Polo Lifestyles-Haiti: May-June 2021 Tribute to Mothers

V O LU M E V / I S S U E I I I / M AY - J U N E 2 0 2 1

T H E U. S . O P E N P O LO C H A M P I O N S H I P S · K I N G S P O LO W O R L D P O L O L E A G U E B E A C H P O L O · M O N T Y W AT E R B U R Y C U P

FLYING WITH CASH? THINK TWICE INSIDE AN INVITE-ONLY SUPER-CAR CLUB

TRIBUTE TO MOTHERS

TOM FORD'S NEW TRASH-TASTIC TIMEPIECE

ORGANIC WINE

TRADITIONAL VINEYARDS PRODUCE INTOXICATING LABELS

CONQUER UNCERTAINTY WRANGLE THE UNKNOWN LIKE A PRO

F E AT U R I N G

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Haiti Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher

Joshua Jakobitz Editor-in-Chief

Claire Barrett

Head of Photography

Eva Espresso

Contributing Photographer

Cezar Kusik

Wine Contributor

Raphael K. Dapaah Art Contributor

Jyoti Paintel

Spiritual Contributor

Stanley Pierre-Etienne Style Contributor

Anne-Isabelle Saint-Pierre Style Contributor

Philippe Lucas

Luxury Contributor Brand Representatives Anne-Isabelle Saint-Pierre - Dubai Michael J. Snell - The Hamptons Stanley Pierre-Etienne Caribbean Jessica Foret Wax - Santa Fe Charles Ward - Montecito K & Co. Media - Los Angeles Contributing Photographers Eric Carre Global Polo Entertainment

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Gregory Bertrand Copy Editor

Katerina Morgan

Contributing Photographer

Michael J. Snell

Lifestyles Contributor

Charles Ward

Mansions of the Month Curator

Joey Velez

Wellness Columnist

Brett Chody

Trends Contributor

William Smith

Philanthropy Contributor

Panthil Dwivedi

Wellness Contributor Polo Lifestyles is a publication of HT Polo Publishing Co. 995 Detroit Avenue, Suite A Concord, CA 94518 Content Copyright © Polo Lifestyles 2020 All Rights Reserved.

For information or to advertise Contact editor@htpolo.com Read online at www.pololifestyles.com Cover Photo of Michèle Bennett Duvalier courtesy MBD Archives

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GHANTOOT RACING & POLO CLUB Al Amal Polo Day for Charity HH President of UAE Polo Cup MARRAKECH POLO CLUB International Women's Day Polo Cup AL HABTOOR POLO CLUB UAE National Day Cup Sir Winston Churchill Cup INANDA CLUB AON International Polo Cell C Africa Cup The Africa Polo Open DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY Coupe PGH Trophee de Bourbon The Polo Rider Cup Open de France

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SCOREBOARDS & COCKTAILS S O C I A L D I S T A N C I N G P O L O

WORLD POLO LEAGUE SEASON EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS FROM MIAMI BEACH POLO page 26 POLO LIFESTYLES EDITORS & CONTRIBUTORS

Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher Polo Lifestyles @haiti_polo_captain

Panthil Dwivedi

Wellness Contributor PanthilWrites.com @panthildwivedi

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Josh Jakobitz

Editor-in-Chief Polo Lifestyles @joshuajakobitz

Charles Ward

Mansions of the Month IdeaWorks Global @ideaworksglobal

Claire Barrett

Head of Photography

Claire Barrett Photography

@clairebarrettphoto

Eva Espresso Photographer

Eva Espresso Photography

@eva.espresso

Raphael K. Dapaah

Jyoti Paintel

Art Contributor Dapaah Gallery @dapaahgallery

Spiritual Contributor Polo Lifestyles @jyotipaintel

Michael J. Snell

Gregory Bertrand

Lifestyles Contributor MJS Groupe @agnello_1

Copy Editor Polo Lifestyles @bertrand7367

Cezar Kusik

Wine Contributor Polo Lifestyles @cezartastesearth

Joey Velez

Brett Chody

Trends Contributor Polo Lifestyles @brettchody

William Smith

Wellness Columnist

Philanthropy Contributor

@velezmentalhealth

@willismith_2000

Velez Mental Performance May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust

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Bend, but don't break to adapt to reality, page 152

Inside a members-only super-car club, page 54

Your trash could be Tom Ford's treasure, page 70

All the best preppy chic looks for fall, page 135

TRIBUTE TO MOTHERS An anthology of inspiring moms from varied backgrounds and walks of life open up about pandemic realness, protecting their children, balancing work and self-care and sending their offspring into the real world.

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U.S. OPEN POLO CHAMPIONSHIP

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ET ME TELL YOU A SECRET: WE’VE BEEN THROWING AROUND THE IDEA FOR A TRIBUTE TO MOMS FOR SEVERAL YEARS NOW, BUT BETWEEN A ROYAL WEDDING TWO YEARS AGO AND THE ONSET OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC LAST YEAR, IT NEVER CAME TO FRUITION. THIS YEAR, WE PULLED THE TRIGGER WITH OUR FIRST MOTHER’S DAY ISSUE. I’LL TELL YOU ANOTHER SECRET: I HAD SO MUCH FUN INTERVIEWING THE MOMS FOR OUR FEATURES. Each of the women, from quite different backgrounds and walks of life, included in this month’s issue of Polo Lifestyles are warm, kind, generous, funny and above all, protective of their children – no matter how grownup those children are. You’ll recognize some of these women from Page Six or the E! Network; others are familiar faces from the Florida winter polo season. Each is unique; each is relatable. Many of them are raising, or have raised, their children in the spotlight. It is a burden that each of them has carried and felt deeply.

One of the polo moms shared this with me: “We (the parents) are criticized for everything we do with the kids on and off the polo field… from social media to talk on the sidelines. But people will never know what lengths we’ve gone to protect our kids. People only see what we’re doing; no one sees or knows what we’ve said ‘No,’ to.”

Our cover mom, Michele Bennett Duvalier, First Lady of Haiti from 1980 to 1986, is a bold - and some will say, polarizing - choice. Her interview with Polo Lifestyles is the first time she's talked to the press openly since 1986 when Barbara Walters flew to Mougins to interview her.

This is a story of a mom, who under intense scrutiny, raised four children; Haiti's first-ever, active First Lady in Exile, remaining relevant throughout a 35-year period.

"I read interesting stories about me all the time," she told me. "Things I never did, places I never traveled. It's very interesting." This is her side of the story, untold and undisclosed until now.

This May, as Mother’s Day is celebrated around the world, remember and treasure the mother-figures in your own life. We wouldn’t be who we are today without them.

Josh Jakobitz josh@pololifestyles.com

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CHOOSE YOUR X. THE BMW X RANGE.

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MBUSA.COM

VOLUME V / ISSUE III / MAY - JUNE 2021

aerionsupersonic In honor of Earth Day, we celebrate the strides made and the work yet to be done

douglasellimancalifornia 7 Beverly Ridge Terrace • Beverly Hills • $21,995,000⁣ listed by Douglas Elliman California

fraseryachts On May 1, the idyllic islands of French Polynesia officially reopened for tourism. page 22

bienabye Summertime is around the corner share your Caribbean roots with a great madres plaid and a floral print

snoopypolo Miami Beach Polo saw a showdown between Seminole Casino and Land Rover

kandcomedia Kick off every day with a bang, inspire yourself and others, and dress for success

assouline In honor of Miami Beach Polo and World Book Day, Assouline's "Miami Beach"

stephanieleitnercom This bronze equestrian piece from Stephanie Leitner is almost finished and ready for a home

krisjenner Kris Jenner picked out some of Kylie's products as suggestions for Mother's Day gifts

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Click and comment on our choices... tag @pololifestyles.

We will share noteworthy comments with you next month.

embassyofhaiti.us Promoting Haitian and HaitianAmerican authors at the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, D.C.

zuhairmuradprivate The couture wedding dress collection from Zuhair Murad Private is every bride's dream-come-true

yaeletvalerie We're seeing all things pink... what's your favorite color to mix with pink?

Turquoise? Chocolate?

estatesataqualina Miami’s most exquisite living experience awaits at the Estates at Acqualina, a dazzling collection of curated homes

glamourtvshow Anedie Azael Doura and Stanley Pierre-Etienne host Glamour TV on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

provenceluberonsothe The ultimate summer destination: an enormous luxury villa in Provence or anywhere in the South of France

kensingtonroyal The U.K. pulled out all the stops for the funeral procession for His Royal Highness Prince Philip, 99

colestige

An afternoon in the garden with a book and a drink might just be the perfect Mother's Day combo

speakrsapp @hermusicofficial took home the Academy Award for Best Original Song at last night’s #Oscars page 23

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WO RL D P O LO L E AG UE BEACH P OLO M I AMI BEAC H

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC CARRE FOR POLO LIFESTYLES

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC CARRE FOR POLO LIFESTYLES

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Seminole Casino Coconut Creek defeated Land Rover by a score of 9-6 to capture the World Polo League Beach Polo title in Miami Beach.

Following the championship match, The Setai took on World Polo League for the Casablanca Trophy.

The Setai received one goal on handicap.

Next came the highly anticipated Celebrity Charity Cup to benefit Give Back for Special Equestrians.

The Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame took on the Polo Training Foundation.

Romero Britto scored the only goal for the Museum of Polo, while Marc Ganzi scored two goals for PTF for the win. Marlon Humphrey, who only just began riding a month ago, looked impressively comfortable on his horse. page 29

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC CARRE FOR POLO LIFESTYLES

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KINGS POLO page 34

CA IR O

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PHOTOS COURTESY KINGS POLO

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U.S . O P E N P OLO CHA M P I ON S H I P

I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O LO C L U B W E S T PA L M B E A C H , F L O R I D A

S C O N E P O L O D E F E AT S PA R K P L A C E

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SCONE POLO VICTORIOUS IN THE U.S. OPEN POLO CHAMPIONSHIP

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HE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED CONCLUSION TO THE GAUNTLET OF POLO AND U.S. OPEN POLO CHAMPIONSHIP AT THE INTERNATIONAL POLO CLUB PALM BEACH DID NOT DISAPPOINT IN A HARD-FOUGHT FINAL THAT CAME DOWN TO THE FINAL CHUKKER BETWEEN SCONE AND PARK PLACE. page 42

Under sunny skies on the Home of the U.S. Polo Assn – Field 1, it was Scone’s father-son duo of Adolfo and Poroto Cambiaso, along with Peke Gonzalez and David Paradice that emerged victorious, raising the prestigious CaptiveOne U.S. Open Polo Championship trophy and capturing the $200,000 prize with the 14-13 victory. Although this is his ninth title, it may be one of the most memorable for Adolfo Cambiaso, winning alongside his son Poroto for the first time, who ties Nic Roldan for the youngest ever winner of the CaptiveOne

U.S. Open Polo Championship at just 15 years old.

Each capturing one leg in the Gauntlet of Polo, the deciding tournament resulted in Scone rising to the top of the field by relying on their trio once again as Adolfo Cambiaso, Poroto Cambiaso and Gonzalez all finished with at least four goals in the victory. After a quick start, Park Place’s offense was stagnant in the middle of the game until coming alive in the final chukker, but they were not able to capture the heroics of their

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semifinal victory despite the impressive 10-goal performance from Hilario Ulloa. Producing efficient offenses and an elite level of play that would be expected in a CaptiveOne U.S. Open Polo Championship final, Scone built their lead in the third and fourth chukkers to withstand the late charge from Park Place and hold on for the thrilling onegoal victory.

Asserting their strategy in the early moments, Park Place took the early lead on a cut-shot goal from Matt Coppola two minutes into the game. Continuing to apply the pressure, Park Place quickly doubled their lead on a Penalty 2 conversion for Ulloa as Scone was forced to battle from behind. Receiving a foul, Adolfo Cambiaso calmed the Scone team and converted a penalty of his own to settle in and begin the hard-fought battle between the two evenly matched teams. Coppola’s second goal kept Park Place ahead by one at the end of the first chukker, but Scone reorganized for the remainder of the opening half. Rotating

An impressive goal from Park Place’s Andrey Borodin saw him jump on the line ahead of Adolfo Cambiaso and run to goal to finish under pressure and bring the game even at 4-all in what was setting up to be an exciting final. Scone came racing out of the tent in the third chukker, converting a Penalty 2 and then receiving consecutive goals from Poroto Cambiaso, who transitioned from the passing role to scoring at the front of the game to give Scone the 7-5 advantage at halftime.

Gonzalez and son Poroto to attack forward and the duo added a field goal each to extend Scone’s lead to four. In desperate need of offense, Park Place turned to their 10-goaler Ulloa, who helped his team slowly chip away at the lead with two goals in the fifth chukker.

Park Place found themselves in a similar position in their semifinal match-up against La Indiana, trying to recapture the magic of a sixth chukker comeback and threw everything they could at Scone in the final minutes. Ulloa’s fifth penalty conversion cut the deficit to two, but Scone looked to seal the game after receiving two penalty conversions for Gonzalez, pushing the score to 14-9 with under four minutes remaining.

Carrying over a foul from the end of the third chukker, Peke Gonzalez stepped up and converted a Penalty 2, opening play in the second half as Park Place tried to fight their way back into the game. Adolfo Cambiaso effectively played the back position, stifling Park Place’s offense while allowing Peke

However, the persistent Park Place team never gave in, providing one final push that sent the game into the final seconds. Ulloa ran onto a Penalty 5 at full speed and won a ride-off with Poroto to provide a quick goal and it was seconds later when he received a foul that was converted, bringing the difference to

effectively, it was Poroto Cambiaso that effectively used the pass, assisting on back-to-back goals to give Scone their first lead of the day at 4-3.

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U.S . O P E N P OLO CH AMPI ON S H I P THE GAUNTLET OF POLO

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T HE G O L D C U P FI N AL THE GAUNTLET OF POLO

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three. With time ticking down, Ulloa continued to run to goal, scoring his tenth and final goal as time expired but it left Park Place one goal short as Scone celebrated the 14-13 victory and the CaptiveOne U.S. Open Polo Championship title.

The Seymour Knox MVP was awarded to Adolfo Cambiaso, scoring four goals and adding four assists in the victory.

A series of Best Playing Pony honors were given to Cambiaso’s string, beginning with the Willis L. Hartman Best Playing Pony award to Cambiaso’s Greta Libelula.

Best Playing Pony of the US Open, Gauntlet of Polo, and IPC Horse of the Year was given to Cambiaso’s Lovelocks Camusericht. Lastly, the Cria Polo Argentino Best Playing Pony of the US Open was awarded to Dolfina Maria.

For his exceptional play throughout the Gauntlet of Polo, scoring 15 goals, Michael Bickford won the Amateur Most Valuable Player award.

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"POLO" TO PREMIERE

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HE WORLD OF POLO CONTINUES TO FASCINATE AUDIENCES ON THE BIG SCREEN. AT THIS YEAR’S CANNES FILM FESTIVAL IN JULY, AWARD-WINNING PRODUCER VALENTINA CASTELLANIQUINN WILL PRESENT HER NEW FILM “POLO,” ALONGSIDE HER WORK WITH THE CCFORUM JULY 6-8 IN MONACO.

Castellani-Quinn announced the production of the film at the recent CCForum in Dubai, revealing a new story that revolves around the Sport of Kings, highlighting that is the attitude and courage that makes kings; not necessarily sport or social status. page 50

Valentina Castellani-Quinn, Cate Blanchett and HRH Prince Nereides De Bourbon

AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

“This film is very personal to me. In my life, I had to start all over again when my husband (Francesco Quinn), suddenly died of a heart attack 10 years ago. I started my life all over again, from pieces, creating Quinn Studios to produce award-winning documentaries, Academy Awards candidate films, TV series. Just like the hero of our story I firmly believe that victories require patience. They are made by humility, by courage, by the grace of integrity, by commitment, by a vision kept intact with an open heart, even in front of defeat, in front of fear. Real victories are made by trust and authenticity and do change life forever,” said CastellaniQuinn about the meaning of the film, “Polo,” and it’s message.

the Royal Arab United Emirates will produce the film.

Quinn Studios Entertainment and Nereides Group, in partnership with

Together, Castellani-Quinn and the prince are developing a series of proj-

“With this film, I want to create a bridge between Hollywood and the Middle East, bringing the high-quality standard of Hollywood film-making with the professional technology and structures of the Emirates... quite a powerful combination,” Castellani-Quinn told Polo Lifestyles.

In addition to being Chairman and CEO of Quinn Studios in Hollywood, Valentina is partnered with Prince Nereides Antonio Giamundo de Bourbon as Global Media Officer for the Parisian conglomerate Nereides Group and its divisions based in Place Vendôme.

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ects, including two powerful documentaries, titled “The White Snake” about Native Americans as well as “The Albinos in Africa.”

“I like to go into dark places and open them to the world,” said CastellaniQuinn. “There is such beauty in turning on the light and helping those who need it most. They define you and expand you, and you can define and expand them.”

“The White Snake” will be narrated by Native American Chief Arvol Looking Horse who led the fight at Standing Rock, the Indian Reservation that is the site of the controversial Dakota pipeline.

“What happened at Standing Rock is an important tale to tell,” said CastellaniQuinn. “It was humanity against technology. The protests spoke loudly to the world about the importance of respecting the planet and the environment but, more importantly, to remember who we are as human beings, resonating together as one with the planet, with each other, and our soul. New technologies are out there that have proved successful in other countries that will ignite a new ‘system’ which beats in harmony with the heartbeat of the planet.”

