Monday, January 12, 4:00 p.m.
My brother Greg has arrived in Mexico without a room reservation, but we’re confident that he can find something suitable, so we ask Alejandro the taxi driver to drop him at the Catalina before taking us to Villa Mexicana. Bag and hammock in hand, he heads toward the office, agreeing to meet us at Paty’s after we’re all checked in. Dick and I arrive at the Villa Mexicana with mixed emotions: it’s great to be “home” on Playa la Ropa, this being our third time at VM; on the other hand, one never knows what to expect when it comes to room assignments, no matter how one has (theoretically) paved the way. I don’t want to spend much time on this, so I’ll just say that this is definitely our last time at Villa Mexicana. The hotel is cute, the location is great, but it annoys me no end that a bunch of Texans on their first visit are given the best ocean view rooms, while we loyal clientes…oh, never mind. I don’t want to ruin my utopian energy from La Barra by fighting about it, so we unpack a little and head to Paty’s just in time for Happy Hour.
Greg strolls over from the Catalina just as we sit down. He has been given a big room with plenty of space on the balcony to hang the hammock. They showed him one of the oldest and smallest first, and he opted for something menos barato. We will see it later. It’s pretty nice for a room that doesn’t exist. We order a plate of guacamole and 2 mango margaritas (which equals 4 on the 2 for 1 deal). The margs arrive…okay, I’ll back up.
For those unfamiliar with the Catalina, it stairsteps down the side of a palm laden hillside, held together by a meandering staircase off of which sprout various hallways to the rooms. The sign at the hall that leads to Greg’s room clearly indicates “rooms 21-28”. His room, at the end of that very hall, is #29. There’s no number on the door, either. We are concerned that, in magical realism/Twilight Zone fashion, it won’t be there at all when he returns for a siesta one afternoon…
A glimpse of the Catalina and its beach palapas
The margs and guacamole arrive. The margaritas are smaller that I remember, and are just okay. The guacamole and chips are okay, too. We finish them and decide to try Elvira’s for the next round. As we cross the little ditch between the restaurants, I see the customary “waiters on the sand” approaching to entice us into Elvira’s. Then their eyes open wide and they greet me and Dick as if we were their long lost relatives. They remember us from our last trip and make us feel so very welcome that Elvira’s becomes our home away from home for much of our La Ropa stay. We order 2 (4) more mango margaritas and another plate of guacamole. The margs are big and thick and taste like fresh mango, the guacamole delicious. This is the first year I remember noticing a difference in quality between the neighboring restaurants, and telling about it makes me feel a bit disloyal to Paty’s, where we’ve spent many a happy happy hour in the past. That said, I know that Paty’s does a great job on many of their offerings.
The sun is setting, and it’s time to introduce Greg to La Perla. Sandals in hand, we splash through the sweet wash of the waves as the first few stars appear. I am twirling with happiness. “Look where we are, you guys!” I call, “Just look where we are!” Playa la Ropa is wide and warm, the vista toward El Centro glorious as the lights begin to twinkle on. We head right to the bar at La Perla where Arnolfo the bartender lets us sample a couple of tequilas. We choose a new one for us (3 Mayaguez? Something like that…). We ask for Francisco, who as usual will be back in 20 minutes, but they offer to phone him and he arrives in 3. He immediately produces the bottle of Washington Cabernet we brought him two years ago and offers to open it, but we decline, requesting instead a visit to the humidor, which Greg has heard much about and is eager to see.
I leave the gentlemen making their deal for cigars and go visit Green Bay the Parrot (nobody else calls him that—it’s a nickname I gave him a few years back when I distinctly heard him cheering for the Packers during the playoffs. “Green Bay!” he said in his perfect parrot voice, “Green Bay!” I even had a witness, one of the young nephews who looked at me with wide eyes then immediately went to argue football with the bird.)
We enjoy a leisurely few tequilas and a smoke at the bar, chatting with Francisco whenever he lands nearby. We probably had something to eat, but I don’t remember.
We return to the Catalina, check to make sure Greg’s room is still there (so far, so good), swing in the hammock for a while, then go up for a nightcap to the Sunset Bar, where (can you believe this?) they no longer serve mango margaritas. Hmmph.
