I asked classmates, “If you could go anywhere for 36 hours where would it be?” John Lobitz would return to “the most beautiful place that I have ever been: the Bernese Oberland Alps in Switzerland; the towns of Grindelwald, Wengen, and Murren; and the mountains, the Eiger, the Jungfrau, and the Mönch.” Larry Leiken says, “Kyoto, since I’m interested in Buddhism, non-dualist thinking, impermanence, no self, and Zen.” In a similar vein, John Rhead would go to “a Quaker retreat center for spiritual renewal and growth.” John Isaacs says it’s “Iceland—beautiful scenery and active volcanoes!” Warren Cook wants to stay “home, where the heart is,” and Michael Tucker “would spend the 36 hours in Brooklyn because that is where my son and daughter live.” Hank Cramer “had a difficult time trying to decide between a place and a time, so the place is Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, and the time is around October 1972. I was using Uncle Sam’s T-34s to learn to fly and I had just met my wife to be.” Al Hine would “go to the International Space Station to watch the earth below go by slowly, admire its curvature, and see the fragility and thinness of the atmosphere, weather revealed by clouds, the huge size of the oceans, the Antarctic/Greenland ice sheets, the great mountain ranges, the wide deserts, the major rivers, and the endless steppes during daytime.” Nick Mason, while traveling in Ecuador and Peru, wrote to say he “always wanted to check out ‘Charles Darwin’ and the Galapagos archipelago.” They go to Greece in the fall. Jim Rooks won’t say why he wants to return but there is “a certain very small, uninhabited ‘motu’ (islet) that’s just a short outrigger canoe paddle across a channel from the Kia Ora Sauvage resort on Rangiroa atoll in French Polynesia (where Tahiti is).” Bill Reynolds waxes wistfully about “Venice in May to escape the crowds. I’d walk the city, visit the Rialto market, have coffee in the Piazza San Marco, view the Tintorettos at Scuola San Rocco, and ride vaporetti to savor the spectacular light over the lagoon.”

—Larry Langford, P.O. Box 71, Buckland, MA 01339; 1967damnotes@gmail.com