I could stop and strip down to the bathing suit I wore under my ankle-length skirt and long-sleeve tunic. I passed the private beaches of resorts too rich for my budget and kept driving until I came to a small sign at the end of a mud parking lot: "Dead Sea Rest House."

I parked and walked onto a swath of caramel-colored mud dotted with patches of grainy sand. Along the spongy strand, groups of Jordanians were enjoying a day at the beach. Vendors sold Coke and coffee, and one entrepreneur offered camel rides. Families sat in straight lines of white plastic chairs and looked across the water toward Israel. Women in long pants, long sleeves and head scarves sat at the water’s edge, laughing and talking.

I didn’t float in the Dead Sea. But I did take off my shoes and sink my feet in the salty foam that tickled the shore. I took a picture of my froth-covered toes. Three boys, the only bathers, bobbed in the buoyant blue-green swells. I envied them their swim as I collected bronze-gold rocks, oily to the touch, which I licked, then put in my pocket. Salty souvenirs.

A young boy who’d been sitting with his family approached me and offered me a white plastic chair. I knew the chairs were rentals and that his family had paid for each one they occupied. And I knew to graciously accept. I sat for a few minutes, then returned the chair to the boy who’d given it up to me. I thanked his family. "Shukran." Three generations smiled warmly and nodded.

I turned and walked through the muddy sand to my car. As I drove toward Amman, 40 minutes away, good feelings filled me. A boy, a plastic chair, and a gesture that will last my lifetime.

The Dead Sea is dying. The hospitality of the Jordanians who live near its shores is alive and well.

Published by TDS Information Service©copyright 2001-2006. All Rights Reserved

Science/Leisure: Seeing stars

2006-08-24T12:52:00.000-05:00

Published Feb. 2003 in Boston Herald-owned community newspapers

Seeing stars at Wheaton's observatory

By Lori Hein / Correspondent
Thursday, February 20, 2003

This is the fourth in a series of articles on various activities available in Bristol County to help you and your family through the cold winter days.

"Tonight, girls, we have Jupiter, Saturn, the moon and the Orion Nebula in our telescopes," announced Wheaton College student Rebecca Washburn, as a troop of about 20 Girl Scouts walked out onto the roof of the school's science center.

The rooftop deck is home to a platoon of powerful telescopes. On this clear Friday night, while some of the telescopes stayed wrapped under beige covers against the cold, four of them were tilted up and trained on beautiful objects in the winter sky.

"Is this open all year?" asked one dad who was chaperoning the girls. "I live right down the street and didn't know about it."

He was clearly planning a return visit, perhaps sans scouts.

On Friday nights, when school is in session and weather cooperates, Norton's Wheaton College Observatory invites the public to tour the heavens, guided by observatory director Lori Agan and a crew of knowledgeable astronomy students.

The Girl Scouts queued up patiently behind the telescopes. The one focused on Saturn had the longest line. When it's visible, Saturn evidently sees a lot of action.

"The rings of Saturn are a sure winner every time," Agan said.

While you wait your turn for a telescope view, your naked eyes scan the sky, and student assistants like Jon Burkle can tell you what you're looking at. On this night, something beautifully white glowed next to the nearly full moon.

Burkle turned it from an unidentified lovely object into the galaxy's largest planet.

"Did you hear that?" exclaimed one of the scouts. "That big bright thing is Jupiter!"

Burkle then pointed out the V-shaped face of Taurus the Bull, shining Saturn, the Pleiades star cluster and Orion the Hunter's belt and sword.

Viewing these new friends through a telescope yielded wonders the naked eye couldn't see: the reddish Orion Nebula (which Agan calls a "stellar maternity ward") hanging in the hunter's belt, and three of Jupiter's four moons.

Burkle, a junior majoring in physics, is on the science center roof most cloud-free Friday nights. He enjoys sharing his knowledge of and passion for astronomy with observatory visitors.

"I love entertaining people's enthusiasm for astronomy," he said. "It's priceless."

Agan was busy this particular night because the observatory was hosting both the Girl Scouts and a smaller Cub Scout pack. For both groups, she'd presented a short slide show before escorting the kids to the roof to see the real deal.

The observatory crew had attached a video camera to the eyepiece of the telescope capturing the moon, and people gathered around the video screen to marvel at close-ups. A Cub Scout had located a large crater and, with Washburn's help, named it. His excited report made everyone on the roof smile: "I saw the moon's craters! One's called Plato!"

Washburn put Plato's dimensions into perspective: "It's about the size of Norton."

A variety of people from a variety of places visit the Wheaton observatory. "We expect 75-100 visitors every open Friday," Agan said. "Visitors from as far away as New Hampshire and as close as a student's dorm. Families, amateur astronomers, alumnae, teachers."

Many groups schedule outings to the observatory, and Agan and her crew ensure a worthwhile experience. Last fall, a school group enjoyed an unusual star tour. A night that had begun clear turned cloudy, rendering the telescopes ineffective.

"One of our students started telling stories about mythologies of the constellations... and the students loved it," Agan recalled. "The teachers and parents felt their students had benefited from the experience, even under cloudy skies."

This Friday night was crisp, and visitors ranged from kids considering the heavens for the first time to accomplished stargazers. While some roamed the roof saying, "Wow, that's beautiful," others deftly discussed topics like density and impact craters.

Agan confirms that amateur astronomy is "definitely a growing field, especially as telescope and camera prices have decreased. Amateur astronomers make a significant scientific contribution."

The Wheaton observatory is a great place to develop or hone stargazing skills. Several websites can help you prepare for your astronomical trip to Wheaton. Make a virtual visit at http://orion.wheatoncollege.edu. Lori Agan's website, http://acunix.wheatonma.edu/lagan/writings.html has both descriptions and images of objects in the night sky.

Agan also contributes to a NASA education project called NESSIE (New England Space Science Initiative in Education). The NESSIE website, www.mos.org/nessie, has a universe of links to help you "participate in cosmic discovery."

The Wheaton College Observatory is open on clear Friday nights from 7:30-8:30 p.m. The science center is in the upper campus, and there's a parking lot across from the building. Call 508-286-3937 in the late afternoon or early evening on a given Friday to see if the observatory will be open. Groups interested in special programs can contact Lori Agan at 508-286-3979.

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Parenting/Travel: Eyeball to eyeball in Santa Rosa

2006-08-23T19:47:00.000-05:00

Excerpt from "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America." Published in 2004 and 2005 in print and online publications including Boston Herald-owned community newspapers, iParenting.com and Route 66 Magazine:

Eyeball to eyeball

By Lori Hein
Guest Columnist
Friday, May 7, 2004

Fifty miles from Tucumcari, the orange and adobe-colored land began to thrust itself upward into buttes and mesas, and wilder red rock in the distance promised utter majesty. The patient hand of time had sculpted the earth into art.

In San Jon, the cemetery's evergreens, all wind-bent in the same direction, were testament that the artist was still at work. Striations of color in the sandstone mountains told of creation working its craft across eons. Younger tan and ochre work rested near summits, ancient cinnamon and richer maroon layers deeper down.

This was a powerfully beautiful world where the ordinary seemed extraordinary. The bewitching headlights of a hundred-car Union Pacific made the train a shimmering mirage as it curved toward us through the desert. We were in a place where a freight train is the most magnificent thing you've ever seen.

