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I was a passenger in the back seat, not really paying attention as we drove through north Oakland, when someone in the front seat turned around and blurted out, “Have you ever been to the Khyber Pass?” It took a minute to register and wonder where this question was coming from before I sheepishly admitted that, why yes, I had been there, but it was a long time ago.

Cyrus, Darius I, Genghis Khan, Mongols, Sikhs, Afghans, and British all crossed or vied for the Pass. Still to come would be its incarnation as part of the “hippie trail” to India, and its role as a supply route for the war in Afghanistan.

It must have been 1963 when our family boarded the PIA (Pakistan International Airways) flight from Dacca to Karachi. East and West Pakistan were still nominally one, loosely joined by the airline and the Muslim religion. We were living in the East while my father completed a two-year posting as an agricultural advisor to the government; this would be a chance to see a bit beyond Dacca and the flat green waterlogged delta of jute and rice fields where the Brahmaputra spread into the Bay of Bengal.

Karachi was a big urban sprawl of cement, and really just a stopover on the way to Lahore, an historic city famous for its annual spring horse show. Not that we were horse people, but my mother anticipated a great spectacle with pageantry and competitions, crowds and colors, tradition come to life. I remember the huge arena and its grandstands, with a good view of the greyhounds racing after a rabbit lure. But the big event was the tent-pegging, supposedly born from military exploits where mounted warriors would swoop through the enemy camp, impaling the tent pegs with their lances and thereby collapsing the tents on the foe. Certainly the British must have been on the receiving end. For the competition, pairs of colorfully-clad horsemen galloped down the field, lances held forward and low, leaning to one side to catch the pegs planted in the ground and then hoisting the prize overhead in triumph when successful.

At least as memorable for us kids was the visit to “Kim’s cannon”, famous from the Kipling book. My younger sister and I both took turns astride the cannon and got small wooden versions as souvenirs.

Peshawar was the next stop, considerably smaller and more remote amidst dry mountains. We were staying at some sort of spread-out hotel, and as we were arriving, my sister and I spied a couple of American girls about our age. While parents unloaded luggage, we made instant friends with the girls, learning their names (Nais and Raisa), finding out they had been there a few days already, and joining them in a game they had invented, jumping over small hedges between the walkway and patch of lawn. Great fun until I leapt and landed on a bent ankle, which swelled and hurt and brought my parents out to check the damage. I needed to see a doctor. Now what?

Somehow my parents determined that there were some services offered at an old fort, where there were apparently a few British remnants providing medical care we might be able to access. We managed to get there, me limping heavily, just in time to be advised that there would be a bit of a wait, as they were have a tea party to celebrate a battle at the fort, where the British were thoroughly destroyed. At least that is the story my mother told, finding it all just terribly and amusingly British. Eventually I was examined, X-rays taken, assured there was no fracture, and sent off with the ankle in an elastic wrap.  By the time we got back to the hotel, our new friends had left (although we did, improbably, meet again in Michigan years later).

At last we come to the Khyber Pass part of the story. Google tells me that Peshawar is about 60 km from the Khyber Pass, famous from its days as part of the Silk Road and as a strategic military location. Google also notes that, among others, Cyrus, Darius I, Genghis Khan, Mongols, Sikhs, Afghans, and British all crossed or vied for the Pass. Still to come would be its incarnation as part of the “hippie trail” to India, and its role as a supply route for the war in Afghanistan. Even though I couldn’t walk around Peshawar much, I could at least travel to see the historic spot. We must have arranged for a car to take us there, winding through the rough countryside to an unimposing crest in the road with a bar across it and a guard with traditional hat and a gun. After some discussion, the guard reluctantly tolerated my sister and I to stand for just a moment with one foot in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan. And so, technically, brief though it was, I had indeed been to the Khyber Pass.

But back in Oakland, before I could delve into this long-winded explanation, I was suddenly chagrined to realize they were asking whether or not I had been to the Afghani restaurant we had just passed by. In fact, I had not eaten there, and despite good intentions never did (it was founded in 1968 but has been closed for some time now–I missed my chance). In any case, the correct answer to their question was no, I have never been to the “Khyber Pass”.

The train from Long Island into the city was laggardly clacking away the evening of December 31, 1968. It was taking me to a transfer station, where I would have to take a second train to reach Grand Central and it was hopeless; that train was long gone by the time we arrived. There was another, later, train which I trundled onto, but it would arrive too late to meet my buddies for New Years Eve in Times Square.

