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Born Sholem Rabinowitz, or Solomon Rabinovich, Yiddish-language author Shalom Aleichem portrayed dreamers, schemers and eternal optimists with tremendous wit and affection. “Fiddler on the Roof” was based on some of his stories. September’s photo shows a statue of him, located on Rognidynska Street in his hometown of Kiev, Ukraine.
I stood on a hill overlooking a wintry landscape of dry fields stretching as far as the eye could see. All around me were stone jars. Enormous stone jars. Some stood six feet high. Some were no longer upright but tilted precariously. Others lay flat on the ground. My husband, Paul, moved from one jar to the next, standing on tiptoe to peer inside, hoping to discover. . . bones, ashes, undiscovered treasure?
by Ed Kinney
by Roger Canfield, Contributing Editor
My daughter, who is a medical missionary in Togo, said she needed an international driver’s license to drive in Ghana for supplies. I was going to get one for her, so I went on the Internet and found all kinds of websites for these licenses. Of course, each wanted my credit card number, etc., in order to process the paperwork.
A quick comment on cell-phone parking lots at U.S. airports, mentioned in the September ’07 issue, page 2. . . In July ’07 we had occasion to try the lot at Orlando International Airport while collecting some members of the London Symphony Orchestra for the Florida International Festival in Daytona Beach.
This was not the greatest experience, as the lot was only half paved and had no information except a board showing which airlines arrived at which terminal.
I was in Thailand in February ’07 and made four cash withdrawals at ATMs using my Visa card. The withdrawals totaled $1,152.
We have used our ATM card around the world and never had a problem. What a shock to find it would not work in Portugal, of all places, in May ’07. Two banks verified that the ATM system that works through MasterCard had been down for weeks.
Our travel friends were able to bail us out, thank goodness (their card had a Visa symbol on it instead of MasterCard), but we ran into other couples who were stranded and trying to get money wired from the USA.
On our trip to the Azores in spring 2006, in the town of Velas on the island of São Jorge I went one morning to withdraw money from the ATM at the local bank. The screen gave me a message that the machine was not, at the time, operative. Needing cash that day, I went inside the bank and asked the teller if I could withdraw money.
“Of course,” was the reply.