OZ On The Water

by Andrea Gross

When I was invited to spend a week sailing off the coast of Maine, I expected to make witty conversation as I toasted nattily-clad fellow passengers with a glass of vintage champagne. You know, like Walter Cronkite, or one of the Kennedys.

The Schooner American EagleAfter all, what did I know about sailing? I grew up in Kansas and Nebraska, two states that are about as removed from the ocean as the Sahara is from the North Pole. 

So you can imagine my surprise when I boarded the American Eagle, an authentic Maine windjammer. Seventy-five years ago she was hauling fish from one port to another; today she carries passengers on cruises around Penobscot Bay.

Despite the loving restoration done by Captain John Foss, nothing can change the fact that I was going to be sleeping in a cabin carved out of the old cargo area, the same place that was once filled with dead fish.

Like Dorothy, I wished I were back in Kansas.

The first night I cracked my head when I sat up in bed. No headroom.

The second day I strained my back when I helped hoist the sails. No know how.

There were only a few canvas chairs on deck, so I found a place on the floor. Whoops — on the deck.

"Wicked nice, isn't it?" asked one of the passengers, a born-and-bred New Englander who'd been sailing all his life. Wicked? That's when I learned that "wicked" means "very" in New England-speak and “cool” in hip-talk. But I’m neither a grizzled Yankee nor a young chick, and where I come from, the word "wicked" is used to describe the Witch of the West and serial murderers.

But by the third day I was sea steady if not exactly sea savvy. When the wind blew hard, the boat seemed to fly, skimming over the water with deck tilted and passengers cheering and laughing. But mostly it moved slowly, giving a sensation of drifting—and dreaming.

Click to read more ...

How Slum Tourism Can Change Your Life

by Andrea Gross; photos by Irv Green

I'm standing in Stung Meanchy, Cambodia's largest garbage dump. The stench is overwhelming, the grit from burned ash covers every inch of my body, and I'm wondering if I made a mistake by forcing everyone in our group to come here.

After all, we'd seen plenty of poverty just driving around the streets of Phnom Penh. We'd even visited the killing fields, where we saw a stupa filled with skulls, a reminder of the more than 200,000 people who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge just thirty years ago. We knew the country was desperately poor, that the people were still too traumatized to rebuild their society.

Did we really need to tour a slum?

But I persisted. Why? Because friends of mine had started a project to rescue children from these slums. I’d seen their photos of Stung Meanchy, and I’d had a hard time believing the horror they depicted.

Now I realize that photographs can’t possibly convey the reality before me. They can’t reproduce the smell of rotting garbage and dead animals; they can’t convey feel of the gravelly particles that swirl around me, making their way, with every breath I take, into my nose, my mouth, my lungs.

Our bus driver hands me a mask. In theory, this will protect me from... from what? I'm afraid to ask. And as I look at the people around me — maskless in the putrid air — I'm embarrassed to put it on.

Men and women — most of whom look very old, although they're probably not — are sorting through the rubble in hopes of finding pieces of plastic or metal that they can sell. On a good day, they earn the equivalent of 50 cents. There aren't a lot of good days.

I take a few tentative steps and see a pile of discarded needles. I pray I won't step on one, pray that the barefoot children who are staring at me won't step on one either. But of course they will. If not today, tomorrow or the next day. This is, after all, the place where used hypodermics come to rest.

Click to read more ...

America’s Secret War Effort

Story by Andrea Gross; photos by Irv Green (unless otherwise noted)

I'm in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the gentleman across the table from me is telling me stories about a time when most Americans, including prominent senators, did the government’s bidding because… Well, just because they trusted the government to do the right thing. No bickering. No complaints. Not even any questions. These stories blow my mind.

On the airplane en route to Tennessee, I’d read articles about more partisan squabbling in Congress, more defiant businessmen, more people trying to advance their own interests at the expense of others. Now it occurs to me that, except for a few weeks after 9/11, I can't remember a time when the people of the United States were really united.

But this gentleman is telling me that such a time existed not so very long ago. “During World War II,” he says, “extraordinary things happened,” and he continues to tell me about the “Secret City” that existed in his neck of the woods.