Meeting my buddies in Times Square on New Years Eve--what could go wrong?

My plan admittedly had the marks of youth and wishful thinking. I was a freshman in college and had gone home to Bethesda for the winter break. The idea was: visit my roommate at her family home in Long Island, then leave her to meet up with a couple of freshman guys who would come down from Connecticut for New Years Eve at Times Square, take the train with them back to one of their houses and then go back to Cambridge for the next semester. What could go wrong? I may have described this plan to my parents as visiting my roommate’s family and then returning to school. The New York City part fell into the category of things I didn’t think they really wanted to know.

Grand Central was pretty deserted as we pulled in after midnight. I didn’t know New York, and didn’t have a backup plan. Also, of course, no cell phone or internet, as they didn’t exist outside of Dick Tracy cartoons. The train platform was dark. I made my way a bit numbly towards the exit. A couple of shadowy figures approached.

Screams of elation! They were my friends! They had come to meet the train I was supposed to be on, hadn’t found me and thought maybe I had a change of heart. They went on to Times Square for the crowd and ball drop, but after midnight, still a bit worried, they decided to check back to see if there had been a delay (more savvy about the transportation snafus than I) and if I had come on a later train. They had just about given up.

Buoyed by the good fortune, we rambled the downtown streets to drink in the New Years remnants. The Square was nearly empty. One of the guys had gone to Music and Arts High School and knew his way around, suggested we stop by WBAI to wave at the programmers there. They also knew how to catch the special 3 a.m. train that only ran on New Years, taking people out of the city towards Connecticut. This train was packed with bleary partyers, some of them weaving from one end of the train to the other while passengers gradually departed with each stop.

By early morning, we arrived in Stamford and the safety of my friend’s home, as if nothing had gone awry. It was 1969 now, and the coming years would bring more travels, friends, lovers, demonstrations, and experiences that I never told my parents about. I don’t really regret that they never heard those stories since they would just have worried more. I’m sure I never heard all of theirs either.

I don’t remember exactly how I met Peter. He was a year behind me in school, and maybe we met on a youth group day hike up Old Rag, a peak in the Appalachians that required a fair bit of rock scrambling to the top. His father was a member of the PATC (Potomac Appalachian Trail Club), helped with trail maintenance, and also had access to cabins along the trail. When Peter asked if I wanted to go on their family outing to Doyle River cabin for the weekend, I, knowing nothing, of course answered, “yes!”

Snow had fallen overnight, and when we arrived at Skyline, the road was closed. The trip was ruined.

It was perhaps November when we headed out to Front Royal and Skyline Drive, which winds along the ridgeline of the low Appalachians. The cabin was supposed to be just a short walk from the road, where we would spend the night and hike a bit before returning the next day. But no. Snow had fallen overnight, and when we arrived at Skyline, the road was closed. The trip was ruined.

But Peter’s dad, Phil, was not giving up. He had a carful of kids aged 6 to 16, plus supplies; I think his wife had wisely decided not to come. Phil was a man of few words but silent determination. There must be another way. The map came out, calculations were made, and many miles later we ended up in a valley by a dirt trail that he figured ought to connect with the cabin, after some unclear distance of trekking of uphill. I couldn’t believe we were really doing this. It was nothing my own family would even consider.

This was also before the sports industrial complex boomed, before gortex and ergonomic packs and gear, but I was unequipped even by standards of the day. My winter boots were thin street wear, with no tread, and they quickly soaked through. I had a suitcase. The six-year old lugged one too. I must have borrowed a sleeping bag. Among other supplies, we ferried a big sack with a large and heavy metal Mongolian pepper pot up a very long, very steep trail, which gradually led into the snow line where we then slipped as we trudged and panted. I think only my youth saved me.

Hours later, in the fading daylight, we reached the cabin, cold, dim and basic, with an outhouse in the snow. In that unpromising destination, somehow Coleman lanterns with mysterious kerosene wicks were lit and a fire started. Phil had grown up in China, and the pepper pot was his idea. We filled it with snow water to boil. Oops, we didn’t have soy sauce. Ketchup will do. Oops, no bean paste—peanut butter will do. I have no idea what we finally threw together, but it was hot and delicious in the way only improvised camp food can be, and we all laughed together.

