Honoring Margot Adler

New York, NY, USA

I was more deeply moved than I would have expected by the death of Margot Adler: journalist, priestess, lover of vampires, and fellow member of the great family of All Souls Unitarian Church.

I knew Margot Adler’s name and voice long before I ever met her. My father literally sets his watch by All Things Considered, and he always has his favorite reporters: Baxter Black the cowboy poet, Scott Simon, a few others, and Margot Adler. When their voices came on the air, the volume went up and we stopped to listen. I am an NPR junkie myself now, with my own list of favorites -- Soraya Sarhatti-Nelson, Robert Krulwich, Laila Fadl -- but Dad and I still have Margot Adler in common.

So in the fall of 2012, when she was going to preach in the pulpit of All Souls, where I was newly employed, I was ecstatic. When I was proofreading the Order of Service and saw her sermon title, “Why We Love Vampires,” I was enraptured. Even though she had preached at All Souls a few times before, I got there extra early that morning in case she needed anything.

When I walked through the parish house door, there she was, shorter and more stooped than I had pictured for such a giant of journalism, but with a radiant smile you can't see on the radio. The other worship leader wouldn’t arrive for almost an hour, so I walked Margot upstairs and we stood at my desk and chatted, just as if we were old colleagues.

I had loved vampires for at least a dozen years longer than Margot, but of the 260 vampire novels she had read while researching her e-book Vampires Are Us, we had settled on most of the same favorites for mostly the same reasons. I had probably also been pondering why we love vampires longer than she had, but she had come to all my conclusions and taken them a step further.

Eventually, from vampires, we turned quite naturally to witches in popular literature. I have long said that if I were any kind of theist, I would be a Wiccan polytheist, and Margot Adler remains the Wiccan priestess most admired by the practicing pagans of my childhood church. In conversation, I learned that both Margot and I were impressed by the representation of witches in bestselling romance novelist Nora Roberts’ work.

We were interrupted by the arrival of the assistant minister, but I made time to sit and listen to Margot’s sermon in both services. Two years later, chatting with Margot is still one of my best memories of All Souls.

After that, she always had a hug for me when I saw her in church. Through Superstorm Sandy, New York mayoral politics and more, I always stopped to listen when Margot Adler’s familiar voice came on the air.

This past spring, I was walking through Central Park, listening to All Things Considered on my iPod, when Margot came on the air. It was a story about new super skyscrapers on the west side of Central Park that were stealing the sunlight from some of the park’s trees. I almost logged into the church database right there in the park to email her about how I had enjoyed the story and that I couldn’t recall seeing her at church recently.

Now I never will and wish I had.

Skyline Drive

Virginia, USA

From Skyline Drive

A romantic interlude along the ridgeline of the Blue Ridge Mountains on my way home from "church camp" with someone special.

From Skyline Drive

Virginia Hike

Radford, Virginia, USA

From Virginia Mountain Stream

In which I spend the last day of "church camp" hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, swimming in a quick little creek, and starting my photography project of images suitable for making memes for a social media campaign.

We Didn't Mean To Break the Boat

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Boats and Beaches

The wind was up, the boats were in the water, and it was warm enough not to worry about an accidental tip-test into the lake. My friend Stephanie had come up with me from New York for the holiday weekend, and I don't think she had ever been sailing. "Don't worry," I said, "I'm a certified sailing instructor. I can teach you in an hour." It's true, I've done it.

Still, it had been a few years since I had been sailing on my own. Last summer, I let my brother Ben do all the actual sailing when we went out briefly on the Sunfish, because I wasn't sure I would still have the feel for it. So before I put Stephanie on board, I took the Sunfish out for a spin on my own. It turns out that sailing small craft is like riding a bike -- actually, better, because I falter an awful lot more when I haven't been on a bike that long! After a quick jaunt out and back, I ran aground on the much shallower-than-expected lake bottom, picked up Stephanie, and headed out to "sea."

Meanwhile, Dad was having a great time on his "new," "free to a good home" Force 5 sailboat. The father of his old high school buddy had this boat sitting around that he hadn't used in a long time, and he recently gave it to Dad. He and my brother had to re-fiberglass some large sections of the hull, and the missing top third of the mast had to be mail-ordered, but now it was ready to sail, and Dad was more than willing and able!

Stephanie and I launched at about the same time in the Sunfish. A few fishermen out in a small boat shouted, "Great sail!" across the water before powering quietly out of our way. Passing Dad, I shouted an old family favorite, "Swallows and Amazons forever!" He was definitely having a great time, heeling up on edge and flying over the water. We couldn't get going nearly as fast in the fickle wind of the small lake.

After awhile, Stephanie and I brought the Sunfish in, and I hopped on the Force 5 with Dad to try his new "go-fast boat." It certainly gave the feel of speed, the wind in my hair, the heel of the boat. We were hit with a particularly strong gust of the inconsistent wind, and I felt sure we had reached that critical angle that you can't recover from and were about to flip her over. As the sail inched closer to the water, I braced my feet under the lip of the cockpit opposite and leaned back as far as I could manage.

Then, all of a sudden, the hull was flat in the water, so was the sail, and Dad was gone, flown off into the water behind me. The mast had snapped clean off near the hull where someone had redrilled an extra pair of holes to reattach the boom. It only proves what Dad always says: "A free boat is the most expensive kind!"



For dinner, we went out to the sea in Portland for lobster. It was a great weekend away from the city, everything the Swallows might have wished for!

From Boats and Beaches