San Esteban, Salamanca

This weekend I had a welcome opportunity to show even more of my beautiful town to an eager returning visitor, seen above checking out the cloister of the Convento de San Esteban.

Wait, don't I have a blog?

I shall make no excuses. I've been hopping continents, switching up plans and cooking up what's next.

I stopped back in Rhode Island to visit family and friends and meet Mary Oliver (did I say MEET Mary Oliver?) and Coleman Barks, among other intriguing folks at the Block Island Poetry Project.

And I took a few much needed walks along the RI coast. I was tempted to post a much more beautiful photo of myself wandering the rocky coast of Newport, RI, but this photo holds a little surprise. Look closely, now. That's me, tracking along once again in the footsteps of the Roving Photographer, though, this time, hmmm...her footsteps seem to be pointing skyward. Tidal pools, you understand. Photogenic tidal pools.

I have lots to say, it would seem, all of a sudden and plan to be round here writin' in the next two weeks, before I wander off to Arrés, in the province of Huesca, in Aragon, to do my first and much anticipated stint as an albergue hospitalera along the Camino. More to come on that front...

Ah, and if you've written and I've yet to respond, bear with me. I made a big dent in the inbox today and will likely be back to you by tomorrow.

¡Buen camino! Hope you've been stumbling into (literally into, if you ask the Roving one) some fabulous tidal pools of your own.

Life in 6 words

Qaminante doesn't post everyday, but ah, when she does, she delights me.

Today Feedblitz served up breakfast with this gem from my favorite blogger in Brussels:

"I was just reading about a book collecting six-word memoirs, entitled "Not quite what I was planning". The one I liked best was "Me see world! Me write stories!" (Elizabeth Gilbert, who seems to me to have been on much the same track already with the title of her book "Eat, Pray, Love", about stays in Italy, India and Bali). I also liked "Am I lost or just wandering?"
It seems the inspiration was an ultra-short story by Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” "

Read an NPR article about the book here.

Qaminante set me to thinking. How might I write my life story in 6 words?

A few drafts are well underway, on this vesper of vacation-time for me...

The first draft is a response to one of the original titles quoted by Qaminante:

I'm not lost, I am wandering...

Or how do you like:

Wandered well. Wondered whether. ..Wrote while...

Alliteration, eh? Suits me. But then again, there's:

But I like what's behind EVERY door.


And this title for me, all 7 delicious words:

Never did play by the rules, much.


Or more likely, a good description of my winding road, so far:

Just one good turn after another.


I'd hope to quote Yogi Berra but he ran long:

When you come to a fork, take it.


So I went back to basics:


Have grin, will travel.


See? I don't need no stinking 6 words.

Hmm... or there's:

For our next act, Erin will...


or

What's next? Well I thought I'd...


And there's this, a blissful response to my fellow salmantinos:

Sí, rubia, guapa y tu niña.



Or let's be realistic:

Ask me later, I'm still living.



No? Ah...

From rat race to pata negra.


True. But so is this:

What d'ya mean, just choose one?

What d'ya mean d'ya is two words? I'm a RhoDylander, people. Let me say the same thing about my life another way:

I'll take one of each please.


or..

Albergue to albergue, just cruising between.


and I like:

Talked fast, ate slow, smiled wide.


I'm sure I'll be working in this for a while. What about you? Got a 6 word memoir, any language?

Whoever answers the red phone, they'd best know good jamón.

photo: El País

If you missed the news, jamón ibérico arrived in the US several months ago and I immediately took heat for not having properly and proactively informed every American friend I had introduced to this heavenly treat during visits to Salamanca.


Then El País proudly published this photo of Barack Obama sampling mediterranean treats at a charcutería in the Italian Market in Philadelphia during a campaign march through Pennsylvania. The (very generous) man behind the counter sliced our candidate a nice thin slab of $99 a pound jamón ibérico - Salamanca pata negra, in fact - and let him know he was tasting a recently legalized gem.

Obama asked what he meant by "legalized". "What, it's like a drug?"

Just taste it, he was told.

Moments later our rapt candidate spoke again. "I only know it's really good."

