Among the many interesting people I met, after moving to Aspen in 1988, were two well-known authors, Judith Barnard and Michael Fain. Both were successful in their respective careers prior to collaborating, in 1982, as the popular and skillful husband-wife writing team, Judith Michael. “Deceptions” was their first blockbuster. In their twenty-three year career, ending with “The RealMother” in 2005, they published eleven well-received books of fiction. (And, incidentally, kept their marriage intact.)
Authors Judith Barnard and Michael Fain. Nora Feller Photograph.
I decided, after enjoying their friendship and loyalty for more than a decade, that I needed to not only read every book they had written but also collect them for my library. To do that, rather than ordering via Amazon.com, tooeasy, I choose to embark on a Second-Hand Hunt. For the next several months, I haunted second-hand bookshops, thrift/goodwill stores, library sales and, antique malls. Within 15 months, I had collected all their books, many showing the wear and tear of having been lovingly read. (“The RealMother”, 2005, had not yet been written.) The total co$t – under $25.00.
I lugged all ten books to their home, triumphantly deposited them on their desks, and asked that they be autographed. Yes, most of the books had already been personally signed but I just suggested an additional inscription be added. To their credit and with good humor, they re-wrote-and-returned within the week, each book inscribed with a wonderfully special message. To this day, I display and treasure my Judith Michael collection.
So, here’s the Santa Snap – don’t discount second-hand, inexpensive books for holiday giving, hostess favors, birthday gifts, or presents of any kind. Scout out classic cookbooks for your favorite chefs. If a friend has a favorite genre, mysteries or science-fiction, perhaps, buy several written by various, well-known authors in that category. There are fabulous drawings and images in used and vintage childrens’ book, useful for enjoying or framing. Tabletop tomes are expensive but plentiful and cheap if you purchase used volumes.
Next week, as we march into 2012, I will Post favorite, must-read-books suggestions, solicited from many of my friends. It’s a forever-list of inexpensive, thoughtful gift-giving, if you go second-hand. Be creative – use “used” to your advantage to explore and discover and $ave and get personal. As a bonus, for every used-book you buy, there’s a tree who’s eternally grateful.
“ Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.”
Holiday Hysteria begs for Holiday Help ? Jenna to the Rescue. Search her Site for gifties, ideas, suggestions and inspiration. Promise.
STIRRING UP MEMORIES WHILE SIPPING YOUR MORNING COFFEE
When traveling, vacationing, or visiting friends and family, it’s always fun to bring home a memory, a token of the trip, some remembrance of where you’ve been, what you did, or who you saw. However, there comes a time, and I’ve reached it, when there is no more room, nor need, nor desire, to do that. Besides, souvenirs can get pricey.
The House Rule in my home is if “something new” comes through the door, two “somethings old” get tossed. Clutter is no longer my friend. That’s not a good reason, however, to give up the “hunt”, stashing a tiny treasure in your baggage to mark the moment. An item you will actually use at home.
These days, I am marking my Moments with Mugs. If you’re a coffee-addict like me, merely sip tea, or wander over to the dark side with hot chocolate, have I got a Mug for you. Wherever I go, there’s always a Starbucks which translates into a Mug commemorating the city, state or country. Now, people, we are not talking fine china here. A Starbucks Mug costs $12.95 in any currency. Wrapped around a t-shirt or sweater, it travels without a chip. Better yet, it scans well at the airport. TSA employees seem to know a coffee mug when they see one.
Locating these Mugs is an adventure in itself? Did you know the Krakow Starbucks is in historic Wawel Castle? I discovered parts unknown in Budapest, trying to find their only Starbucks store. (I never discovered it.). When I dropped my D.C. Mug in the street, it cracked and had to be replaced. I almost missed my plane. But the real merriment, for me and my house guests, is when we make a Mug-choice every morning. It brings a whole new meaning to “a quick cup of coffee“.
(With apologies to ARIZONA, CHICAGO, and WASHINGTON D.C., who were in the dishwasher.)
