Greek Triumph: Ask Me Again Tomorrow, a Life in Progress by Olympia Dukakis

Olympia Dukakis, the well-loved and Oscar-winning actress who passed away earlier this year at the age of 89, is vibrantly and fully alive on the pages of this fast-paced and fascinating memoir. Her strong personality comes through on every page, first as she describes her childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, her teen years and first career steps in and around Boston, and her young adulthood and continued career development in New York. 

Her Greek-American identity and fraught family relationships shaped her character. She was rebellious and unconventional from the start, not the "good Greek girl" she so often referred to. She had a tense relationship with her critical mother and eventually uncovered disappointing behavior on the part of her father, a philanderer who badly hurt her mother and the family.

Despite many challenges and setbacks, she was determined and ultimately succeeded in becoming a serious and successful actress, had a loving relationship and marriage that spanned 40 years, started and for years ran a theater company with her husband in their adopted home base of Montclair, New Jersey, and was the mother of two children.

Her memoir, written with Emily Heckman, recounts the many details of her struggles and travails to achieve career goals, to find acceptance as an ethnic "outsider" in many circles, her struggles with depression and health issues, and celebrates her many successes as well. While she also describes relationships with others in the acting field, she avoids imparting celebrity gossip – there is not a word, for example, about Cher, her co-star in "Moonstruck", for which they both won Oscars, though she is listed in the many acknowledgements at the close of the book.

While reading the memoir, it was hard to grasp that she was no longer with us, it is that vivid and intimate. It is almost like receiving the confidences of a friend who trusts you to listen, but knows you won't judge her. She is so real, so down-to-earth, that you feel you know her, and only wish she could live forever.

I was fortunate to have a fleeting moment in which I shared a space with her (from afar). A friend and I attended an Off-Broadway play shortly after "Moonstruck". We had balcony seats in the smallish Lambs' Theater (now demolished, sadly), and looked down into the orchestra section, where we spotted Olympia (in mink) and Cher (in a white fur) arriving and taking seats in the front row. We were amused to see them sharing an aluminum foil-wrapped snack during the intermission – maybe Olympia brought it from her kitchen in Montclair – who knows? So normal and so just like the rest of us!

I highly recommend her memoir, not only if you are a fan, but also if you have an interest in theater, and the lives of unconventional feminist mid-century women. There's a lot to chew and digest here.

Obituary for Olympia Dukakis from the Boston Globe

Fantastic Voyage – Out of Istanbul: A Journey of Discovery along the Silk Road by Bernard Ollivier

I was fascinated by this book by French journalist Bernard Ollivier, an account of the first part of his journey – on foot – along the route of the ancient Silk Road, beginning in 1999. I felt as though I was with him every step of the way from Istanbul across Turkey to the point just miles from the Iranian border where he unfortunately became ill and had to return to France to recover.

His descriptions of the scenery, villages and towns, his encounters with local people, his emotions and his physical condition are so vivid and compelling that I felt as though I was there. As an American Jew, I know I would never be allowed to enter Iran (even Ollivier had a very limited visa) when the time came. His continued walk will be covered in the next installment of the three covering his experiences in Central Asia.

Ollivier was 62 when he set off, a recent widower, and recently retired from his career as a political and economic journalist. He had recently completed a walk from France to the Shrine of St. James in Spain (Santiago de Compostela), though he did not do it for religious reasons, but for the experience of the journey.

To begin his trek along the Silk Road, Ollivier took a train to Venice, where Marco Polo began his expedition to China a thousand or so years ago, then a ferry across the Adriatic, before starting to walk from Istanbul. Once he began his trek, even though he was in good physical condition, he had problems with his boots until his feet became accustomed to them, but when they healed, he was able to cover astonishing distances nearly every day, stopping in small towns and villages to eat, sleep and purchase supplies. Once he left Istanbul and its more modern environs, he found some less than appealing conditions in certain places, though there were Internet cafés and banks where he could use an ATM card...but often the off the beaten track places he visited were fairly primitive by our American and European standards.

He spoke barely a few words of Turkish, but encountered English speakers (and very few French speakers) along the way with whom he could communicate when needed, but most of the time he was on his own. He had many heartwarming but fleeting moments with the Turkish people he met, but there were occasional moments of danger, and in the Kurdish areas to the East, closer to the Iranian border, the danger increased, along with the poverty. Despite that, until he was barely a day's walk to Iran, and contracted a serious case of amoebic dysentery, the trip was enormously rewarding.

For all those who are dedicated travelers and consider themselves citizens of the larger world, Ollivier's journey will be rich with the allure of the open road and of the experiences that beckon from afar. A walk across countries such as Turkey, Iran and other politically challenging regions is not for everyone, but even if our travel to those places must be more of the armchair variety, we can still savor Ollivier's experiences, and enjoy his vivid, first person account of his astonishing trek.