With Quinn Studios Entertainment, Castellani-Quinn embarked on a new

initiative, co-producing the sustainability-focused business initiative, the CC-Forum, with its creator Max Studennikoff. The forums take place each year in Dubai, Monaco and London.

“I love working on this new initiative, bringing a touch of Hollywood and the entertainment business to the forum,” said Castellani-Quinn. “I’m working with Max to expand the forum in a more kaleidoscopic way, involving sport and entertainment, health, education and social impact projects. The Monte-Carlo Forum is reflecting this new vision.” page 51

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REV YOUR ENGINES

I T ' S T I M E F O R R A L LY P O I N T E A S T (IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE INVITED)

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF UGUR DURSUN

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LIFESTYLE

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF UGUR DURSUN

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HOME FOR THE DRIVE: RALLY POINT EAST

MICHAEL J. SNELL Luxury Contributor

@agnello_1

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HE HAMPTONS IS HOME TO SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST AFFLUENT INDIVIDUALS WHERE HAVING IT ALL MEANS YOU CAN ALSO HAVE IT ALL - INCLUDING A LARGE ARSENAL OF RECREATIONAL, ADRENALINE-PUMPING TOYS TO PLAY WITH ON THE WEEKEND. But there isn’t quite anything like the newest members club that has lists of the elite knocking at the door to get in.

Make sure you buckle up and fill out your application – this is Rally Point East.

A first of its kind, this premium members-based club located in the

Hamptons is centered around the automotive experience. The energy of the club is to speak directly to those who call themselves passionate car enthusiasts, in any sense of the form. From F1 fans, classic and vintage restorers or those who strive to pack their garage full of the latest and greatest hypercars, you’ll never know who-owns-what sitting next to you. The idea, which came to founders Chris and Kelly DiJorio about a year ago after searching for something similar to enjoy stemmed from the true passion of petrol and bonds formed between a member’s club. Providing a destination to drive is one thing, but paring it with a stunning space to both work and play, climate-controlled car storage, and exceptional roster of seasonal programming, Rally Point East has taken a bespoke approach to re-envisioning your typical motoring club.

The first and only facility of its kind is located within the private Gabreski Airport, just a short distance from the Hampton Hills Golf Club and notable

vacation destinations. Chosen for its accessible location to points across Long Island and beyond the club definitely intrigues you from the minute you pull up. Greeted by a tastefully designed lobby just adjacent to the members private conference room and business center, you enter to a vast, utilitarian warehouse facility all designed with a sense of warmth and purpose in design. The space is finished with polished concrete floors and white walls that present an almost gallery-like stage splashed with unique automotive memorabilia and curated works throughout. In partnership with brands like Gallery Momentum, Paul Oz, After the Race, House of Spoils and Maranello Design you will see hand-selected pieces from their collections along with curated reading materials from Retromotive artfully gracing the sleek surfaces. Speaking of surfaces, Lichen, the Brooklyn-based design firm, designed and outfitted

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the space with historically significant pieces representative of automotive club culture. Master and Dynamic has fully outfitted the club’s audio system and the team has also gone so far as to curate a signature scented candle by Hamptons Handpoured and a hand-selected Club Roast coffee from Hampton Coffee. The coffee can be enjoyed at their coffee bar, along with a highly tailored selection of other beverages -- all non-alcoholic of course -- as this club does involve driving both physically, and even virtually on one of their two racing simulators.

We’re not sure what is more unique: that you can project and view any race you desire across the expansive wall or dine next to an ever-changing array of modern and classic supercars that are set right inside. page 58

What’s even more captivating than the space is the list of inaugural programming to take place.

With the increased number of New Yorkers who have made The Hamptons their new permanent home, a new community of clientele has begun to search for new ways to spend their time, places to meet and the ideal places for enthusiasts to convene. Following the initial Rally Point East opening announcement, the club’s traction gained an immense amount of interest, so much so that we were told to-date they are ‘way more than pleased’ with the membership rate, but as a club would not disclose the current number.

Following the completion of your application process and brief interview, your yearly dues are collected which are in

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the several-thousand(s) and admittance is granted. When we said that people are lining up to get in, we meant literally.

Applications are rushing in with such rapidity that they cannot keep up. The first group of founding members was invited to join the launch event rally that took place at the end of March to signify the kickoff and the beginning of something bigger yet to come.

Last week, Rally Point East teamed up with Manhattan Motorcars to hold their first charitable rally. Along with partners like Abushi, Berkshire Hathaway International Realty, The Baker House 1650, Diane Hendricks Catering and The MJS Groupe, the event aimed at helping raise funding for St. Mary’s Hospital for Children. With registrants entering both their vehi-

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cles and a donation into the roster, all participants gathered at the Manhattan Motorcars Porsche Dealership in New York and were greeted by Robert Marchhart, Director of Marketing for the dealership group, along with Rosco Abushi, owner of Abushi Automotive and Robert Heicklen, advocate for St. Mary’s. Following the welcome breakfast, attendees started their engines and began the 86 mile drive out east. Over 50 cars participated in the day’s rally event which included a few notable novelties like a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder, Lamborghini Huracan Performante & Aventador SV, Ferrari Testarossa, Custom Restored Ford Bronco, 2019 GT3 RS, Lamborghini Gallardo signed

by Valentino Balboni and Roll-Royce Wraith along with several other Ferraris, Porsches and Aston Martins.

The day wouldn’t have been complete without a member’s pre-rally happening in tandem, which started from the Rally Point East location taking a more local route and having both groups convene back at the same time. Welcoming members, VIPs and friends of the club, guests were invited to view the 65 cars that were on display both inside and out as well as to enjoy a scrumptious brunch selection crafted by Chef Diane Hendricks.

In total, the members and attendees raised just under $10,000 for the charity, which will be part of an ongoing mission for the St. Mary’s advocate Robert Heicklen.

Rally Point East offers once-in-a-lifetime experiences for their members,

much like being a part of a charitable rally, and to even hold a rally of their own private event. In addition, the club is envisioned as the home for many new luxe events like car launches, fashion week events, art installations and brand activations. In the queue are events like an exclusive Ferrari F8 Tributo and Ferrari Roma test drive event by Ferrari Long Island, Brunch & F1 Screening and the much-anticipated reveal and drive event of the Bugatti Chiron Sport and Chiron Pur Sport.

This is where you come to feel at home amidst a tight-knit community of individuals with an unwavering passion for all things automotive. A home, your home for the drive.

MICHAEL J. SNELL LUXURY CONTRIBUTOR POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

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FLYING WITH CASH? THINK TWICE A LITTLE-KNOWN TECHNICALITY COULD RESULT IN WHAT TSA CALLS "FORFEITURE" W E I N V ESTIGATED A ND T H E RES U LTS A RE A L A RM IN G

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FORFEITURE

IS A LITTLE-KNOWN, VERY ANNOYING INCONVENIENCE

TSA CAN SEIZE YOUR CASH - GETTING IT BACK IS COMPLICATED JOSHUA JAKOBITZ Editor-in-Chief

I

@joshuajakobitz

N 2010, I WAS ROUTINELY FLYING FROM PORTAU-PRINCE TO MIAMI OR FORT LAUDERDALE SEVERAL TIMES A MONTH. A MAJOR EARTHQUAKE HAD STRUCK THE CAPITAL CITY OF HAITI AND OUR HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE THERE WAS UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE TO MAKE MIRACLES HAPPEN. Our fledgling communications team worked off of dial-up speed Internet shared with volunteers who were accustomed to advanced WiFi connections.

One of the many miracles – in the midst of organizing major surgery schedules, importing, trading and buying medicines; piecing together makeshift clinics, ERs and pharmacies – I was constantly asked to perform was to “make the WiFi work.”

I begrudgingly drove to the AccessHaiti office in Petion-Ville several times a week over the course of a month to beg their exhausted employees to reboot our connection, trade out our equipment for something “pi bon” (better quality) or demand that someone come personally page 66

to fix the issue at our office and house.

I don’t know what I was thinking at the time; every visit proved completely fruitless. I heard from other responders that some organizations brought in satellite technology from the Dominican Republic or Miami. I poked around on the Internet in the middle of the night when no one else was connected (Attention! The WiFi works at 3 a.m.!) and made a list of necessary equipment.

I convinced the country director to let me start importing anything that could and would fit into a suitcase on my trips back and forth. The equipment wasn’t inexpensive. I would order it on my credit card, ship it to my address in the U.S. and take the equivalent of cash with me to deposit at an ATM stateside to reimburse my expenses.

On one particular ill-fated trip from Port-au-Prince to Fort Lauderdale, I felt the eyes of surveillance on me more than usual – in baggage claim, in customs and immigration, at the security re-check point and at the only sit-down restaurant inside of the security perimeter. Sure enough, I was pulled aside as I walked from Chilis to the gate for my connection. Two DEA agents who identified themselves only by last names knew everything about me. They questioned me, went through my carry-on and shoulder bag and generally tried to shake me up. My familiarity with carrying large sums of cash over international borders could be summed up in one question on the standard immigration

form: Are you carrying over $10,000 in cash today? Check Yes or No. I had checked No – and it was the truth. I had been careful to bring in less than $10,000 in cash during any one trip.

The DEA agents counted my cash in front of me and seemed mildly disappointed it was slightly less than allowed.

I was indignant about my rights and allowances. The agents switched gears and questioned me about drug trafficking in Haiti, but lost interest when I didn’t recognize the names they were throwing out. After that trip, I placed envelopes of cash more selectively in my personal bags – a little here, a little there. Imagine my surprise 11 years later, when I saw the headline, “Flying with Cash? You Could Lose It All.” The memory from FLL, long-since filed to the unimportant section of my brain-archives, came flooding back. I’m no expert on the matter, internationally or domestically, but Andrew Wimer, Assistant Communications Director at the Institute for Justice (IJ), is. He tracks cases of government-seized cash and recently wrote the following, which he has graciously shared with Polo Lifestyles.

FLYING WITH CASH? YOU COULD LOSE IT ALL Jerry Johnson flew to Phoenix hoping to buy a big rig for his growing trucking company, but the next day he went home without a truck and without his money. Jerry wasn’t a victim of a criminal or con artist; instead, law en-

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forcement seized his cash at the airport out of mere suspicion. He was never charged with a crime, but he could lose his $39,500 in savings to the government anyway. And Jerry isn’t alone in losing his money just because he wanted to fly with it.

Rebecca Brown had $82,000 taken from her in Pittsburgh. Stacy Jones’ $43,000 was taken in Wilmington. More than $58,000 was seized from Rustem Kazazi in Cleveland. Each of them was doing something completely legal: flying domestically with cash. But each of them lost their savings for months after law enforcement seized the money and then tried to take it through civil forfeiture.

Only after their cases became public did the government give up and return the money.

If you look on the Internet, you won’t find any warning from the government that flying with large amounts of cash is suspicious. Jerry, like others before him, checked online to see whether there was anything he needed to do before flying with his money. At the most, some websites warn that flyers should be prepared to tell Transportation Security Administration screeners why they are carrying the money. There’s no hint that those screeners routinely alert law enforcement when they see cash on their scanners.

When Jerry landed in Phoenix, he was confronted by officers at the baggage

claim who asked him whether he was carrying drugs or money. Jerry said he was not carrying drugs but did have cash. He was taken into a back room and interrogated for an hour. The officers refused to hear anything about his trucking business or the auction he was headed to in Phoenix that had the exact model of Peterbilt truck he was looking for.

Instead, the officers focused on Jerry’s old criminal record and circumstantial evidence like Jerry buying his ticket only a few days before flying. Jerry had served prison time for a drug charge in 2005 but turned his life around with his trucking company and has not had a run-in with the law in nearly a decade.

Eventually, the officers gave Jerry a choice: sign a form on-the-spot agreeing to hand over the money or be arrested. Alone and far from home, Jerry signed the form the officer had filled out. He was able to fly back to Charlotte the next day and, knowing that he had done nothing wrong, decided to fight for his money. But the deck is stacked against him. He hasn’t been charged with any crime. Instead, the government is trying to take his money through civil forfeiture. But civil forfeiture isn’t a criminal proceeding—it happens in civil court. Property owners don’t have the right to an attorney and often have to prove their own innocence to get the money back.

It’s also a legal process that leaves people without their money for a long time.

Even in a best-case scenario, if law enforcement takes money at the airport, it will be half a year before it is returned.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent took Terry Rolin’s life savings from his daughter Rebecca Brown when she was flying from Pittsburgh to her home near Boston in August 2019. It was October before she received a notice that the government wanted to forfeit the more than $82,000. Rebecca’s story made headlines in January 2020, but she didn’t receive notice that the government would return the money until early March; it took a few more weeks before it was transferred.

LIFESTYLE

In total, Terry Rolin waited nine months to get his money back.

Jerry has teamed up with IJ to appeal his case in Arizona. Meanwhile, Arizona lawmakers are considering civil forfeiture reforms which could have prevented law enforcement from taking Jerry’s money to begin with.

The reforms would require a criminal conviction before forfeiting property, prevent the use of waivers (like the one Jerry was strong-armed into signing) and create a prompt hearing so that someone can get their property back without delay. page 67

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PHILANTHROPIST IN FOCUS

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FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN TO BESPOKE FASHION

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DESIGNER TOM FORD

TACKLES PLASTIC TRASH WITH BOTH STYLE AND MONEY WILLIAM SMITH Philanthropy Contributor

R

@willismith_2000

ECENTLY, MY HOMETOWN OF SANTA FE WAS ABUZZ WITH THE SALE OF ONE OF DESIGNER TOM FORD'S LUXE PROPERTIES HERE. HIS GORGEOUS ESTATE JUST OUTSIDE OF SANTA FE, ALL 20,000PLUS ACRES OF IT, RECENTLY SOLD (AND CONGRATS TO POLO LIFESTYLE’S FRIEND NEIL LYON, WHOSE SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY’SASSOCIATED NEIL LYON GROUP, BROUGHT THE BUYER TO THE DEAL).

While Ford’s ranch deal was being negotiated, the ever-cutting-edge aesthetic for which he is known found it’s way into a new timepiece and a driving passion to address the crisis of plastic trash in our oceans.

Late last year, Ford introduced the 002 Ocean Plastic Watch, billed as the “first luxury timepiece made entirely from 100% ocean plastic.” Each timepiece contains the equivalent of 35 discarded plastic bottles from the ocean and Ford describes the fusion of fashion and social consciousness at the heart of the 002 Ocean Plastic Watch with a simple statement: “In my opinion, ethical luxury is the greatest luxury of all.”

Coinciding with the release of the 002, Ford also announced his partnership with startup 52HZ in launching the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize (plasticprize.org). The “prize” is $1 million USD to find a more environmentally-friendly substitute for thin plastic film, which accounts for approximately

half of all plastic pollution entering oceans annually. Once the prize is awarded, the plan is to have a scalable alternative to thin plastic film by 2025.

Ford’s new focus couldn’t be more timely for the urgency of climate action, or more sexy for a timepiece whose wearer wants to demonstrate their values. page 71

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POLO LIFESTYLES

TRIBUTE TO MOTHERS

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GLADYS NAZEMI DUBOUSQUET

DIANA ROSS

MARYSE PENETTE-KEDAR

GIGI HADID

THE BALMIR SISTERS

JENNIFER GARNER

ANGELIA JOLIE

JEN HATMAKER

DOMINIQUE JACKSON

MICHÈLE BENNETT DUVALIER

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I

t is 11 a.m. in Paris and Michèle Bennett Duvalier is sipping her morning coffee while catching up on the news. This particular morning, another grande dame from Haiti has been hospitalized in Port-au-Prince. She speaks of the woman with a bit of nostalgia, another one of her contemporaries fading away.

She’s had her own bouts of health scares as recently as February. She squeezed in this interview between ongoing appointments with doctors and specialists. She also recently tested negative for COVID-19 after her closest domestic employee exposed her to the coronavirus. “I’m on my own in isolation right now,” she said. “Managing the house, the dog, everything.”

For the next hour and 43 minutes, she relived memories, spoke highly of her four children and set the record straight about her often-villainized, former husband.

“I haven’t thought about many of these things in a long time,” she concluded toward the end of our no-questions-off-limits interview.

She was neither pretentious nor overly humble; rather she seemed interested, at long last, to share at least part of her side of the story. It was the first time she has spoken on record since her 1986 TV interview with Barbara Walters.

She referred to her former husband repeatedly as The President.

I called her Mrs. Duvalier during our interview; however, for the sake of this feature, I referred to her as Michèle, as many of the central characters share a common last name, which could be confusing to the reader.

“Never complain, never explain,” she said to me multiple times during our interview. “That’s my motto. In general, you don’t complain, and as long as you don’t owe anyone anything, you don’t have to explain either.”

Josh Jakobitz, San Francisco, May 5, 2021 page 76

MICHÈLE BENNETT DUVALIER Michèle Bennett Duvalier in Paris

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H

ER CAREFULLY WORDED, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TITLE IS SIMPLY, “FIRST LADY OF THE REPUBLIC OF HAITI FROM 1980 TO 1986,” BUT FOR ANYONE LIVING IN HAITI DURING THOSE YEARS, THOSE 11 WORDS ARE LAYERED WITH MEANING, DRAMA, CONTEXT AND A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC.

