Marching with Las Madres

In early December 1999, I flew to Buenos Aires to meet my husband Bill who was working in South America. I arrived to find the streets of the city blockaded by banks of police and their motorcycles. Helicopters stuttered overhead. The taxi driver told me it was inauguration day and Argentina's new president, Fernando de la Rua, was moving in ceremonial cavalcade toward to Plaza de Mayo. To get me to the hotel, the driver had to convince the police that we had authorization to enter. I sat very tall and tried to look important as he nervously talked us through.

I'd like to tell you that I immediately dashed into the crowds to watch the inauguration. I’d like to boast that my Spanish was fluent enough to allow me to understand the speech de la Rua made from the balcony at the Casa Rosada. But the reality was that I was fearful of going into the city alone.

Then reason kicked in. I was going to be there for 10 days and Bill would be working most of that time. It was either head into the crowd or spend my vacation at the hotel swimming pool. I chose the crowd.

By the time I found my way to Plaza de Mayo, all that remained of the festive crowds were metal barricades and a ground littered with celebratory paper and political leaflets. I bent down to pick one up and noticed that it lay on what appeared to be the outline of a human body painted on the paving stones. Inside this outline were a name and a date. These painted figures were everywhere. When I straightened up, I bumped into a woman standing near me. I wanted to ask her what these figures symbolized but my Spanish was limited. I'd spent the last two weeks studying phrases like the one that discusses the peculiarities of keeping an elephant in one's house . . . not exactly the words I need now.

I excused myself for bumping her and began to walk away, but she smiled. Encouraged by the warmth of her smile, I decided to use my fractured Spanish to ask her what the symbols meant.

"Ah," she replied, "they are 'los desaparecidos.'" The disappeared! I shuddered. She then took me by the hand and lead me toward the Plaza obelisk where there were other symbols – she told me that the doves were actually kerchiefs. The "panuelos blancos" that symbolize the mothers of "the disappeared" who, since the mid ‘70s have gathered every Thursday in Plaza de Mayo to protest the disappearance of their children.

We sat on the grass to talk because Esther had phlebitis and though she had been warned by her doctor to stay at home with her leg raised, this retired history professor refused to miss such an "important event." She had traveled by bus since early morning from a mountain town several hours away.

We spent the rest of the afternoon together, wandering through historic sites and chatting, and as we talk the barriers imposed by language crumble. I bless the spirit that urged me away from the hotel and into the square. It has enabled me to do what I love best -- to see a place through the eyes of the people who live there.

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2008

See Finding Time for God for Beryl's blog on living a contemplative life in a busy world.

The Argentinian and Brazilian views of Iguazu Falls

In December 1999, I had the opportunity to practice the special blend of insecurity and trust that seems be to the hallmark of an American tourist in South America. A good example concerns our trip to the northeasterly tip of Argentina to view one of the world's greatest wonders: the immense and mighty Iguazu Falls located in the lush subtropical jungles of Brazil and Argentina.

To get to Iguazu, which is in Misiones province, we had to fly over Corrientes, a province that had just erupted into armed violence and which lies directly south of Misiones. Would we need to detour or abort the flight because of the violence in the neighboring state? My worries dissolved as we flew without hitch into Iguazu, only to resurface as we boarded the tour bus that was to take us into the jungles. From there we would be able to view the Garganta del Diablo (the Throat of the Devil): the most fearsome of the falls, forming as it does a huge concave gorge over which the Iguazu river hurls, spewing spray so high it can be seen from miles away.

The cause of this malaise was our bus driver who insisted that we give him our airline tickets. He claimed he needed them to confirm our return flights. I wondered why a bus driver would be responsible for confirming flights that wouldn't take place until the following day. I worried even more about getting them back. Refusing to yield, I clutched the precious tickets tightly. Not until another and more experienced tourist told me that this was normal procedure did I give in.

The following day, despite the fact that although all the other tourists had gotten their tickets back and ours were still missing, we decided to trust yet another stranger. When we'd decided, at the last minute, to fly to Iguazu we'd not had enough time to get visas to enter Brazil. It was only after we'd arrived in Iguazu that we discovered the Brazilian side of the falls should not be missed. The tour agency, however, refused to take us without visas. So, at the instigation of a desk clerk, we sought the help of Omar, an immense and very friendly taxi driver who said he'd try to get us in, mentioning that there would be no charge if he failed. His assurances were not reassuring. I worried more about spending Christmas in a Brazilian jail than spending money for an unsuccessful trip.

