LLWorldTour

Has a movie ever inspired you to travel?  This is not that uncommon, in fact, my friend Mark and I visited Tokyo after seeing Lost in Translation. He called me up and said, “Want to go to Japan?”

“Sure,” I said. And we were off…well, not that same day, but you get the point.  Basically if I have the opportunity to go anywhere, I will. All you have to do is ask. Ask me…go ahead…I am waiting…oh, okay, I guess I’ll get on with the rest of this article.

It turns out, we are not the only ones traveling to far off lands after being inspired by a film. Nowadays, a growing vacation trend is themed trips focusing on popular books and movies such as the Harry Potter series, The Da Vinci Code and science-fiction favorites such as Star Wars.  Some statistics show that thirty per cent of under 20-year-olds are likely to visit a place after seeing it on film.

There are definite areas that have seen particular success as people opt for ‘location vacations’.

• New Zealand – thanks to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (NOT why I went there)
• New York City – It’s said to be a character of its own. And has been featured in countless films such as: Woody Allen movies, When Harry Met Sally, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Superman, Ghostbusters, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and most recently, Sex and the City which also treated it as the 5^th character.
• Italy – Under the Tuscan Sun, Roman Holiday
• Thailand – The Beach (I did visit THE beach…not too shabby, but, of course now very touristy—case in point)
• London – Always a popular destination on it’s own and thanks to movies like An American Werewolf in London, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually, Notting Hill, Sliding Doors (love this movie), Bend it Like Beckham (love this too), and period films like the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and Sherlock Holmes.

Recommended Link:  Have you been inspired to take a trip to London? Check out Travel Supermarket’s deals for London Hotels.

Bob Atkinson, travel expert from travelsupermarket.com, said: “It’s hardly surprising that travelers are taking their inspiration from films, we’re a captive audience and the big screen often captures locations at their best.  People might also look to recreate the experiences in the films.

“From bored housewife Shirley Valentine ‘discovering herself’ on a Greek Island or gorgeous period dramas with the backdrop of some of the UK’s most stunning stately homes, to fun and frolics in hits such as Mamma Mia!, or films from best-selling novels like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, when a destination gets picked to feature in a film the tourism office there should really capitalize on it.”

And locations around the world do capitalize on it. The New York ‘Sex and the City Tour’ became a huge success especially after the release of the first movie in May 2008.  Just as the “Sound of Music Tour” just outside of Salzburg is still extremely popular with American and British travelers.

“Undoubtedly the modern ‘tour de force’ behind movie tourism however is Dan Brown – demand for tours in Paris and Scotland increased after the release of The Da Vinci Code, Vatican Tour requests rose by 20 per cent in the months following the release of the Angels and Demons, so we have high hopes for Washington DC, which must be hoping to revel in the same success, having been the setting for Dan Brown’s latest novel – The Last Symbol.”

With the summer movie season on the horizon, here are some films and possible ‘location vacation’ destinations for 2010:

Recently my step-sis, Beth, and I were doing what a lot of people in New Jersey spend a lot of time doing: driving. It was late one night and we were returning from dinner and heading north on the infamous New Jersey Turnpike. We were near Newark, New Jersey’s largest city and a bastion for industry. You’d think growing up in New Jersey as I did, I would have visited here, but nope. It really wasn’t a destination for several reasons…it wasn’t known to be very safe, I didn’t really have my driver’s license until my last year in New Jersey (before I left the state for university) and the fact that New York City is just 8 miles east…so why mess around in Newark?

As we sped passed a large power plant of some kind, all lit up against the night sky, I began to wonder what was really going on there. I caught the name and in modern technology fashion, Beth proceeded to punch it in to Google on her Blackberry and away we went into the world of interesting facts and knowledge (well, for us at least).

According to Wikipedia and various other websites, the gas-fired (natural gas and butane), 940-megawatt Linden Cogeneration Plant was built in 1992. It is owned by El Paso Energy (the nation’s largest natural gas pipeline operator, with more than 43,000 miles of pipe in service) and operated by G.E. Energy Services.

The way in which the facility generates power is intriguing. It burns natural gas, which while not entirely clean is certainly better than a few other sources. But it takes the process one step further.

It uses the heat generated by its five gas turbine generators to pressurize heat recovery steam generators—hence “cogeneration.” The plant is making sure to harness every drop of energy it creates, even heat.