The next morning, the snow had melted. Skyline Drive, now cleared for traffic, was indeed steps away from the cabin. But, of course, the car was at the bottom of the hill, so we ended up with a righteous hike both up and down through the woods. He said nothing, but as we finally piled back in for the ride home, I imagine Phil might have felt satisfied that he had successfully improvised and salvaged the trip. In any case, it impressed me as I learned what a little knowledge, persistence and invention could do.

Peter and I went on to do lots of hikes, canoe trips and bike rides over the next couple of years, including more misadventures–all of which we survived. We stayed friends. I remember standing on a bridge over a creek in the Shenandoahs, with the sun shining down as we rested before heading on the next trail section. The moment was perfect. We were never romantically involved, but we laughed and were good company, willing companions. I loved him for being my friend.

Fall was when I thought each year began. September was my birthday, it was the start of a new school year, the sticky summer was through, the air was crisp and I might even have some new clothes. Of course it was my favorite.

September was my birthday, it was the start of a new school year, the sticky summer was through, the air was crisp and I might even have some new clothes. Of course it was my favorite.

I learned to love fall when we moved to four-season Michigan in 1955, but didn’t always have it in my life. I remember little of early childhood in St. Louis except that it was very hot and we could only sleep with the help of a fan, which I knocked over and then got in trouble. And seasons in Vietnam? Hot again, and humid. The only relief was a trip to the highlands where pine trees grew and it was slightly reminiscent of the fresh air of fall of four-season Michigan. Then in East Pakistan, the choices were dry and wet seasons. The monsoons were ferocious, with widespread flooding. The slightly cooler dry season was still hot. We ate seasonal okra and pumpkin.

When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area as a young adult, I discovered that the weather swung wildly depending on your micro-climate. In the western parts of the city it was cold and foggy all summer but over the eastern crest of the East Bay Hills it would swelter. The radio’s daily forecast was invariably, “Night and morning fog, clearing inland. Highs 60’s to 90’s.” If you traveled away in the summer, it was a relief to return home to the fresh air of the fog. In February, you could drive to snow many feet deep in the Sierra Nevada and then return through blooming orchards in the Central Valley. And yet, there was still a real fall in Oakland to savor, with leaves turning color by November, the nights becoming cold, and even a rare few flakes of snow drifting down in upper elevations.

In October of 1991, the Santa Ana winds ripped through the Oakland HIlls following a long drought. All the vegetation was desiccated and a spark turned into a conflagration, incinerating thousands of homes and costing 25 lives. After that, fall felt more like a time of danger. When the hot dry wind blew from the east, I recognized it as the fire wind. A dull anxiety permeated everything until the days shortened, the wind shifted, and the cool ocean air returned.

Of course, California has always had a fire ecology, so periodic fires were nothing new there or in many parts of the west. There was a large fire on Okanagan Mountain in British Columbia the year before I moved there. But in the past twenty years, as the planet has warmed, the fires have become fiercer and more frequent. Towns like Paradise, California and Lytton, BC have been completely consumed. In 2016 the entire population of 70,000 in Fort McMurray, AB was evacuated as fire raged. Smoke from Canada, Washington, Oregon, California has darkened summer skies across the continent even as far as New York City. And that is just in North America. The weather reports regularly include heat, UV index, precipitation, and smoke. There is a new season that seems determined to stay indefinitely—fire season.

I have a deep sorrow that other children may not know the seasons I grew up with, and even deeper sorrow that we humans have the knowledge but maybe not the wherewithal to change. We will know all too soon. Still, the earth remains tilted on its axis and weather will continue to change as the planet makes its yearly revolution around the sun. It still gets cooler towards the end of the year in the northern hemisphere.  Spirits can lift even as darkness increases, since it means fire season may wane.  After that, what is left of fall still brings its welcome promise of relief and a chance to start over.

I cringed as the ill-fitting white coat was placed on my shoulders.  We were a gaggle of first year medical students traipsing after the pulmonologist to learn how to examine a chest, and I did not have my own white coat.  Did I even own one yet?