Democracy in South America is a far cry from that in the US--only two days earlier I'd marched with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose children (more than 30,000 of them in Argentina alone) had been abducted, tortured, and murdered by South American governments. The number of "disappeared" keeps growing and those responsible have never been brought to justice despite the 29 years of weekly marches these Mothers have organized.

Our Goliath had no trouble getting us across the border but the affair of our abducted tickets was not so easily settled. We arrived at the airport without them. It wasn't til just before boarding time that I spotted the bus driver nonchalantly hanging around outside the terminal. While I guarded the luggage, Bill ran outside to get him, reaching the bus just as that driver pulled away from the curb. Without asking for identification, he handed Bill the tickets and drove off. Unlike the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, our wait yielded the missing tickets but those mothers continue to wait for something incomparably more precious. I thought of them that Christmas, as I give thanks for the birth of the child whose mother also suffered that we might live free and in peace.

Seattle by day and by night

In Seattle, that friendliest of cities, we did something we rarely do. Limited in time and anxious to see all that should be seen, we signed up for two tours, one of the city and one of the Boeing Manufacturing Plant in Everett.

* View from Queen Anne's Hill with Mount Ranier in the distance

I’ve got mixed feelings about such tours because they give only the broadest overview of sights to be seen but it works when time in a particular spot is limited. Here is a running time-table of sites seen while on our tour.

Seattle Center, the site of the 1962 World’s Fair, the space needle, and of the fancifully designed side by side museums of Space and of Rock (musical not geological) our driver gave us 20 minutes to see what we wanted and to take photos. One of our traveling companions -- a businessman from Taiwan -- took this shot of Bill and me under the space needle. The Center was strangely deserted when we arrived, perhaps it was the rather gloomy weather or maybe just too early in the day.

Then it was off to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and Museum where we had 1/2 hour to explore its riches when I could have spent several days, so engrossed was I in the journeys of the men and women who forged the route from Seattle to the Klondike in search of their fortunes. Most of you know of Nordstrom's department store but did you know the founder was a Klondike gold-digger. He sold his mine and used the money to begin a shoe-store and look what happened. An empire!

At Pioneer Square, we had 20 minutes to check out the Waterfall Gardens and take a quick peek into the underground city, the subterranean ruins of the great Seattle fire in 1899 over which the new city of Seattle was built in brick and stone. With little time to investigate anything here, we succumbed to the lure of chocolate and coffee at a local coffee house in the Square.

*street performers at Pike Place Market

We had 40 minutes to traverse the famed Pike Place Market with its street performers and open air fish and produce markets. The barbership quartet pictured here was so good I could have spent the entire 40 minutes listening. Instead we dashed around sampling locally produced cheeses and wines in lieu of lunch.

Then up the winding narrow lanes of the Queen Anne’s Hill (please click this link for some spectacular photos of this view) to one of the best views of Seattle. If I remember correctly, this jaunt was not included in the official tour but was provided kindness of our tour guide. So up those narrow residential streets we went in a vehicle much too large for such a jaunt that got a bit too friendly with a parked car while en-route. Because of this encounter, we had more time than we would otherwise have had to enjoy and snap photos of the Seattle Bay and Mt. Ranier shining golden in the distance, probably 20 minutes.

Because our hotel was the most distant, and because the tour was running late (hmmmm!) our driver gladly dropped Bill and I off near the world-famous Elliott Bay Book Company – a must see for book lovers. While there I was delighted to find they actually had two copies of my book in stock. I signed these books and then zipped off to check each book store story [sorry couldn't resist the pun]. We left the store with several bags of books we couldn't resist. As our bookshelves overflow with more books yet to be read, we wonder if there is a BA (bookaholic) support group we could join. Any suggestions out there?