At 7:45 a.m., I round the corner of the hotel, anticipating my first full glimpse of the morning bay (the view from our room is kind of sideways, looking south). My jaw drops. There’s a hippopotamus in the birdbath. An immense cruise ship clots the bay, filling it from edge to edge. I’ve never seen one so big here. The launches are already in the water, shuttling back and forth like leaf cutting ants. Grimacing, I join Greg at a table at Elvira’s. I’m disappointed that his first shining morning experiencing La Ropa is full of ship. He smiles at me. He knows why I’m frowning. “Did you see the name of it?” he asks. I adjust my eyes to long lens focus, and we share a good chuckle. The name of the leviathon blocking our view is “Crystal Serenity”.
Dick joins us for a cup of coffee and we set off. We have decided not to let the Presence in the Harbor deter us from today’s plan, which is to walk into town via Playa Madera. We hike up the hill at the north end of the beach and head toward the Irma. Just past Puesta del Sol, I peek into the tiny office of a little lodging of some sort. No one there, but I’m just being nosy. Ten paces later, we are caught up with by a sweet lady who insists on giving us a tour of Mi Casita, which turns out to be pretty darn cute, actually, except that it’s right on the road from town to La Ropa and so I imagine is never quiet. There are several rooms, cheap ($35/night or so), not a bit fancy, but with verandas overlooking a slice of jungle and the bay. Refrigerators are available for a few extra pesos. Looks clean and livable, and seems to be owned by the same people who own Puesta del Sol and Casa Bahia. Just below the main structure is a very cool jungle hut, palapa roofed, big bed, bathroom, plenty funky but could be a lot of fun to stay in. Also cheap. The dear lady who is giving us our tour explains that, by next year, there will be a camino secreto, a secret path, down through the jungle to Playa Madera. I managed to understand her as she told me that her husband thought she was loco, but she wanted that camino secreto!
By the time we get to Madera, Dick and I are hungry, so we set up at MJ and Richie’s for a bit. Dick orders chicken taquitos, which are the best he has the whole trip. In my brother’s honor, I order Huevos Divorciado (divorced eggs)—I’ve wanted to try those since spotting them on another menu somewhere. They’re yummy: 2 eggs, one in a milder green sauce, one in a spicier red. After toasting there for a bit, I pull the guys up the hill to explore Bungalows Ley, which I’ve heard about from many of our message board amigos, but have never seen from the beach side. It only takes a few minutes to decide that this will be our home next time we’re in Zihua. Dick and I have realized that we’re ready for Madera now, that pretty pocket beach with its residential feel and an easy walk to town.
The walkway that hugs the hillside and borders the bay is still under construction, but all of it is passable and much of it is lit. There are workers finishing the paving as we pass, all of whom return a friendly “hola” when it’s given. Soon we’re in Centro, where we spend a leisurely morning exploring, window shopping, visiting the ATM, and avoiding the people in socks and white vinyl belts wandering confusedly up and down Paseo del Pescador. We stop at Rick’s Bar, that living room away from home, so I can email our son and send a quick message to Jerry’s board. I like Rick’s. It’s comfortable and always welcoming, with its clean well-stocked bathrooms, its lending library, its new high-speed internet connection, its shower and laundry facilities for weary travelers. I even enjoy the soft whir of the clothes dryer in the background as I sip good coffee and enjoy the English keyboard. Outside again, I use my two-year-old Ladatel card to phone Lucia in Ixtapa and Catherine Krantz, the editor of Another Day in Paradise. I’ll visit Lucia in a few days, and arrange to meet Catherine later today at her new favorite place on La Ropa.
The rest of the afternoon is spent lazing in chaises at the Catalina. Dick plays in the water and naps. Greg and I tag-team a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle between vendor-chatting, people-watching and simply enjoying the view.
Eventually, Greg disappears into Elvira’s for a while, then reappears juggling three huge styrofoam cups and a big smile. “What did you bring us?” we ask, and pry open the lids to discover that each of us is the proud owner of a quart of thick, smooth mango margarita. What can one do? Personally, I give myself a cold headache instantly with a few tokes on the straw.
By the time we finish our jumbo margaritas, we’re almost late for a very important date. After a quick change of clothes, we hustle down the beach, past the sand lady…
…past La Perla, past the crocodiles, and through an opening in the wall onto a little drive that leads to the entrance to El Manglar, a restaurant recently opened by two young men who are friends of Catherine’s. Outside, on a large deck bordering the crocodile lagoon, we find Catherine and her new assistant Tamara waiting for us.