The Sofitel Budapest Chain Bridge during October Breast Cancer Awareness Month (parisbudabest.hu)
Since I am currently writing about my recent experiences in Central Europe, it feels appropriate and necessary to acknowledge and honor Evelyn Lauder, who was born in Vienna and died this month in Manhattan from complications of non-genetic ovarian cancer. Mrs. Lauder, a well-recognized champion for breast cancer research, was the driving force and constant presence behind the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer awareness begun in 1992. www.pinkribbon.com
Evelyn Lauder (Getty)
For the past 50 years, Mrs. Lauder worked for the cosmetic conglomerate, Estée Lauder, a beauty products giant founded by her mother-in-law. At the time of her death, she was a senior corporate vice president.
But her real story, like so many others I heard while traveling through countries ravaged by War and Occupation, is about a frightened toddler fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna with her parents and few possessions. Her father bartered some household silver for visas which got them to Belgium and, eventually, England. Authorities sent Mrs. Lauder’s mother, Mimi, to an internment camp on the Isle of Man while daughter Evelyn, separated from her parents, was placed in a nursery. It took more than two years for her father to raise the money, unite his family, sail to the United States and settle in Manhattan, where they established a successful clothing business.
Acknowledging Breast Cancer Month Worldwide, Vienna Photo by Arthur Serating
I have always known these many interesting facets of Mrs. Lauder’s life because she and her husband, Leonard, have been part-time residents of Aspen since we moved there in 1988. Although I do not know the Lauders personally nor move in their circles, they never met a stranger. The Lauders were friend-makers, generous not only in largesse but in time, effort and spirit. We watched as Mrs. Lauder bravely and quietly fought and conquered breast cancer (1989) and unsuccessfully battled ovarian cancer (2007). While her death was not a surprise nor shock, we Aspenites lost a good neighbor and that always feels very, very sad.
There are many Evelyn-stories being shared and told in Aspen now, but this is my favorite.
My dear Aspen friend, Luky, was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 1992. It was a frightening time for her. She was only 41 years old at the time and had been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. One day, out-of-the-blue, she received a call from Mrs. Lauder, who she did not know nor had ever met.
“Luky, this is Evelyn Lauder,” she was told. “I understand from our mutual friend, Barbara, that you have been diagnosed with cancer. I want to know if I can help in any way.”
Luky, a gal who’s never at a loss for words, chatted briefly, discussing her illness, voicing her concerns. As the conversation ended, Mrs. Lauder said, “If you need anything, Luky, anything at all, I will help you. Just call me.“
Although Luky chose to have treatment in Louisiana, near her family, and is now very healthy, I have heard her tell that story over and over again. It was the call she desperately needed at a time when she was completely depleted and demoralized. And, during that period of her life, she always carried Evelyn’s “Good-will Card” in her hip pocket. If things go terribly wrong, she thought, I’ll call Evelyn.
It’s ironic, I believe, that I was traveling through Europe in October, a month recognized internationally as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Pink ribbons hung everywhere, on jacket lapels, lampposts, at cosmetic counters, even on the Austrian Parliament Building in the city that Ernest, Mimi, and little Evelyn Hauser fled from in 1936.
If you remember, in the early Nineties, women’s health issues and breast cancer research still were plunked on America’s back burner. In 1992, after waging her own battle with breast cancer, Mrs. Lauder coupled her talents with her friend, Alexandra Penney’s expertise, and Charlotte Hayley’s ribbon idea to develop a campaign for breast cancer awareness. Starting as a personally-financed Lauder project, producing pink ribbon bows to be given at department store makeup counters as a breast exam reminder, the campaign rapidly morphed into so much more and has arguably saved thousands of lives. This year I picked up my pink ribbon, a reminder to have my yearly exam, at a cosmetics counter in Budapest.
The Worldwide Symbol for Breast Health
In an interview with the New York Times, shortly before her death, Mrs. Lauder spoke about the campaign, which took about three years to really give birth. “ When it launched,” she said, “it was so little known that some people thought it symbolized AIDS awareness.There had been no publicity about breast cancer, but a confluence of events — the pink ribbon, the colour, the press, partnering with Elizabeth Hurley, having Estée Lauder as an advertiser in so many magazines and persuading so many of my friends who are health and beauty editors to do stories about breast health — got people talking.”
Today, this campaign has exploded into fundraising projects, the congressional designation of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the creation of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, funded by $330 million in donations, $50 million from Estée Lauder and its partners. www.bcrfcure.org
We may have lost Evelyn Lauder but that little Pink Ribbon will endure, continuing to be a worldwide symbol of women’s breast health.