We had all waltzed into the patient room with no real introduction and were bade to proceed with an exam.  It was early days and I felt it was a fraud to pretend I was anything close to a doctor, especially as we were referred to as “doctors”.  I was chagrined to be one of the crowd thrusting our cold stethoscopes on the fragile chest of the sick woman, whose name or consent I never heard, tapping on her back, asking her to say “eee” and “”aayy” repeatedly.  I murmured apologetic thank you’s to her.  So much seemed wrong.

We were told that we would be changed by our medical training.  Our tender idealism would be transformed by long hours and hard work.  And yet we students tried to forestall that by banding together in support groups, which helped a bit in the first two years before we scattered to disparate shifts in hospitals throughout the city and ultimately to postgraduate training.

What was wrong?  Medicine in 1973 was overwhelmingly dominated by white men, often paternalistic and unquestioned. Women were nurses or other staff, and support services heavily non-white, reflecting the rest of the social strata.  Our medical school class was unusual in the relatively large proportion of women (almost 25%) and “minorities”, the advancing edge of change.  Medical culture lagged far behind however.

I had volunteered in women’s health clinics and free clinics , which tried to change the paradigm.  We hoped to empower people with knowledge—especially about reproductive health—in a supportive and respectful environment. We researched common medical issues and produced educational sheets accompanied by hand-drawn diagrams of yeast hyphae or trichimonads. We didn’t wear white coats.  Many people, including medical students, wanted medicine to transform.

The white coat became a point of contention.  Some students felt it symbolized the power disparities between medical professionals and patients, and caused them to be objectified.  Others thought it was a sign of respect for the patients—certainly better than jeans and tee shirts—and created a healthy professionalism.

When the coat was forcibly placed on my shoulders, it seemed like they were trying to squeeze me into a mold I rejected.  Once freed from the constraints of the training programs, I jettisoned the coat. And I maintained connections with community and women’s clinics.  Maybe I was changed by medical training as we had been warned we would be, but I hoped not too much.

We were told that we would be changed by our medical training. Our tender idealism would be transformed by long hours and hard work.

Four women past a certain age swapping stories: no way!—you worked at the post office too?  Every single one. Ask around and you will see—it was almost a rite of passage.

The many beauties of the Post Office included the fact that you didn’t need a degree or experience—just the ability to score well on a test with number sequences and literacy.  There was the undeniable lure of the pay—a princely three and a half dollars an hour, more than double minimum wage in the early 1970’s—thanks to a strong union.  One could live on that. And there were more benefits if you reached permanent status.

For me, it was the first decent job I had even though it was only over the Christmas rush.  The Oakland Sectional Center Facility, where I was assigned, was an enormous concrete block of a building where mail was distributed to smaller offices.  It processed vast amounts of second class “junk” mail—flyers, magazines, catalogues—and packages arriving from overseas by ship or plane, festooned with green customs slips.  And of course first class mail too, including lots of Christmas cards long before they became a twentieth century relic.

We new hires got our orientation and security badges.  Learned how the time clocks worked, the exact minutes of break or lunch hour.  I don’t recall that they mentioned the catwalks over the work floor where we could be observed or the spot checks to make sure we were tossing the mail into the right bags, but it became evident soon enough.  It might be possible for, say, a Playboy magazine to be misdirected just out of spite.

They called it “tossing” the mail, and that was exactly right—we would literally fling the second class items while standing in front of a bank of maybe eight sacks in a rack two deep, each with a different zip code.  The first class letters were “cased” into a grid of cubicles and sometimes it would bring a smile to see the holiday cards in brightly colored envelopes with fancy writing and special stamps.  The parcel post was physically challenging, as the boxes—some quite large and heavy—quickly poured off the conveyor belts and had to be moved off to the right sorting station.

It was kind of enjoyable to those of us with a taste for organization and I was getting better at it each day.  Then I heard from the regular employees that the workload was not as much as expected that year, and if we worked too fast, we would get sent home early.  Lower pay check.  So, steady but not too fast if you know what I mean.

One day, a friendly fellow with some supervisory responsibility asked if I would like to get some lunch nearby.  We didn’t have much time to do that—every minute was tracked and we had to negotiate getting in and out of the building and fit in lunch besides.  He knew a place across the street with soul food.  Would I like to try?  Of course I would.

