It was then that I realized that though I’d never dance for a living… I would always be a Dancer.

Weren’t we supposed to hear only birds chirping and grass growing? It turns out that power mowers and leaf blowers give jackhammers and car alarms a run for their money, especially leaf blowers with their incessant roaring.

Somehow, despite punishing poverty, they gave their hard-earned shekels, rubles, zloty (Polish $$$) to a traveling photographer to take their picture. Why did they feel the need to have their picture taken?

Des Moines is just a few degrees west of perfect south from Minneapolis – two-hundred thirty-four flat miles of corn, milo, wheat, beans, cabbage, spinach, and the occasional tall hemp plant which, if you smoked it you got a headache.

We remember how we forgot to hurt when we danced in stiletto pumps. What we wish for now is another walk through Paris, another climb up the steep hills of Montmartre.

504 North Beverly Glen: where I spent seven of the happiest years of my life. When we moved there in 1952,