An understatement, but it's better than a campaign season exaggeration. I'll take it.

Fermín, a jamón producer based in La Alberca, in the my home province of Salamanca, won permission to be the first producer of pata negra jamón to import its products to the States last December.

So what do my neighbors say about all this, you ask? Well to be honest, the talk here is endearingly Spanish. Salmantinos are certain all those jamón-lusting Americans are going to drive up our local pata negra prices until only wealthy foreigners can afford the stuff.

But I'm not worried. Yet. I'm going to a wedding Saturday. And guess what they're serving during the wine-sipping hour? One guess, Laura?

Columns of the Knights Templar, Hervás

All the tourist maps list the Columnas Templarias, a series of columns left from a Templar church, as a must-see in Hervás, a city once protected by the Knights. After an ardent and fruitless search, we stumbled onto the columns, unobtrusively leading visitors into a series of small businesses in a building alongside the town hall. I've decided I've snapped a soldier here, do you think?

Rings a bell

I did a brief but energetic jota last week when I read that a story I blogged back in April about Joshua Bell's poor earnings as a busker in a DC metro station had earned a Pulitzer.

As I told the story in my original post:

"El País told me last week that during one hour in the metro station at L'Enfant Plaza in Washington DC, 1070 people rushed right by the violinist playing in his heart out. Twenty seven people threw him a coin, nickels, the odd quarter. He made a little over 32 dollars in that hour. Rush hour. One woman, a young employee of the US Commerce Department stopped, stared and listened. For an hour.

She recognized the violinist, since she'd seen him perform 3 weeks before in the Library of Congress.

The violin was a 1713 Stradivarius, and the 40ish man playing it, in baseball cap and jeans, was Joshua Bell.

Leonard Slatkin lost a bet in the whole deal, according to El País. He was sure a crowd would form, and 50 and 100 dollar bills would hit Bell's violin case.

Made me wonder what prodigies and wonders I walk by every day, going where I have to go, without ever knowing......"

I hadn't read the original story, Pearls Before Breakfast, written by Gene Weingarten for the Washington Post, but I'm delighted the prize led me to it.

Seems the Washington Post was behind the whole experiment:

"His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

The original article looks at the results from all sorts of view points and includes video clips of Bell playing while the harried crowd hurries by him and interviews with both Bell and manuy of the commuters who passed through the station that morning. It's pure pleasure to read and plenty of fun to chew on, afterwards, as well.

Heads up. There's beauty all around.

A door in Candelario

Improvisation, and fateful encounters

"A walk, following your intuitive promptings, down the streets of a foreign city holds rewards far beyond a planned tour of the tried and tested.

Such a walk is totally different from random drifting. Leaving your eyes and ears wide open, you allow your likes and dislikes, your conscious and unconscious desires and irritations, your irrational hunches, to guide you whenever there is a choice of turning left or right.

You cut a path through the city that is yours alone, which brings you face to face with surprises destined for you alone. You discover conversations and friendships, meetings with remarkable people.

When you travel in this way you are free; there are no have-tos and shoulds. You are structured at first only, perhaps by the date of the plane departure. As the pattern of people and places unfolds, the trip, like an improvised piece of music, reveals its own inner structure and rhythm.

Thus you set the stage for fateful encounters. "

-Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art (Line breaks mine.)

I can't recommend Nachmanovitch's book highly enough, for anyone who wishes to bring improvisation to music, or writing, or pottery... or travel. A poet, improvisational violinist and computer artist, he delighted me with images and lyrical prose while giving me new insight into my creativity -and the many masterful improvisers I have watched, among them my father, a professional musician.

And yes, yes, I say, travel, in a foreign city, along a pilgrim's path or just round your own hometown with a new pair of eyes, is improvisation. It doesn't flow from such a different creative surrender than art or music do, does it?

This passage reminded me of how I got started wandering. When I was in grade school I would ride my bike through strange neighborhoods, pushing myself a little further afield every time I reached familiarity, continually scouting out places and streets I hadn't yet explored. Every day I rode out of our garage with one goal: to get lost. I loved to be lost, with no idea what lay beyond those woods, or at the end of that street, free to head any old way I'd like at every intersection. Sooner or later, I'd reach a recognizable main street, and wend my way home.