Apparently a percentage of the power produced by the facility is sold into the New York City market in the form of steam.

From a small dry cleaner on Manhattan’s East Side to Rockefeller Center to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the United Nations, along with some 2,000 other customers and 100,000 buildings, from residential low-rises to commercial skyscrapers, the City of New York is one of the largest consumers of steam. The Roman Catholic Church of St. Peter in lower Manhattan began using steam to warm its sanctuary in 1882, the year the first steam generation plant went into operation in New York. The church has used steam ever since.

Some 30 billion pounds of steam every year flow beneath the streets of Manhattan from the Battery to 96th Street. While it is unknown to most New Yorkers (even though years ago David Letterman talked of the ‘radioactive steam’ wafting up from the city streets), Con Edison’s subterranean steam system is the biggest steam district in the world boasting an annual steam production more than double that of Paris, Europe’s largest system.

The New York City steam system carries steam from central power stations under the streets of Manhattan to heat, cool, or supply power to high rise buildings and businesses.  Cogeneration significantly increases the efficiency of fuel usage and thereby reduces the emission of pollutants and particulate matter and reduces the city’s carbon footprint.

So now I know this super steam system is the reason for the steaming manholes we see all over Manhattan. We did learn this is usually caused by external water being boiled because it came in contact with the freakin’ hot steam pipes, rather than leaks in the steam system itself.

A bit of history:

By the early 1900s, regulations emerged across the U.S. to promote rural electrification through the construction of centralized plants managed by regional utilities. These regulations not only promoted electrification throughout the countryside, but they also discouraged decentralized power generation, such as cogeneration.   By 1978, Congress recognized that efficiency at central power plants had stagnated and sought to encourage improved efficiency with the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which encouraged utilities to buy power from other energy producers.

Cogeneration plants proliferated, soon producing about 8 percent of all energy in the U.S. However, the bill left implementation and enforcement up to individual states, resulting in little or nothing being done in many parts of the country.

In 2008, Tom Casten, chairman of Recycled Energy Development, said, “We think we could make about 19 to 20 percent of U.S. electricity with heat that is currently thrown away by industry.”

Cogeneration, also called combined heat and power (CHP), is, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “an efficient, clean, and reliable approach to generating electricity and heat energy from a single fuel source.”  Combined heat and power can greatly increase a facility’s operational efficiency and decrease energy costs. And it is said that CHP reduces the emission of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climate change.

Outside the U.S., energy recycling is more common. Denmark is probably the most active energy recycler, obtaining about 55% of its energy from cogeneration and waste heat recovery. Other large countries, including Germany, Russia, and India, also obtain a much higher share of their energy from decentralized sources.

Something a lot of cities are doing really well nowadays – taking what’s old and making it new again and in many cases even better. Case in point: New York City’s Highline.

This elevated railway 30 feet above the city’s West Side and Meatpacking district was built in 1934 for freight trains hauling dairy products, produce and meats.  Today it has been transformed into a public park.  Abandoned for nearly 80 years and under the threat of demolition, the Highline was saved by a citizens group with the help from the City Government.  Now this former eyesore, has been turned into something wonderful and the first section opened just a few months ago.

Wood decking and concrete walkways meander through gardens and lovely landscaped areas of wild grasses. There are benches sprinkled all about where you can plop down to read a book in the sun or just enjoy watching the passersby. There is virtually a sundeck with wooden chaise lounges and another section even has a small amphitheater where you can look down on to ‘the stage of life’ – 10^th Avenue below with its stream of taxis, cars, and cyclists whizzing by.
When all sections are complete, the High Line will be a mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, running through the West Side neighborhoods of the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen.

Access points from street level will be located every two to three blocks. Many of these access points will include elevators, and all will include stairs.

It was a beautiful, autumn Sunday in New York when we checked out the highline.  Couples, tourists, and families with kids in tow were all enjoying one of New York’s newest green, open spaces. Way to go New York.

Mob rules.  Get a group together and get bulk discount rates for cool stuff.  But what if you don’t have your own gang or posse? No worries Groupon takes care of all that for you.

Groupon is a website with daily deals too good not to pounce on.  From teeth whitening to spa days to dinner deals at your favorite restaurant, Groupon offers discounts from about 50-70% off normal prices.

And Groupon is growing – they are now in almost 20 cities across the US and hope to be in 30 by year’s end.