To get to El Manglar, take a left at the crocodile.
Eventually, the restaurant will be accessible directly from the beach, but until the footbridge is rebuilt, I don’t recommend taking that route. I do, however, recommend trying El Manglar. When we ask for an appetizer for the table, owner Memo Armenta and Chef Apollo present us with a large platter attractively arranged with chunks of blackened tuna, tuna sashimi and a side dish of savory and delicious sautéed spinach. The food is great, the service friendly and attentive.
Dick and I need to introduce Greg to Tamale’s Any (and we can’t wait a moment longer for some green pork pozole), so we stop there next, then finish the evening by celebrating Tamara’s birthday at Pipe’s, a local hangout in the alley behind Coconuts, where a strolling mariachi band sings a birthday song.
Wednesday, January 14
It’s golf day for Dick, so off he goes to Ixtapa to play the Marina course. I want to show Greg the “real” mercado in Zihua, so we grab a cab at the taxi stand a block from Villa Mexicana. We spend a delightful hour strolling around and through the mercado, admiring the stalls and shops and soaking it all up. There’s so much to see! I love the stalls with all the kitchen gadgets and plastic stuff hanging everywhere, everything from spoons to funnels to flyswatters. One little stall (attention, do-it-yourself bartenders) carries nothing but miscellaneous blender parts! The blades and screw-on thingies, rubber gaskets and lids, a wall of glass and plastic pitchers hanging by their handles. Then there’s the food, of course. Homemade cheeses, honey, sea salt; sheets of dried meat hanging from dowels; fishes and octopi and langostino; yellow-orange chickens, heads and feet intact, laid out like a giant rubber-chicken joke.
And all around, a bounty of fruits and vegetables: pyramids of dark red strawberries, heaps of papayas and oranges, baskets of avocados, wooden carts overflowing with those sweet and tiny limes, watermelons, armloads of bananas. Tomatoes, onions, chiles like jewels in every imaginable color and size, cilantro and basil and broccoli. Then, what’s that aroma? As we pass a bakery stall, a young man is sliding hot crusty rolls, still steaming from the oven, into a bin already deep with them. A few pesos later, we are tearing into two of them, inhaling and smiling and chewing all at the same time. We pass an aisle of restaurant counters, ten or more of them. They seem to feature similar menus, but two of them boast customers on every stool and more waiting behind (the other counters seem less popular). One señora, on her way to work, perhaps, is served a big bowl of hot soup brimming with seafood. Looks like a good breakfast to me.
We cross town to the artisan’s market where my eye is captured by some watercolor paintings hanging at the mouth of a little stall. I soon learn that the man tending the shop is Roberto Martinez, and that many of the works are his own. I fall in love with a painting filled with light and color, a street scene in Taxco. Then I fall in love with another painting, this one a bit moodier (“the rainy season”, Roberto says), also a street scene in Taxco. The first is by Roberto, the second by his friend José Mejia. I can’t decide between them, so I buy them both. (It will cost me more to frame them than I paid for them, and once home I am overjoyed that I have them to look at.)
We return to La Ropa, where Dick joins us, having had a fine morning of golf, including his hamburguesa con queso delivered to him on the 10th hole. The guys spend the afternoon body surfing in some of the biggest waves I’ve seen on La Ropa. Why are the waves so big? We’ll find out. Meanwhile, Dick and Greg return to their chaises looking like they’ve been through the power-sander part of a lumber mill. Greg, having been dumped upside-down a few times by the surf, is feeling woozy, which he attributes to having swallowed a pint or two of sea water. Dick is having trouble clearing his sinuses. A whole afternoon of foreshadowing…
Around mid-afternoon, a groggy Greg is approached by a young man from the Catalina staff who speaks to him in Spanish for a while, sounding apologetic. Greg says, okay, bueno. As the man is walking away, I say to Greg, “I think he said he’s moving you, didn’t he?” “I think so,” Greg replies. “Where to?” I ask. “I’m not sure,” says Greg, now wide awake. “Maybe you’d better find out,” I suggest, big-sisterly. Greg sprints after him and returns to report that he is being moved to another room, that the staff will take care of it, and that he’s not sure why. My guess is that Room 29 is due to disappear today, and they’re just taking precautions.