Still carrying our bags of books, Bill and I walked to the famed Seattle Waterfront, where we wandered in the lovely evening air and looked for a place to eat, finally settling at Seattle’s most historic seafood restaurant Ivar’s Acres of Clams located on Pier 54 where we dined sumptuously [well, that's a bit of an exaggeration but the food was good] on their famous clam chowder and delicious wild Alaskan Salmon. We then headed off to catch a movie, something we always do when in a city of any size, movie house deprived as we are on Lake Superior's north shore in Minnesota.

* a group practicing water survival on the waterfront

Seattle is spectacular by night, a veritable shining kingdom of lights. On our bus ride to the uphill, upscale, downtown area, we sat with our faces glued to the windows. Returning to the hotel by bus would have taken over two hours and as we had another full day on the morrow when at 6 a.m. we would be picked up for the Boeing Future of Flight and Factory Tour in Everett, we succumbed to the luxury of a taxi back.

Canyon Lake AZ: Traveling with the departed

I hadn’t realized when we began our drive to Saguaro and Canyon Lake near Mesa AZ that we’d be heading to the mountain lake my daughter Francesca told me about during her brief sojourn working in Phoenix when she was 19, but as we climbed into those arid mountains her words came back to me.

“Oh, Mama. You’d love it. The lake is tucked right into the mountains. You can’t imagine the view from the rocks. Oh I do wish you’d see it.” Her excitement had bubbled over the phone lines from Arizona to Minnesota.

My husband and I had chosen the perfect time to spend a few days in Phoenix. Everything was blooming, including the desert. I was stunned by the wonderful colors of the arid heights – the rocky cliffs striated in ocher and burnt orange, the sweeping expanses of blue and lavender, red and yellow flowers spreading above and below us.


Since Francesca’s death in 2001, I’ve carried that beautiful child with me in my heart to all the places we’d traveled since then. I'd so wanted her to see them. But here, as we topped Canyon Lake she was showing me.

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2008

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006. She is a columnist for the Cook County News Herald and has been published in anthologies and periodicals nationwide.

Morning at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Phoenix

On a bright March 15 morning, we traveled east from Phoenix on Highway 60 to visit the Boyce Thompson Arboretum where desert plants from around the world are featured in landscapes reflecting other desert environments –

Africa, Australia, South America, the Canary Islands, and the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico, west Texas, and southern New Mexico. My husband Bill and I got so carried away that we took well over 100 photos. Don't run, I'm only posting a couple here!

My favorite landscape and hike was the High Trail through the Upper Sonoran Natural Area.

The rocks looked like they’d been poured in blobs from some heavenly sand bucket.

We saw no rattlesnakes but we didn’t go looking for them. Besides, from what I understand rattlesnakes don’t show themselves until it gets a bit warmer.



The photo to the left is of a Blue Elf Aloe (pretty big for an elf wouldn't you say?)

And, check out the bark on the Mount Atlas Mastic Tree to the right. Beautiful even if it resembles anf elephants hide.


Several hours of browsing through the Arboretum aroused in us a “powerful thirst.” so we traveled to the historic mining town of Superior AZ – not quite a ghost town but almost -- with the only affluence reflected in the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

The town center was restaurant free, so we headed back to the highway and stopped at Buckboard City Café, which also boasts the world’s smallest museum.

The café’s charm lay not so much in its food which was hearty and good, but in its ranch town frontage, rustic interior,
and the amazing sculptures built from discarded household, farming, and mining paraphernalia.

The lovely piece to the right is called Hard Labor Falls, though I was hard pressed to find any falls trickling from those wheelbarrows.

Satiated, we were ready for our next journey, this one to Saguaro and Canyon Lakes, the subjects of my next post.

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2008

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006. She is a columnist for the Cook County News Herald and has been published in anthologies and periodicals nationwide. See Road Writer for her travel blog.

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

As soon as I arrived in Phoenix, having escaped yet another Minnesota blizzard in mid March, my husband Bill and I set out for Tucson to see the Pima Air and Space Museum, a trip which excited him more than it excited me. However, while on the way, a sign announcing the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument -- an amazing Native American Structure built around the year 1,000 A.D. when Leiv Erickson was landing somewhere along the coast of Newfoundland sent us on a several hour detour (how could I let a national monument pass without stopping?).

The interpretive visitor center at the monument is impressive with its large selection of beautifully presented exhibits on the life of the ancient Hohokam farming community that built the mysterious Casa Grande -- yet another example of the wonderful museums and interpretive centers found in our national and state parks for which I felt a great deal of gratitude.