The photo is Prats de Mollo, in the French Pyrenees. The fact that I inexplicably snapped the sign as a mirror image, from behind? Improvisation, I guess. The odd photo did lead to a memorable Spanish to Catalan conversation with the lovely old woman who owned the charcuterie.

Daily dose of exercise, and Lorca

Ah, how the graffiti greeting me on my daily walk along Salamanca's riverside bike path continues to inspire.

The other night, walking at sunset, I found myself facing García Lorca.

A spray paint bard has scribbled "Media Luna" from García Lorca's Primeras Canciones across a vacant building, just underneath a rusting door with ragged, broken windows:


Media luna

La luna va por el agua.
¡Cómo está el cielo tranquilo!
Va segando lentamente
el temblor viejo del río
mientras que una rama joven
la toma por espejito.

Federico García Lorca

Because I can't bring myself to post a homemade translation of García Lorca and have yet to locate an English translation of this poem, I'll simply share the image.

Imagine the moon moving across the Tormes, not 50 yards from the graffiti poem. From a still, tranquil sky the moon leaves its reflection on the shivering water (the ripple of the water) and a small branch sees (that reflection as) a tiny mirror.

Just a moment along the Tormes.
Muchísimas gracias, bard of spray paint. I await your next post.

Thanks to an anonymous commenter for correcting a whopper of an error in my original post.

But of course!

Alex from Building Bridges has just returned from her first visit to Chicago.

And she's in love.
But of course.

Her Chicago report is well worth a visit, if only to stroll through her suburb photos of the city. Well, stroll and come to the realization that I do indeed have excellent taste in adopted homes, if I do say so myself.

Alex, not long ago I was one of those friendly Chicagoans who instinctively asked the map-bearing lost if I could help, or rambled off the detailed history of a corner or a building....

Es caminante quién...

He is a caminante who moves his feet and his head, and his hopes, wholly giving all of his time, dreaming about what lies ahead, enjoying everything that arrives to his eyes.

A blessing to the pilgrim who, through the camino of the stars (the Camino de Santiago) finds himself without looking, walks the trails without moving his attention from a single step and without longing for his destination.

from the First Book of Petrolinus the Alchemist, who wrote of his pilgrimage to Santiago, through Salamanca, in 1765. Found in a lovely illustrated booklet published by the tourism office of Salamanca, and lying in wait for me at Salamanca's luxurious pilgrim's albergue.

What I've been doing while I haven't been blogging

1. Staring over my trusty Camino boots at the stunning pools of water known as Los Charcos Verdes in Hervás, Extremadura.

2. Clinging desperately to a swaying lamp post while an elderly woman flutters in the wind on the other side of the same post, during a wind storm in San Sebastián on Spain's Basque coast.

3. Losing myself in two long, blissful wanders through the charming Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona, thanks to tips from my generous and capable virtual guide, Alex over at Building Bridges.

4. Meeting an invaluable collection of new pilgrim friends from all corners of Spain while completing the hospitalero training of the Federación de Associaciones de Amigos del Camino in Irun. My first assignment? Fifteen days in June, tending to the Camino Aragonés albergue in Arrés, the very albergue where I arrived, limping, on my second day on the Camino, only to spend two days on ice, healing my first Camino sprain.

6. Falling in love with yet another Extremeño town: Hervás, with views to the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra de Gredos and one of Spain's best conserved and most vibrantly alive juderías (old Jewish quarters).

7. Watching a sunny Easter Saturday sky turn first to hail, then to the thick white-out of a spring snowstorm in Ávila.

8. Finding myself trapped between Semana Santa processions in some of Salamanca's most narrow medieval streets while taking altogether disappointing photos of the festivities, despite the good company.

9. Describing Salamanca as a expat home-buying destination to Spanish Homes magazine. Wait. Salamanca as an expat destination?

10. Meeting fellow blogueras-en-España Wheylona (in San Sebastián) and Rebekah from Moratinos Life (here in Salamanca, where she faithfully tended to the local pilgrim's albergue for 15 days).