We have chosen Puesta del Sol for dinner. We are greeted and seated by a youngish woman. We order (guess what?) mango margaritas, which are the absolute without equivocation best we have on our trip. Suddenly a young man appears at our tableside. He is very young and very beautiful, with soulful eyes and lissome posture. He does not smile. “I am Eduardo,” he says. Oh my god. Travis’s reports flash instantly into my mind. Eduardo! The impish and mysterious man-child of Travis’s tales. “Eduardo,” I say, maintaining my composure. “I have heard about you.” He returns my look unwaveringly. “All good things, I hope,” he replies. His dark-lashed eyes are sulky and suspicious, flirtatious and inquiring, sweet and dignified—all at the same time. I am afraid my poker face may have failed me just when I needed it most. “Of course,” I say. “Good things.” I swear I almost stammered. Who is this boy? Is he twelve or nineteen? Is he the reincarnation of Kokopelli, god of mischief? And where are the movie casting directors when you need them??
One thing I do know, and that is that he is in some trouble this night. Both Jorge our waiter and the woman are miffed at him, possibly for not moving fast enough—a situation which appears only to make him move more languidly. He stops by our table occasionally…and just stands there. Then he asks if there’s anything we need, responding to either a yes or no with an almost imperceptible nod. In the meantime, Dick and I have ordered from Jorge. (Greg, I’m sorry to say, has excused himself and returned to his room, feeling decidedly punky by this time.) The best dish is the shrimp tirita, slivered shrimp marinated in lime and cucumber. The ceviche is disappointing. The medallions of beef with roquefort, flambéed tableside, are good. Dick and I share this plate after our appetizers. And I do enjoy the Sambucca-ish digestif (apparently called a cucaracha) presented by Eduardo who sternly instructs me to slam it on the table and drink it all at once. All in all, the meal was good. We will certainly return, if only to see whether Eduardo is still around, or whether he has at last been discovered by a hungry Hollywood.
Thursday, January 15
This morning I leave early for a solitary stroll through El Centro. As I meander past the church, I see a pretty young woman coming my way, a huge basket balanced on her head. Even before we brush past one another on the narrow sidewalk, a familiar fragrance reaches my nose—basil! Bouquets of the herb in purple and green peek over the edges of her basket. Meanwhile, down on Paseo del Pescador, the fishermen are relaxing after their busy morning…
…catching up on the news and eating breakfast.
I meander over to Daniel’s to see if I can find Judy from Minnesota. Sure enough, there she is, so we have a hug and a chat.
Back at La Ropa, the men are relaxing. Greg seems to have a touch of the flu, and Dick has a stuffy nose. When I go up to our room to fetch some medications for them, I find one creature sitting on the bed…
Towel teddy by Anna, our wonderful camarista
…and another exploring in the corner.
This is the tiniest gecko I’ve ever seen, about the length of a matchstick. We saw him often in following days.
The medicines work, and the guys are up for lunch at La Gaviota, which used to be one of our favorite lunchtime haunts. This time, they want nearly $30 (that’s dollars) for a smallish huachinango al ajillo, which seems muy rico to us, so we order a filete of dorado instead. I enjoy a Coronita while an unusual tableside visitor entertains us.
After three tries, I got a photo that satisfied both me and the juggler, who scrutinized the first two and simply didn’t approve until we captured the oranges mid-air.
A napping-and-reading afternoon, during which I take a walk up the beach to get a shot at…I mean of…the new construction beside the Sotavento. This is an Intrawest project (the Intrawest of Whistler, B.C., and numerous other Canadian and U.S. projects including some in Seattle), and is their first project outside the U.S. and Canada.
The palapas and umbrellas are the Sotavento’s. This new gargantua is right next door.
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I’m engrossed in my reading when I realize I’m being hailed by one of the waiters at Elvira’s.
“Do you want to see Mari?” he is asking. You bet I do. Mari and I became friends four years ago when she was the shopkeeper at the mini-mart behind Elvira’s. She speaks not a word of English, but we managed to learn a lot about each other, and she saved me from a case of turista with her family remedy (Estomaquil plus Yoli soda). Fernando, her friend who is the current shopkeeper, recognized us when we arrived this time and told me he would tell Mari we were in town. I am invited up the stairs at Elvira’s to the family hang-out, where I spend the next half-hour visiting with Mari and cuddling Señorita Jennifer Lopez Santos, Mari’s new baby girl.