Haiti was known as the Pearl of the Antilles rather than the poorest country in the West Hemisphere during her husband’s 15-year presidency. The story of that era neither begins in 1980 nor ends in 1986. Rather it begins in 1957 – and as for the ending, Michèle Bennett Duvalier is actively writing that from her apartment in a lovely neighborhood in Paris.

Her social media followers cling to her every word in posts and essays, sharing and reposting her longer thoughts, “Mes Points Sur Le Ï,” broadly. The subjects

Wtih Jean-Claude where it all started: Port-au-Prince, Haiti

WRI TTE N BY J O S H UA JA KO BI TZ / P H OTOG R AP H S C OU RT E SY MI C H E LLE B E N N E T T D U VALI E R

range from memorializing friends and loved ones to celebrating birthdays and holidays – sharing just enough personal, behind-the-scenes insight to remain as relevant as ever. But her most popular posts are disparaging discourses of the present state of Haiti. She often will quote her ex-husband, “What have you done with my country?” in her lectures to government leaders. My country – because it was her country, it was her child of sorts – is how she still thinks about Haiti.

From 1980 to 1986, she was its First Lady, its mother. Like a child separated from its mother, life in exile didn’t disconnect Michèle from Haiti. Instead, it’s commonly argued, she became the first-ever active First Lady in Exile, receiving Haitian dignitaries and visitors in the same grand fashion as she once did at the Villa d’Accueil in Port-auPrince. In the 1980s and 1990s, she stayed connected to Haitian culture, society and politics.

Social media’s rise in the 2000s – Michèle’s preferred platform is Facebook

– gave her a new avenue to connect with both supporters and haters. The last five years of Haiti’s painful tailspin have provided plenty of targets for her Points Sur Le Ï, because a mother never stops being a mother; a mother never truly abandons her child. And she has a lot to say about that for anyone who’d like to listen.

In order to understand her position as First Lady in Exile, we need to start at the beginning of the end.

HAITI - 1978 In 1978, Michèle was a beautiful divorcée, educated abroad, friendly with emerging artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and an otherwise busy mother of two young children from her first marriage. She worked at the Bennett family business, mostly focused on the exportation of coffee. Her first marriage lasted only five years and she wasn’t looking for a repeat.

“I didn’t need a husband to support myself,” she said bluntly. “I was doing fine on my own: house, pool, nice car. The page 77

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family business was more than capable to care for my financial needs.”

There was one very eligible bachelor in particular to whom Michèle’s characteristics appealed greatly, and he was about to change the course of her life.

The president of Haiti, Jean-Claude Duvalier, was only 27 years old in 1978, but he’d been president for eight years already. He inherited the position of President for Life from his father, Dr. François Duvalier, who had secured the family’s grip on power through a series of changes to the Constitution and consolidating the Parliament, complete with an election that all but ensured his victory. His first-born son and natural successor Jean-Claude became president at 19 unexpectedly. He desired a different kind of government – his own legacy – but he was largely surrounded by the administration he inherited from his father.

In those days, Haitian people and Haitian families were either Duvalierists or not. To be a Duvalierist during his father’s administration meant unflinching, unquestioning loyalty to the presidency.

By the late 1970s, many Duvalierists expected to be rewarded for this loyalty.

And a marriage between a prominent Duvalierist family and the Duvalier family was considered the ultimate accomplishment.

“Every Duvalierist family in Haiti had a daughter for the president,” said Michèle. “I was not anyone’s choice. I was wrong in every way.” The administration blocked the president’s social advances with Michèle, but he wasn’t dissuaded. Michèle Bennett caught – and held – his interest. She was everything he was not: glamorous, well-traveled, foreign-educated, experienced in the ways of the world and, most obvious of all, mulatto. François Duvalier had gone to great lengths during his presidency to instate the country’s black majority into power, effectively alienating influential members of the wealthier mulatto community. Michèle represented the mulatto community in every sense of the word: her father owned page 78

vast amounts of land, growing coffee for export, claiming indigenous Taïno ancestry, rather than African roots, as well as a direct descendancy from King Henri Christophe. The family lived in privilege inaccessible to the majority of the population. The Bennetts were also Church of England Episcopalians in a Catholic country, which would later present a challenge of its own.

None of these things deterred JeanClaude, so he invited her to his villa for

cocktails. A butler served Champagne and the two renewed their friendship, continuing to see each other both socially and privately. “(Jean-Claude) was a breath of fresh air,” said Michèle. “His father had been feared, but he was the son of Haiti: he grew up under Haiti’s watchful eye. Haitians from every walk of life were naturally protective of him.”

Michèle’s influence on the president was physically noticeable during their courtship: he slimmed down to a healthier

This page: Photographed at the Villa d'Accueil in Bourdon, Port-au-Prince

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body weight and popped up strategically in towns across the country, surprising delighted Haitians with his signature one and two gourde coins, pressed into the palms of children or thrown from the back of a car. She still didn’t think marrying Jean-Claude was an option, but he insisted, so she set a wedding date.

Her religious affiliation to the Episcopal Church and complications from her first marriage to Alix Pasquet, also Catholic, had to be overcome.

“The president called Archbishop (François-Wolff) Ligondé for an audience,” recalled Michèle. The archbishop surprisingly noted that Michèle lacked the necessary dispensation for her first marriage to Alix due to a clerical oversight. The clergyman’s official position was that her first marriage had been invalid in the eyes of the Church.

“When the archbishop told me that, my first thought was ‘How will I ever tell my children?’” said Michèle. Then she exploded. “The archbishop advised me to calm down and gave the president specific guidance on handling the dispensation we needed,” she said.

Jean-Claude wrote to the Vatican, explaining the situation and requesting their dispensation. The Vatican, having been the recipient of François Duvalier’s political maneuvering decades earlier, quickly and quietly granted it in two months’ time. By contrast, The Vatican took 11 years to annul the first marriage of Princess Caroline de Monaco during the same period.

In May 1980, the two married in the social event of the decade. The wedding, which took place one year before Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, cost an unheard of $3 million and was televised on the government-operated TV network in every municipality, village and city.

Around the world, the Haitian diaspora watched the wedding on local TV, too. She wore Givenchy couture, designed and fitted in Paris by Hubert de Givenchy himself.

Above: Michèle Bennett at Haiti's National Cathedral, seated next to her future mother-in-law First Lady Simone Ovide Duvalier.

“I was worried about the dress accentuating my curves. I was thin, but particularly conscious of the back of the dress,” Michèle said. Hubert reassured her: it was very flattering. He insisted on designing a custom headpiece, rather than a traditional veil, which formed a crown-like starburst that accentuated her striking silhouette and features. Haitians danced in the streets to celebrate the marriage of their president.

“I read in the newspapers how much the wedding cost,” Michèle said. “But I was in charge of two things: the dress and the date. The president and his sisters chose everything else… they had excellent taste and made all the decisions about décor and expenses. At one point, someone asked me which kind of flowers I liked – white orchids, I said – and they incorporated those into the decor. Newspapers reported that we served imported caviar page 79

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With President Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti

and other delicacies at the reception; but in reality,” she said, “The food was all locally made – it was a very Haitian wedding for all of Haiti.”

When Michèle moved into the Presidential Palace, she encountered her first obstacle to truly becoming First Lady: her new mother-in-law. The wife of the late president for life saw herself as First Lady for Life and it took Michèle time to transition into the role promised to her, intended for her: First Lady.

Michèle’s experiences abroad, tastes in fashion from her time interning in New York’s Garment District and general desire to expand Haiti’s presence on the world stage culminated into a PR plan: this one aimed at the international community. With her mother-in-law still in the way, perhaps she couldn’t summon an ambassador to the Presidential Palace, but no ambassador could miss a complimentary headline from Haiti’s daily newspaper, Le Nouvelliste.

Michèle – sometimes accompanied by the president – looking every part a glamorous First Lady in striking suits and coordinating hats, supported extremely popular causes and initiatives, and her instincts ensured that the press was present to capture every smile, touch and endearing moment of her campaign. In 1981, Michèle received Mother Teresa at the Presidential Palace, where the hallowed Mother told the press approvingly that she had never seen poor people so familiar with their Heads of State.

“No one knew that I met Sister Theresa years earlier at my father’s office,” Michèle said. Her mother, Aurore, had been a long-time supporter of the Missionaries of Charity. Her mother’s benevolence – “I saw her write a big check to Sister Theresa, and I asked, ‘How will Dad react to that?’” Michèle recalled. “This is the one expense your father never questions,” Aurore replied – instilled a baseline for charity work into Michèle.

Over the years, she actively fundraised for Mother Theresa, while also estabpage 80

lishing the Fondation Michèle Bennett Duvalier to support health, nutrition and education initiatives in Haiti. “I never set out to become famous or popular myself,” Michèle said. “Everything I did, built, funded… it was all to, first and foremost, support the president, while providing jobs and services.” Her foundation, the first of its kind and only one of its kind in regard to depth and breadth of success, developed and operated hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, canteens and schools.

By 1985, she had completed three hospitals – in Bon Repos, La Saline and Place Cazeau – and was breaking ground on a fourth in Delmas. There were hundreds of clinics, each paired with a pharmacy. The two largest were in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince and the rural city of Port-de-Paix. The foundation funded schools, both existing and new construction. Over 15,000 students a day benefitted from “canteens,” nutrition programs that served school-aged children a hot midday meal. Michèle was personally involved in every aspect, from planning to human resources. And her foundation was well-funded, both from the private sector as well as the

public. “When we left Haiti, the foundation bank account had a balance of $3 million (USD) to sustain the work,” she said. “I still have the bonds (to prove it).”

Newspapers, TV and radio hosts and later, bloggers, fixated on how much the Duvaliers ‘stole’ and ‘took’ into exile, typecasting them as villains and pillagers; meanwhile, the funds in the Fondation account were emptied, the projects abandoned, the buildings burned and as a result, denied school children their plat chaud, the daily midday meal previously provided by the canteens.

One last note on the Fondation: all the building, fundraising, organizing and operating listed above took place within a five-year span of time. It was a massive undertaking, the likes of which Haiti has never again experienced under successive governments – or First Lady agendas.

In addition to her responsibilities with the foundation, she oversaw the development and opening of the MUPANAH, a museum dedicated to the forefathers of the nation and the preservation of Haitian culture and art.

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Top left: With Pope John Paul II in Port-au-Prince; Top right: Dancing with Jean-Claude

The MUPANAH not only survived the social unrest in 1986 and beyond, but it withstood the earthquake that toppled most other buildings in its proximity.

The combination of her initiatives and successful projects coincidentally sidelined her mother-in-law. Simone Ovide Duvalier, beaten soundly in the press by her daughter-in-law, relinquished her title and power of the First Lady position to Michèle. The country had a new mother, and her name was Michèle Duvalier.

What followed in those short few years puts both Haitians and historians at odds with each other. To a vocal, critical contingent, Michèle was an underminer-extraordinaire, completely out of touch with the reality of her impoverished homeland, a “Dragon Lady,” according to a salacious piece published

by People Magazine and the most successful looter of the national treasury since Haiti’s inception in 1804. Reports indicate the Duvaliers once amassed up to $800 million in personal wealth. That would be an extraordinary achievement for today, in 2021, let alone in 1986.

It must be noted that actual charges

for these alleged actions have never materialized.

In the other corner, a just-as-staunchly demonstrative, yet quieter and harder-to-pin-down crowd of loyal friends and supporters describe the era as a magical time in Haiti’s history: the First Lady oozed elegance and grace, the Presidential Palace was a center of grandeur that represented the pride of the world’s first free black republic – and the parties, they were neither more, nor less, excessive than any reception at the Quay d’Orsay in Paris. The military and police presence in the street encouraged orderliness and cleanliness. The people in this group leave kind messages on her Facebook posts, recalling the births of children at “her hospitals,” reminiscing of the good old days, wishing her well and pleading with her to come back to restore Haiti to its former glory.

Michèle, it seems, doesn’t mind the mystery surrounding those years at all. Over the three decades since she left Haiti on an airplane in the middle of the night, she’s avoided telling the whole story, turning away potential biographers one after the other until she agreed to speak

to Polo Lifestyles.

She learned lessons with the foreign press the hard way – and as a result, she’s still careful about sharing too much.

Upon her arrival in France in 1986, the tabloids were ravenous for details of the Duvaliers in exile. The paparazzi hounded Michèle and the headlines that the papers wrote weighed heavily on the entire family. Aurore complained about the constant photographers and way the headlines portrayed her daughter. But Maman, Michèle countered, How do I look in the photos?

“The photos are good,” Aurore answered. Then it’s fine, Michèle replied.

HAITI – 1983 In 1983, things were starting to break down inside the Duvalier administration. Pope John Paul II visited Haiti and in broken Creole declared that things needed to change in Haiti, calling on the Duvaliers to do something about the economic situation. In over 30 years, no one had spoken out against the government so egregiously and stuck around long enough to try it again. Jean-Claude page 81

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responded, lowering food prices by 10 percent, but the silence had been broken and popular opinion was shifting rapidly.

Michèle invested more time in public appearances, fully believing they could regain the country’s trust. She appeared in public regularly, looking every part the perfectly coifed First Lady. Her standing hair appointment at La Noblesse Salon kept her long, thick head of hair moisturized, highlighted and shiny. The owner of the salon called her style the “Michèle Duvalier,” and it was her most-often requested ‘do among the other wealthy ladies who frequented her salon on the Champs-de-Mars across from the Presidential Palace.

Raising her four children in quasi-normalcy also demanded more of her attention: Francois-Nicolas, Jean-Claude’s eldest male heir, was the subject of a proposed change to the Constitution to name him personally as successor when he was only two years old. Michèle fought the change and Jean-Claude supported her. “The president was always so supportive of me, and especially sensitive when it came to my stance on the children. I felt the presidency is something you need to want – obviously at two years old, I had to protect Nicolas from that pressure,” Michèle said. “All of my children are precious to me, but the last two are miracles, and I have always protected them as such.”

Michèle’s OB-GYN had diagnosed her with cystic fibrosis (CF) following an initial miscarriage in the early years of her marriage to Jean-Claude.

He, as well as specialists from Miami, discouraged her from considering pregnancy again, which was common medical advice for CF patients in the 1980s. Michèle, more determined than ever, produced two Duvalier heirs: in addition to Francois-Nicolas, their daughter, Anya, was born two years later.

Top: With the children: Alix, Sacha, Francois-Nicolas and Anya in Haiti; bottom: the work never stopped in her office as First Lady page 82

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In front of the international airport named after Jean-Claude's father, François Duvalier in Maïs Gaté.

By the end of 1985, the country was in crisis. Jean-Claude was considering abdicating the proverbial throne he inherited 15 years earlier. In early 1986, the pressure from foreign governments was too great and the Duvalier family and some 15-odd associates left Haiti in the middle of the night aboard an American military jet. Haiti descended into total political and social chaos without a president for life at the helm. The Duvaliers’ vacation homes in the mountains and at the beach were breached, vandalized and looted. Remaining high-ranking members of the administration were hunted down in the streets or forced into house arrest. Many simply just disappeared, never to be heard from again.

MOUGINS, FRANCE – 1986 The government of France declined to grant the Duvaliers asylum, but it didn’t

enforce their temporary visitor status either. Michèle was spending vast amount of cash to outfit the chateau they were renting, and perhaps the local officials just decided they were good for the economy. The First Lady in Exile now faced multiple challenges, but raising her four children in a foreign country was at the top of the list. As children do, they adapted and excelled in French culture, never actively learning to speak Haitian Creole. Later, as an adult, when Francois-Nicolas returned to Haiti fulltime, he had to learn the basics of the language from friends.

Michèle’s active social schedule in Mougins and Cannes contrasted with Jean-Claude’s more relaxed approach to life in exile. The two eventually split and later divorced, citing irreconcilable differences. Following the divorce and a security incident in Cannes, she moved

the children to Paris and enrolled them into an American school in the 16th Arrondissement.

“The president called me because he heard our children were walking two blocks from the school to a canteen at lunch time,” said Michèle. “He wanted to beef up their security. They already had a driver and a nanny. I said, ‘Non!’ I was raising them as normal French children.

I taught them how to navigate the Metro and the bus system, too.”

She describes herself as a traditional mother and she always tried – and tries – to remain a positive person and influence in their lives.

“My mother was such a positive woman,” said Michèle wistfully. “(JeanClaude) was also old-school, like I was, in the ways of raising the children. The divorce split my family, which was so page 83

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Left: With brother Rudy in Paris; above: happy with her oldest sons, Alix and Sacha

very painful.” She described the divorce as “an overnight destruction of my family.”

The family – the one with Jean-Claude that she had worked so hard for, risked her health and life for – was separated both physically and emotionally.

Those who had initially gone into exile with the Duvaliers started to scatter, too. Some landed in Miami, others in Canada. She focused on being the best mother she could to her four children in Paris, because that’s how she could best respond to the circumstances in the moment. She remembered her roots in Haiti during difficult times.

“The real mothers of the nation (of Haiti) are the ones who sacrifice their all for their page 84

children – they inspire me, then and now.”

PORT-AU-PRINCE – 2010 When an earthquake shook Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area on January 12, 2010, upward of 200,000 people died under pancaked cement buildings. The Presidential Palace shook, rattled, groaned and collapsed.

Across the city, it was a hellish scene of chaos.