In Santa Rosa, where truckers stopped to rest and refuel, we took in the amazing collection of vintage cars and Mother Road memorabilia at the Route 66 Auto Museum and talked with Anna, the owner. Adam and I both burned a roll of film on the gleaming Mustangs and GTOs, DeSotos and Impalas, Bel-Air Nomads and Tom Joad trucks, all with hoods up to show pristine engines. I asked Dana to take a picture of Adam and me in front of a tomato-red convertible, circa about when I was born. Dana found us in the lens, then put the camera down.

"Adam's taller than you!"

At least once a week over the past few months, before excusing himself from the dining room table, Adam would give me a slim-eyed look and say, "I'm taller than you," which, of course, required me to stand up and prove him wrong.

I knew the day would come when he'd be right. We always stood eyeball-to-eyeball, not heel-to-heel, because we enjoyed looking into each other's eyes, the one pair saying something like, "I'm not a kid anymore," and the other something like, "Hold on buddy, I'm still your mother."

Mike and Dana measured and refereed. I'd been winning by an almost literal hair for a while now.

Hearing Dana's pronouncement, Adam turned to me, grinning. Hugely. Never mind the vintage wheels. He was taller than his mother. If Dana, chief competitor in almost everything in life had said it, then it must be true.

We stood eyeball-to-eyeball. I disregarded the fact that he wore mega-huge rubber-encased Nikes that must have weighed three pounds and lifted him two inches off the floor (the same shoes the Mississippi had wrapped her mud around). I'd be conceding height to him soon enough. Why not now, while we were on a journey that allowed him to be a boy most of the time, but called on him to be a man some of the time.

I'd left Boston with a moody teenager. I was standing, 3,700 miles later, next to a beautiful young person I knew I could count on to take his headphones off when the situation asked for it, pitch in, keep cool, and help us through whatever bump in the road we faced. He was the man of the house - or van, or tent, or motel - for 12,000 miles.

"You are taller than me. When did that happen?"

We all grinned. Dana lined up her sights again and snapped the photo.

Leisure/Human interest: Kid chess champs

2006-08-23T19:13:00.000-05:00

Published in community newspapers owned by the Boston Herald, January 2003

Check and mate: Local youngsters are champions at chess

By Lori Hein / Correspondent
Thursday, January 2, 2003

Imagine "thousands and thousands of kids, different languages, different nationalities" gathered in one place to compete for three days in chess games that last as long as three hours.

" It's very intense, " said Norton's Elizabeth Poggi, as she described the scene her young sons were part of at the recent U.S. Chess Federation's national scholastic championship tournament, where they represented Sage School, an independent school located in Foxboro. "The kids have pretty good focus. "

Jonathan Poggi, 12, and his 8-year-old brother, Chris, must have pretty good focus, for the 4 to 6 hours per week they spend playing chess (Jonathan is "working toward ten hours per week" ) helped both boys' Sage teams nail first place national titles when they traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to match wits with other young chess talents.

Sara Itani of Easton was also part of the Sage group.

"I was excited and scared at the same time in Georgia," said Chris.

Jonathan said he was "very excited to be in Atlanta with my teammates. I did not feel nervous, just excited. I was confident that we would do well, and we all supported each other."

Jonathan and Sara Itani played on the seventh-grade level team with two schoolmates from Sharon and Newton. At the end of the six-round tournament, the Sage team walked away with the national championship for their grade level.

More than 2,000 top chess talents from nearly 700 school teams in 42 states competed. Keen competition sweetens a win, as does successful defense of a title. The Sage seventh-graders, last year's sixth-grade national champs, kept the school's name on the first place trophy.

Elizabeth Poggi recalled last year's tournament, Jonathan's first. They didn't expect a first place win.
"We were hoping for top ten nationally," she said. "When the Sage sixth-graders took the title, it was just unbelievable. "

This year, with confidence and experience along for the trip, the team's goal was loftier than making top ten. They left for Atlanta saying, "We've got to defend our title. "

Check and mate.

Second-grader Chris Poggi, who says what he enjoys most about chess is "thinking hard and winning, " played with Sage teammates from Sharon, Newton, and Brookline. This was the second-graders' first trip to the nationals, and some older brother karma must have rubbed off. They, too, took first place and brought home a national champs trophy that's bigger than some of the players.

These wins are special because, while many competing schools have chess as part of their curricula, Sage's program is a voluntary after school club supervised by parents. Winning tournaments requires the player focus Elizabeth Poggi talked about, but getting to them requires commitment from both students and parents, who fund the trips out of pocket, according to Melanie Shaw, Sage's public relations director. This year, said Shaw, the chess players paid dues so they could bring in an instructor "to go over strategy" to help in their tournament bids.

Shaw described the intensity young players bring to the game. Where kids interested in music may take piano lessons, chess-playing kids may have coaches. "They have the same kind of passion that music or art students bring to their work. It's completely absorbing. The passion often runs in a family. Typically, there's a parent who teaches them," said Shaw.

Love of chess is a leaf on Jonathan and Chris Poggi's family tree. Elizabeth's dad played.

" Not a day went by that I didn't see him at the chess board," she remembered. "It's definitely in the blood, so to speak." She keeps "an image in her head" of her father playing chess with a man, for days, as the family made a shipboard Atlantic crossing between New York and France when Elizabeth was 5. "I didn't know who he was. I just remember him as the man who kept taking my father away. "

The man was Bobby Fischer.

Jonathan's grandfather passed away before his grandson was born, but Jonathan called on him for inspiration during the national championship. He told his mom that during the tournament he'd ask, "Please, Grandpa Van Doren, tell me what to do next. Help me know what the right move is. "

He's sure his grandpa heard him. "I think he helped me," he told Elizabeth.

Sage is a day school for academically talented kids and draws students from nearly 50 communities. There are currently four students from Norton, five from Easton, and 10 from Mansfield, which, according to Shaw, is "one of our top three towns." She described Sage as a place full of happy, excited kids who are "free to grow."

The Poggi brothers have interests beyond chess. School and family rank high, and both play soccer. Swimming, basketball, travel, and building things with K'NEX and Star Wars' Legos rank up there, too.

Besides the Poggis, Sage School has a few other chess family dynasties in the making, including the Rice brothers from Newton, and Sharon's Andrew Wang and his younger sister, Clara. A.J. and Jack Rice and Andrew Wang were on the first place teams that left Atlanta with national titles.

Clara Wang was in Atlanta, too. She played solo, and finished in 10th place nationally. She's in kindergarten.

Copyright by TownOnline.com and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems, Inc. No portion of TownOnline.com or its content may be reproduced without the owner's written permission.

Sports/Inspiration: Marathoners race for cancer research

2006-08-19T22:04:00.000-05:00

Published in a half-dozen Boston Herald-owned dailies and weeklies, March 2003:

Marathoners race for cancer research

By Lori Hein / Norton Mirror Correspondent
Friday, March 14, 2003

As a correspondent for this newspaper, I often use column space to write about interesting or noteworthy things local people are involved in. This week, the paper is letting me share something I'm involved in.

I'm running the Boston Marathon as a member of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's team. About 400 Dana-Farber runners hope to raise nearly $3 million for the Claudia Adams Barr Program, which funds promising cancer research projects.

Training and fundraising run side by side through the winter, and by April 21, when the gun goes off in Hopkinton, both your body and fundraising account need to be in peak shape. I'll do my best with the first, but welcome your help with the second. Many of you have already helped, and I thank you.