At a dinner party fifteen years ago, a close friend, also a talented plastic surgeon, said to me, “You know, Mary, if you’re going to get your eyes “done”, better sooner than later!”
Although I’ve never gotten my eyes nor anything else “done” – I’ve earned these wrinkles, after all – I did take note of his remark. There isn’t a face cream I haven’t purchased nor a wrinkle remedy I haven’t tried.
Recently, in Budapest, the Hungarian women shared a secret about an only-in-Hungary product called Helia-D. “This is a cream that defies laws of cosmetics,” a pamphlet says. “Without a single penny spent on advertising and marketing, this product is increasingly popular among women of 24 different countries.”
The Helia-D Cosmetics Line, a well-kept Hungarian miracle.
What’s important to know, however, is that the Helia-D Cosmetic line can only be bought locally, in Hungary. It’s a sure bet that American women are suckers for products that their hometown girlfriends and neighbors can’t buy. If it reduces a few wrinkles with its sunflower stalk extract, so much the better.
There were 20 North American women in our Budapest city tour group and I’m pretty sure we greatly depleted the inventory by the time we climbed onto our bus to continue to Vienna.
My SNAP this week is the website where any Helia-D product can be ordered. Here’s proof that in the Age of the Internet, nothing is sacred:
Does it work, after just two weeks? The jury is still out. But, every night, as I’m slathering the cream on my face, the memory of it makes me smile. That is a very good thing.
WARNING: This Blog Post deals with female nudity. If you’d rather not read “nude” material, please return another day.
Still here?
When my globe-trotting friend, Ardyth, discovered I was stopping in Budapest during my recent European travels, she urged me to take advantage of that city’s thermal baths. “Don’t miss experiencing the famous Gellért Baths,” she suggested. “Be sure to have a massage. Don’t leave Budapest without doing that.”
The Gellért Spa’s main hall, gallery and glass roof, built before WWi in the Art-Nouveau style.
It’s no secret that the world’s largest thermal water cave system,170 caves containing 80 geothermal springs, lies under Hungary’s capital city. Seventy million liters of 21-78 degrees Celsius water (that’s 82-172 degrees Fahrenheit) gushes up daily from natural springs.
Since I live part-time near Las Vegas, a city touting many amazing spas/pools, why do that in Budapest? I don’t know how to swim, my bathing suit is 30-years old, and, at my age, I practice camouflage-mode. I really don’t “do” swimsuits and pools.
Besides, there’s enough to see in Budapest, I thought, with its UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Danube cruises, Szechenyi Chain Bridge, markets and monuments, without pausing to “take a bath”.
I returned my bathing suit to its moth balls.
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BUDAPEST: After discovering, despite my activity-list, I still had a free afternoon in Budapest, I decided to Spa. It helped that Linda, who’d I just met, was also game. I must admit to being relieved at having a partner-in-bathhouses. Linda, being from California, had packed her bathing suit and, thinking I could improvise, I grabbed my t-shirt and shorts. Clutching a handful of Forints, the Hungarian currency, we hailed a taxi and headed for those famous Gellért Baths:
The Good: “This was definitely a unique experience, a “Hungarian water world,” of sorts,” she remembered, in her recent e-mail.
The Bad: “But, it was as if we made a wrong turn and ended up at a state prison,” she lamented.
The Ugly: Personally, it was intimidating for me to walk into an alien, albeit breathtakingly beautiful, environment and be greeted with a chilly reception, the afternoon’s precursor. During the entire four-hour visit, not ONE person smiled or was kind. Must be a Staff Rule.
I’m a skeptic as well as a coward and suggested re-hailing the cab. But Linda, already charging into the gorgeous main hall, with its Art-Nouveau glass roof, had found the check-in office. We got the most uncooperative young woman we’d yet encountered in Hungary. (Our Budapest city tour guide had warned us about this.) It took 15 minutes and countless heavy sighs from her, to purchase, “The Works”. We had no idea what “The Works” (our translation) cost but were told it included everything.