Up the hill, in a leafy neighborhood called Bourdon, nestled between the members-only Petion-Ville Club and the official residence of the American Ambassador to Haiti, the historic and beloved Hotel Montana crushed employees and guests when the weight of the cement struc-

ture could no longer withstand the relentless shaking of the earth. Lost in the rubble was Michèle’s beloved brother, Rudy Bennett. Her devastation knew no constraints. She returned to Port-au-Prince for the funeral and found the city unrecognizable. Blocks after blocks of buildings in the government district were flattened. The pristine hospitals she once dedicated were in shambles, overwhelmed with the wounded, the dying and the dead. She returned to Paris.

A year later, in 2011, JeanClaude returned to Haiti for the first time in 25 years.

During his three-and-a-half years back in Port-au-Prince, he faced corruption charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, but the court system wasn’t equipped to take the charges any further. He lived quietly on a tree-lined street in Petion-Ville. He died in October 2014.

Michèle was already in Haiti when he died, now coming and going frequently and freely. In the early morning hours following Jean-Claude’s death, she received a call of condolence and a promise of a state funeral from then-President Michel J.

Martelly. For three days, she and the family waited for more information from the administration on the funeral plan. No one ever called.

The government had succumbed to threats of violence from anti-Duvalier groups that promised destruction if the administration gave the former president a state funeral. Michèle took it upon herself to organize the funeral arrangements. Occide “Père Sicot” Jean agreed to give the funeral and the St. Louis de Gonzague school where Jean-Claude had once studied agreed to host it. Without any official assistance, Michèle pieced together a fitting tribute for a former president.

PARIS – PRESENT DAY Covid-19 lockdown restrictions have taken their toll on the world and Michèle hasn’t been immune from the pandemic’s fallout. Isolated from her entire family except Anya, she uses social media heavily to relive happier times.

Never-before-seen photos from her years as both First Lady and First Lady in Exile splash across her Facebook and Instagram accounts. She responds personally to thousands of comments, radio emissions and messages.

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Top left: With her four grown children Nicolas, Anya, Alix and Sacha in Seychelles in 2004; top right: With daughter Anya; below: Pensive in Paris

“There are a couple of radio show hosts in Haiti (who stream online) who I like to surprise by calling into, whether to correct the record of something they said, or to clarify a historical moment,” said Michèle. These lines of communication keep her connected to the world around her, and as political crises mount in Haiti, her posts and comments both reprimand and extol various politicians.

She was hospitalized for a week in February when her diabetes spun out of control, but even that couldn’t keep her down. Her wealth these days is measured in memories, photos, mementos and calls with friends and family. She has always advocated for her children to make their own decisions and walk their own paths, following their dreams. She offers counsel – “Sometimes they take it, sometimes they don’t… often when they don’t, they come back later and say, ‘I should have listened,’” Michèle said. “I have a perspective; I’ve been through a lot.”

To her four grown children, she is and always has been a mother; to 15 million Haitians in both Haiti and the diaspora, she remains in many relevant and deeply personal ways, mother to the nation.

JOSH JAKOBITZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

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ANGELINA JOLIE

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H ANKS TO THE ONGOING CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, ANGELINA JOLIE HAS HAD TO ADJUST TO LIFE AS A STAY-ATHOME MOM.

The mom of six does not think she’s “good at it at all,” according to her new interview with British Vogue, with featured personal photos amid lockdown with her six kids, Maddox, 19, Pax, 17, Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 14, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 12.

“I was never very good at sitting still. Even though I wanted to have many children and be a mom, I always imagined it kind of like Jane Goodall, traveling in the middle of the jungle somewhere,” Jolie said.

“I didn’t imagine it in that true, traditional sense.

I feel like I’m lacking in all the skills to be a traditional stay-at-home mom. I’m managing through it because the children are quite resilient, and they’re helping me, but I’m not good at it at all.”

However, she says the seven of them have become a team. “It may sound clichéd, but you love and you try, and even if you burn the eggs, that doesn’t matter in the end,” she said.

Honestly, it sounds as though she’s doing just fine. In fact, her teammates have become pretty protective of their 45-year-old mom. “We were on the trampoline the other day, and the children said, ‘No, Mom, don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself,’” Jolie shared later in the interview. “And I thought, God, isn’t that funny?

There was a day I was an action star, and now the kids are telling me to get off the trampoline because I’ll hurt myself.”

Jolie—who recently revealed she separated from ex-husband Brad Pitt in 2016 for the well-being of her children—did share some specific updates about her kids. “We went into it having just gotten out of the hospital with Zahara [who underwent surgery early last year], and we were so happy she was OK that we entered lockdown in a different state of mind,” she said, adding that COVID-19 has put a damper on some of their milestones. “But, you know, there are also these other markers of life: Pax going into his senior year, but not being able to enjoy all that it is to be a senior; Zahara finally getting her driving license, but she’s taking the test with the driver wrapped in the full outfit with the masks.”

She continued, “It’s not how you imagine these moments. But birthdays go on, and I think that for many people, it’s made us all feel very human together. There’s something beautiful about that.” page 89

POLO LIFESTYLES

TRIBUTE TO MOTHERS

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WRI TTE N BY J O S H UA JAKOB I T Z / P H OTOG R AP H S C OU RT E SY T H E B ALMI R FAMI LY

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The Balmir Sisters & Moms

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VERY CHILD – YOUNG OR OLD – IN HAITI KNOWS THAT THE POTO MITAN OF THE FAMILY IS THE MOTHER. SHE IS THE ONE WHO HOLDS THE FAMILY TOGETHER THROUGH THICK AND THIN. POTO MITAN REFERS TO AN ESSENTIAL STRUCTURAL SUPPORT IN TRADITIONAL HAITIAN CONSTRUCTION PRACTICES. IN CONSTRUCTION, BUILDINGS COME IN DIFFERENT SIZES AND SHAPES – SOME REQUIRING MORE SUPPORT THAN OTHERS. THE SAME IS TRUE FOR FAMILIES: DIFFERENT FAMILIES REQUIRE MORE SUPPORT THAN OTHERS, DEPENDING ON SIZE OR COMPLICATION OF COMPOSITION. A STRONG, CENTRAL SUPPORT PROVIDES A SOLID FOUNDATION FOR GENERATIONS TO COME. page 92

The family matriarch, Gladys Nazemi Dubousquet

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When you speak with any one of the four Balmir sisters for longer than a few minutes, inevitably the subject of their beloved Poto Mitans comes up. Yes, that’s plural: Poto Mitans. As the youngest, Stephanie Balmir-Villedrouin (who’s also the former Minister of Tourism and Creative Industries for Haiti), put it, “I have two moms: Gladys and Albalucia.

They are both equally my moms, sharing and caring for our entire family, as well as each other.”

Stephanie’s birthmother, Gladys, and her father, Alix, who had seven children together prior to divorcing when she was four, both remarried: her mother remarried Mehrshad Nazemi; her father remarried Albalucia Sanchez. Stephanie met Albalucia when she was only nine years old. “We had an instant bond. As close as I was – and am – to my mother Gladys, I was immediately – and continue to be – just as close to Albalucia.”

Stephanie’s three sisters, Pascale, Christine and Sabine, concur. “We’re a modern Haitian family,” said Pascale Balmir-Hilaire. “Two moms, two dads, seven kids, 24 grandchildren and 6

great-grandchildren. We vacation together, we’ve lived together, we talk constantly. We share a dream to all have a big piece of land where there’s enough room for each of us to build a house and live together harmoniously for a long time.”

Gladys, who was born north of Port-auPrince in Gonaives, Haiti, to Dr. Gerard Dubousquet and Jacqueline Sajous, married young and started her own family with first husband Alix immediately. He was a diplomat and they raised three sons and four daughters in Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and Spain. “We lived outside of Haiti for 18 years, always representing our country abroad. The distance from home made us incredibly close as a family: the children were each other’s best friends and play mates,” said Gladys from Santo-Domingo, where she lives these days. “But it was the example that my parents set that primed me to raise my family as one strong, solid unit. I always tell the kids: the keys to life are love, listening and respect. If you can listen lovingly and have a dialogue, you can resolve anything.”

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Gladys and Alix set the bar incredibly high for integrating their second spouses into the family’s closeness. Gladys insists that it felt like the most natural thing in the world to her. “Why wouldn’t I be gracious and kind and loving to (Albalucia) who loves the children as much as I do? She’s a wonderful mother, too,” Gladys said.

“Albalucia left everything behind her to marry our dad,” said Christine Balmir Roc. “She was very impactful and she remains very important in my life.”

Sabine Balmir Derenoncourt added, “She and (Gladys) shared the responsibility of raising us together, with the same basis for family: love, understanding, compassion, forgiveness and listening.”

Albalucia Sanchez Balmir married Alix in 1992 and moved to Port-au-Prince, site unseen. “Integrating into the Balmir family was like landing a hot-air balloon on a beautiful day, I slowly parachuted in… landing softly and gently,” she said.

“There was an immediate connection with the children. Gladys has also been so helpful and loving to me over the years. She introduces me as ‘The mother

of her children’ sometimes.”

As for the four daughters, when they became serious about boyfriends and potential husbands, it was natural they chose men who would easily integrate into the family dynamic.

Christine said about her husband, Bertrand Roc, “The entire family knew him since he was 9 years old, so he’s been part of the group for a long time.

He’s a perfect fit; all of the spouses seem to naturally fit well into the closeness of the family dynamic.”

All four of the Balmir daughters stressed how important listening was to both Gladys and Albalucia – and it’s something they’ve all tried to implement as mothers, even when the feedback is funny or hard to hear.

When Stephanie became Minister of Tourism in Haiti, she had three young children at home with husband Marcel.

“The job required me to travel constantly for five years, so there was a lot that I missed. When I was in Port-au-Prince – whether we were attending Carnaval or inaugurating a new building – I brought the kids with me,” Stephanie said. “I

Top left: The four sisters; Right side, descending: Pascale's family, Christine's family, Sabine's family and Stephanie's family

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THE BALMIR SISTERS & MOMS

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All the women of the Balmir family, left to right: Sabine Balmir Derenoncourt, Pascale Balmir Hilaire, Gladys Nazemi Dubousquet, Albalucia Sanchez Balmir, Stephanie Balmir Villedrouin and Christine Balmir Roc

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wanted them to see what I was doing so that it might make sense. They understood that I was focused on Haiti’s international image – to the point that they came to me with suggestions. They really understood the work, wanted to help and felt their feedback would be heard.”

In 2010, following the earthquake in Haiti, both Stephanie and Christine moved temporarily with their young children to Sabine’s home in Miami. “We had all three sisters and seven kids in my house,” said Sabine Balmir-Derenoncourt.

“My daughter Satine moved into my room, Stephanie and her kids had a room and Christine had a room with her kids.

It was a wonderful six months, being that close. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was a very successful test run for our ultimate dream to live on the same property together.”

For now, the Balmir family is spread out – living in Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo and Miami – but they’re planning their next group adventure soon. “It’s not easy to coordinate that many schedules,” said Gladys. “But we always make it work.”

JOSHUA JAKOBITZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

Top left: The two moms, Albalucia and Gladys; Above: Gladys with mom Jacqueline Sajous Dubousquet; Right: Christine, Pascale, Sabine and Stephanie together page 96

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DIANA ROSS page 100

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ARCH 26TH WAS THE ICONIC DIANA ROSS’ BIRTHDAY, AND BEFITTING OF HER STATUS AS AN INTERNATIONAL STAR, SHE RECEIVED LOTS OF CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES ON SOCIAL MEDIA. THOSE THAT STOOD OUT THE MOST WERE FROM HER FIVE CHILDREN.

Diana Ross and her children have amassed millions of followers on social media over the last several years. In truth, their individual accounts are some of the most beautiful and healthy spaces on social media. The support the siblings show each other and the love they have for their mom, as well as how they display it, is inspirational.

Diana Ross is undeniably a phenomenal woman. She built the house in which most of the women in entertainment currently live. She overcame the hurdles of racism and sexism and thrived in an industry that was still in its infancy. She triumphed over bad press, rumors and innuendos, building a rich career and an even bigger legacy. Professionally, she is a legend. But Diana Ross is also a wonderful mom.

“Our mum is a mum before she is any-

thing else,” daughter Tracee Ellis Ross has been quoted saying many times over. Rhonda Ross, the eldest daughter, noted that their mother encouraged her children to be their own person. “I credit my mother with that. She allowed for us to have our own and to know that our own was important.”

All five of her children always speak highly of her, never even sharing a side joke or a sarcastic remark about her as a parent. Moreover, they are all independently living fruitful and healthy lives.

Whether it’s in pictures and videos on social media or walking the red carpet together, this is a family that exudes love. It flows genuinely. Diana Ross has been a strong presence in the careers of her children. In video archives, she proudly invited Rhonda as a teenager to sing at one of her events. In other videos, she performs with or while holding her other sons and daughters.

The glamorous life of the stage did not and could not take away her love, care, attention, and pride in her children. Her children have shared on many occasions that while growing up, she never left them for more than a week. When she was touring nearby, she made sure to come home every night and be there in the morning to help them make their beds and make breakfast. “She always

made an effort to be a mom first,” said daughter Chudney.

Now that her children are all adults, she still performs regularly with them and has even toured jointly with Rhonda.

Evan Ross shared in an interview that watching his mother’s performance in Lady Sings the Blues is what inspired him to go into acting. He also sought his mother’s blessings and opinions in his duet I Do that he sings with his wife Ashlee Simpson.

Tracee shared that her mother visits regularly on the set of Black-ish.

“I have five beautiful children, a wonderful career, a wonderful life,” said Diana Ross back in 1996 during her Super Bowl performance rehearsals.

Tracee recently shared in a social media post that her phone was running out of space and she was really feeling bad as she had to delete some voice messages from her mother because she sends such sweet messages.

Looking back at her childhood and Diana Ross as a mother rather than a superstar, Tracee said, “She really gave us space and the courage to live the lives that we want to be living, and to have time to dream and conjure up the life that I wanted to be living. ” Gal Mux Special to Polo Lifestyles 2021 page 101

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WRIT T EN BY J O S H UA JA KO BI TZ / P H OTOG R AP H S C OU RT E SY T H E P E N E T T E FAMI LY & N AD I A TOD R E S

MARYSE PENETTE KEDAR page 104

This page: Maryse Penette-Kedar photographed by Nadia Todres with her Olivier Bertrand painting; Opposite top: with daughter Arielle Dominique; Opposite bottom: at l'Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje

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O

F ALL THE HATS THAT MARYSE PENETTE-KEDAR WEARS, “MOM” IS HER FAVORITE. SHE HAS ONE GROWN DAUGHTER, ARIELLE, BUT HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS, HAVE DEPENDED ON HER GENEROSITY, VISION, EMPLOYMENT AND SCHOOLING OVER THE COURSE OF HER LIFE.

Born in Petion-Ville, Haiti, she is the daughter of highly respected school professor Max Penette. He instilled a spirit of leadership through education into her and in 1995, following an illustrious career in Haiti’s foreign service, she founded the internationally recognized non-profit Progress and Development Foundation (PRODEV), an empowerment-through-education initiative. In 2010, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, she co-founded l’Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje to provide education in an under-served community north of Cite Soleil.

“Visiting the children at the school always brings me immense joy. Witnessing their progress, seeing them grow into wonderful, educated, young adults is a true source of happiness and pride,” Penette-Kedar said.

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Top: With students at l'Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje; bottom right: Three generations of educators: Maryse with her father, Max, and daughter, Arielle

“I am blessed to have one wonderful daughter (Arielle). People who know me well also know that despite my small family, I have created a much bigger family of many amazing Haitian children from all walks of life and ages – I consider them my own (children),” Penette-Kedar said. “I have had the opportunity to build profound relationships with so many young Haitians; I truly hope that I have enriched their lives as they have enriched – and continue to enrich – mine.

When Penette-Kedar acknowledged the difficulties to overcome in the education sector, she didn’t mince her words. “In Haiti, the lack of access of education is a serious hindrance to the advancement of this country. In that respect, L’Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje serves as a model school that participates in shaping Haiti’s future leaders. In page 106

a country where the widespread perception is that ‘nothing works,’ local efforts such as Zoranje represent Haiti’s best-kept secrets.

So many of these Haitian-led and successful initiatives such as model schools, artisan networks, women’s groups, small businesses and stellar foundations are what keep me going and believing that Haiti, despite all evidence to the contrary, will succeed,” she asserted.

As in nearly all cultures, women in Haiti bear the overwhelming responsibility to do the best they can for their children. “Haitian women are the heroes of Haiti, and on this Mother’s Day, my heart goes out to all the mothers – pillars of their communities – of our country,” said Penette-Kedar. “They surmount incredible obstacles to raise their children, send them to school and provide for them. Mothers are the real warriors.”

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DOMINIQUE JACKSON page 110

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FX

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A

CTRESS AND ADVOCATE DOMINQUE JACKSON JUST WRAPPED SHOOTING THE THIRD AND FINAL SEASON OF THE FX DRAMA “POSE.” IN MARCH 2021, SHE APPEARED ON THE MUGLER RUNWAY IN AN ICONIC SHEER DESIGN NEXT TO FASHION STAPLES LIKE BELLA HADID AND ALEK WEK AS WELL AS EUPHORIA’S BREAKOUT STAR HUNTER SCHAFER. SHE APPEARED IN VOGUE ESPAÑA AND GUEST-JUDGED ON HBO’S “LEGENDARY” IN SEASON ONE.