West Oakland had been a center of a vibrant African-American community of the diaspora until urban renewal destroyed most of it, but there were a few remnants.  The restaurant we went to was humble but turned out savoury greens, cornbread and BBQ.  My companion made conversation—who were my heroes?  Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin?  Oh god, no.  They were too counter -culture, unserious and lacked class analysis.  But I couldn’t come up with anyone.  Who were his heroes?  Well, for men, it was definitely Malcom X—“Saint Malcolm”.  And for women—he hesitated and got a dreamy look as if conjuring up her presence—the incomparable Nina Simone!

We got back to work almost ten minutes late.  I was worried about consequences—I needed the job and, as a temp, could be summarily dismissed.  My partner in crime just smiled and reassured me I had no worries.  His job was monitoring the time clock. I wouldn’t have a problem.

I learned the age-old lesson that it isn’t what you know, but who you know.

For me, it was the first decent job I had even though it was only over the Christmas rush.

I remember at least two things from kindergarten. One was the wonderful feel of fingerpaints as they spread across the paper, inevitably making a mess, with the bright blues and reds and yellows turning into mud. The other was getting my blanket out of my cubbyhole, laying it on the floor next to my classmates, and then trying to take a nap as the teacher tiptoed around us. Oh, and there were milk and cookies afterwards.

There were milk and cookies afterwards.

Later, when we lived in the tropics, I remember my mother extolling the virtues of the afternoon siesta, though she seemed to need it more than the kids did. And much later, when I started being “on call” during medical training, sleep became a real issue for me.

My senior resident, Neil, encouraged our team, whenever possible, to have dinner in the hospital cafeteria and then hit the call room for whatever nap we could get before nighttime admissions came rolling in. The call room at San Francisco General then was kind of a bunkhouse, with pagers going off in the dark and bleary interns scurrying off as needed, so it was rarely restful. I learned that if I could get four hours of uninterrupted sleep in a night, I was semi-functional. And when sleep-deprived, not as nice a person as I wanted to be.

Some people have the gift of nap. I am not one of them. As an intern, I would lie awake dreading a call, trying not to conjure one up by thinking about it, then jumping in a startle when it happened. As years went by, It became a little easier but always a strain. I figured out ways to adjust my schedule the day after call so I could continue. It wasn’t until I finally retired from patient care that I could count on an uninterrupted sleep.

Except that now I find myself lying awake, ruminating over the problems of the world and not solving them. Breathe, I intone. Let it go. Don’t finish the sudoku now. Oops, have to pee. Why is no position comfortable any more? Coffee, once a friend, can only be drunk first things in the morning without repercussions.

And then, during the day, when things are quiet, sometimes I sneak back under the covers and blissfully nap. Sometimes I even have milk and cookies.

Driving on the wrong side of the one-lane roads in rural Scotland was a challenge. We were following an old English Ordnance map, looking for the elusive “Breach”, which showed up as a thinly-lettered dot in Banffshire. Was it a town, a hamlet, an existing site? All we knew was that it had appeared on some old marriage and birth records as far back I could trace my Scottish relatives, and we wanted to see it.

Was it a town, a hamlet, an existing site? All we knew was that it had appeared on some old marriage and birth records as far back I could trace my Scottish relatives, and we wanted to see it.

Maneuvering map and searching the countryside, we came upon a farmhouse set back from the road, surrounded by golden fields and a post by the gate clearly marked “Breach”. Bingo! It had been, and still was, the name of a farm, “my” farm. This was the spot from which my ancestors had migrated to other parts of Scotland and then to Canada and the US.

The small nearby town of Fordyce was full of old stone buildings, churches, streets and walls which didn’t seem to have changed much for quite a while. Its cemetery was full of stones commemorating people whose names corresponded with our genealogic research. It truly felt like stepping back in time.

The little museum wasn’t open, but the woman at the local café lent us the key to the Joiner’s Workshop, which had some local history—including a book with pictures of “the Hendrys of Cairnton”. Other old records showed that some of the family had indeed moved there, and a little more nosing about showed that Cairnton was the farm abutting Breach. We set out to explore more.

Still following the ordnance map, we found another farmhouse with a sign marked “Cairnton” and even better, a notation on the map of a cairn on a hill above the farm. Scotland is full of old standing stones and cairns, and maybe we could find this one. We drove up and down along the little lanes, trying to get close to the location and peering deeply at every little bump and outcropping that might be a cairn.