At the get-go it was apparent my shorts and t-shirt were verboten. I could rent. (You must be kidding!) Or, buy. We headed for the adjacent bathing suit store. Suspecting a tall, good-looking, blond California woman has purchased more beach apparel than I ever would, I looked to Linda for guidance. She glanced at me, scanned the rack and grabbed a suit. I surrendered the rest of my Forints to the clerk. In 1981, my last suit purchase, I chose black. Visualize a brown and orange one-piece, strung with wooden beading, made in China. That’s the new Me.
One of the Gellért Spa’s Thermal Bath Pools, Budapest, Hungary.
This is when the real problems began. We walked into the Spa and showed our passes. The door man, who did speak English, demanded towel money.
“What?” Linda said. “We already purchased our tickets.”
“I know, but now you must purchase a towel for 886 forints ($4 American dollars) each,” the door man insisted.
“You mean these tickets don’t include towels?” Linda inquired, incredulously.
“No, they don’t,” he replied.
“Well, how are we going to get dry if we don’t have towels?” she asked, now fuming.
(This is when he gives her a “that’s the point” glare!)
“Well,” she says, “we are not paying for towels.”
If you remember, I’d already blown $250 on laundry at a Warsaw hotel. Heck, four bucks a towel, that was chump change. But, Linda, a successful entrepreneur, was not having it.“My perspective was that a deal’s a deal,” she told me. “I mean we were told it was all-inclusive pricing, right?”
Okay, no towels.
We were greeted inside by Mrs. Stern Matron #1.( I instantly realized most of the female spa-goers were wandering around in the buff, which left me uncomfortable, mortified, and squirming. I am not proud of my inhibitions.) She wrote 4 p.m. on a clipboard, handed us each a white sheet and pointed upstairs. Rather clueless, we suspected 4:00 pm was our massage time.That would give us two-hours in the baths. We climbed the stairs to change into suits.
Already, I’m thinking, “I am going to kill Ardyth.”
We leave our possessions with Mrs. Stern Matron #2 who locks them in cabinets but keeps the keys. Clutching our sheets (everyone else has towels), we head for the thermal baths. I picked the pool with the least number of nude women and navigated from hot baths to cold dips to saunas to steam rooms, keeping my head down and using my sheet as a towel.
Linda liked the thermal baths but soon headed for the swimming pool where she got kicked out for not having a swimming cap. (Let’s not even discuss her purchasing one.) She returned to the hot baths, totally unconcerned and uninhibited by all the nude, primarily older women, who were in the baths. No one talked, smiled or laughed, except us.
At 4pm, we left our wet gear with our unfriendly matron who loaned us keys to get our underwear. After wrapping ourselves in our sopping wet sheets, we headed for our massages. My masseuse led me to a room and was immediately miffed at having to provide a “dry” sheet. Using gestures, she told me to totally strip and get on the table, face down on the sheet. I do not remember much about the 40-minute massage. I do remember that I was cold, totally naked, uncovered, bare-assed and interacting with a stranger who never murmured a word to me, not even in Hungarian.
Really, I am going to kill Ardyth.*
Linda’s experience was far worse. She did not even rate a room. “My massage was unique,” she told me,“in that the masseuse left the curtain open and I was eye-to-eye with a woman who was hooked up in some kind of neck constraint in what, I’m hoping, was a therapy pool “
“And, will you ever forget the rock music (American) playing in the background?” she asked.
Following our massages, wrapped back in our sheets, toga-style, we couldn’t re-claim our clothes, get dressed and exit fast enough. We did delay our get-away ten minutes to help a young American woman, a honeymooner, who was gifted “a spa afternoon” by her new husband. We left her in tears.
Wonder how that marriage is going.
We found a cab, returned to our hotel, and headed for the bar, where we drank our Supper and ate free peanuts.
“Didn’t you feel like we might be expelled at any moment?” Linda asked me.
If the Gellért Baths are about sophistication and being cosmopolitan, I thought to myself, I’m just not there yet. It’s going to take some real work!
There are morals to this story:
1.Inhibitions or not, I fervently believe women over sixty should keep their nudity to themselves and not share it with others.
2. Principles or no principles, if you’re going near water, take a towel. Sheets are non-absorbable.
3. Travel leads you down many memorable paths and provides an inordinate amount of pleasure, fun and experiences.
*My friend,Ardyth is still alive. No one enjoyed this story more than she.