Built without metal tools, the Casa Grande -- with four feet thick walls to support four stories, was built by ancient natives who somehow moved more than 30,000 tons of the rock-hard caliche found in the area, softening it with water and carrying it to the site where they had to work quickly to shape the huge blocks before the caliche dried. These natives, obvious engineering geniuses, also created an irrigation system of over 300 miles to carry water from a mountain lake to their desert farms – a canal system that is still in use in some places around Phoenix.

Because we stopped at Casa Grande, and because Tucson was farther away than we expected, we arrived at Pima Air and Space Museum just as it was closing. Instead of walking past hundreds of beautifully restored airplanes and bombers, we got to drive past miles and miles of junked planes on the other side of the road.

We stopped at the El Mercado shopping center in Tucson to dine sumptuously (I had an amazing combination of Mexican style seafood specialties) at El Charo on a rather strange covered terrace that reminded me of the rustic seafood huts lining tropical beaches on Caribbean Islands.

Tired but well fed, we drove the 100 or so miles back to Phoenix and toppled into our comfortable hotel beds. Our agenda for the next day (and my next post) concerns a walking tour through the Boyce Thompson Desert Arboretum State Park 55 miles due east of Phoenix.

Visiting the Cloisters in New York

When the weather was fine, I loved walking New York’s cross-town, uptown, and downtown
streets getting from one Pen Festival event to another. But when the weather was lousy, I learned to ride the subway: to read a subway map, to decipher what routes to take, to buy a pass, find the right platforms and transfer to another train.

I also learned that subway riders still yield their seats to the aged and infirm because they always stood so I could sit (not that I consider myself either aged or infirm). Sitting on a wildly swaying subway car that jars to stops and lurches to starts has a distinct advantage to standing, even when supported by a wall of standing riders like oneself.

On Sunday, May 4, the day I was to fly home, I decided to ride the subway uptown to 190th Street to visit The Cloisters in Fort Tyron Park.

To get to the Cloisters, I needed to take the E train to Grand Central Station, then transfer to the A train to 190th Street. I didn’t know that on weekends the A train doesn’t run to 190th Street, that one has to exit at 168th Street where a shuttle bus would complete the rest of the trip. What I also didn’t know was that there were two shuttles, one going to the 190th Overlook Terrace station within the park, and another that went elsewhere. Guess what one I got on?

When I asked for directions to The Cloisters, my bus driver was perplexed. “I’m going to the Cloisters too,” the pretty teenager behind me added. "I'm supposed to meet my class there. I took the train in from Long Island."

By that time we’d already passed 190th Street (no bus stop there!). The bus driver pulled to a stop and told us to head "that way." He waved his hand vaguely toward the west, so we walked back to 190th and headed west, finding ourselves in a residential neighborhood at the base of a cliff. I told the teen that I knew the cloisters "overlooked the Hudson, so they must be up there." I pointed upward.

"They are? Why are there no signs?" she said. She obviously didn't trust my information. She was worried. She was already 40 minutes late. What if her class had already left?

How did I know why there were no signs? I was as stymied as she was. I don't think my "It's got to be around here somewhere," reassured her.

"Are the cloisters around here?" I asked two young women pushing baby strollers.

They didn't know but told us there was a park "up that way." Anna, the teenager and I turned in the direction of "the park," and eventually we found a stairway leading up.

Still no signs. We climbed a mile or more of stairs. We encountered a lady walking a dog. She told us we were heading in the right direction. "I better take you there," she said. "Too many paths that might confuse you."

Anna and I sighed with relief. We'd made it. I lost sight of her there as she hurried off to find her class. There were several classes touring the site, but though I looked for her among them as I walked through the museum, she never reappeared.

I lived in New Jersey for years before moving to Minnesota 30 years ago but had never visited the cloisters which were built in 1938 to house art works from the Middle Ages within a structure replicating their original functions: cloisters, chapels, great rooms , gardens. Original stone portals, asps, cloister pillars, and courtyards and astounding sculptures, windows, tapestries, paintings, and manuscripts. My journey through this work of art was one of prayer, awe, wonder, and peace.