Let me take you on a quick run through the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge (DFMC). Marathon training is a curious mixture of exhaustion and euphoria. For some reason, the balance tips just enough toward euphoria (which always follows the deepest exhaustion) to make you keep doing it. When you bust through the hardest points is when you feel most alive. At such moments, I know that the energy to run is a gift. It seems right to use the gift to fight something that steals energy from others.

Most marathoners train for three months, some longer. I train for 10 weeks. This will be my third marathon, but my fifth time in training. My first two attempts ended in injuries close to race day, the result of doing too much, too fast, for too long.

I do my long runs, the heart of marathon training, on Thursdays. That's when I strap on my survival belt packed with Gummi Bears and Gatorade and go out looking more than a little goofy for a few hours. I often have golden packs of PowerGel pinned to my belt.

One day, while running up Mountain Street toward Lake Massapoag, one of my favorite routes, I ran by a group of kids at a bus stop. The gels, bouncing at my waist, caught their eye, and they screamed, "Runner! Hey, Runner! Why do you have candy? Mom! Why does she have candy?" When the bus passed me a minute later, I laughed at their dozen faces pressed to the window glass.

You know you're ready for the marathon when anything under 15 miles is "going short," and anything under eight feels like a day off. You're good to go.

Easton's Elizabeth Puopolo and Kathy Strange, and Kaitlin Hoffman of Mansfield, are going through their own variations on this training theme. They're running Boston for Dana-Farber, too. (And likely eating large amounts of pasta, beans and whole grains, like I am. I appreciate my family's patience during this period of culinary tedium.)

An army of volunteers helps the team. Two of those volunteers are Kaitlin's dad Richard Hoffman of Mansfield and her boyfriend, Joe Coughlin of Easton. Last year, they set up water stops for winter group training runs and helped set up on race day. They plan to do the same this year.

When you support a DFMC runner, your money does great things. First, you're helping your friends and neighbors. Over 42,000 Massachusetts residents received care at Dana-Farber in just the last five years, and nearly 300 of them were from Mansfield, Norton and Easton.

Dana-Farber scientists are responsible for many breakthrough treatment advances. They established the principles of chemotherapy, achieved remissions of a common childhood leukemia, pioneered self bone marrow transplants, introduced tests for both ovarian and recurrent breast cancers and developed cancer treatment methods used as models around the world.

The Barr Program, to which all DFMC funds go, supports doctors and scientists like Jeremy Green. Dr. Green and the other Barr investigators conduct studies that hold promise in improving cancer treatment and cure rates. Your donations help set up and run their labs.

I heard Dr. Green speak at a fall runner's meeting, and he, among others, convinced me this was a cause worth running for. He recently took a break from writing a 16,000-word proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to share, via e-mail, the impact of the funds raised by the marathoners and their sponsors. His NIH proposal is to follow up work currently funded by the Barr Program.

NIH needs "preliminary data." Without the Barr Program and the DFMC, Dr. Green might not have any. According to Green, "They provide the seed money that gets the big projects rolling." This money "is an absolute necessity to the research effort."

He described how the spirit of the marathon buoys the researchers: "Although our research output has to be emotion-free, we scientists are just as emotional as anyone else and just as touched by the cause of curing patients and by the dedication of the runners."

Green will watch at least some of the marathon, as he always does - even if he's in the lab on Patriot's Day.

One of Dr. Green's final comments was "...Cancers are so unfair, but I genuinely think that cures are within reach. It's an exciting time in cancer research." That's all I need to lace up my shoes.

If you'd like to help, you can send your tax-deductible gift payable to "Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge" to: Lori Hein, 40 Williams St., N. Easton, MA 02356, or visit www.dana-farber.org/DFMC, click on "Support A Runner," and enter my name (some of you know me as Lori Belanger - Mike's wife and Adam and Dana's mom - but I'm running as Lori Hein) or eGift ID, which is LH0025. You can make eGift contributions to the other local runners there as well. Together, we can beat cancer to the finish line.

Family/Travel/Inspiration: Chicken Soup for the Soul

2006-08-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

This excerpt from "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America" was published in "Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul II" in March 2006:

Dawn Magic

A bridge over the Big Sandy River took us over the state line. Dusty, ochre ugliness. Kentucky wasn’t supposed to be dry and beige. It was supposed to be rich and green. What was this brown limestone world, this claylike landscape of dirty yellow rock, this Daniel Boone Forest that didn’t seem to have any trees? I made an emergency stop at the Ponderosa buffet in Morehead, so we could fill ourselves with comfort food and recover from the disappointment of learning that Kentucky—at least this part of it—was not very pretty.

Closer to Lexington, redemption. Hints of green and blue. Patches, then whole pastures, of rolling, perfect grass. Grass that nurtures champions. Mare and foal pairs in love and nuzzling, savoring their time together, sunlight on their withers. Horses so beautiful you wanted to cry. Elegance and long legs and strong backs and power bred for a purpose. This was Lexington.

Dana's dream became real, mile by white rail-fenced mile. The horses were pure majesty. I watched Adam watch Dana. I could see him decide to go with the flow and let his sister enjoy. I filled up. My daughter was in her place of a young lifetime, we were surrounded by equine beauty that took your breath away, and Adam was showing himself to be a true gentleman.

Our Lexington days were all horse. We made an eight-hour, 85°- in-the-shade, no-square-inch-missed visit to Kentucky Horse Park. We went three times to Thoroughbred Park to leap among and sit atop the life-size bronze Derby contenders. We stalked a pair of Lexington cops and their chestnut mounts as they walked their Main Street beat. “The police even ride horses!” marveled Dana, as she added law enforcement to her mental list of jobs for horse lovers.

I don’t think Dana slept much the night before our dawn pilgrimage to Keeneland Racecourse to watch the morning workouts. When I whispered in her ear at 5:30 that it was time to get up, her eyes shot open and her face beamed. We dressed quietly so we wouldn’t wake Adam, slipped out and went downstairs for a quick breakfast before heading into the already hot Lexington pre-dawn.

We were the first breakfast customers of the morning. As we passed the reception desk, I whispered to the clerk, “We’re off to Keeneland.” “Ahhhh,” she whispered back, nodding at Dana with a knowing look, telepathy transmitted from one horse lover to another. “You’ll love it.” I looked at Dana, always beautiful and, at this moment, the most excited, gorgeous little girl on the planet.

We traced a route around venerable Keeneland along parts of the Bluegrass Driving Tour, following Rice and Van Meter and Versailles. “We say ‘ver-SALES’, not fancy like the one in France,” the night desk clerk had told me when I’d come down to ask the best route from the hotel to Keeneland. Dana could have spent hours on these roads, each a thin, gray ribbon along which lay some of Lexington’s most storied horse farms. The pastures were lush green carpet, the architecture distinctive and utterly beautiful. Crisp lines, fresh paint, rich trim. Pristine clapboards and elegant cupolas, graceful weathervanes.

Dana has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything equine and, from her reading, was more familiar with these farms than I. Her excitement as we read their names—John Ward, Drumkenny, Broodmare, Manchester, Fares—traveled like an electrical current, stirring in me a deep contentment. We pulled over by a white rail fence on a slight rise in Rice Boulevard and looked out over the pastures spreading before us, hints of blue visible in the rich grass as it waited in the low, early light for the new day to burn off the night’s dew and mist.