The Chicago-based company has sold nearly 500,000 groupons, saving consumers about $23 million according to Andrew Mason, the company’s founder.

That is beginning to translate into big money for Groupon. It makes money by taking a percentage of each groupon it sells, and Mason says the cut hovers around 50 percent.

“It’s really exploded in a way that, if I stop and think about it, kind of freaks me out a little bit,” Mason says.

Why am I writing about it? Simply because I signed up, thinks it’s a very cool idea, and am easily entertained by neat, new stuff…plus it really works and you can save a wad of cash!

Check them out, if not for their good deals, at least for their sharp and witty prose. Each day’s write up can be pretty entertaining.

From time to time I will be posting some righteous sites and other really cool stuff that I think is LL-worthy and you simply must check out.

This week’s link? Improv Everywhere.

This group does exactly as their name describes – the world is their stage as they create human works of art in various sketches in random locations amidst an unknowing audience who had no idea they were about to see a free live show. They’ve frozen in New York’s famous Grand Central Station.

They’ve staged one act plays on the subway – like dropping their drawers during rush hour traffic and acting like it’s completely normal.

They’ve greeted tired commuters on the way to work in the morning with random “high fives.” And they’ve welcomed home complete strangers at the airport with cheers and balloons.

As their site says:

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 80 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.

It’s awesome and brings some joy and chaos to the average day…we could all use some more of that.

The first time I traveled around the world, I really wasn’t running away from anything. It was more like I was running toward something – a dream; doing something I had always wanted to do, but just never could. But then a small window opened and I slipped out into the world and never looked back.

That was two years ago now. Starting October 2006, I left the comforts of my well-appointed home in Chicago and traveled, literally, around the world – staying with friends, meeting strangers who became friends, and having the time of my life. Fifteen months later, I returned to the US. For eight months I bopped between coasts from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles and back to New York again. And now I actually think I am running away – away from having to ‘root’ myself in an ordinary life; away from having to make a decision about where to live; away from having to work full time again; away from having to pay actual bills and away from the reality of the fact that eventually I will have to give up this vagabond lifestyle and someday buy a bed of my own again.   Or maybe I figure I should just keep traveling until I just can’t stand it anymore. But I think that is highly unlikely.

I am sitting in seat 21D on a Swiss Air flight headed to Europe.  This time around it didn’t seem as monumental leaving the US and all; sort of anti-climatic actually.  No goodbye parties. No big farewells. No major life changes.  I just hopped the subway to JFK in New York City and blew a kiss goodbye to one of my favorite cities.

And soon I will be in Berlin, perhaps my favorite city from my last trip. I am returning for several meetings/interviews for some possible freelance opportunities. Then I will be heading to France and Italy for a few months. I’ve been to these popular destinations a few times before, but not on my last trip. Paris was the first city I had ever set foot in in Europe more than 10 years ago and it had me at ‘bon jour.’ And Italy, oh Italia, I’ve been three times and am anxious to return to see if I still love it like I did every time I was there in the past.

Then I’m not sure where my wanderings will take me. As any traveler knows, my list has not gotten any shorter. In fact the more you travel, the longer it gets. This trip is currently looking something like this:

• Berlin
• France (Paris, Normandy, Lyon, Swiss Border towns, Provence, Bordeaux ?)
• Italy (some of these: Turino, Verona, Assisi, Gubio, Orevieto, Bologna, Perugia, Arezzo, Lucca, Roma, Sicily)
• Malta
• Cyprus ?
• Egypt
• Israel
• Jordan
• Istanbul
• St. Petersburg
• The Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania)
• Denmark
• and eventually back to Berlin and Paris again.

As always, if you know anyone - friend, family, animal, mineral – in any of these locales, please let me know. I would really appreciate it. I love to meet new people and have new friends when I get to a new town.

Unlike the last trip, this time I do have a return ticket. For two reasons: one, I’m taking advantage of all my racked up frequent flyer miles and flying for free to and from Europe therefore needing to book an actual roundtrip ticket and, two, I have a ‘save the date’ in New Jersey in the Spring.  I will return home for my father’s wedding. After thirty odd years of bachelorhood, dear old dad is tying the knot and my tiny family is getting just a bit bigger. Mazel Tov!

I touched down in New York City with a slight feeling of sadness and worry. I was returning to my grandmother’s nearly empty apartment. But it wasn’t the stuff missing that was bothering me. It was that she was missing.