Mari, me, Jennifer Lopez Santos, and a niña from Elvira’s family
Later, we go into town again, this time to La Sirena Gorda, where Greg orders his mahi mahi blackened and we order ours “adobo”. We win! The only trouble with Sirena Gorda is that there are too many excellent choices. We’ve never had a bad meal there. I order the dorado ceviche blanco. It’s so limey and tasty, and I learn a valuable lesson—that’s what kind of ceviche to seek out if I don’t want that ketchupy flavor. Greg buys a string sailing ship to take home, because—well, because you can’t very well leave Zihua the first time without one of those. Then we go find Catherine at Rick’s, where we settle in to listen to Josefina, a very young woman with a rich and beautiful voice. Rick convinces Josefina’s mother, Rosa Carmina, from whom Josefina learned her craft, to sing a duet with her daughter. Rosa joins Josefina for one heart-wrenching ballad en español, then insists her daughter have the stage to herself.
Serenaded by the muse
Sitting on the veranda of our room around 1 a.m., I notice that the surf is still pounding. What’s that on the horizon? Looks like lightning to me.
We awake to a downpour.
A tap on the door, about 9:00. It’s Greg, streaming water like Flipper coming up for a snack. He must be feeling better, as he has just had an order of French toast and bacon at Elvira’s which he raves about. He’s going back to his room to pack: he leaves this afternoon. Dick is a tad sulky, having planned another round of golf, but his head is still stuffy, so he decides to catch up on some sleep. I take my book to Prudencia’s, the restaurant at Villa Mexicana. It’s packed with pouting people, but I find a little table. It’s almost too dark to read.
We reconvene about 11. The rain has stopped, the floods are subsiding. It’s dry enough under the Catalina palapas to read and visit until lunchtime. The skies have lightened somewhat, although it will remain overcast all day, and showers will continue to move in across the bay. We walk the few steps to Elvira’s, where Greg chooses for his last meal of the trip langostino ajillo—a good choice. I have carne asada, or “fried meat” as the menu appetizingly describes it, and Dick orders fajitas. All yummy. Then we gather the wonderful wait staff together for a farewell photo for Greg, whom they have dubbed Gregorio or Goyo. This is one fine group of young men. Bonito, second from the left (that’s his nickname, meaning “beautiful”), is leaving next week to join his brother in Alaska for two years to fish and paint houses, so we traded a lot of English and Spanish phrases during the week. Bennie is third from the left, Moses (“Monchi”) is the tallest, and Fernando is at the far right.
They are compassionate as we send Greg off in his taxi (120 pesos to the airport). They embrace him heartily and assure him of his return to Zihuatanejo. His hermana (that’s me) receives consoling pats on the back and a nice dose of Mexican philosophy regarding the ups and downs that make up la vida.
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It’s still raining off and on, so we take the easy way out and go to Elvira’s for happy hour, where Bennie takes our picture.
Having had a large lunch, we decide on appetizers for dinner at Kau Kan. This is one of our favorite things to do in Zihua, although it does take some explaining to one’s waiter. Not wanting to disappoint this year’s waiter as we did the last time when we never got around to ordering an entrée, we let him know our intention right away. His reaction is somewhat concerned, but he understands our request. My good husband agrees to white wine (he prefers his wine on the black end of red), as we know we’re going to be eating some very delicate seafood here. On the headwaiter’s recommendation, we order a bottle of Albariño, a lovely buttery white from Spain. Kau Kan has the best ceviche I’ve ever tasted, so we start with that and an order of marinated abalone which is just to die for. Then we have the tuna roll stuffed with sea bass tartare. So far, you’ll notice, nothing is cooked—and neither is our final choice, the mahi mahi carpaccio. I need to describe this dish, so if you don’t like raw fish, you can skip this part. If you do, and you’re hungry…I pity you.
Picture a large, square, frosted glass platter. On it, spiraling outward from the center of the plate to its very edges, are gently overlapping slices of dorado so thin that the entire dish is translucent. The fish is invisibly drizzled with a fine subtle dressing of lime and other magical things. The finishing touch, a scattering of the thinnest imaginable threads of some crisped vegetable—sweet potato, maybe?—just enough to add a bit of texture to each delectable bite of fish.