In “Pose,” Jackson brought to life the fictional character of Elektra Abundance based on her immigration experience from Trinidad-Tobago to the United States as a non-gender conforming minority. Jackson lived through homelessness before being introduced to the ballroom scene, which launched her modeling and acting career. Jackson’s Elektra is a stern, funny, charismatic house-mother to her children – younger orphaned or abandoned fledgling artists who found love and acceptance in the ballroom community of New York City.

Elektra’s position in the ballroom scene is largely linked to her ability to provide for her children, which is, in turn, intrinsically linked to her season one relationship with Dick Ford (played by Christopher Meloni) who finances her

lifestyle but ultimately rejects Elektra following her gender-confirmation surgery. To provide for her family, Elektra turns to the dark side of sex work, a feat that Jackson manages to make equally entertaining, shocking and humorous.

Ultimately, Jackson’s Elektra founds a second house, the House of Wintour, a sanctuary for grooming for success in the ballroom world.

House-mother Elektra is the main antagonist on “Pose,” and Jackson struggled to separate her character’s approach to life, which often pins her children against her or in uncomfortable situations, from her own. She eventually became clinically depressed.

“When I first read for the auditions, I saw the power in her, but when we actually convened on set and I had to deliver those lines to beautiful Blanca and speak to my children that way—it was so far off from me,” Jackson said.

Fans of the series oftentimes are also unable to separate her personality from Elektra’s. “I was outside of Saks [one day] and this woman comes up to me and she says to me ‘Oh, you play Elektra!’ and she just goes off on me!” she said. “She’s like ‘How could you do that to Blanca?’ And she read me to filth. But in that instance, I had to stop and think, you know what? She’s not separating Elektra from Dominique.

“So I smiled and said ‘Well thank you, ma’am. You’re letting me know that I’m doing a good job,’ and that was how I was kind of able to overcome that.”

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MEGHAN ARELLANO

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EGHAN ARELLANO HAS JUST ARRIVED AT THE FAMILY FARM OUTSIDE OF AIKEN, S.C., WHERE SHE AND HER POLO BROOD WILL SPEND THE SPRING SEASON, FOLLOWING A SUCCESSFUL WINTER IN WELLINGTON, FLA., WHERE TWO OF HER THREE CHILDREN PLAYED HIGH-GOAL TOURNAMENTS TOGETHER. THE TRIP, WHICH SHE MADE TWICE BACK-TO-BACK, WHILE PULLING A HORSE TRAILER BETWEEN AIKEN AND WELLINGTON, IS NINE HOURS EACH WAY.

“I never drove a trailer before I had kids,” Meghan said. “I played polo my entire life but couldn’t drive a truck and trailer. Then along came my three kids, and I found myself pulling the trailers up and down the coast. But they’re getting old enough to start doing some of the driving now.” Her three children, Agustin, 23, Lucas, 21, and Hope, 18; all play polo and like moms across the world, Meghan reflects that the last 20 years of her life have been all about the kids – where they’re playing, where they’re not playing (equally important), where home is, how they’re getting there, where the horses are and where they need to be next.

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young, so you have to protect them at all costs. You have to make the best decisions for them. We discuss everything as a family and go from there… (more recently) everyone has an opinion nowadays,” said Meghan.

“What else do I do?” she asks almost rhetorically. From the background, daughter Hope answers. “Oh, by the way, you’re on speakerphone,” she says and then repeats Hope’s answer: “Yes, I set up penalties, I drive the truck and trailer, I hold spare horses. I do whatever the kids need.”

Hope, a 1-goaler, had her favorite season yet this winter in Florida. Regardless of Covid-19 restrictions, she played in the 14-goal Palmetto Challenge at Port Mayaca with brother Lucas, a 2-goaler. Their team, Bank Mill Feed, lost in overtime in the final to SD Farms, but the experience was as highlight for the entire family and has put both Lucas and Hope on a different trajectory into the professional polo world.

In many cases, Meghan is the full-time polo mom and polo dad: while she and the kids were at Port Mayaca or moving

back to Aiken, her husband, professional polo player Julio Arellano was at the U.S. Polo Assn. Field at the International Polo Club coaching the Park Place team to the finals of the U.S. Open Polo Championships. “It was a tough loss at the end of the day (in the final), but when you’re facing (Adolfo) Cambiaso, what do you expect?” Meghan acknowledges that the world of professional polo is tough enough to navigate as an adult, so she and Julio have been selective about when and where to insert their children. When she refers to the children, she often insinuates they’re younger than 23, 21 and 18. When she catches herself, she clarifies: “They’re all adults now. We put them on ponies so early – it just seems like that was yesterday.”

require wearing them for outdoor activities, so being at the polo fields is nearly normal for the Arellanos.

Julio will join the family again in a few days in Aiken for the spring season.

Agustin will continue working as a pro and team manager for Woodrow Farm.

Lucas will pursue opportunities playing professionally and Hope will graduate from high school with plans to take a year to travel. That sounds like more than enough to keep Meghan busy for quite some time.

JOSH JAKOBITZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

In Aiken, Covid-19 restrictions are less stringent than in West Palm Beach, plus the entire family and even employees live on the farm. “In the last year, we’ve really had time to do things together that we don’t normally do: fishing and shooting. Being out on the farm, we really only got a dose of reality when we went into town every 10 days or so.”

Mask mandates in the Aiken area don’t

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GIGI HADID N EW MOM GIGI HADID IS GOING TO GREAT LENGTHS TO SHIELD HER DAUGHTER’S FACE FROM THE PUBLIC ON OUTINGS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

Hadid and her partner Zayn Malik took their daughter, Khai, to the New York Aquarium in Coney Island in Brooklyn recently. Both Hadid and Malik wore protective face masks for the aquarium visit.

Khai has been on quite a few art-filled adventures with her parents in recent weeks. She explored the American Museum of Natural History with both her parents and toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a mommy-daughter date that included Hadid’s father, Mohamed Hadid.

In February, Hadid shared details about her daughter’s birth, revealing that she welcomed her first child at home surrounded by her family and partner.

Hadid had planned to give birth at a New York hospital, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, there was a limit on who could be in the delivery room, and so the couple decided a home birth was the right choice. Hadid was in labor at home for about 14 hours before giving birth.

Hadid’s doula, Malibu High classmate Carson Meyer, had prepared her for the moment when the mother feels she can’t go any longer without drugs. “I had to dig deep,” Hadid said. “I knew it was going to be the craziest pain in my life, but you have to surrender to it and be like, ‘This is what it is.’ I loved that.”

A midwife coached Gigi through the pain. “There definitely was a point where I was like, I wonder what it would be like with an epidural, how it would be different,” Hadid said frankly. “My midwife looked at me and was like, ‘You’re doing it. No one can help you. You’re past the point of the epidural anyway, so you’d be pushing exactly the same way in a hospital bed.’” So she kept pushing.

“I know my mom and Zayn and Bella were proud of me, but at certain points, I saw each of them in terror,” Gigi said, before confessing she is in no rush to have a second baby. “Afterwards, Z and I looked at each other and were like, ‘We can have some time before we do that again.’”

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ERICA GANDOMCARSACHS

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JUST LOVE KID-CHAOS,” SAYS ERICA GANDOMCARSACHS. “I WANT TO FILL UP THE DENVER POLO CLUB WITH KIDS, PARENTS, GRAND-PARENTS – EVERY GENERATION REPRESENTED. I DON’T SEE ENOUGH MULTI-GENERATIONAL ACTIVITIES HERE, OR AT ALL IN THE UNITED STATES. I WISH THAT WERE MORE COMMON HERE.” Gandomcar-Sachs has the Iranian-born influence of her father, John, to thank for that multi-generational perspective.

He and her mother, Chris, founded the Denver Polo Club (DPC) in 1986 and raised their daughter on horseback.

Today she manages that club.

“I was on a horse by the time I was two, playing polo by age eight and competing at USPA events by age 10,” she says, speaking from her home in Denver. Her daughter, Sydney, now 8, shares a love of horses with her mother, but also recently asked to join a soccer club. “I was so

thrilled – I don’t know anything about soccer or soccer clubs, but I did some asking around and signed her up for a great club,” Gandomcar-Sachs says. “The most important thing for me as a mom is to let Sydney choose her passions… let her try everything and hook into what she loves, whether or not that’s horses and polo.”

That’s not to say that Sydney doesn’t have a daily exposure to horses and the Sport of Kings. The pair regularly hit the barn together, ride together and play stick-and-ball. Gandomcar-Sachs is determined not to the let the pressures of the world of polo or secondary extracurriculars get to Sydney. “She’s a kid first.

I’ll teach her about the world and let her decide,” Gandomcar-Sachs says. “The pressure from outside is unnecessary.”

Still, Sydney is now old enough that some of her peers have social media and have snooped on Gandomcar-Sachs’ background. “Sydney came home one day and asked if I’m famous,” she says.

“The easy answer is, ‘No,’ right? But the cat’s already out of the bag. It’s a hard conversation to have with your child,

but it’s important to be proactive about it – or as proactive as possible.”

Club members of all ages and backgrounds come to DPC to fulfill their dreams, says Gandomcar-Sachs. “In that atmosphere, the kids are listening to everything (the adults) say and watching everything (the adults) do. Since kids don’t have a filter, it can be quite humbling to hear their feedback. Our children are our mirrors, and to engage with them means setting aside our ego much more often than with adults.”

Gandomcar-Sachs’ family of three is completed by her husband, Ian Sachs.

Ian doesn’t share the affinity for the barns and chores, but he certainly enjoys a day at polo. He’s known to gently tease the family equestrians after a day in the barn. “Sydney and I will come home straight from the farm and Ian will wrinkle his nose at the smell. I just laugh and reply, ‘But you didn’t even notice my manicure is looking amazing today!’ I’m a polo mom, keeping a nice manicure is a feat unto itself!”

JOSH JAKOBITZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

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KRIS JENNER

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K

RIS JENNER IS A BUSINESSWOMAN AND A MOMAGER, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY SHE IS A MOTHER TO SIX SUCCESSFUL CHILDREN, AND MANY, MANY, GRANDCHILDREN. OF ALL THE ROLES AND TITLES THAT JENNER HAS IN HER LIFE, IT SEEMS THOSE INVOLVING HER CHILDREN AND GRANDBABIES ARE THE ONES SHE CHERISHES THE MOST. AND OFTEN, WHAT SHE HAS TO SAY ABOUT HER LOVED ONES IS WORTH HEARING. Jenner taught her family to be tolerant and accepting of others. She understands the importance of tough skin and ignoring the criticism that her family often receives, and she is continually learning about patience, selflessness, and unconditional love from her famous offspring. She’s raised children who may bicker and fight (this can be seen on their reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians) but they are loyal to each other and would never dare break their

family pact and expose secrets that they want to be kept from the public eye.

And while it was a tough task raising six children, Jenner really enjoys being a grandmother (although she doesn’t like being called that), and this is something that fills her heart with love and happiness. Below are some things Jenner has said about being a mother and a grandmother; they are funny, interesting and most importantly, relatable.

It’s not her business accomplishments she’s proud of, but the fact that her children are all taken care of. She says, “I never thought I would be in this place where all your kids are taken care of and settled down and have a home, and that’s such a joy for a mom.”

For Jenner, being a mom is the best thing she’s ever done. She shared this on an Instagram post, writing, “Being a mother is by far the greatest blessing.

My children are my most precious gifts and I am so beyond proud of each and every one of them.”

Not all celebrities like the title of grandma, or a variation of the word. And if we’ve learned anything from Jenner it’s that there’s no shame in admitting you

would rather be called something else.

Jenner prefers her grandbabies call her Lovey. “My mom had a friend called Lovey and I thought that was the cutest name,” says Jenner.

Having chosen to live their lives in the public eye and share so much of themselves, Jenner understands the implications for their children, and it’s something she worries about. She’s spoken about her fears of bullying, saying, “It’s my grandchildren who I worry about they don’t have a choice… And I worry, I do, because it is such a bullying environment.”

There are many adjectives to describe the Kardashian family, but two that Jenner would appreciate you using would be: accepting and tolerant. For Jenner, it’s incredibly important to raise people who have these qualities, and she cannot understand how people can say unnecessarily mean remarks about others. “I raised my kids kind of old-fashioned—if you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say it at all,” she says. “I teach love, acceptance and tolerance.”

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JEN HATMAKER

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UTHOR, PODCAST HOST, AND INSPIRATIONAL SPEAKER JEN HATMAKER KNOWS THE COST OF STANDING UP FOR WHAT SHE BELIEVES IN.

“The only regret I have is that I did not do this sooner,” Hatmaker said.

Once a darling of evangelical Christianity, retailer LifeWay Christian Stores pulled Hatmaker’s books from its shelves in 2016 after she expressed support for the LGBTQ community in an interview. Her popular book, “7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess,” was put out of print. Her next book contract was canceled, too.

She regrouped and adjusted. Hit pieces followed. So did the nightmares. But the freedom that came with it has been worth it, according to the bestselling author and speaker. She launched an HGTV show, a book club and a podcast, reaching more than 829,000 followers on Facebook alone.

Most recently, the author and her husband divorced, and their oldest daughter publicly shared she is gay. page 122

In her 2020 book “Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You,” released during the pandemic, she encouraged her readers to experience the same freedom she has found by living into their authentic selves, no matter what the cost.

“It is daunting for so many women to even just imagine staring down a brandnew path of truth telling. I know it,” she said. “I believe if we can trust truth to do what it has always told us it will do — which is lead us into life, which is lead us into fullness and wholeness and goodness — then whatever the cost, I promise it’s going to be worth it to pay it, and great is its reward, honestly.”

This year, she re-released the book that LifeWay Christian Bookstores originally banned, “7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.” Along with the opportunity to republish the book, Hatmaker decided not to delete any of its problematic language or narrative, she said, taking particular aim at language that now

reads to her as condescending. Instead, the result, newly titled “Simple & Free: 7 Experiments Against Excess,” released March 23, will not only show how she has changed, but also free readers to do the same. In the re-release, she appended the original text with bracketed notes where her thoughts 10 years ago are no longer her viewpoints – or, in other cases, what new data is available.

The concept of that book is as relevant as ever said Hatmaker: “We still live in a world of excess, and the month-long so-

P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F J E N H AT M A K E R

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cial experiments designed 10 years ago to consume less — wearing only seven items of clothing or giving away at least seven possessions each day — still hold lessons for today.”

Looking back at her career leading up to her 2016 interview, Hatmaker acknowledge that, “I was very much a darling of white evangelical women subculture.

It’s a real niche, but I was succeeding there. What was so devastating at the beginning was noticing all the places that, for me, the fabric was beginning to tear. And it was in more than one way.

It was being located inside a system that was still very much operating under the rules of patriarchy and misogyny — nobody would want to admit this, but white supremacy and privilege, power differentials, where it was very clear who was right and wrong; who was in, who was out; who was included, who was excluded.”

She got to the point where she said to herself, “Jen, you either get to hang on to your career as you know it or you get to hang on to your integrity, but you don’t get both. These things are now at odds. I picked my integrity, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.”

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READING WITH ZIBBY A book you can reread over and over: “Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Life Rescued by Tragedy” by Dani Shapiro The best book you’ve read recently: “When the Stars Go Dark” by Paula McClain

ZIBBY OWENS page 124

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ZIBBY OWENS

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ASICALLY, EVERYTHING YOU WANT OR NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ME, YOU CAN TELL BY THE TITLE OF WHATEVER PROJECT I’M WORKING ON AT THE TIME, AUTHOR ZIBBY OWENS SHARED RECENTLY WITH POLO LIFESTYLES. “I JUST PUT IT ALL OUT THERE.”

uting to the Washington Post, Good Morning America and editing “Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology.” The latter, available on Amazon, features original essays from over 60 previous podcast guests.

Owens really does put it all out there: her brand, “Moms Don’t Have Time To…,” covers topics from reading and traveling to having sex and losing weight. What started out as a podcast three years ago grew into appearances at book fairs, championing local libraries and hosting literary events. The podcast is now daily, she co-hosts a slew of other podcasts, including “Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Sex,” a Q&A set up with Tracy Cox (“I’m blushing the entire time,” Owens said) as well as contrib-

“I knew on Day 1 that I needed to do something with the brand that would ultimately help authors, many of whom were in the middle of a book tour (when Covid-19 restrictions went into place),” Owens said. She brought more guests on the podcast, she expanded the topics, focused intensely on social media and addressed the fallout from lockdown in very personal ways.

Her family of six – her kids range from 14-year-old twins to the youngest who’s six – holed up in Long Island for the duration of the pandemic. She planned for two weeks; it’s been over a year.

“I noticed I had gained some weight, so we launched ‘Moms Don’t Have Time

To Lose Weight,’ which is an exclusive private Instagram safe group space of 1,255 members for questions, concerns, successes and failures.

She maintains a sense of humor through it all, as well as a love of books, reading and libraries. She co-chairs the Library Council of the New York Public Library and the annual Library Lunch. She’s also sponsored Authors Night for the East Hampton Library and will be one of their featured authors this summer.