On Van Meter, the red trim on the outbuildings of a vast farm betrayed it as Calumet and, as we neared its fences, from a stand of tall trees that graced a velvety grass hillock, came a line of grooms, all Latino, each man leading a stunning Thoroughbred on a rope. The line of small, silent men and sinewy horses flowed down the hillock toward us, then turned left and continued, parallel to the fence and the road we watched from, keeping under the shade of the trees, then turned left again, gently ambling back up the rise toward Calumet’s stables.

At Keeneland, we stood at the rail of the fabled oval, the only spectators, and watched trainers lead horses from the misty rows of silvery stables and onto the track. Light, lean, blue-jeaned trainers, one with dreadlocks flying from under his helmet, put pounding, sweating Thoroughbreds through their paces. The trainers wore helmets and most wore chest pads. They carried crops, which they weren’t shy about using. Some stood, others crouched. Some made their horses step sideways. The men and animals took the track's bends and straightaways at breakneck speeds. Old Joe, tall and gaunt and wrinkled, in jeans and western shirt and a helmet with a pom-pom on top, sat astride his horse, Frog. They sat at the track rail, inside and on the course, ready to go after runaways. That was their job. Joe’s eyes were peeled, and he was ready to ride Frog to the rescue of any trainer whose trainee decided he’d rather be somewhere else.

A good number of the riders took note of Dana. A little girl with a beautiful brown ponytail who’d risen before the sun to stand at the rail. Like this morning’s desk clerk, they recognized her as a kindred spirit. They smiled, waved and slowed down when they passed so she could look longer at their horses. Dana had brought her little plastic camera, and some of the trainers posed for pictures. One trainer with a gentle face and shining eyes assembled himself and three others into a parade formation. They passed us, four abreast, at a slow, regal posting trot, like palace guard presenting the colors before the queen, each rider smiling down at Dana. I thanked them with my eyes. That they took note and took time turned this special morning into magic. These were busy men with hard work to do. Some were watched by the horse owners who paid them, and they weren’t paid to be nice to little girls. But they were, and I’ll always remember them with fondness.

Before we left Keeneland, as the first brush of hot, higher-than-horizon sun kissed the bluegrasss, we ventured into the great grandstand and sat awhile in Mr. George Goodman’s personalized box, imagining what it would be like to settle in here in the cool shade on a sunny race day to watch the horses and the other race goers.

Adam had slept until we turned the key back in the door. “Breakfast is about to close. You’d better get down there, bud.” On this trip, I left no hotel amenity unturned, amassing a sack full of little soaps and bottles of shampoo that I used to wash our clothes in the sink or bathtub. And, I encouraged the eating of any available free food. I looked for the magic words “Free Continental Breakfast” on motel signs. Sometimes we hit pay dirt, finding a motel that also hosted a “Manager’s Happy Hour.” This meant free dinner, because, next to the beer and wine and soda, the manager usually laid out cheese and crackers and a big tray of crudité. The kids drew the line at raw cauliflower and broccoli, but tucked into the celery, carrots and cherry tomatoes, huge dollops of dip on the side. Sometimes pay dirt turned to mother lode, with a spread that included things like tacos and little egg rolls.

Through careful husbandry of free motel fare and a manager’s cocktail hour here and there, we were occasionally able to patch together a string of five free meals in a row. By meal number six, we were ready for a restaurant and we always voted unanimously on type: Mexican.

Dana and I accompanied Adam down to the breakfast bar. “So, how was it?” he asked, of our visit to Keeneland. He asked Dana, directly. I wanted to hug him over his plate of biscuits and gravy. As she wove a tale of the magic kingdom of Keeneland, Adam listened and chewed. While it was clear he thought Keeneland sounded cool—he said, “okay” a few times as Dana talked—I knew he didn’t feel he’d missed anything. Dana preferred horses, he preferred sleep. He was content they’d both gotten what they most wanted from the morning.

That night, while I worked on my first installment for the newspaper, Dana was writing her own story, “Horse Capital of the World.” It begins: “In the heart of Lexington, Kentucky, lies a beauty like no other…

Excerpted from "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America", by Lori Hein

Travel/Leisure: Climbing Pitcher Mountain

2006-08-19T21:19:00.000-05:00

Published in The Heart of New England, July 2005:

The Heart of New England
Celebrating the unique character & culture of northern New England
Maine ~ New Hampshire ~ Vermont

Pitcher Mountain:
Small Climb, Big Views
by Lori Hein

I've climbed Pitcher Mountain some 50 times. This beautiful,
small peak sits four miles from my family's cottage on
Stoddard, New Hampshire's Highland Lake, and it's where
we go to indulge our bodies in exercise and fill our souls with
beauty.

My 50 climbs aren't a testament to my athletic ability, but to
Pitcher Mountain's accessibility. It's a mountain that welcomes
you with quick, easy trails and rewards you with a summit
view that's hard to match. A fabulous return on time and
energy invested.

The drive to Stoddard, itself a scenic pleasure from most New
England locations, delivers you to the Pitcher Mountain
parking lot and trailhead on Route 123. From the parking lot,
the main hiking path, part of the Monadnock-Sunapee
Greenway, quickly offers up a choice. A rocky path on the
left heads into steep woods and straight up the fault line. Time
from trailhead to summit is about 15 minutes. This is the trail
we take when we're up for a bit of boulder-hopping or when
we want to be nestled in the cool, deep green embrace of
trees.

A wide, singsong path on the right ascends gradually, skirting
the high pastures of the Faulkner family's 200-acre Pitcher
Mountain Farm, home to about 50 tawny, long-haired
Scottish Highlanders raised as beef cattle. This is the trail we
take when we want to amble, to savor the first peek of Mt.
Monadnock as it rises in the distance beyond the cows, farm
and miles of forest. This is the trail we take when we want to
follow the butterflies that seem to know the path's gentle twists
and turns. This is the trail we take in winter, when the steeper
path is icebound. Wider, sunstruck and well-trodden, this
path offers solid traction and the lovely crunch of snow
underfoot.

On either route, the climb lasts less than a half-hour, but the
360-degree panorama that greets you at the mountain's
2,163-foot top is endless. A steel fire tower stands anchored
to the granite, and if the watchman is on duty, you can climb
into the observation room to chat, ogle the unspoiled mountain
world that spreads in every direction and see a photograph of
the 1941 Stoddard-Marlow fire. That blaze ravaged the two
towns and destroyed Pitcher Mountain's original wooden fire
tower.

But, in burning the mountaintop's tall trees, the fire created the
magical, unobstructed view, unusual for a short, low-elevation
climb. And it provided the nourishing soil required by the
thousands of blueberry bushes that today crown the summit.
In late summer, climbers bring buckets and baskets and coffee
cans and collect the wild berries, leaving a dollar or two in a
tin that the Faulkners nail to a parking lot tree. While some of
Pitcher Mountain is state-owned, the Faulkners own the parts
most day trippers visit.

As I stand on the summit for the 50th time, I turn myself
around in a slow, complete circle, drinking in ponds and lakes,
farms and pastures, dense, rich forests, and mountains tall and
small. I greet old friends like Mounts Monadnock and
Sunapee, Vermont's Green Mountain ski resorts lined up
across the Connecticut River Valley, and, on very special
days when the air is crystalline, the faraway crests of the
White Mountains. I say hello to the dozens of peaks whose
names I've yet to learn.

I've come only 300 vertical feet from the parking lot. For the
50th time, I marvel at this small walk that yields such big
rewards.