13. Planning a poetic return to my home land.

14. Avoiding watching Salamanca's Plaza Mayor blow up on film.

15. Getting a good handle on how to make pulpo at home - from the New York Times yet.

16. Nursing an altogether unhealthy obsession with US news and opinion columns, especially NY Times elections coverage. Is this making anyone else nervous?

17. Discovering there are indeed "ideas worth spreading" over at ted.com.

18. Revelling in Spanish train travel, especially that magical 2 o'clock hour when one by one, each passenger faithfully crinkles open his tin foil or plastic wrapped package and snaps open his soda can, till we are all simultaneously and silently snarfing, each of us, one bocadillo, one canned beverage, and one piece of fruit. I most enjoy the thought of the waiter in the train's deserted café coach doing exactly the same.

19. Spotting Via de la Plata pilgrims passing through Salamanca on their way to Santiago...and spotting the familiar yellow arrows pointing the pilgrims' way in Barcelona and San Sebastián.

20. Greeting spring, who arrived right on time, once we'd gotten that one inevitable snowstorm out of the way.

21. Learning that a good man may be hard to find, but a dependable freelance web designer is impossible. A web project first dreamed up two years ago lies begging for death, or completion.

22. Preparing to wish you all a very happy Lunes de Aguas - tomorrow!

A little wall wisdom

Death is so sure of victory she gives you a whole life's head start.



translated from a ladies' room wall of a bar in Hervás, Extremadura.

Meet the Keltic Dreams

I've been feasting on this video all week. Meet the Keltic Dreams, a celebrated band of Irish stepdancers from.....a grade school in the Bronx?

I've feasted on this New York Times story because it crosses borders, defies assumptions, and stars some adorable, curious and openminded children who can step dance a heck of a lot better than me.

Watch this video and feast for yourself.

Note: The video loads from the link above, but very slowly. To get it to more quickly, follow the link below to the story, and watch the video there. Or, go to the Times video page and look for the video "Keltic Dreams".

The full online story is here.

Aguda, and proud

This must be a milestone.

Last week for the first time during four years in Spain, I received an e-mail with my name written with an accent mark.

It was written as one would write it in Spanish, if we pronounced it as the 1 in 100 Spaniards who even dare to make the attempt do.

Estimada Sr. Corcorán, read the opening line.

I'm always Sr. Corcoran to people reading Erin for the first time so I happily let that slide. But my eye fixed on Corcorán. Corcorán.

Nice, huh? And correct if we think about it.

Spanish has admirably fixed rules for placing accent marks in words. It's all based on which syllable is stressed. And so, if I said my name as I would in the States, COR-cor-an, with the accent on the first syllable, well, I'd be a woman living under an esdrújula, and I'd need an accent mark up front.

Córcoran.

If I said my name as most Spaniards do, cor-cor-AN, I'd have to call myself aguda and place an accent on that last syllable, as my friendly correspondent did.

Erin Corcorán.

I like it. And it really might take away the fright at pronouncing my name.

Without an accent mark, you see, my moniker is a type of word known as grave - far too serious a label for me - and is pronounced with the accent on the middle syllable: cor-COR-an. Many Spaniards read the accentless name I scribble and type everywhere I go - Corcoran - and they stumble, sensing this odd beast must be cor-COR-an while at the same time finding that pronunciation as awkward and unlikely as I do.

After four years, one finicky española has given me a darn good way to get my name spoken aloud. To be listed as more than simply "Erin" in the database at my hair salon, at the grocery store, at the dry cleaners. After all, another Erin may just invade Salamanca one of these days.

Corcorán.
Erin Corcorán.
I like it.
I hereby pronounce myself aguda, and proud.

NABUUR, the global neighbor network

After my most recent post about Kiva's shout out for volunteer translators, Gertie from www.nabuur.com wrote, sure I'd be enthusiastic about her organization, as well.

And I am.

Nabuur.com, the global neighbor network, is an online volunteering network that lists tasks needing done: tasks requested by people in villages all over the world. Tasks you can do in the course of a few hours from your computer, when your virtual skills meet the local need posted by the village.