She fully intends to pass on her love of writing, reading and books to her children. “The youngest ones still do story time with me,” she shared. “I’m working with the (14-year-old) twins to help them understand the joy and excitement that comes with opening a book, rather than the iPad.” Owens herself is most inclined to pick up memoirs and literary fiction pieces, so it’s no surprise that her next project will be a memoir. Life, for Owens, continues to mirror her art. page 125

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LARCENIA "SISSY" FLOYD

“M

AMA!” HIS LAST INTELLIGIBLE WORDS CRIED OUT IN PAIN, CRUSHING AGONY AND HAUNTING DEATH. JUST OVER A YEAR AGO, NO ONE HAD EVER HEARD OF LARCENIA “SISSY” FLOYD; A GUT-WRENCHING, NINE-MINUTE VIDEO PUT HER 46-YEAROLD SON’S FACE ON EVERY MAJOR NEWS NETWORK IN THE WORLD. MAMA, AND HIS REFERENCE TO HER, WAS PART OF THE DEVASTATING STORY. page 128

Was his crying out for Mama to help him? Or was he acknowledging her spiritual presence as he neared the end of his life? Mama, you see, passed away in Houston two years before he died, pinned down on the streets of Minneapolis.

“Mama!” The name elicits a knee-jerk reaction in nearly half of the world’s population. Young mothers wait anxiously for the day when their little one will fuss their first words from the combination of uncooperative lips, tongue and vocal chords. The cry can mean delight, desire for attention, pain or fright.

The name is often the first word from our lips, and in this case, it was also one of his last.

Larcenia Floyd was a mother of five, who raised her children in a poor neighborhood of Houston called the Bricks. They lived in public housing and she served on the resident council, advocating for her family, her community and her neighborhood. She was the descendant of sharecroppers from North Carolina, who were the descendants of slaves. She was named after her great-grandmother, Larcenia, who bore 22 children, all of whom called her “Mama.”

“Mama!” For those who still have an earthly Mama, the month of May is a reminder of her importance in our lives.

For those whose Mamas have departed from their earthly bodies, the cry is a reminder of her lingering spiritual presence in our lives.

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JENNIFER GARNER

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P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F " Y E S DAY "

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J

ENNIFER GARNER KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HER OWN “YES DAY” WOULD ENTAIL. THE ACTRESS’ NEW HIT NETFLIX FAMILY COMEDY, YES DAY, REFLECTS HER OWN ANNUAL TRADITION OF ALLOWING HER KIDS, VIOLET, 15, SERAPHINA, 12, AND SAM, 9, WITH EX-HUSBAND BEN AFFLECK, 48, ONE DAY A YEAR TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT — WITHIN REASON. As for Garner, “I wouldn’t mind ice cream for breakfast, if you really think about it,” she says. “I would probably go to this little café, Huckleberry, and have the green eggs and ham there, which is this prosciutto and pesto and homemade English muffin. Great cappuccino, a few close girlfriends. There’d be a fun group workout. Probably a walk. Enjoy a beautiful sky. With lots of talking and then probably mix in some kid time. We all just need an adventure.”

The actress, 48, has also tried to stay optimistic for her kids while her family sheltered at home in L.A. during the pandemic. “I don’t know that I’ve stayed positive the whole time,” she admits.

“I think I’ve had a couple of temper tantrums. And I hope [my kids] have too. I think you have to. It’s like, have your feelings. But there’s so much to be grateful for.”

Finding ways to give back has helped as well. “You take a deep breath and start brainstorming about what can we do to help,” Garner says. “Like my daughter, she likes helping people on GoFundMe, so for Christmas, she asked for a little GoFundMe money. She said it just gives her a lift.”

As for the little aggravations that moms face on a daily basis, Garner experiences her fair share.

“Kids who ignore you when you talk to them five times in a row.

When they’re mean to each other. Or when they won’t try and they just like, lay on the floor,” she says with a shrug. “And then I realize I basically do the same thing. I mean, sometimes you just have to walk away from your kids. You don’t even have to announce it. Or you just say, ‘Oops. Hold on. I think somebody’s calling me in the other room.’ You just have to get away.”

When she really needs a moment of self-care, Garner turns to her girlfriends. “And laughing. And a good workout,” she says. “I’ve done The Limit with Beth Nicely almost every day and I always feel better. I had a trainer for 20 years, Valerie Waters, who I love so much. Her saying was, ‘You’re always one workout away from a good mood.’”

Garner is also good about sharing those relatable glimpses into her life with her 10.5 million followers on Instagram. From her “Pretend Cooking Show” to showering in a wetsuit in celebration of her partnership with her longtime hairstylist Adir Abergel’s line Virtue, Garner always prefers to keep it real. “I like to engage with people, so I will from time to time,” she says of her following.

“I like when there’s a back and forth.” page 131

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FASHION & STYLE

THIS SEASON'S PREPPY CHIC LOOKS DIOR'S SPRING STAPLES page 133

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BLAZE MILANO

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PREPPY CHIC

CO-ED-INSPIRED COLLECTIONS

AHARONI

A

S IF WE’VE STEPPED INTO AN EAST COAST BOARDING SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE, PREPPY CHIC IS TRENDING ON THE RUNWAYS OF FALL 2021.

From classic knits and blazers to riding boots and messenger bags, today’s top designers are rewriting the rulebook so long followed by the Ivy League-bound

AMI

ALESSANDRO ENRIQUEZ

BALMAIN

spawn of the New England elite (though thankfully, almost everyone has managed to avoid boat shoes). Polo, tennis, and rugby codes drawn from the world of the country club are deconstructed and reconfigured, maintaining their air of sophistication while taking on a more independent and artful spirit.

vates the ball-capped, girl-on-the-move look. Tory Burch masterfully mingles in some 70’s influence. Andrea Pompilio smashes gender codes by cropping the rugby shirt and combining it with non-binary shorts and skirts. Vivienne Westwood and Junya Watanabe do the unthinkable – mixing prep with punk. Thom Browne creates an exquisite, oracular vision of a cable knit winter ensemble as only he can.

Coach mixes preppy knits with playful pop-art exploration. Courrèges ele-

FERRAGAMO

LOCASCIO

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COACH

PAUL SMITH

COURREGE

COACH

LONGCHAMP

CHANEL

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MOLLY GODDARD

ETRO

FILA

TORY BURCH

MAX MARA

D-SQUARED

JASON WU

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DIOR'S SPRING 2021

STAPLES

Dior has launched a Spring 2021 capsule addition to their Chez Moi collection.

Chez Moi is the first collection from Dior exclusively dedicated to loungewear.

Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s creative director, created the collection’s first iteration back in the days of quarantine.

She wanted a way to bring the elegance of her normal style into the stay-at-home lifestyle, so she created it for herself.

Now the Spring 2021 capsule brings elegant white and blue patterns to the comfortable products we know and love. page 140

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MILANO

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PHILANTHROPY IN FOCUS

BUZZ-WORTHY BLOSSOMS IN DANGER WILLIAM SMITH Philanthropy Contributor @willismith_2000

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S MOTHER’S DAY APPROACHES EACH YEAR – AND GIVEN THAT IT COINCIDES WITH THE ARRIVAL OF SPRING – I ALLOW MY MIND TO DRIFT TO THE THINGS THAT MY OWN DEAR MOM LOVED MOST: NAMELY, HER LILACS AND THE HAPPY POLLINATORS THAT MAKE THEM POSSIBLE. page 144

To ensure I allow my experience of that intimacy to transcend beyond thought and sentiment, I nurture lilacs in the garden off my back patio each spring, hoping the fickle and unpredictable spring weather of northern New Mexico doesn’t nip them in the bud with a snow or freeze. This year? So far so good.

itself. They are foundational to a balanced ecosystem and as we know, the ecosystem is in deep trouble.

But over the past several years, I’ve also become keenly aware of the threats to those pollinators of lilacs – bees and butterflies. And I am not the only one. The emergence of Pollinator Philanthropy has become part and parcel of the larger philanthropic response to climate change and environmental stewardship.

It’s estimated that one in every three bites of food that humans consume can be attributed to the busy work of pollinators. A whopping 75 percent of crops depend on pollinators according to the World Economic Forum. And the humble honeybee in that mix? They carry out about 80 percent of all pollination worldwide. And for those readers whose thinking tends to monetize things, $20 billion USD in products annually are attributable to pollinators. So yes, this is a big deal from every angle.

Pollinators, which include over 200,000 various species, are critical to the growing of food and therefore to humanity

It’s therefore no surprise that in the early 2000s, when beekeepers worldwide began to track loss of beehives surviving

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winters, an alarm bell sounded. Like the literal canary in the coal mine, the decline of bee colonies signaled deep cause for concern.

Colony Collapse Disorder, or CDD as it came to be called, has thankfully receded since its 2008 height when 60 percent of colonies of honeybees were lost over the winter, but concerns persist. Other pollinators like bumble bees and butterflies, especially the majestic monarch, are all in decline.

The causes for the threats to pollinators is well-documented. Pesticides, loss of habitat and global warming all wreak havoc on the pollinator ecosystem, threating the global food security landscape and portending to upend human life as we know it. Hyperbolic? Maybe, but consider the role these creatures play in food production and what was termed the “Bee-pocalypse” isn’t too far-fetched.

The crisis has sparked a blossoming of nonprofit organizations seeking to support bees and other pollinators. Many long-time environmental organizations have also stepped up their efforts.

Check out the Pollinator Partnership (www.pollinator.org), whose work includes providing School Garden Kits to support educational efforts around pollinators and to create pollinator-friendly gardens. Save the Bees (www.beemission.com) sells bee-themed merchandise that supports their mission of education on threats to bees. Their line of t-shirts is impressive… and motivational. I am especially fond of the “God Save the

Queen” shirt. Spoiler alert – they are not referring to Her Royal Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II. A quick Internet search can identify local pollinator organizations across the globe. They are everywhere and create great opportunities to give financially for the good of ourselves and the planet.

In addition to giving to nonprofits, corporations with a socially responsible bent are also increasingly paying attention, giving consumers another angle for support. Most recently, my own Happy Hour indulgence of the classic Gin & Tonic encountered a way to double up on the enjoyment. Discerning palates for libations have long-bypassed grocery store standards for tonic. One favorite mixer brand describes the evolution succinctly, “If three-quarters of your drink is the mixer, mix with the best.” They make a point.

So when recently purchasing tonic, I came across Buzbee’s, a premium cocktail mixer brand, whose niche is sweetening their lineup of beverages with honey. Their ever-patriotic logo is a honeybee with wings, replete with the stars and stripes. They bill their product as both healthy as a result of honey’s inclusion, but also as part of the Pollinator Philanthropy movement in its passion for Bees, Beekeeping, and Honey. I’ll be honest, I’ve taken to the flavor of their Indian Tonic Water and it somehow feels slightly more responsible-citizen-like to supporting bees while imbibing.

If you want to know just how far the corporate embrace of Pollinator

Philanthropy has come, how about a cigarette brand touting their support? In one recent advertisement from tobacco brand Natural American Spirit, the brand touted that “maintaining our own hive sanctuaries to supporting groups that help bees thrive, Natural American Spirit is dedicated to preserving pollinators and their natural habitats.”

Finally, there are things each of us can do to support bees and other pollinators. First, the loss of habitat for pollinators means each of us can plant our gardens, flower boxes and pots to support pollinators. The Pollinator Project allows you to enter your zip code and access Ecoregional Planting Guides with helpful information on what to plant. Go to www.pollinator.org/guides Secondly reduce, or better yet, eliminate the use of pesticides. And if you have a swarm on your property, seek out someone who can safely remove the swarm.

Do not spray it with pesticides to kill the swarm. Just this week, my local community group on Facebook had someone post an offering of their services to safely remove and relocate swarms.

Finally, support your local beekeepers and perhaps consider becoming a beekeeper if your living arrangements allow.

Trust me, you’ll be amazed at the local beekeeper culture, wherever you live.

Bees, butterflies and other pollinators are the keystones for life on earth. They need our help. Now. page 145

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THE RISE OF THRIFTING CONSCIENTIOUS SHOPPERS OFFSET FAST FASHION BRETT CHODY Trends contributor |@brettchody

U

NTIL JUST A DECADE AGO, THRIFTING HAD A STIGMA AROUND IT. RAPPER MACKLEMORE’S HIT 2012 SONG, “THRIFT SHOP,” POKED FUN AT THRIFT STORES ACROSS THE COUNTRY. BUT OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS, THERE’S BEEN A SHIFT IN PERCEPTION ABOUT THRIFTING. THE RISE OF FAST-FASHION BRANDS AND ONLINE SHOPPING HAS MADE CLOTHES CHEAPER AND EASIER TO ACCESS THAN EVER, WHICH HAS ALSO CAUSED MANY FASHION-FORWARD CONSUMERS TO TAKE A STEP BACK AND LOOK AT THE PROBLEMATIC SYSTEM THEY’RE FEEDING MONEY INTO. Fast fashion is a business model that uses cheap materials and labor to produce clothing collections at a rapid pace. It’s a multifaceted problem that negatively affects the environment and causes social issues as it exploits its workers in developing countries. page 148

According to Business Insider, fashion production comprises 10 percent of global carbon emissions, equal to the annual carbon emissions of the entire European Union. It wastes water and pollutes rivers – 85 percent of textiles go to dumps every year.

Moreover, a whopping 80 percent of fast-fashion garments are made by women between the ages of 18-24. A 2018 U.S. Department of Labor report found evidence of forced and child labor in the fashion industry in countries such as Argentina, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines.

While there isn’t much global urgency to stop the fast-fashion industry, a way to help mitigate its negative effects is thrift shopping. Shopping at thrift stores is one of the best ways to reduce your clothing footprint, and it is a great way to find high quality and unique clothing pieces at a fraction of the price of retail.

Averill Smith is a sophomore at the University of Southern California and thrifting advocate.

“I first started stepping back from fast fashion when I realized the unethical practices of most fast-fashion companies,” she explained, “I have been recycling my clothes since I was in middle school and I love to revamp old clothing pieces, especially jeans!”

Members of Generation Z like Smith are the majority of those behind the thrifting movement. According to McKinsey’s “The State of Fashion 2019” report, nine in 10 members of Gen Z consumers believe companies have a

responsibility to address environmental and social issues.

Social media platforms like TikTok can also be thanked for the rise of thrift shopping. Creators such as Los Angeles based-Maci Eleni and Atlanta based-Symphony Clark are champions of recycled apparel and share their love for thrifting with their 100,000s of followers. Like Smith, Eleni said that she started thrifting in middle school when her family would stock up on clothing during Salvation Army’s half-off family day. But thrift shopping soon evolved from an essential to a passion for her, and she began sharing her thrifting experiences on YouTube in 2011, migrating to TikTok in 2020.

Eleni shares a myriad of thrift-inspired TikToks with her 269,000 followers, such as thrifted clothing hauls and her favorite local L.A. thrift stores. Eleni said her biggest tip for first-time thrift shoppers is to “(go) into the thrift store with an idea of what you’re looking for, as well as an open mind.” The creator hopes that her videos influence her following to be more conscious about what type of clothing they consume.

Smith echoes Eleni’s sentiment. The USC student understands that fast-fashion companies are extremely convenient, but she says one step in the right direction is enough. “I think it’s hard to say, ‘Stop consuming from all fast fashion,’ but to just be conscious of one’s purchases. I always ask myself, when purchasing an item, if I will like in a year from now – and if not, I won’t buy it!”

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Top left: Macy Eleni's TikTok page where she documents her thrifting experiences Bottom left: Averill Smith models her thrifted pieces for social media Bottom right: Macy Eleni out and about in thrifted goods - follow her Instagram page @macyeleni

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ALIGN WITH YO SPIRITUALITY · FAITH · QUESTIONS · GROWTH · FOCUS

ADAPTABILITY: BENDING, BUT NOT BREAKING “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent.

It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

"THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES," CHARLES DARWIN, 1859 Jyoti Paintel Spiritual contributor @pololifestyles

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NLIKE OUR ANCIENT ANCESTORS, WHO LITERALLY HAD TO THINK FAST ON THEIR FEET TO RUN FROM PREDATORY ANIMALS, SELF-PRESERVATION IN THE PRIMAL SENSE IS NOT A FUNDAMENTAL CONCERN FOR THOSE LIVING IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD. However, in the year 2021, we must think on our feet wisely, not quickly - we must keep behaving in a way so as not to spread the pandemic, but we also need emotional and mental wits to make it through the world now. page 152

The Dao de jing says, “Rigidity is a sign of death and suppleness is a sign of life.”

Let's explore that.

ADAPTING ANCIENT WISDOM Have you ever watched a tree on a windy day? It doesn’t stand there stiff and unyielding; its perfect design means that it will bend to the will of the wind.

The branches will sway as the wind whistles through the fluttering leaves.

The tree provides a lovely allegory for how you should live your life, showing that it is better to move with the wind rather than fight it.

One of the major tenets of the ancient Chinese philosophy, Taoism, is to go with the flow. Water in a stream trickling over stones will take the path of least resistance, going with the natural current where the shape of the stone bed and gravity will determine how the water flows.

Now in principle, this seems natural and

easy, but it’s not as simple as it sounds.

In practice, you might find it hard to let go of things. You might even find it hard to let go of resistance itself. Resistance keeps you stuck and prevents you from moving in a positive direction. But gently transitioning to a new mindset when life throws you a curve ball means that you can find a way to respond effectively. As in a yacht on the ocean, when the wind changes direction, a clever sailor will not fight the wind but will simply change the mainsail to tack with the wind. Adaptability is naturally innovative and creative.