Topical/Events: Men unite against domestic violence

2006-08-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

Published in the Easton Journal, Norton Mirror, Mansfield News, January 2004:

Men unite against domestic violence

By Lori Hein / Correspondent
Friday, January 23, 2004

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Church group takes White Ribbon pledge

This is the fifth in an occasional series on the role of churches, synagogues and religious organizations in the community.

It started in Canada. In 1991, a group of Canadian men decided to speak out against violence against women. They wore white ribbons to symbolize their commitment.

Within six weeks, about 100,000 men across Canada wore ribbons, and the White Ribbon Campaign was born. White Ribbon Campaign events culminate in men coming forward and taking a pledge "never to commit, condone nor remain silent about violence against women."

On Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 7:30 p.m., the men's group of Easton's Covenant Congregational Church will host a White Ribbon Campaign event to raise awareness among men and boys in Easton and surrounding towns of the types, magnitude and effects of violence against women.

Everyone is invited, but the evening's message will be aimed at men, who, at the end of the gathering, will be invited to take the White Ribbon Campaign pledge and receive a white ribbon to demonstrate their promise, in the words of men's group member Bill Griffith, "to not accept, to fight against, to essentially reject anything and everything that is connected with domestic violence."

Covenant Congregational Church has a very active men's group, Griffith said.

"Last year, we decided to take on as one of our missions the task of helping local agencies that support the fight against domestic violence," he said.

From Denise Papagno, domestic violence officer for the Easton police department and president of HUGS II, a local program that offers help and service to abuse victims, the men learned about the violence against women - physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, financial - that exists in their communities.

"Denise receives upwards of 300 emergency calls per year," Griffith said. "It's terrifying to imagine how some people live."

He added that many people in towns like Easton don't realize the extent of the problem.

"They think Easton doesn't have these issues," Griffith said. "Womans Place Crisis Center in Brockton doesn't have enough beds and here, in Easton, many homes have more bedrooms than there are people living in those homes. It's a dichotomy that is bothersome. Life is not fair."

Last year, the Covenant men decided to do something to help make life a little safer for local abuse and violence victims. They held a fund-raiser called "Dinner With the Guys." The men cooked and served a five-course dinner to "an absolute sellout crowd," recalled Griffith, and raised $4,400 to benefit Womans Place and HUGS II.

"It was very eventful when we delivered that check," said Griffith. "Very meaningful."

The men's group plans to hold another fund-raiser in the spring.

Impressed with the Covenant group's desire and ability to reach out and enlist others in the fight against abuse, Maria Robbins of Womans Place Crisis Center put the men in touch with Chuck Callan, vice president of Old Colony United Way and co-chair of a local White Ribbon Campaign initiative. Callan co-chairs the effort with Timothy Cruz, Plymouth County district attorney and Joseph McDonough., Plymouth County sheriff.

"I took this project on about four years ago," Callan said.

Working with Michael Sullivan, former Plymouth County district attorney and now U.S. attorney for the Massachusetts district, Callan began volunteering time to the White Ribbon Campaign, now an international, interdenominational effort. Callan works to educate men and boys about the need to end men's violence against women.

"People think this is a woman's issue," he said, "and that men don't need to get involved."

Callan spends time "going out and talking to men and boys, going into the schools, setting up White Ribbon pledge signings." As United Way funds support many of the agencies that provide services to abuse victims, Callan noted that his volunteer work with the White Ribbon Campaign "works hand in hand" with his professional responsibilities.

Covenant's White Ribbon evening will include, in Callan's words, "a lot of speaking from the heart." The church's pastor will introduce speakers who will share facts, feelings, insights and personal experiences. Speakers include Callan, Denise Papagno, Timothy Cruz, Joseph McDonough, Maria Robbins, and Captain Richard Cardinal of the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department. Several domestic abuse survivors will share their stories, or pieces of them.

"It will be very moving," said Callan. "Very, very powerful."

At the end of the evening, "all men attending, young and old, will be invited to take the pledge together," said Callan. The men will then sign a banner declaring the White Ribbon Campaign promise "never to commit, condone nor remain silent" about an issue which Griffith says "touches us all."

Each man taking the pledge will receive a white ribbon. It started with a small group of Canadian men who, a dozen years ago, inspired 100,000 other men to stand up against violence against women. In 2003, according to Chuck Callan, more than one million men worldwide took the pledge.

Covenant's White Ribbon evening will take place at the church on Wednesday, Feb.11 at 7:30 p.m. The church is located at 204 Center St. in N. Easton. For more information about the White Ribbon Campaign, visit www.whiteribbon.ca or call 508 238-6423.

Lori Hein can be reached at 508-634-7563 or easton@cnc.com

Sports/Human interest: Hawaii Ironman

2006-08-19T21:03:00.000-05:00

Published in Easton Journal, Mansfield News, Norton Mirror, November 2003:

Easton man earns ironman status

By Lori Hein / Correspondent
Friday, November 21, 2003

Kelley competes in Hawaii triathlon

Let's say you're going to run a marathon. You've trained for months and hope you're ready. If you go the distance, at the end of the day you can call yourself a marathoner.

Now, let's say you're going to run a marathon, but not until you've first swum 2.4 miles in open water and raced 112 miles on a bike. Then, you lace up your shoes and run 26.2 miles. If you go the distance, at the end of the day you can call yourself an ironman.

Easton's Steve Kelley, 34, first became an ironman at the 2000 Ironman USA in Lake Placid, NY. (Capital "I" denotes trademarked races sponsored by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), while lower-case "i" refers to ironman distance in general and non-WTC events.) On Oct. 18, after 140.6 miles in 13 hours, 5 minutes and 4 seconds, Kelley crossed the finish line at Hawaii Ironman, granddaddy of all ironman-distance triathlons and holy grail of any triathlete who competes at that distance.

Many athletes spend years trying to snare one of Hawaii's 1,500 coveted slots. There are two ways to get one. You can race another Ironman to which slots have been allocated, and finish at or near the top of your age group. (If your time doesn't have an 8, 9 or 10 in the hours column, you won't.)

Or, you can enter your name in a lottery whose 150 winners are drawn in mid-April. If your number comes up, you then "validate" your entry by completing a triathlon of at least half-ironman distance. That done, you can buy your plane ticket to the Big Island.

Kelley had his name in the lottery for years and, this April, finally got lucky. His daughter, Ava, was born on May 2 and right after he and wife Kati brought their new baby home, Kelley started training for Hawaii. He did his validation race in June.

Ironman training is an average 18-hour weekly commitment to swimming, cycling and running. Kelley spent three mornings a week lapping for one-and-a-half hours in the Brockton High School pool. Wednesdays and Sundays meant four to six-hour bike rides. He'd ride "toward the coast," to Duxbury or Plymouth, where his parents live. His parents' house was a good place to fill his water bottle and hook up with riders who wanted to go out for a short leg.

"There were rides where I'd have ridden with four or five different people before the ride was over," Kelley said.

Occasionally, he'd hook up with his neighbor and brother-in-law, Easton's Mark McCormack. McCormack, the 2003 US Pro Road Race Champion, out on his own five to six-hour training ride, might call Kelley on a cell phone and the two would join up for an hour or two. On running days, Kelley stayed closer to home, doing loops around Sheep Pasture, Stonehill and Borderland. For long runs, he entered local road races.

