March 26, 2025

A comment from my good friend, Marty Shenkman, regarding my last blog regarding Recife, Brazil.

“Fascinating. I had no knowledge of any of this history. It is tragic that so many hundreds of years after what you describe people continue to torment each other over differences of faith, nationality, etc. We don’t seem to learn the lessons of the past or the damage that it does.”

Marty, I agree with you 100%.

Fortaleza, Brazil is about a 35-minute ride from where the ship docked. It is basically a beach town and having lived in Florida for 44 years, I have seen my share of beaches. We are still in the Southern Hemisphere, so with the temperature hovering in the high 80’s/low90’s I didn’t know if riding back to the ship on a bus in a wet bathing suit was such a good idea.

We heard that the largest craft market in Brazil was in Fortaleza, so we took the bus to the Mercado Central that has over 500 handicraft booths.

Coming from Florida we made one bad assumption. The handicraft market was not airconditioned! And did I mention it was in the low 90’s! Our shopping spree was cut short, and we took a bus back to the ship for a late afternoon swim in the pool.

Our father was a “splicer” with the New York telephone company. (It is interesting how specific job titles use to be.) A telephone splicer installed and repaired telephone cables including testing, and repair of cables and he spent a lot of time climbing up and at the top of utility poles. Long before the smart phone, if a telephone cable was damaged it could cut off telephone service for an entire community. Our Dad used to love storms because that meant that he could work overtime and get paid “time and a half”. (Your regular hourly wage plus half again) This “bread and butter job” allowed him to have his three children attend college. We are forever grateful.

I often think of our dad when I travel because of this:

Our dad sure would have gotten a lot of overtime!

Thanks for traveling with us.