I worried if New York would ever be the same for me since this is the place I always came to be with her. And she was truly the glue that held New York City together for me. I never had to find a hotel when I came here. I never needed to search for some good bagels and lox…she already had it waiting for me.

So, after a four month stint in the sun and easy-life of LA, I was back in harried, frenetic New York City for ten days. I shouldn’t have worried. I loved it all over again and more.

In just my first five minutes walking on the crammed sidewalk amongst the people it hit me all at once how great this city is and what a contrast it is to Los Angeles. Even though they are two huge cities, New York really is a true city inside and out, uptown and downtown, down below in the subterranean jungle of the subways and high up above in the posh financial offices scraping the sky. I know this has been said before a zillion times. But I can’t help saying it again: it’s the stew, the pot pourri, that good old melting pot. I don’t think I ever saw it as clear as I did now after being in LA. You can’t help notice it as you walk down the crowded sidewalk. New York is a true coming together of all races, all classes, and all kinds – young and old, sane and crazy, filthy rich and broke and homeless, every race, every gender, ever class. People are walking alone and yet altogether in one massive sea of life. Wall Street tycoons in Armani suits ride the public bus next to Hispanic moms with three kids in tow next to gussied up teenage girls on their way for some cappuccinos.

I had just come in from a five hour flight from LAX and I was tired and famished. I thought I’d start my stayoff here with a New York ‘must:’ a greasy, floppy, delicious slice of New York pizza. But unlike the old days when you could just stand in one place and do a 360 spin to spot the nearest pizza joint, now my view was crowded with Starbucks, CVS, and other chains. Then I spotted a guy sitting on a bench with the package I sought: a white paper bag, a white paper plate, and that famous gooey slice. I walked up to him and asked where he got it. He answered in a garbled voice and I realized I was talking to a homeless man. I asked him again. And he said, “I don’t know. Someone gave it to me.”

It couldn’t have been more perfect. New York strikes again. Although often misunderstood, it’s not uncommon that New Yorkers are friendly and generous and very tolerant of one another. Many people chat up their local bums everyday and when going for a bite, often get a little something extra for that ‘guy’ they pass on the way home. Whenever My friend Mark would go buy himself a hamburger at his local fast food establishment he would get two and hand one to the guy that stood outside on the sidewalk holding the door open for customers. Better that then handing him a dollar he’d drop on liquor or worse. Although…perhaps the McDonald’s burger was just as bad?

After I walked away from my new pizza-eating friend, he called after me and yelled out that he thought the place was just around the corner. I followed his gesture up 8^th Avenue and around to 23^rd street. There it was – the classic New York pizzeria. It’s nothing fancy – just a few tables, that glass counter which gives you a view of the pies on offer – cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, and a calzone or two – a soft drink fountain, a brick oven and big, white cardboard pizza boxes stacked up ceiling high. I ordered a simple cheese slice and sat down to enjoy the delicacy. And here I saw it just like I had walking around outside. Every kind of citizen was coming in for a slice – the construction worker, the student, the ladies discussing interior design, the lawyer in a suit, and a mother and son. Here everyone eats a slice. Here everyone rides the bus.

It was New York…always there and always accepting. It was the same as it’s always been – except the slice was now $2.75, not $1.00 like it was when I was a kid. So I picked it up, folded it in half and took that first fabulous bite.

Most of you know, I have spent a good part of the last two years traveling the world. The one worry in the back of my head during my travels was what if something were to happen to my 94-year-old grandmother while I was thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe. She and I made a pact before I left that she would ‘wait’ for me until I returned. We were both quite logical direct gals and I guess, weren’t exactly afraid to discuss the inevitable. But, true to her word as always, she waited for me to return. Since I have quit working full-time I have been able to do some things that would obviously not have been possible with a full time job. One of these things was being able to live with my grandma for two months in her apartment in New York City.

Unfortunately, during the last few weeks I was there she started to feel bad. The very day I flew back to Chicago she checked herself into a hospital. About a month later, I called her the day before I was to fly to Belize. She had literally just walked in the door of her apartment and was so happy to be home after several weeks in the hospital. A week later, while I was still out of the country without phone or internet access, she died.

Esta Saltzman Lubin 1914-2008

I flew home early and my family came together in Manhattan for her memorial service. She would have been so happy we were all together. She lived a long and amazing life. She was a very strong and independent woman who never complained – not once. She was feisty and sharp, but also extremely generous and selfless. All I can say is how lucky I was to have her in my life this long and how lucky I was to return from my travels when I did to spend those two months with her. Miss you G-ma.