What is NABUUR?

NABUUR.com is a place on the Internet that connects:

Neighbours: people that want to take action now for the benefit of people in developing countries
&
Villages: people in need of knowledge, contacts, and new ideas to improve their lives.

People on NABUUR have in common that they are committed Global Citizens with a drive to do something to make a difference.

Through NABUUR.com you:

• 
  Do what is really needed. People living in local communities communicate with you directly what they want; nobody else is in charge or in between.
  
• Spend 2-8 hours behind your computer as your schedule allows and do a concrete Task that will mean so much to a community of people.

Gertie wants all of you lovely multilingual gems who come by my comment box to know that NABUUR.com needs volunteer translators, too. And not just translators!

If you've got a few hours and a hankering to help somebody in a concrete, hands-on way, the site lists all kinds of urgent tasks just waiting for your skills and energy, along with current volunteer vacancies within the NABUUR.com organization, all perfectly doable from right where you are, right now.

Wisdom, philosophy and greatness

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry,

the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness

which does not bow before children.


~Kahlil Gibran


Thanks to Laura for the quote.

Riff on a tree along the camino

She's not an easy tree to find.

She stands clinging with everything she's got to the rocky slope of a painfully steep hill called the Alto de La Cruz, some 8 or 9 kilometers from the village of Monreal, in Navarra. It's not easy to put a label on her, figure out what species of tree she was, when she bloomed and grew and sprouted green. In a look you decide what sort of tree she is: proud. Tested. Generous. Strong. What sort of being could hold on to that tiny a parcel of earth with a pair of long dead roots? What sort would want to? Long after her sprouting life has ended, she is eager. Eager to play and participate, eager to share a bit of the road with each traveler who passes.

You see she did sprout green sometime; it's there in her confidence and the graceful wishbone reach of those two surviving branches. Is she long dead, you wonder? Did she have company - tree company - on this lonely summit when she lived and breathed and cleaned the mountain air sweeping down from the Pyrennees? What fragrance of her own did she loan the breeze that passed by then? Did she welcome birds? Mice? Maybe a pueblo of bees helped itself to her generosity. Has she met many villagers during her long stay atop this hill, you ask? Did her branches serve as fuel or fodder for homes and barns and necessary farm tools?

Now she greets you as a signpost. On her dry grey trunk someone's painted the red and white marks of the GR trail that crosses Spain, and below them the simple yellow arrow of the Camino. She has to hang on, she tells you; she's guiding pilgrims. As the only distinguishing feature of this harsh, scrub covered alto, she has work to do. No one walks the Camino Aragonés without climbing this hill. And so she clings. And waits.

As you watch, she leans hard over the edge of her stony cliff, bending her two stubby branches toward the green, flat valley below. Is she struggling to hold on, you suddenly ask yourself. Is that it, or? Could she be trying to free herself? She twists and bends like a pilgrim preparing for the day's hike. As if to say she'll be with you in just a moment, yes in fact she will join you on your walk to Santiago, if you go on ahead she'll be right along. It's that way you know, west. There. Have you spotted her arrow?

When you've finally left her alto behind you, you're genuinely surprised not to hear the dull scratch of wooden feet lumbering in your footprints.

Bilingual? Kiva needs volunteer translators.

One of the reasons I struggle to get over to this Blogger text box as much as I like is a joyous one. Kiva is going gangbusters.

If you're new, I talk about Kiva alot here. It's an online organization that lets anybody lend as little as $25 to an entrepreneur in the developing world. And yep, you get paid back.

An interesting article in the New York Times a few weeks ago focused on the other side of the Kiva picture - how local agencies, people on the ground, a fiercely dedicated staff and hundreds of volunteers, including 250 translators scattered around the world, get a microentrepreneur's photo, story and loan request to the web, where you can help fund it for as little as $25.

Kiva's looking for volunteer translators to join that team. Their current needs include a long list of languages, Spanish among them. Volunteering for Kiva is one of the most rewarding things I do. Every business description I translate is the brief story of someone's life and his hard work to get ahead under his own steam. I always leave my Kiva sessions flying.