Kelley, who has a law degree but left that field "for a balanced lifestyle, the general happiness factor," teaches U.S. history at Southeastern Regional. But triathlon is a major part of his life, and he is not only a serious competitor, but also an experienced coach and active multi-sport promoter.

His athletic resume is long. Kelley's been a triathlete for 15 years, is a certified triathlon and cycling coach, was assistant coach of last year's Wheaton College swim team, heads USA Triathlon's New England Region, is a six-time Boston Marathon finisher (marathon legend Johnny Kelley is his great uncle). USA Triathlon and the U.S. Olympic Committee recently named him Triathlon Development Coach of the Year in recognition of his work with young athletes.

In 1998, Kelley co-founded the Baystate Triathlon Team (www.baystatetri.com), an adult team whose 125 members compete in races ranging in distance from sprint through Olympic to ironman.

From this team sprouted a junior team for athletes ages 14 through 23. Kelley channels much of the money he earns from private coaching into the JuniorTri.com Development Team (www.juniortri.com).

Said Kelley, "Our hope is to graduate some of them into the ranks of professional triathletes."

One of their kids just turned pro.

Now to the Big Island. Ironman begins and ends in the tiny town of Kailua-Kona. In a day that puts human beings through extreme physical and mental challenges, one of the toughest is the bike stretch through the stark, searing lava fields of the Kona coast. But Kelley turned the landscape into a source of strength. As his plane was landing in Kona, Kelley "caught glimpses of the lava field. It was exciting. I could feel the energy of the island."

His hotel room faced the swim start, and in the days before the race, he would swim part of the water course, gauging currents, temperature, sun position, buoy placement, and cementing the hotel as a visual to keep himself on course in what would be a mayhem of thrashing arms and legs come Ironman morning.

Kelley wasn't alone at the swim site.

"The athletes strut around all week long," he said, and people sit on the pier and the seawall to watch the superfit bodies. The ritual flexing and gawking has earned this spit of sand the nickname "Dig Me Beach."

Race day. Fifteen-hundred athletes assemble for the 7 a.m. swim start. Fifteen-hundred athletes' worth of accumulated hopes, dreams, fears, prayers, focus, energy, training, determination, and sheer will.

Kelley described Hawaii as "definitely the most memorable swim start" he's ever done.

"There was intense energy at the start of the race. Thousands of people watching on the seawall and pier, loudspeakers blaring native drumming and chants in Hawaiian."

Helicopters hovered above the water, rotors stirring up the sea. He talked of the countdown. "Five minutes, three minutes, one minute. Then, a cannon goes off - an actual cannon- and 1,500 people get into the water trying to find a comfortable place to swim."

Kelley did the swim comfortably and in good time. He felt relaxed, saw "colorful fish," and described the experience as "enjoyable, tropical, sunny." After swimming for an hour and 19 minutes, Kelley ran up the beach to the transition area, where a volunteer handed him his bike bag. After he'd changed into riding gear, he grabbed his bike, and, eight and-a-half minutes after leaving the water, Steve Kelley took off for 112-miles in the saddle.

He felt good on the bike, and expected to, having put most of his training emphasis on cycling.

"The goal of any ironman is to come off the bike in one piece," he said. "If you come off the bike comfortable, not dehydrated, and with enough energy, then you're in good shape for the run." (Remember, there's a marathon at the end of all this.)

Steady headwinds at about 80 miles slowed him down, but he decided not to fight them, and to conserve energy for the marathon.

"I've learned, from 15 years in triathlon," he said, "that you have to be patient."

So, he spent more time on the bike than he'd planned.

"The worst part of the bike was wanting to get off it."

A five-minute bike-to-run transition put Kelley, after eight hours and nearly 115 miles, at the start of a marathon. It was about 3 p.m. He had leg cramps, but worked through them over the marathon's first 10 miles. By mile 18, he was running in pitch darkness.

It is crucial to keep eating and drinking all day, and Kelley's moveable feast included energy bars, pretzels, electrolyte tablets, water, Gatorade, and Coke. (When it was all over, he ate a pizza.)

Kelley described the finish on Alii Drive as "one of the most spectacular race finishes in the world. Complete darkness. Then, all these floodlights, illumination, the crowd. The finish is pretty intense. A really profound sense of accomplishment."

Kelley keeps an old poster of an Ironman finish, blurry, the way it looks to a depleted athlete seeing it within reach. The caption reads, "If you have to ask why, you'll never understand."

Kelley brought some people who understand to Hawaii with him, including wife Kati, a vice president at Community Bank and a runner.

"She's beat me in every marathon we've done together," Kelley said.

In addition, he brought six-month-old Ava. "Ava was a real hit in Hawaii."

Kati had dressed her in leis and a hat, and "she was in lots of photos and got lots of attention." Ava did well on the long trip, too.

"Not a peep on the plane. An excellent traveler," reported her dad.

On Dec. 6, Ironman comes to NBC. A show commemorating its 25th anniversary airs from 5 to 6 p.m.. Highlights of the 2003 Hawaii race air from 8 to 9 p.m. Keep your eyes peeled for bib number 196.

Lori Hein can be reached at 508-634-7563 or easton@cnc.com.

Travel/Leisure: Bookshop bargains

2006-08-19T20:22:00.000-05:00

Published in The Heart of New England, June 2005

The Heart of New England
Celebrating the unique character of Northern New England

Browsing for Bargains
...at Homestead Bookshop
by Lori Hein

I get cheap thrills - grocery bags filled to the brim with used
hardcovers and paperbacks for about $15 a sack - from Robert
Kenney's Homestead Bookshop in Marlborough, New
Hampshire. The shop, which Kenney told me his parents
opened 35 years ago as a "retirement and fun business" and
which Kenney has run since 1981, is paradise for browsers and
bargain-hunters. I've been a regular for 20 years.

Most of Kenney's customers are regulars, although he sees some
of them but once a year. "Our business is primarily out-of-town
or out-of-state repeat business," he said. Homestead has
cultivated a following among travelers passing the Route 101
shop on their way to or from somewhere else. For people whose
reasons for driving through Marlborough are "everything
imaginable," the modest emporium of previously thumbed tomes
is a destination in itself, "something that's high on their list," said
Kenney. He looks forward to visits from his "habitual"
customers, people "who might be driving from the seacoast to
New York state or in the opposite direction, people who have
second homes, or who come home for the holidays or to visit
parents. I see some people the same weekend every year."

I live close enough to Homestead to be able to pay more
frequent visits, and every one is a lovely little trip. I usually
squirrel myself in the corner that holds the shelves of used
paperback classics arranged alphabetically by authors' last
names and priced at a quarter to a buck a pop. At these prices,
there's no economic need for restraint, so I make towering piles
of anything by Wharton or Rand, Welty or Hemingway, Hersey
or Greene that I haven't yet read and gradually move the piles
from the floor to the old desk at the front door that serves as the
checkout area.

Even if I buy 30 new-old books, there will be 30 fresh choices
awaiting me on my next visit because Kenney is constantly
restocking his inventory. One day, I found him surrounded by
cardboard Budweiser cartons filled with books that someone
had just dropped off. He was busy dusting them with a fat brush
he'd pulled from the chest pocket of his denim apron and was
sorting them by category. The boxes held an eclectic array of
titles from "Of Human Bondage" and "Leaves of Grass" to
"Handbook of Amazon Parrots" and "The Boston Massacre." I
asked Kenney how often people come in with books for him to
buy. He smiled. "All the time. Every day. Every minute."