• Obituary in Jewish Forward
• Obituary in New York Times
• Obituary New York Times #2
• Miliken Archive Interview
• Ladies of Yiddish Theatre & Film
• Internet Broadway Database
• Internet Movie Database – IMDB

It’s almost impossible to walk around this vibrant city and not mix with people from all over the globe. From the filthy rich to the just plain filthy it is this veritably chunky stew that makes this tapestry complete. Just like the streets and avenues weaving through Manhattan in their symmetrical pattern, the inhabitants of New York City are like threads coming together to make up the rich fabric of one of my favorite places in the world.

Since I grew up just through the Lincoln Tunnel on the other side of the Hudson River in hills of North Central New Jersey, I have visited New York dozens of times and even lived here for about a year back in my university days when I was an intern at “Late Night with David Letterman.” But never have I really explored the city as much as I did during the two months that I stayed with my grandmother right after my world tour. Perhaps it was because I was still happily in traveler mode; I was more than content to wander the streets like the modern-day vagabond that I’d become.

The island of Manhattan is undeniably walkable. Every time I went out to explore a new neighborhood I would walk there and back oftentimes covering several miles during my journeys. But there was just so much filling my view, so much tickling all my senses, that I barely notice how far I’d gone.

One day I strolled from my grandmother’s Chelsea apartment on 24^th Street and 9^th Avenue to get a very overpriced haircut on the Upper East Side at 73^rd Street and Lexington Avenue. That’s 50 short blocks north and 7 long blocks east coming out to about three and a half miles one way. Another day, after experiencing one of New York’s best tourist deals—a free round trip aboard the Staten Island Ferry which passes our nicest gift from France, the Statue of Liberty, I walked home from the southern tip of Manhattan and Battery Park City. It was amazing and also a good way to try and ‘walk off’ all the food and desserts my grandma was forcing me to eat. Well, force is a bit dramatic…she offered me chocolate and I said ‘yes.’ She offered me ice cream and I said ‘yes.’ You get the idea.

It’s funny, when I was in my early twenties my favorite neighborhood was the Upper West Side—it was clean, trendy, and well, just plain ‘neighborhoody.’ And although it is still very nice, it’s become a bit too plastic and ‘chain-store’ saturated for me. I think it’s like the biggest fear of gentrification—well, simply-put: over-gentrification where there’s no longer any personality or independent thought or design to the Starbucks frothed area. This go-around, I got to know some other neighborhoods better and really became smitten with them. Like the old warehouse-lined streets of the Meatpacking District (officially known as the Gansevoort Market) just south of Chelsea with its velvet-roped nightclubs and obscenely expensive shops sprinkled throughout the industrial zone’s hulking structures where cows once hung in its 250+ slaughterhouses in the early 1900s. Now high-end boutiques like Christian Louboutin and Stella McCartney, and restaurants such as Pasti’s and Buddha Bar, all have recently opened in order to cater to yuppies and hipsters. In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District “New York’s most fashionable neighborhood.”

I can’t think of a neighborhood more charming than the West Village. Its leafy cobblestone side streets are lined with super-expensive and painstakingly renovated brownstone apartment homes with freshly painted shiny black banisters, polished brass door knockers and charming wooden shutters. On a stroll through Greenwich Village I realized how much I liked it now. Back in the 80s and 90s, I think it was still a bit too hippie-slash-grungy for me. Today it’s teeming with trend-setting students from NYU, cute coffee shops, hip bars, and still a few hippie holdouts that add a dash of grime and grunge to give it just the right flavor.

While wandering around, I satisfied my craving for some tasty New York street food with a $3 juicy, drippy Gyro in a pita with tzatziki and hot sauce. I indulged in this fatty delight while sitting on a bench next to someone you find in every park in Manhattan—a pigeon-person. This man was feeding dozens of his fine feathered friends right out of his hands in the Village’s famous Washington Square Park. While I munched on my lunch, I also watched dogs of all sizes gleefully playing in a fenced off ‘dog park’ where a posted sign summed up the whole ‘hood:’ No people without dogs, no dogs without people.