It’s widely said that a sign of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Although this might be obvious from the standpoint of logic, the power of habit is a powerful thing that takes over our sense of control over our actions. What I mean by sense is that control is only an illusion - we think we have an extraordinary amount of it because most of us

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OUR PURPOSE IN SY N C W IT H YO UR V IB E

R E N E WA L · C O M M U N I T Y · S U P P O RT · E X P LO R AT I O N · E N E R G Y

have the freedom to do what we want or need to do, but that does not mean we can actually control anything other than our choices and our reactions to the results of those choices.

WHAT ARE THE KEY SIGNS OF ADAPTABILITY? 1. Adaptable people are willing to try something new and are willing to let go of preconceived ideas.

This last year wreaked havoc and disrupted many planned events- in the sporting world it has nearly canceled everything major and minor all the way from the 2020 Olympic Games to most athletic performances and events all over the world. For some athletes, the complete change in lifestyle has forced them to not only adapt - but to question the status quo that existed in their lives before the pandemic’s abrupt changes.

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Misty Copeland, the prima ballerina for the NY Ballet, discussed how she as a dancer found herself maintaining a healthier body weight; not the waif-like look that comes with the physical demands of nonstop performing. The look of traditional ballet requires women to be extremely thin and thus unnaturally hide their natural curves by becoming extremely lean. To be a be ballet dancer page 153

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SPIRITUALITY · FAITH · QUESTIONS · GROWTH · FOCUS

ALIGN WITH YOUR PURPOSE IN SY N C W IT H YO UR V IB E

R E N E WA L · C O M M U N I T Y · S U P P O RT · E X P LO R AT I O N · E N E R G Y is an elite art, but it puts tremendous scrutiny on how the body performs and looks. Now many are challenging the notion that to be a good dancer means you must be unnecessarily thin. Not only are the dancers adapting but the whole art, but the industry of ballet is being forced to examine and shed outdated ideas of what is normal.

2. Adaptable people see opportunity where others see failure.

If something in this last year has not worked out for you or you’ve faced economic or other types of hardships, then you wouldn’t be alone. The sheer amount of small businesses, restaurants, shops and salons that have disappeared, or have had to completely reinvent themselves to survive, is staggering.

You may have heard the epithet, “Adapt or die.” This is applied in nearly every facet in life - personal and business as well. When we think about companies that failed to adapt to technology, we almost forget that we once went anywhere other than Amazon for movies or books. Blockbuster, Barnes & Noble and Borders are now cautionary tales. The pandemic has literally pulled the rug from under our feet, so how can we stay upright through the bumpy ride ahead?

By staying flexible.

To adapt is to grow, to change, and to change you must forego what you once

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believed to be right, you must classify it as wrong, and then adopt what you now believe to be the new right. If you don’t, you stagnate. This is something that not only individuals, but organizations, struggle with—habits that have defined their success in the past rather than questioning whether or not those same habits will continue defining success in the future. Chances are, they won’t.

3. Adaptable people are resourceful.

One of my favorite podcasts is NPR’s “How I Built This” with Guy Raz. The podcast originally featured stories from entrepreneurs and artists on how they built their idea into a successful business. There is always something to take away from learning about the trials and tribulations of others and how they overcame obstacles. We learn so much through failures - not just our own. We can take comfort that others also faced relatable difficulties. Now NPR produces a pandemic series that focuses on resilience during difficult times. The best part of many of these stories, and what they all had in common, was the sheer ingenuity of adaptability and the resourcefulness to keep believing in their own vision. Even if you don’t own a business - they relate how their personal relationships also interplayed with their stories - we are the sum of both things: our work with our selves and our work

with the world.

4. Adaptable people don’t whine, complain, or blame others about having to change.

Another classic in the art of adaptability is the book, “Who Moved my Cheese?”

The short story is a parable for all business owners who must find their source of cheese (income), or quickly move on to something more reliable if the source disappears. It also demonstrates what happens when, instead of moving on, a business owner staunchly believes that the cheese will come back to them because they are simply entitled to it.

Entitlement is never a positive word when it prevents us from being our own saviors, and the song of entitlement is complaining and whining that our cheese has disappeared.

Instead of standing on the victim soapbox, talk to yourself: self-soothe your worries and anxieties. Tell yourself you are as capable as anyone, be your own fiercest protector and promoter. You cannot fall victim to external influences when you’re proactive. To adapt to something new, you must forego the old.

Adaptable people don’t hold grudges or eschew blame needlessly but instead absorb, understand and move on.

JYOTI PAINTEL SPIRITUAL CONTRIBUTOR POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

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MANSION OF THE MONTH GREEN GABLES page 158

WOODSIDE, CALIFORNIA

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MANSION OF THE MONTH

A 74-ACRE BAY AREA ESTATE IS BACK ON THE MARKET

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HE FLEISHHACKER FAMILY’S GREEN GABLES, A 74-ACRE COMPOUND WITH SEVEN HOUSES AND THREE POOLS, HAS STAYED IN THE FAMILY SINCE IT WAS BUILT. AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY, INDUSTRIALIST MORTIMER FLEISHHACKER SR. WAS LOOKING TO ESCAPE TWO THINGS: SAN FRANCISCO’S FOGGY SUMMER WEATHER AND HIS IN-LAWS. “They had a home on the north side of the bay, in San Rafael,” says his page 160

great-grandson, Marc Fleishhacker.

“So he drove south.”

At the time, the California coast was comparatively undeveloped and Mortimer, who founded the Anglo California Bank and the Great Western Power Co., was in a position to buy whatever land struck his fancy. In what his great-grandson calls a “quest to build a family compound,” he quickly amassed nine parcels in Woodside, a town that’s now the heart of Silicon Valley.

Inspired by a trip to England’s countryside, he hired architects Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene to build the compound’s main house, which has the general air of a Cotswolds cottage, albeit one that was

staffed by a minimum of five servants at all times. Green Gables, as the property came to be known, opened for leisure in 1911.

Today, the 74-acre estate has seven residences with a total of 32 bedrooms, three swimming pools, a tennis court, an orchard, and several gardens. Most important it has remained a family compound for over a century, just as its founder intended.

Until now.

Currently, three branches of the family, totaling 10 cousins, own shares of the land. “And as we look at the next generation, and we think of the inevitable passing of this to our children, well, that number goes from 10 to 17,”

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says Fleishhacker, a marketing executive who lives in Florence, Italy. “And that becomes 34 if everyone has a significant other, so you can imagine how difficult that is to manage.”

And so, to preempt any discord, the Fleishhacker descendants have decided to put the compound on the market.

At first, they listed it without a price, but the offers they received were, in the family’s estimation, too low. So now they’ve officially listed the home for $135 million with Zackary Wright of Christie’s International Real Estate and Brad and Helen Miller of Compass.

“We’re doing the next round of estate planning,” Fleishhacker says.

THE PROPERTY After Mortimer built the main house, the property was unaltered for about a decade, at which point, “despite the magnificent gardens in front of the main house, my great-grandfather decided to put in the showcase piece of the property, which is what we refer to as the Roman Pool,” Fleishhacker says.

This football field-sized expanse of water, which is preceded by a lily pond, is framed by symmetrical curved stone stairways on one end and on the other, by a grotto of arches reminiscent of a crumbling aqueduct. Flanking the pool are olive and oak trees.

Mortimer continued to build on the land. He built the “tea and dairy house,” a rustic-looking stone structure in which Mortimer’s wife Bella served tea. (The “dairy” part of the name came from the basement, where dairymaids churned butter and stored milk.)

Next, he built for his daughter a six-bedroom house designed by William Wurster, which also has its own pool.

“That became the second prominent house on the property,” says Fleishhacker.

Two craftsman-style homes from the 1860s were already on the land; those were gradually updated and used by staff. An additional house—originalpage 162

ly the butler’s residence—is now used by the estate manager.

The last major structure to be built on the property is the so-called “oak valley home” that was constructed in the 1970s. It, too, has its own pool, along with a mother-in-law unit that was added recently.

Small social areas dotting the property include an artist studio Mortimer built for his wife, “an amateur, albeit quite accomplished, painter,” Fleishhacker says, plus picnic grounds and “a beautiful cactus garden, which we’ve recently revitalized.”

To give a sense of the property’s scale, he says that when “we decided to refresh our spring flower bulbs a few years ago,” some 25,000 bulbs had to be ordered.

A HARMONIOUS RETREAT Despite the abundance of living space, Fleishhacker says that the property has only served as a full-time residence only twice in the past century: once when family hunkered down there during World War II and once when Fleishhacker lived with his wife on the property for a year before moving to Italy.

Instead, the family has used it, in Fleishhacker’s telling, “harmoniously” as a vacation retreat.

“Geography helped us more than anything,” he says. “The way the various homes are situated is that you’re not that far from one another, but no one house sees the other. And the best way to get along with your family is not to see them that often.”

They did, however, see the world’s politicians and grandees on a near-constant basis.

The 20th anniversary of the United Nations was celebrated on the grounds.

“My grandfather, the second generation to live on the estate, was asked to chair the festivities of that commemoration, which culminated in the gala event being held at Green Gables,” Fleishhacker

explains. And lunches with dignitaries were a near-constant feature of life on the property.

Fleishhacker recalls his grandparents inviting him to luncheon with the crown prince of Sweden and the consul general of France (not at the same time), and “a flow of politicians and aspiring politicians and people from the world of arts and culture,” he says.

Every two years, the family holds a Fourth of July picnic, “the criteria for which was: Invite anybody you know,” Fleishhacker says. More than 650 people would attend, “and I can tell you, when you have that many people there, it’s not crowded.”

In recent years, it has been rented out a few times as a wedding venue and a few others as a corporate retreat, including to “a computer company based in Silicon Valley that has an interesting doughnut-shaped headquarters,” Fleishhacker says, and that “has used the property a number of times for approximately 1,000 people.”

Mostly, he says, “the estate serves as a wonderful summer home for family.”

NO PRESSURE As a result, the family isn’t in a rush to sell. “There’s no pending financial pressure, there’s no rift in the family,” he says. And without any pressure, arriving at a price wasn’t easy.

“There are no comparables,” Fleishhacker says. “Go show me 74 acres in Silicon Valley with seven homes and a Roman pool, and then we can do comparables.”

Instead, they looked at Green Gable’s acreage and setting against other estates in the area—Larry Ellison, Charles Schwab, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Masayoshi Son are all said to have homes nearby—and came up with a number.

“Until we get an offer, which we think is fair and reasonable, we won’t sell,” Fleishhacker says. “But we are ready to sell.”

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Hungarian

WINE

T h e H i s t o r y, t h e L e g e n d and the Future of a tradition

BY CEZAR KUSIK

SOMMELIER & WINE WRITER

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In Search ofWine Hungarian Solace Traditions THE HISTORY

MAGYAR WINES THE LEGEND & THE FUTURE

CEZAR KUSIK Wine Contributor @cezartastesearth

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UNGARY IS A BIT OF AN ODDBALL OF A COUNTRY. IT IS A LANDLOCKED NATION, TIGHTLY PACKED IN CENTRAL EUROPE, SHARING ITS BORDER WITH SEVEN COUNTRIES: SLOVAKIA AND UKRAINE TO page 174

THE NORTHEAST, ROMANIA TO THE EAST, SERBIA TO THE SOUTH, CROATIA AND SLOVENIA TO THE SOUTHWEST, AND AUSTRIA TO THE WEST. It covers an area of nearly 36,000 square miles with a population of 10 million people. Budapest is both its capital and largest city and is the indisputable political and cultural center of the country.

It is believed that Hungary’s origins go back to the 9th century when the Magyars, a Finno-Ugric people, estab-

lished their settlements in the middle of the Danube River basin. The country’s unique language starkly stands out in the region dominated by Slavic tongues.

The Hungarian language is closely related to Ob-Ugric languages, Khanty and Mansi, spoken to the east of the Ural Mountains with slight similarities to Finnish and Estonian. I dare you to listen to some Hungarian without going, “What the hell was that?”

Despite its small size, geographically, Hungary offers a well-balanced topography of high-elevation regions near

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the Alps and Carpathian Mountains, lowland plains in the center, with the Danube River as its main tributary, and Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe. The country is situated between the 46th and 49th parallels, the same latitude as France’s wine regions from Northern Rhone to Champagne.

Warm to hot summers and cold winters are the result of the continental climate with small climactic differences between different regions. Rainfall is not abundant, but it is well-distributed throughout the year. The Carpathian Mountains to the north offer a protection from the cold fronts rolling in from Poland and Ukraine.

While writing this article, I turned to one of California’s foremost Hungarian wine experts Eric Danch. He is the co-owner of Danch and Granger Selections wine importer, specializing in the wines of central Europe. His Hungarian portfolio is a carefully selected lineup of esoteric wines with impressive quality to value factor.

Historically, Hungary has been one of the top producers of quality wines in Europe. Its wine history predates the Roman Empire. Aside from the legendary sweet wines of Tokaji, whose records

go as far back as the 1400s, the country’s dry whites and reds were praised throughout the continent until the end of 19th century. There were four major historic events that led to a near annihilation of the Hungarian wine industry: the plague of phylloxera in 1880s, two World Wars, and 40 years of communist collectivization. It is important to mention that as a result of the Treaty of Trianon at the conclusion of the World War I, the Kingdom of Hungary was robbed of two-thirds of its territory, leaving the nation’s psyche scarred into present times.

After World War II, Hungary become a satellite state of the Soviet Union, cut off behind the Iron Curtain. Since the collapse of Soviet occupation and disbandment of the communist bloc during the 1990s, Hungary’s wine industry experienced an explosive period of revival. The combination of tradition and progressive sensibility of young wine makers are at the forefront of this restoration.

HUNGARY’S KEY WINE REGIONS Hungary has 22 designated wine regions. I selected four that in my opinion best represent the country’s presence on the international wine stage, but also depict both its historic heritage in wine

making and new trends for the future ahead.

TOKAJI Located along the Slovakian border, the Tokaji region is Hungary’s crown jewel. Louis XIV of France famously christened Tokaji wines as “Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum” (Wine of Kings, King of Wines). He was referring to Tokaji’s sweet dessert wines, which at their best, are in a class of their own.

Six endemic grape varieties are permitted in the making of Tokaji: Furmint, Hárslevelü, Kabar, Zéta, Kövérszölö and Sárgamuskotály. (Good luck pronouncing these).

Two stand out: Furmint and Hárslevelü.

The wines are made from hand-harvested and carefully selected botrytized grapes (noble-rot affected) and vinified to the varying levels of sweetness with eszencia being the sweetest, packing 450+ grams of sugar per liter. The flavors of sweet Tokajis are hauntingly irresistible and the wine’s aging potential is believed to be indefinite.

But the region is not all about sweet wines nowadays. In the last few decades, new and innovative wine makers started turning out some impressive examples of dry white wines from the region. page 175

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Hungarian Wine Traditions

The writer, sommelier Cezar Kusik, and importer, Eric Danch, tried a few Hungarian wines.

Again, Furmint and Hárslevelü grapes seemed to be the most suitable for the dry style, excelling in complexity and depth. I asked Eric about the general differences between the two grapes.

“Furmint tends to be fuller-bodied, with more pronounced minerality and in need of longer aging to soften its roughedged acidity. Hárslevelü exhibits more floral aromas and fruitiness wrapped in lighter body,” Danch said.

EGER About 80 miles northeast from Budapest lies the region of Eger. There are two wines in particular that define the region: Egri Bikavér (bull’s blood) and Egri Csillag (star of Eger). Bikaver is obviously a red wine: a blend. The appellation’s specifications require that 50 percent of the grapes are the native Kadarka or Kékfrankos or a combination. The remainder can be a varying combination of international red grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Syrah or Pinot Noir. The wines are dense, spicy, packed with jammy wild berry flavors, often with an angular and almost boorish edge to them.

Legend has it that in the mid-16th century during the Ottoman siege of Eger, page 176

the Turks witnessed crazed behavior of Hungarian troops fueled by the local red wine. Their faces, stained red with shockingly bloodshot eyes, made the Turks believe that it was bull’s blood that the Magyars drank. Although outnumbered, the Hungarians won.

The more recent white version, Egri Csillag, is also a composition of at least 50 percent of local white grapes: Furmint, Hárslevelü, Zenit, Zengö and Királyleányka. The wines are delightfully aromatic. Vibrant and pronounced flavors of jasmine, pineapple, ginger, and lychee are complemented by a slight tingle of zesty finish.

Aside from these two classic styles of wine, Eger also offers a great selection of single variety wines from several producers who do a great job at showcasing the individual potential of the native grapes. Eric singled out Kadarka as his personal favorite red grape with a great versatility of expression.

SOMLÓ There is an air of magic and a touch of mystique about the region of Somló. It is tiny; only 741 acres. Located on an extinct volcano stump, the area comes

with a unique geological soil composition of black basalt as its bedrock and loess, clay, and sand in the topsoil. White grapes dominate here with Furmint, Hárslevelü, and Olaszrizling performing well. But it is the native Juhfark which excels. Juhfark means “sheep’s tail” in Hungarian and refers to the elongated shape of the grape clusters. In my research, “fierce” was the reoccurring description of the Juhfark whites. Other descriptors included: ashy, smoky, savory, intense minerality, visceral with aromas of cantaloupe, soaked wheat, toasted almonds, honey-coated apples and blooming magnolia flowers. For centuries, the locals believed that these special wines of Somló cured ailments and promoted fertility. Drinking Somló wines on a wedding night was supposed to ensure the conception of a male heir. We tasted Furmint, Hárslevelü, and Juhfark from the Apátsági Pince label side by side, all three whisked with botrytis and they were stupendous, a rare combination of decadent richness and cerebral finesse.