So there's always something for everyone in this cozy little store
that offers the gamut from cheap, dog-eared paperbacks to rare
and precious first editions and out-of-print treasures. Coffee
table books to antique volumes with gilt-embossed covers and
illuminated illustrations. Back issues of popular magazines to the
occasional complete set of the "Hardy Boys."

And Kenney knows where every book is. I've yet to see him
stumped when someone asks for a particular volume. I told him
his ability to put his hands so quickly on a requested title
impressed me. "That's one of the advantages of this shop," he
nodded. "The organization. Everything is categorized and
orderly. We have categories. We may not find it in the first
category we try, but we're able to narrow it down very quickly."

"How many books are in here?" I asked.

"Fifty thousand," he answered without hesitation. I looked
around and considered what it might be like to be surrounded
most of one's waking hours by fifty thousand books. "Do you
love it?" I asked.

Another smile. "Yes." He continued, "I'm involved with the
books seven days a week. Even when I'm not in the store, I'm
often doing something book-related."

Like serving as president of the New Hampshire Antiquarian
Booksellers Association, enjoying biographies, his favorite genre,
or gathering once a month with about a dozen other booklovers
to "read Shakespeare in the afternoon."

Contact Homestead Bookshop at 603-876-4213 or
800-834-3618 toll-free.

A note about available business writing samples

2006-08-19T07:51:00.001-05:00

When I write for a business, the business generally owns the copy, so I'm limited in what I can post here. I was paid for my work, but it's not mine to share. Also, copywriting projects often deal with proprietary business issues and are written for targeted, often internal audiences. Posting unedited samples would violate client trust; posting substantially edited samples would water down the writing's impact and take too much of my time. The following are samples that I can share.

Business copy: Leading teams

2006-08-18T19:24:00.004-05:00

Excerpt from a team coaching workbook for managers:

1. Teams can benefit from having more than one leader figure. Leadership can rotate by the clock, calendar or task. Rotating team leadership helps create more leaders and makes effective use of situational expertise.

2. Strong leaders don’t ensure team success. If team members are ineffective, poorly trained, uninterested or incompetent, the team will stall or fail.

3. A good reality check on whether you’ve created a truly functioning team is to ask, “Do people enjoy being on this team?” People taking on more responsibility, showing initiative, looking beyond immediate, required tasks, and considering the consequences of the actions they take together are signs that being part of the team is a positive and important experience.

4. People who feel good about their teams and team members find new opportunities and challenges to work on together. Such people are convinced of the advantages – the synergy- of working as a team. They look for additional common goals and projects because they already share common objectives, values and mutually supportive relationships.

5. Team coaches and leaders must progressively hand greater responsibility to the team members themselves. Discourage dependence on a single leader figure. True teamwork needs all members to participate fully and rise to challenges. Having one person cling to most of the responsibility is counterproductive. Team members must understand that their responsibilities and opportunities will expand as they grow and develop, and that growth is encouraged and expected.

Business copy: Introduction of new management tool

2006-08-18T15:41:00.005-05:00

From a communication to managers about a new performance measurement tool:

A New Tool To Help Your Teams Keep Score -- and Win

My son's in the fifth grade and plays basketball in a town youth league. He started playing last year, and he's a lot better this year than last. Part of the reason is practice and experience. But there’s more to it than that.

Last year, the boys’ teams played for fun. They ran up and down the court passing, shooting, rebounding, fouling out and occasionally sinking the ball. But they didn’t keep score. At the end of the game, you’d hear boys ask their parents, “Who do you think won?” Parents usually answered with some variation of “it doesn’t matter.” We’d leave the gym hoping that the loose collection of gangly boys had at least enjoyed themselves and maybe picked up some pointers to improve their individual games.

This year it’s different. They keep score. The loose collection of gangly boys is morphing into a well-oiled machine. They're becoming a synchronous unit of moving parts with specific roles and functions. They know what a win is, and they know what part each boy plays in making it happen. Last year they were a group of kids out on a court at the same time. This year they're a team with a common purpose. They leverage the skills they've got between them and focus on putting that ball through the hoop. Whether it’s Adam or Jay or Nick who ultimately sinks the shot, they shout “nice going” to each other and spread high-fives and backslaps all the way around.

One critical difference between a group and a team is that a team knows exactly what a win is. Whether it’s putting a climber on the summit of Everest, an astronaut on the moon, or an injured employee back to work, the team knows what constitutes success. Every member has a rock solid understanding of what the target is and what it takes to hit it. We’ll be refocusing on teamwork basics in the coming year. And nothing is more basic, nor more important, than keeping score. Are the teams you lead and influence winning or losing? Do you and they know why or why not?

You’ll soon see a tool, the 5 Critical Success Factors Scorecard, that will help your teams keep score. The Scorecard will focus your teams and clients on exactly what constitutes a win.

The 5 Critical Success Factors Scoreboard will gather and display the following information:

Press release

2006-08-18T15:30:00.000-05:00

After my book was published I wrote this press release to create market awareness and establish myself as a travel expert. In addition to book sales, this single release yielded three radio appearances, interviews and book excerpts published in newspapers nationwide, a month-long run as the featured author on a website and forum for baby boomer women, and numerous public appearances, lectures, book readings and travel slide shows.

Travel America! Take a US Road Trip This Summer
More Americans than ever will spend their summer vacations in the US, and many will travel by road. Lori Hein, travel expert and author of Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, offers inspiration and travel planning tips.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) February 28, 2004 ---This summer, more Americans than ever will spend their vacations traveling in the US. Surveys by the American Automobile Association confirm that since 9/11 more people are choosing domestic vacation travel. And more of us are traveling by road. Recent surveys show that both trends will continue.

Turning dreams of an American road trip into reality takes time and planning, but the rewards are as limitless as the country itself. Lori Hein, author of Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, traveled 12,000 miles of American back roads and byways with her two young children. Hein says that anyone -- solo travelers, moms with kids, families, seniors -- can plan and enjoy a road trip into America. "America is a rich tapestry of places to discover and savor," she says. "When you get off the interstate and travel the country's small roads, through its downtowns and open spaces, when you stop awhile at its fishing docks and ports, its churches and diners, its parks and ballfields, you experience first-hand the country's majesty and humanity."

Hein, a freelance writer, newspaper correspondent and marathoner, is a travel expert, having visited over 50 countries, often solo, often with children in tow. While Ribbons of Highway is a travel narrative, a family story and a fresh look into the heart of America, it’s also a blueprint for planning a trip of your own.

Some tips for planning a great summer road trip? "Preparation and attitude are key," says Hein. "Start your planning early. Study maps, scour brochures, make lists of places you must see and places you'd like to see. Choose routes and calculate time and distance between planned stops. You may have to rework your itinerary several times before all the pieces fit. (Save the pieces that don't fit for your next trip.)"

Says Hein, "Clear your mind. Jump into your trip with an open, positive attitude so you can accept and enjoy whatever the trip presents. When you hit bumps in the road, literal or otherwise, relax, take a deep breath, and manage the hurdle. Then continue your journey. There's so much to see."

Asked what impressed her and her children most on their cross-country odyssey, Hein said, "The country's vastness and the freedom we have to travel through it. Each morning, we'd set out on that day's 300 miles of small, beautiful roads, and we'd look up other roads, knowing there were 300 different miles to be had by traveling any one of them. And we were free to do so. There were no border stops, no papers to check, no questions to answer, just an overwhelming sense of freedom."