My third new favorite new ‘hood is the Lower East Side. It was formerly home to thousands of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century. It was here where my grandma, Esta Saltzman, performed in Yiddish plays and musicals in some of the biggest venues of their time. Of course nowadays, these theatres are gone, with new funky shops and trendy eateries in their place. In fact, the theatre on the corner of Second Avenue and Houston was formerly know as the National Theatre where she performed, but now in its place is a new cultural icon of our generation: a 60,000 square foot Whole Foods.

But there are still some old Jewish holdouts that I can’t ever miss when I’m in town: Russ and Daughters Deli and THE one and only, Katz’s Delicatessen—made famous by its orgasm-inducing pastrami sandwiches—well, at least the one Meg Ryan was having in When Harry Met Sally (really the best rom-com of all time). Nowadays, this area is gentrifying fast with the most written-about hip and trendy restaurants opening up next door to Laundromats, convenience stores, and even a retro skateboard repair shop all up and down the great, lively streets: Ludlow, Rivington, Orchard, Stanton, and Clinton. This was once home to family-filled tenement buildings of lower class workers. Now it’s a trendy mix of hipsters, artists, and rich-folk wanting to be in the neighborhood of the moment. One night I met up with my new Swedish friend Erik—we were actually supposed to meet in London a couple months ago, but he moved here to New York before we got the chance. He took me and a friend to the lower East Side for dinner. We were walking down Rivington Street when suddenly, he just turned a corner and headed down a dark alley that oddly had a street sign. Oooo-kay. At the dead-end of the alley was a little shack of a place called Freeman’s that looked to be the back side of a building. But its million-dollar rustic-chic interior was packed to the gills with the trendy-set drinking cocktails and nibbling on tuna tartare. Needless to say it was at least a two hour wait (and it was a Tuesday night) and we didn’t stay. A wait that equals the time it would take us to fly to Chicago for dinner was a bit too long even if it was THE in place to be of the second (this is new York after all, by the time you read this—it may have closed already).

New York City. It’s more easy-going and friendlier than most think. I hear hellos and how you doins’ all the time. The people walk with a purpose and are a direct lot, but really do smile and say hello probably more than any other city I’ve been in (ok, even if most of the ones saying hello are the construction workers).

Just on my subway ride to the airport I experienced this New York friendliness that I’m talking about. First I asked some of New York’s finest of the NYPD about which train to take to JFK. Not only did they point me in the right direction, they waited for me to board the train and told me which stop to get off at. Another man helped me with my suitcase as the wheels got stuck in the door while I was hoisting it onto the train car. And once onboard and riding through Brooklyn another friendly local who knew I was heading to the airport, thanks to my bags, told me I’d be getting off in just a few stops…and I didn’t even ask him. And you can be anyone and meet anyone here. One day I walked past beautiful actress Anne Hathaway on the sidewalk in Chelsea. And then the next day I was passed by an old lady pushing a stroller…with a cat in it. Yep—only in New York.

New York Hotels

While I was traveling around the world I really didn’t have much to worry about except Dr. Seussical things like: ‘where will I find a bed? Where can I lay my head? Where can I go to be fed?’ But one thing I worried about back home was my grandmother still being there when I returned. She’s a fiercely strong, independent woman and the older I get the more I realize I am a lot like her. We made a pact before I left that she would wait for me to come home… And she’s a woman of her word. Just this past weekend she turned a young 94-years-old. I am staying with her in her apartment in Manhattan. She’s phenomenal. She was an actress in the Yiddish theater in New York and traveling shows for about sixty years of her life. She started on stage when she was six-years-old and didn’t stop singing and dancing until she hit eighty.

And today she lives alone and is still taking care of business. Her mind is amazingly sharp, but thanks to emphysema (she used to smoke, oh, roughly fifty years ago when it was très chic and oh so healthy) she’s slowed down a bit. She gets around fine though by zipping around Manhattan in what she calls her Lexus, a snappy red electric scooter. I can’t even keep up with her when she’s cruising down the sidewalk plowing down the fine citizens of New York left and right. Watch out, or she’ll take you down.

And believe it or not, just the other day, she motivated me to get on her treadmill. That’s right, not only does she own a treadmill, she uses it three to four times a week. She walks on it for about fifteen minutes and seeing her on it made me think to myself, ‘Okay, if my grandma is on there, I better step it up and start running again.’ Nothing like your 94-year-old granny to kick your ass into gear. I can only hope to be like her when I’m old and wrinkly.