I translate 6 or 8 short texts a week through an easy web interface on the Kiva site. And when I'm travelling or overloaded with work, "I can't help this week" is always a fair answer to a translation request.

Check out Kiva's translator needs, oh multilingual blog crowd. You'll be making a tangible difference to a great organization and a lot of folks who are more than willing to work hard to improve their family's quality of life.

45

The 45th best novel of all times is Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh, according to the BBC.

Elizabeth I ruled 45 years, until her death in 1603.

The
45th largest city in the world is Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (population 5,068,000).

Number 45 on the American Film Institute's top 100 movie quotes list is Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire: STELLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

The anniversary gift for year 45 is sapphire. Feel free to send along gifts in keeping with this fine tradition; slight tardiness is perfectly understandable.

The 45th state to be admitted to the US of A was Utah, in 1896.

The 45th highest peak in the world is Changste in the Tibetan Himalayas.

+45 is the telephone country code for Denmark.

The 45th post on this blog was written June 26, 2005.

The 45th most livable city in the world according to Business Week is my kind of town: Chicago, IL. (Chitown seems to be tied for 44th with Washington DC, which leaves my home away from home occupying the 45th place on the list.)

The 45th speech on a list of the top 100 American speeches of all times is William Jennings Bryan, with a speech titled "Against Imperialism".

Forty-five is a triangular number, a hexagonal and 16-gonal number, a Kaprekar number, and a Harshad number. (I don't understand a word of that, but it sounds good, doesn't it?)

45 is the atomic number of rhodium, a rare, and (ahem) silvery white transition metal. (Highly appropriate, says the new 45 year old.) It is also a precious metal and one of the most expensive.


Hoy he cumplido 45.
Liking it, so far.

195 Km

This treat landed in my inbox this morning.

I have exactly one photo of myself in my own Camino de Santiago photo collection - me at the 100 kilometer mark. Yet Kilometer 195 was just as memorable.

One day late in October, I shared a day's walk, her last day on the Camino, with the española you see above and the young Camino angel who sent me this photo this morning from Bucharest. It was an all girls day - three nationalities, three women, each in a different decade of life, no one language shared fluently all the way round. The day was magic, with roses for all three of us as we savored good conversation, the scent of rosemary, and the breathtaking beauty of fall golds and browns in the wine country of El Bierzo.

Cheers to a friend in Bucharest this morning for taking me back to the Camino today.

Choose a life

Found on a set of stairs along Salamanca's riverside trail:


Choose a life
Choose a car
Choose a television
Choose a house
Choose a dream
Choose a mate
Choose a beer
Choose a toaster
Choose a team
Choose a game
Choose a drug
Choose savings

Stop thinking about what you choose
and begin to live

Company

I've had company this week. Fellow americana Kathleen escaped from Madrid to the quiet banks of the Río Tormes (rechristened the Río Mel Tormes by a visiting New Yorker) for a few days this week and checked in for her first stay at Casa Wander.

I do love showing off my lovely town, almost as much as I enjoy watching a first time visitor widen his eyes, shake his head and call Salamanca "simply magical". New Yorker friends were in town with Kathleen, which provided the opening for two perfect Salamanca evenings complete with full moon, glowing golden sandstone, delicious Riberas and impecable pinchos. Farinato was the undisputed favorite of the pincho tastings, although huevos rotos, a very tasty bacalao en salsa at Casa Paca, and anything Bambú's straightfaced grillman wanted to throw over his coals (costillas, chorizo, morcilla and panceta this trip) all held their own.

As always, I found myself conducting a Casa Wander orientation of oh-so-many and oh-so-necessary explications about my beloved rented home at check-in. Among them:

-Wriggle that door knob just a little more and I promise the door will open...
-Careful not to overpower the water pressure on that shower or you'll be chilly...
-That? Or that's just the neighbors, did I mention thin walls?

I know I've written about all of these quirks. Which gives me an idea.

I wonder if I should assign the posts about these little household quirks as required reading before an overnight visit here to Erin in wanderland?