Aaaah. Who needs more? With a basket of fresh-baked bread served with olive oil, our meal is complete. Kau Kan has world-class food. The subtlety of preparation is astonishing—just a tiny bit of this or that, never too much, always just enough. Dick and I just shake our heads in amazement every time we eat there. This is our splurge in Zihuatanejo, and boy, is it worth it.
We have used every bit of our discipline to leave some wine in the bottom of the bottle, which we take back to enjoy on our veranda. We sit and sip and talk and what’s that on the horizon? Lightning?
We awake to a downpour.
At least it was a warm downpour yesterday. Today it’s cool and windy, too. Dick goes back to sleep, grumbling. I slip on my airplane sweatshirt and go down to see what the sky looks like. Prudencia is packed again, with the gloomiest group of guests you’ve ever seen. I overhear one man telling another that his wife is in the room in tears. I get some tea in my thermos cup and take my book and camera out to the backgammon palapa. Water streams from the edges of the palm leaves all around me. I marvel again at the efficiency of these roofs in this climate. Warming my hands on my cup, I sit and watch the storm.
After a while, a couple from Montana sits down to play checkers under the palapa. She is sulking, afraid she’ll go home tomorrow with less of a tan than she came with. I offer her some words of encouragement: we Seattleites are well-versed in shades of gray, and the sky is definitely looking brighter to me. Apparently, my husband agrees. Just after ten, he appears in full golf get-up—that’s my brave guy. I reinstate my plans to accompany him into Ixtapa for a visit with Lucia Gayon. By the time I grab a few items for the trip, including a box of Tetley English teabags for Lucia, the rain has stopped and the clouds are thinning.
The taxi drops me at Villas Paraiso and continues on to the Marina golf course. I find Lucia and we have a good long talk. The sun is out now and things are warming up nicely, so I give Lucia a goodbye hug and set out to explore, since in our previous visits to Zihua I sort of never got around to getting into Ixtapa. An hour later, I’m in a cab back to La Ropa.
(Ixtapa is clean and beautiful. It’s just not what I go to Mexico for. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow and I’m getting greedy about my time.)
Dick has had another fun round of golf, doing research for the article Catherine has asked him to write for Another Day in Paradise. We loaf in the sun then go back to our room to do some pre-packing. We want a good long stretch of nothing before we catch our plane tomorrow.
La Perla is the place for our last sunset. I meet Francisco on the beach as he and I and several others toting cameras watch the sky present its post-storm extravaganza.
Then we’re off to Casa Vieja, which thankfully re-opened only last week. Our selections tonight: their excellent smoked fish paté, the bacon-wrapped tuna steak for me, the pork in red citrus sauce for Dick, all served with fragrant fresh-made corn tortillas, followed by a shot of Chalua each to insure our return to Zihuatanejo. After dinner, we walk (we need a walk after that dinner) across the bridge into Centro to have a drink with Catherine on the patio at Bandido’s. When the music gets too loud for talking, the three of us wander around town, just looking and chatting, then Catherine drives us back to La Ropa where we bid her a fond hasta luego.
It’s a good thing we didn’t find out about that French toast and bacon at Elvira’s any earlier in our trip or I would’ve returned home looking like that sand lady. The guys serve it to us at a little table between our chaises on the beach with real butter and real maple syrup and a pot of hot coffee. It’s heavenly.
We spend our last day soaking up the sun, which is back in all its glory, and handing out gifts to the staffs at Villa Mexicana and Elvira’s. We’ve brought a collection of baseball caps which we entrust to Monchi to distribute to the waiters, and bottles of bubbles for the waiters with children here and at Villa M. Too quickly, it’s time to say adios to La Ropa and its people and places. There’s no doubt that La Ropa is changing. You can see it and feel it. (We are fortunate that we found it when we did, before the current developments began.) But Zihuatanejo remains a charming, friendly, and oh so welcoming town, so we will be back for longer stays in the future. We have made friends here.
If I have any advice to other visitors, here it is. Keep your eyes and heart open, tip generously, use any and all the Spanish you know, and let yourself appreciate the gentle rhythms of this generous country.
“In Mexico, nothing is set in stone. The absence of black or white at first alarms, but it can liberate, too.” Katie Hickman, A Trip to the Light Fantastic