It happened like this: On August 2, 1939, President Roosevelt received a letter from Albert Einstein stating that there was reason to believe Nazi Germany was developing nuclear capabilities. Roosevelt realized that the United States had no choice but to do likewise — and to it faster.

Thus was born the Manhattan Project, a massive, top-secret, all-out effort by the United States government to develop nuclear capabilities.

Senators and Congressmen authorized the money without debate, knowing only that it was needed for a secret war effort. (Hmmm…. Can you imagine this happening today?)

Click to read more ...

Mom's Story

by Andrea Gross

Ten years, ago I was watching as Charlie Rose interviewed a guest who was publicizing a book about his mom and dad. Rose looked envious. "You know," he said, "I've interviewed thousands of people, but I've never interviewed my parents. I've heard many of their stories, but I've never written them down." I looked closer. Did he have tears in his eyes?

Light bulb: I was working for a major consumer magazine. Like Rose, I spent my time interviewing people who weren't my parents. Mistaken priorities? Definitely.

Two weeks later I was at my parents' apartment, fully outfitted with tape recorder, microphones and all sorts of journalistic paraphernalia. My mom talked non-stop for four days.

Her eyes sparkled as she told stories of flying in a single engine airplane with the handsomest boy in town. She spoke of times that made her laugh, experiences that made her cry, and events that changed her from a young girl concerned only with appearances to a wise woman dedicated to helping others.

Click to read more ...

Learning to Navigate Airport Security

by Andrea Gross

My four-year-old neighbor, a cute kid with the nicely old-fashioned name of Billy, knocks on my door. "Wanna see what Mommy gave me?"

"Sure," I say. (His mother is looking across the yard to make sure her child has safely navigated the few feet of space between our front doors. Can't be too careful these days.)

Billy is carrying a huge box, nearly as big as he is. He hands it to me, I wave to his mother, and we go into my living room.

He unpacks the box. "It catches 'terrists,'" he tells me. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature airport security check point station. I kid you not.

It has seven parts: a baggage x-ray machine, a people metal-detector, three plastic people, a rolling carry-on suitcase that fits in the x-ray machine, and a chair for the person who watches the suitcase in the x-ray machine. The people consist of the following: a traveler, a TSA agent, and a policeman with a gun.

The possibilities for creative play are obviously endless. Traveler tackles policeman. TSA agent gets trapped in metal detector. Policeman shoots x-ray machine. Child has nightmares.... (All people are white and male, but that's a discussion for another time.)

Click to read more ...

Ditching Stress — An experiment

by Andrea Gross

This is the year I diet. Not by going low-cal: been there, done that. This year I'm going low stress. I'm cutting down on stress as surely as last year I cut down on carbs.

It won't be easy. Stress gives me the same high as chocolate and, try as I might, I can't see the glory in taking a vacation in order to relax. But magazines say it's healthy to turn off your mind and revel in doing nothing. I spent 10 years writing for these magazines, so I have a hard time believing them, but what the heck....If Obama can spend an hour a day playing basketball, I can spend a week a year de-stressing. (This works out to Obama being approximately 168 times more important than I am, which seems to me, if anything, an understatement.)

But it's a concept that comforts me during my first hour on the beach. I'd prepared well — brought along a beach chair, towel, sunscreen, hat, snacks, and Wally Lamb's 752-page book, The Hour I First Believed, which proves to be too heavy to hold without straining my wrists. I put down the book and wish I had my computer, the nifty laptop that miraculously connects to the web even in the middle of nowhere. But I left it home, in deference to a hubby who said that after forty years of marriage he deserved four days of Nothing to Do.

I even left my cell phone home. Well, I'd cheated a little on this point. I traded mine, which rings or vibrates with comforting regularity — see, I am important — for my dad's. His never rings because he won't turn it on. "It's only for 911," he says. So I brought along his phone and gave the number to my four kids, so I could maintain the fiction that, in case of real emergency, one of my nearly-forty year old kids call for Mommy. Everyone else, I figured, could wait. I'm not that important, after all. I can check out for a week, and the world will still turn.

Click to read more ...