As we were parked on the side of the road, binoculars scouring the fields, a fellow drove up and asked suspiciously if we needed some help. Once we explained our quest, he had lots of information. It turned out that the cairn was there no more—it had been dynamited sometime back when evidence of a Pictish silver hoard was discovered on the hill. Alas, they never found the urn they thought might be there, but bits of silver ended up in some museum in Banff.

The helpful fellow turned out to be the current owner of Breach! No relation to me apparently, but we didn’t dig too far. He described how the whole area was basically owned by the fabulously wealthy English Seafields, who still leased the land to the farmers as they had for centuries. Today, they rule with a light hand, and those who occupy the farms own them in all but name. He allowed that the current reigning Seafield was a bit of a playboy and word was that Seafield, in fact, no longer owned Breach because he lost it on a gambling bet.

Looking across the golden fields, worthy of a Sting song, I asked what they grew. Barley, of course! For scotch whiskey. Who bought the crop from Breach? Glenfiddich, McCallen, and the Strathisla single malt in the Chivas blend. Needless to say, we got a taste of each one before we left Scotland, for auld lang syne.

The poppies bloom in Canada in November, the plastic red petals embellishing lapels, commemorating Veteran’s/Remembrance Day. This year it is fitting to recall that 2024 is the 80th anniversary of D-day, the joint Allied invasion on the beaches of Normandy to liberate France from the Nazis. In the end, the Allies won, Hitler was defeated, the horrors of the Nazis and fascists repulsed.

2024 is the 80th anniversary of D-day, the joint Allied invasion on the beaches of Normandy to liberate France from the Nazis.

WWII veterans, “the greatest generation”, made trips in their later years to the graveyards and beaches of Normandy on honor tours, until only the centenarians remained. The baby boomers, their children, still carry the memories second-hand as they, too, fade.

The tides that brought the Allies to Europe’s shore seem to have shifted, and overt fascists are flooding back. The democracies that so many fought to protect have elected them. What beaches, literally or figuratively, lie ahead?

I had a vague familiarity with the digeridoo and some of the paintings. What to expect?

We weren’t sure what to expect when the Gay Games came to Australia. Tom Waddell, a gay Olympian, spearheaded the first games in 1982 in San Francisco as the “Gay Olympics”, where athletes of all orientations could compete openly in sports they loved. Being an “out” athlete then was unthinkable. The International Olympic Committee promptly sued him, despite the apparently benign Special Olympics, Police Olympics, and even the Crab Olympics that had used the name. Nonetheless, the renamed “Gay Games” survived and thrived. After two cycles in San Francisco, they opened in Vancouver Canada, New York City, Amsterdam, and in 2002—Sydney Australia.

The Games stressed inclusion, featured culture and supported the struggle against homophobia. They were a happy, supportive gatherings of thousands of people from around the world (and continue to this day—the next ones will be in Spain in 2026). Where else could you find such a grand weeklong celebration with activities such as cheerleading, choirs, marching bands, same-sex ballroom dancing and figure skating along with field sports, swimming and diving, tennis, bowling, billiards, softball—not to mention music and parties?

In Sydney, the Games took advantage of the sports venues spruced up for the recent IOC Olympics of 2000, and the Games’ opening ceremony was held in the same big stadium, choreographed in part by the same people. We signed up for tickets for events throughout the week, spread across the city. One of them was for an evening celebrating aboriginal culture held in a neighborhood venue. I didn’t know much about aboriginal culture and the history of Australia, except that it was dismal and racist, but was keen to learn more. I had a vague familiarity with the digeridoo and some of the paintings. What to expect?

The venue was pretty low key, a small theatre with a stage and simple lighting but with a full house. There ensued a series of acts that featured local talent, mostly singing. I really hadn’t expected country music with a guitar and cowboy hat, but it was interesting. Not a digeridoo in sight. Of course, this was an urban event, but it really didn’t include what I had imagined–some sort of traditional performances.

And then the lights went down, and the grand finale show-stopper came on to the unmistakable bass of an electric guitar. Out came the most magnificent incarnation of Tina Turner, with huge blonde spiky wig, form-fitting slinky dress and high heels, crooning the sweet opening lines of Proud Mary. As she geared up, the aboriginal drag queen brought the song into its super-energetic explosion of “rolling on the river”, dancing feverishly and lighting up the stage. The crowd was ecstatic. She did Tina proud indeed.

Wow. Just wow. I was schooled.