Read excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America at http://www.lorihein.com/ . The book is available at http://www.booklocker.com/ or major online booksellers such as Amazon. Contact the author at LHein10257@aol.com or 508-230-3766. And get out there!

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Lori Hein
LHein10257@aol.com
http://www.lorihein.com/
ph: 508-230-3766

Press release

2006-08-18T15:07:00.000-05:00

This press release was written to promote a basketball tournament used as a high school fundraiser. Result: 20 participating teams from four towns, many spectators, $600 raised, tournament adopted as an annual event.

3-on-3 Basketball Tournament -- 7th grade to adult -- Play some hoop this Thanksgiving break! Saturday, November 29, 2008, 3PM start, at Oliver Ames High School. Sponsored by OA's Class of 2010. Entry fee just $20 per team, spectators $2. Teams can have 4 members (3 players and one sub), and players' ages can vary. Tourney will be a one-game elimination, NCAA-style bracket. CASH PRIZE to winning team, amount determined by number of teams entered. Teens, families, adults, college kids home for the holiday -- get a roster together! Entries MUST BE RECEIVED BY NOVEMBER 21. Printable form at www.teacherweb.com/ma/oa/mrauger/photo2.stm . Send your $20 check payable to "OA Class of 2010" along with player and team names to Mr. Matt Auger, OAHS, 100 Lothrop St., N. Easton, MA 02356, or give form to a class officer (Alex Capobianco, Dana Belanger, Alex Kimball, Marci Costa, Dave Peretti). Questions? Email Mr. Auger at mauger@easton.k12.ma.us or call 508-230-3766. Brackets available from Mr. Auger after registration is complete.

Spread the word, join the fun, and support the great kids of the Class of 2010.

Business copy: Leadership newsletter on motivation

2006-08-18T15:03:00.001-05:00

Excerpt from a leadership skills white paper for business executives. Topic: motivation

At the turn of the 20th century Harvard psychologist William James did a study measuring the amount of ability and effort people expended on their jobs in order to avoid being fired. He found that employees could work about 20-30% of their total ability without getting fired for being unproductive. James also found that those same people could consistently work at 80-90% of their potential if they wanted to – if they were motivated to do so. Subsequent studies support James’s findings.

For leaders, the question is, “How can we motivate people to exert greater effort toward achieving company goals and increasing overall productivity? The answer is “We can’t.” Motivation comes from within. The word derives from the Latin root motive, meaning a force or agent that causes a person to act or move. The action, movement, effort come from the person, not the agent.

Thus, to move employees from 20-30% ability to a consistent 80-90%, leaders must create motivating environments that spur people to want to tap into and give more of their potential. When you hear or use the term ‘motivate’, remember that ultimately your employees motivate themselves. Your focus should be on creating opportunities for that motivation to surface and be put to use.

Motivation is an important key to superior productivity and increased employee effectiveness. People who are committed to achieving organizational objectives generally outperform those who aren't. Increasing people’s commitment and effectiveness is not optional for today’s managers and leaders. Companies and managers that don't view employee motivation as one of their most important responsibilities will find themselves overtaken by competitors who do. The most valuable employees will work for those competitors.

You'll find in-depth treatment of motivation in the Motivation Techniques Workbook you recently received, and, in the upcoming leadership training program we'll share ideas for creating a motivating environment and identify actions you can start practicing immediately in your office or work area.

Press release

2006-08-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

This release was written to promote a nine-month-long museum exhibition and related special events. The exhibition's run was highly successful, and the workshops and events that I hosted were so well attended that additional appearances were added.

Women at Work Museum features work by Lori Hein, author of Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America

- ATTLEBORO, MA, December 23, 2006 - "Defining Decades," an exhibit which runs through September 2007 at the Women at Work Museum in Attleboro, Massachusetts, includes a dozen-plus displays that examine how decades and eras are defined by the actions of individuals, organizations and nations.

In the Women in Transport display, author Lori Hein takes museum visitors across America and around the world through words and pictures.

Hein, author of Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, shares her published travel writing and photography through a colorful display that includes slide shows of images from around the world.

During the exhibition"s run, Hein will also present several special events and workshops at the museum. In "An Evening of American Travel," Hein reads from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America and shares slides from the 12,000-mile, post-9/11 road trip the author took with her two children.

Hein will also present "On Writing and Getting Published," a workshop for aspiring writers.

For information, contact the Women at Work Museum at 508-222-4430.

Press release

2006-08-18T07:21:00.003-05:00

This press release was written to promote a fundraiser for an international non-profit that aids child war vicitims in northern Uganda.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Lori Hein, for Impact Relations music promotion
508-230-3766
LHein10257@aol.com; ImpactRelations@gmail.com
http://www.lorihein.com/

Boston’s Lansdowne to Headline Student-Sponsored Concert For Invisible Children, the Child Victims of War in Uganda

Boston, MA, April 6, 2009 – On May 2nd, Boston rockers Lansdowne will headline Talent 4 A Cure: Invisible Children, a show organized by student leaders from Oliver Ames, Mansfield, Sharon and Canton high schools to raise money to help rebuild the lives of Ugandan children enslaved as soldiers by Joseph Kony, brutal leader of rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Lansdowne, who’ve played to sellout crowds in Boston and beyond and were named "one of Boston's best bands" by Mix 98.5, are known for devoting time to entertaining U.S. troops. When Lansdowne shares Easton’s Oliver Ames Performing Arts Center stage with accomplished musicians from the four schools committed to the Invisible Children cause, the band’s music will benefit soldiers of a different kind – the 30,000 child-soldiers abducted during the 23-year civil war that has ravaged northern Uganda and forced to kill for the LRA. A ceasefire tempered Kony’s atrocities, and he is on the run, but the humanitarian needs of his young victims are at crisis level. Invisible Children puts a spotlight on their plight and funds social and educational initiatives in the country. Talent 4 A Cure's student organizers hope to raise $10,000 from ticket sales and sponsorships.

Lansdowne, a socially-conscious band that devotes energy to several worthy initiatives, jumped at the invitation to help concerned students spread the Invisible Children message. Said Lansdowne drummer Glenn Mungo, "When we found out we were being offered this show, we were immediately honored and excited at the opportunity to raise awareness around such an important cause. We quickly accepted and have been brainstorming ideas ever since to really make this performance special to all in attendance. It's a great feeling to be able to use our music to help inspire a change and support this movement."

Along with Lansdowne, who’ve worked with Invisible Children in the past, Talent 4 A Cure will feature Sharon violinist Daisy Joo, a high school senior and concertmistress of the New England Conservatory's Youth Philharmonic, Northeastern University-based Goodcop Badcop, led by Mansfield guitarist Ryan Kershaw, and competing performances by artists from Oliver Ames, Sharon, Mansfield and Canton High Schools.

The show is on Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 6:30 PM at the state-of-the-art performance venue at Easton’s Oliver Ames High School, 100 Lothrop Street. Only 1,200 tickets available, $15 at door, $10 in advance. Last year’s Talent 4 A Cure was a sellout.

Contacts for interviews, additional information, band photo and one-sheet:
Talent 4 A Cure: Invisible Children: Topher Kerr, Oliver Ames High School, 617-599-8170; topherkerr@comcast.net
Lansdowne: Ryan Ziemba, band manager, 646-256-4791; RyanZ@SWAPMgmt.com
Websites: www.myspace.com/lansdowne ; www.invisiblechildren.com

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