MÁTRA The second-largest wine making region in Hungry is the region of Mátra, which

Major Levente, a Hungarian wine maker, focused on organic production

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produce vast quantities of inferior quality wines during the communist era. A prolific production persists, making up for about one-third of Hungary’s wine export. It is situated in northern central Hungary with the vineyards sprawling at the lower elevations of the Mátra Mountains. There are two sides to this historic and prolific region: the commercial and… the other. In recent years, there has been a resurgence taking place beneath the muck of commercialism that cannot be ignored. Small, family-owned wineries with a focus on quality and uncompromising integrity are sprouting up and giving the region a new identity.

Mátra’s grape breakdown by color is 70 percent white and 30 percent red. There is a plethora of grapes cultivated here, but Olaszrizling, Irsai Olivér, Hárslevelű, and Szürkebarát are amongst the most important whites, while Kékfrankos, Turán, and Pinot Noir are popular reds.

There is one man in Mátra whose stance perfectly exemplifies the new trend of artisan wine making in the area and the whole of Hungary for that matter: Levente Major and his winery. I have never met Major, but I love him already

just from reading about him. He is a quintessence of a new-age Hungarian wine maker. A renaissance man of a sort: a philosopher, a geologist, a historian, but first and foremost, a creator of wine, fully devoted to his passion.

Here, it is all about the symbiotic relationship with nature. His holistic approach to farming is based on principles leading to a balanced and minimally disturbed ecosystem in the vineyards: no plowing, no use of pesticides, handpicked grapes and the use of cover crop.

A similar philosophy extends to wine making: exclusively ambient yeasts are allowed during the fermentation in open vats and used oak barrels. He uses a wooden basket press instead of mechanical crusher-destemmer. In general, he avoids machinery in favor of manually processing his harvest. As of 2016, which coincided with Levente acquiring organic certification, all the wines are unfiltered with extremely low sulfuring applied only at bottling. When asked how he knows when to harvest his grapes, he answers, “When my kids eat them – that’s when the fruit is ready to be picked.” Whether or not it’s true, I

appreciate the answer.

The story of Hungarian wine is one of my favorite ones. It is deeply rooted in history and folk tradition where facts, myths and legends intermingle and coexist in harmony, giving it both historic bearing and poetic flare. It is a story of defiance and integrity; a story of rebirth and reemergence after over a century of irrelevance and inconsequence.

There are many wine makers like Levente in Hungary, wine makers whose dedication and methodology focus on the long-term well-being and prosperity of our natural environment. Wine makers who care about the preservation of the traditions of the craft and the unadulterated quality of the final product, rather than their commercial success.

But it also takes importers like Danch and Granger who go to great lengths to seek out these producers, to expose them to an international audience and to teach us the appreciation of their labor. And that is one of the aspects of the world of wine that fills me with hope, pride, and makes me tick, and tick and...

CEZAR KUSIK WINE CONTRIBUTOR POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

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MOLD YOUR MIND

WRANGLING THE UNKNOWN LIKE A PRO JOEY VELEZ MA, MBA @velezmentalperformance Healthy Lifestyles Contributor

I

N MARCH 2020, I MADE A CAREER TRANSITION. I WAS OUT OF A JOB, FINANCIALLY STUCK, NOT TO MENTION JUST GETTING OUT OF A TWO-YEAR RELATIONSHIP, SO THE THOUGHT OF MOVING TO GEORGIA AND STARTING FRESH FELT LIKE THE RIGHT MOVE. I was excited to experience this new region of the country. I was also excited

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to start a new job in my field of Sport Psychology, but I would be lying if I said I did not experience an equal amount of doubt. There was a level of uncertainty that I had not accounted for – moving 2,000+ miles away from home, being 1,000 miles from the closest person I knew, working with a population I had no clue about – I started to question whether I was going to make it or end up back on my mother’s couch in California.

As with any transitional period, whether a new career, moving, or trying

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something new, there comes a level of uncertainty that can cause your self-confidence to take a plunge. In these situations, you may not know from where to pull the confidence that is your best chance at success; one thing to leverage is your strengths during transition to increase certainty in your abilities, as well as your overall ability to handle the unknown.

difficult to pull from the four experiences I’ve outlined. In fact, you may not have the experience to pull from all four, and if your mind is not ready to perform and is lacking confidence, your body will respond in similar fashion. To fight this, we leverage our strengths to build confidence in times of uncertainty.

WHAT IS CERTAINTY?

There are three categories to look at in terms of your strengths and abilities: physical, mental and interpersonal.

Physical abilities are related to your behaviors or actions, such as having a strong lower body or high endurance. Mental abilities are more cognitive based, such as self-motivation or high-level focus. Interpersonal abilities are your people skills: being open-minded or an effective communicator. Create your own exhaustive list for each category. The more exhaustive your list, the more you can potentially pull from when faced with uncertainty. Even if you only list one per category, you can still leverage that strength to increase your confidence and your ability to handle the unknown.

Certainty is derived from the word confidence, which is defined as the degree of self-assurance about our capabilities to execute a particular action. There are four areas where we can pull certainty from: personal experience, physical state, vicarious experience, and persuasion. Personal experience is related to your past accomplishments and failures.

Physical state is related to your interpretation of how you are feeling physically. Vicarious experience is related to watching someone else, and persuasion is related to your internal self-talk or statements from other people.

When faced with unfamiliar leading to uncertainty, it becomes increasingly

LEVERAGING YOUR STRENGTHS

Once you complete your lists, work on a statement for each category on how your strengths can help build certainty in your skills. For example, my statement as I started my new career in Georgia was, “I have not worked with soldiers before, but I know the information and can use my open mind to learn about this population.” Your statement can be related to a particular category, or a more general sense of how your physical, mental or interpersonal abilities can help increase your ability to handle uncertainty.

FINAL THOUGHTS You may not have the luxury of experiencing all that life has to offer. You may be faced with new situations – and these new scenarios may test your level of uncertainty lowering confidence in your abilities. Embrace the uncertainty. It can be the fount of strength from which you can draw. Use this as an opportunity to learn and grow. By leveraging your strengths, you not only build confidence in times of uncertainty, but you also increase your ability to handle the unknown. Trust yourself and trust your abilities to defeat any challenge. page 181

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HEALTH IS WEALTH

AYURVEDA

THE HOLISTIC NUTRITION PLAN E DI TOR 'S N OTE:

This month, we welcome Panthil Dwivedi as the newest contributor to our wellness team. We took almost a year to contact and interview candidates for this position. We knew our search was over after our first conversation with Panthil. He’s a brilliant scientist by day as well as a “fitness freak” (his words) and nutrition guru. He’s documented his fitness journey on social media extensively and he is just a beacon of positive energy. He brings a science-based, thoughtful and discerning approach to fitness as a lifestyle.

PANTHIL DWIVEDI Wellness contributor @panthildwivedi

W

HEN IT COMES TO FITNESS AND BODY TRANSFORMATION, THERE ARE THREE FUNDAMENTAL PILLARS: WORKOUT, NUTRITION, AND page 184

RECOVERY. ANYONE WHO IS EMBARKING ON THEIR FITNESS JOURNEY CANNOT POSSIBLY IMAGINE GETTING GREAT RESULTS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THE CORE OF THIS HOLY TRINITY OF FITNESS. When we dissect all three in terms of subjectiveness, we always talk about workout and rest. We develop individual workout plans, exercise plans

and recovery plans to suit the subjective needs of an individual. But, when it comes to nutrition, most of the time we try the one-plan-fits-all approach; however, nutrition pivotal when it comes to health, fitness, and body transformation and every individual’s nutrition needs are different.

Our bodies are unique and although we all are anatomically similar; on a cellular level, our needs can be very different. Our molecular cascades govern our cellular health and our an-

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atomical health depends on the healthy functioning of our cellular and molecular machinery. On a cellular level, we all function differently, that is why we have different allergies, food intolerances, different metabolic profiles, reactivity to certain types of foods, and so on. This is the exact reason why when it comes to food, nutrition, and supplementation, it is important to understand that oneplan-fits-all is not the ultimate solution; and why popular plans like a keto meal plan, vegan-only plan or a raw-food detox plan might work for one, but would be harmful to the other.

Nutrition is a very broad subject with different theories, definitions and ideologies. But if we were to classify two roots of nutrition, one would be scientific and the other would be cultural.

Branches of scientific nutrition include diet, clinical nutrition, food chemistry and metabolism. On the other hand, we have a cultural branch of nutrition, the food that we grow up eating, and the ancestral knowledge of nutrition that shines in the traditional food of every culture. Before science and data quan-

tification came into the picture, ancestors of every region already developed a cultural database of health food and nutrition. Examples of traditional food and recipes created on the principle of “considering good as a form of medicine” can be seen in various cultures like India, China and Greece.

Modern nutrition and its various branches always find similarities in traditional nutrition. The ancient branches of food and nutrition did not consider food as just something we eat to survive, but more like an additional source of supplementation and secondary medicine that provides longevity, health and vitality. This is why foods included more natural products, roots, subtle sources of fats, including a lot of herbs, spices; and the food incorporated paid exclusive attention to native geography and elements. Food changed with seasons, day and night, weather, and also were dependent on a person’s anatomy and reactivity toward food.

One recent branch of nutrition that evolved to incorporate a similar princi-

ple of personalized food and nutrition is called functional nutrition. This branch of clinical nutrition is based on a very personalized subjective form of nutrition and it is different from the regular“one-plan-fits-all approach. A similar branch of nutrition exists in India and has been practiced by many in the subcontinent for centuries. It is a pivotal branch of the ancient Indian medicine system Ayurveda. When it comes to food and nutrition, Ayurveda does not prescribe a one-plan-fits-all approach; rather an Ayurvedic doctor or practitioner would take into consideration every aspect of an individual’s health, where they live, their background, and then prescribe diet and nutrition suitable to that individual only.

WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL NUTRITION? Functional nutrition is a branch of nutrition and diet in which, before prescribing diet and nutrition recommendations, the expert takes into consideration an individual’s history, health, overall lifestyle, ailments, allergies and medications. Functional nutrition is a personalized approach to improve the overall health of an individual rather than just quick fixes. So rather than providing conventional nutrition recommendations to an individual that might temporarily provide health benefits on the surface, like weight loss, functional nutrition provides a recommendation to optimize the overall health of the body.

It is also considered to be a sub-branch of functional medicine, wherein functional medicine experts would analyze every individual right from their genetic makeup, hereditary, illnesses, history, food habits, allergies, reactivity to supplementation and medicines to provide medicinal plans to holistically heal the body. Modern medicine provides quick solutions by treating immediate symptoms of an illness, while a functional medicine practitioner tries to heal the illness by eliminating the root cause. Similar to medicine, functional nutrition is a cornerstone of functional medicine, wherein food is considered as page 185

VOLUME V / ISSUE III / MAY - JUNE 2021

HEALTH IS WEALTH I N C OR P O RATING AY U RVE DA IN TO A FUNCTI ONAL N UTR I TI ON PR OG R A M

medicine, and the nutrition it provides heals the body rather than quickly fixing temporary issues.

How is this related to the ancient science of medicine like Ayurveda? To answer that, we need to understand the basics of Ayurveda.

Ayurveda is an ancient traditional system of medicine that originated in India thousands of years ago. The origin of the word Ayurveda is a combination of two Sanskrit words Ayur (life) and Veda (knowledge) hence translating into the knowledge or science of life. For over 3,000 years, Ayurvedic practitioners have been practicing this form of ancient medicine in India. The fundamental principle behind Ayurvedic medicine is holistic healing and creating a balance between the life sources; which are the body or body composition (Prakriti), the soul (Prana), and the life forces (Doshas). Rather than treating just immediate symptoms of any illness or ailments, the Ayurvedic doctor tries to resolve it from its root cause by creating a fine balance between these essential life sources.

Like modern functional medicine and nutrition, Ayurveda also incorporates principles of uniqueness. Ayurveda believes every individual is unique and takes into consideration an individual’s health, history, geography, hereditary, body composition, doshas, food habits and lifestyle patterns before initiating the treatment. The key forms of Ayurvedic treatment would be herbal medicine, functional foods and yoga.

As we are going to discuss fitness, and the importance of functional nutrition, we are going to discuss the importance of how Ayurveda can help us reach our health goals by incorporating principles of functional nutrition. page 186

My journey with Ayurveda began in early childhood when I was introduced to this science by my parents and grandparents. Later in school, I opted for Ayurveda as a key module and studied it for over 12 years. I was trained in various aspects of Ayurveda by a certified Ayurvedic doctor who taught this class in our school. We were not only trained in the theoretical aspects of this science, but even trained practically in making herbal medicines, lepas (topical ointments), churnas (oral supplements).

WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTAL PILLARS OF FUNCTIONAL NUTRITION? In most cases, a practitioner would follow certain steps to analyze an individual before recommending personalized plans. The plan will follow most if not all steps mentioned: •

Evaluate previous medical history

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Review of medication and supplement history

I was trained that the three key aspects of Ayurveda are herbs (herbal medicine and formulations), food and nutrition and yoga. My interest and curiosity in this neglected, yet powerful, field of traditional science grew when I started studying life science in university, and I started reading more on topics that include Ayurvedic herbs, spices and plants, and their importance in chronic diseases.

•

Review of current diet

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Analyze lifestyle habits

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Get reports on previous illnesses and ailments

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Biochemical tests to check for any specific deficiencies

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What are the fundamental pillars of Ayurvedic nutrition?

Being a biochemist, I could understand how after dissecting the bio-molecular map of the herbs and spices, one can derive its molecular benefits in treating some of the key human diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration, allergies, autoimmune diseases, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disorders, and more.

I even developed my Ph.D. proposal around Ayurvedic herbs (such as neem, tulsi, cloves, and turmeric) by dissecting their biomolecular profiles, and establishing a correlation between these key biomolecules in treating cancer.

•

Similarly, an Ayurvedic practitioner would include all the details of what to and not to eat, including what kind of foods not to mix.

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Analyze patient history

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Analyze the doshas

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Review the current diet

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Analyze lifestyle and habits

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Analyze imbalances from a mind, body, soul perspective

Enough about me, coming back to the topic: how can we use the knowledge of Ayurveda and incorporate it with our functional nutrition plan?

To do this first we need to derive some similarities between functional nutrition and Ayurvedic nutrition.

Doing both branches of nutrition are not there to treat or cure anything, nor do they provide quick fixes or conventional nutrition plans that apply to all.

Instead, they analyze individual needs and formulate a nutritional plan around food and herbs that will benefit one individual only. Now usually one needs to consult a certified dietitian or Ayurvedic doctor to help incorporate the correct

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functional nutrition plan for them to match your individual health needs to help you reach your fitness, body transformation, and weight loss goals.

For starters, these are some recommendations you can keep in mind when creating your functional nutrition plan and include Ayurveda to help you with your health and fitness goals.

Ayurveda says that the body is primarily composed of five key elements: Prithvi (earth), Vayu (air), Jaal (water), Ether (space), and Agni (fire). Every food we eat affects one of these elements, and the idea is to keep these balanced; hence try to have a simple balanced diet.

Know your Doshas: Ayurveda recommends three key Doshas (Vatta, Pitta, Kapha) that primarily govern our body composition; and these doshas are affected by weather, lifestyle, and food.

Vatta is dominated by ether and air, Pitta is dominated by water and fire, and Kapha is dominated by earth and water.

Stay away from Tamsik foods (in Sanskrit : tamas: means darkness).

These are the foods that generate imbalance and some key examples can be spicy food, a lot of garlic and onion, al-

cohol, processed food, unhealthy white sugar and red meat.

Incorporate more satvik food, meaning food that is virtuous, like berries, green leafy vegetables, lentils, sprouts, whole grains, spices like cardamom and turmeric.

Pay attention to your gut health: Ayurveda pays special attention to herbs and food that keeps the gut healthy and active. For example, it is recommended to eat herbs like Harde or Haritki (Terminalia chebula) after dinner or before bedtime to keep your gut healthy.

Similar to how modern nutrition recommends probiotics, Ayurvedic practitioners recommend buttermilk after dinner which consists of a healthy microbiome essential for healthy gut and digestion. If your gut is healthy, your entire body will feel healthy.

These are just some basic recommendations, and the more we understand Ayurveda, the more avenues and indepth knowledge of functional nutrition we can incorporate into our lifestyle.

If you analyze the above-mentioned tips, these are quite in tune with the basic recommendations that functional nutrition would give you, such as

understanding your body, pay attention to your body if you have a body type that is more prone to ailments like cold and flu (Kapha), acidity and heartburns (pitta), migraines and joint pains (vatta), eat raw food, eat whole grains, lentil, and pulses, include more fresh berries, fruits, herbs, and vegetables, do not drink or smoke and pay attention to gut health, including probiotics.

Before you begin this journey, always remember that functional nutrition and Ayurveda is not a one-plan-fits-all or do-it-for-two-months-and-go-back-toold-habits type of science. These plans are only successful when it becomes a lifelong habit. The goal is to attain long-lasting holistic health and incorporate it with your fitness goals. The process of understanding your body at different stages of life, and bringing in variations to accommodate those changes is the only way forward. With the many complexities, it is always recommended to consult and dietitian or Ayurveda practitioner to help you with your food and nutrition requirements for an effective nutrition plan.

PANTHIL DWIVEDI WELLNESS CONTRIBUTOR POLO LIFESTYLES 2021

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