In Gennesaret

I’ve been hearing recently about a new trend: sober vacations. People are intentionally planning trips that are devoid of any alcoholic content. Whole industries are growing around this concept – travel agencies, resorts, cruises. This apparently follows on the heels of other similar trends – namely, Sober October and Dry January. It seems that the former began in the U.K. as a fundraiser for cancer research. On the other hand, Dry January just sounds like a health thing. Try not drinking any alcohol for a month and see what the health benefits are. And people found the benefits were plentiful and started telling everyone about it. And my reaction was, Uhhh . . . what? Is this really news? ALL my months are dry and sober -- at least most of them. I very rarely drink alcohol. Mainly because nobody drank in my house growing up, and my college roommate abstained because of her alcoholic father (and I hung with her in support), so I just never developed a real taste for the stuff – an...

I know a bit of Spanish. Un poquito. So when I volunteered to tutor a young Mexican lady in English a couple decades ago, I wasn’t sure how well that was going to go. But it did go well – mainly because Blanca was bright and motivated. For our second lesson, we met at a grocery store. With a notebook in hand, she pointed at things, and I named each item in English. She learned far more on her own than she did from me; I was merely an available person for intentional conversation. And for the answering of questions . . . like this question that she asked me one day: “What means, ‘Ado tiso?’” Ado tiso . . . hmm . . . I asked her to give me a situation where she heard this phrase. She described a couple scenarios and repeated the phrase with a strong lilt, trying to mimic the people she heard. “Ah-doh TEE-so!” I was genuinely puzzled for quite a while. But then it hit me. She was trying to say, “I don’t think so.” That became an inside joke in my home for quite a while. “Can I h...