Author: lionsandcows
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Stop Two of Nine: Bornholm, The Sunshine Island
Thought I forgot? I didn’t. I had to do some living which overall is going well. I must get better at sharing when the sun is out in my mental health, but in those moments, as a member of the last analog generation, sometimes I just want to be present, my mind in the moment.…
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2025: Copenhagen
Stop One of Nine: Copenhagen A delayed recap but here we go. On a quieter break now, with time to reflect. Let’s start here. June in Denmark is a delight. June in Copenhagen is even more. The first thing I noticed about this lovely city was all the green space. Gardens and alleys, allotment plots…
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2025: Away we go…
Not the way it normally goes but sometimes the way it is… a mad dash through the coastal capitals of Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and then a collapse I am sure in Sweden… and home. Travel does make my heart beat faster…. So bring on airports, airplanes, people watching, lots of coffee, walking…
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2025: An Upcoming Journey
“The true risks of travel are disappointment and transformation: the fear you’ll be the same person when you go home, and the fear you won’t.” — Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road by Kate Harris I love to read as much or more than I love to travel to new lands.…
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2025: What’s Blooming So Far
What a year. I know it’s only May but feels longer. I can only think in lists lately. What have I accomplished? Better health. Mental and moving on physical. Holding the chaos of the world at bay. Trying to celebrate in the day to day. You know. Working the steps. So here’s to the spring…
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2024: Missing Year
Adding in some of 2024 because we’re well into 2025. It was a year of change. Therapy. Travel as ever. And more therapy. Quit management. Started new things. And focused so hard in moving some cows from one field to new grass, forgot all about this space. As ever. Some highlights through a look back…
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2023: Travels
Once upon a time, the lion part of this space was about being away from the every day. Before I move on to all the many 2024 things, here’s a celebration of where I went to see “lions” and some actual cows, called coos. Happiest Trails.
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2023: Life in the Riptide
Today, I wait for my car to be released from a crushing lot of repairs, dreaming of the shore and sea breezes – so close to my week and 1/2 by the sea, friends, celebrations, kayaks, reunions, the best parts of my best summer memories all happened in August, at a big rambling house on…
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2022: A year in pictures…
A year of recovery and growing pains, a year of loss and love. All the words that escaped capture here. Here’s to what’s next.
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2022: Extra Time In Iceland
I know, I know, but I like it here. Or I did. Until my friend Covid met up with me and a four day fun weekend became nine. I still love Iceland but maybe we are on break for a minute. I need to share first I am well and healthy. 2022 Covid is more…
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2022: Snuggled in
The hearth stuff goes way back but nothing else feels like home in the winter than a sharing a day’s stories by a cracking fireplace. What a strange weather winter we’re having in New England. Blizzards and ice storms, then springlike sunny days and then right back into the deep freezer. This past weekend there…
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2021: A Year In Review
2021 you were a year. Filled with the happy, the sad and all the real stuff. First the easy, I learned how to cook for a reestablished family of four. I watched a lot of content from Tik Tok to whatever I could – some of it educational and some of it not so much.…
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COFFEE CUPS: 2021 The Berkshires, still
I am four days from my second vaccine shot and I planned my first international trip in two years yesterday. The wanderlust is waking up. I hope I will look back on this year of slower days, time inside, with my close family 24/7 as a gift. My mother is 90 and my nephew is…
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2021: March, bringing back the wonder
March is a long month in New England, usually starts out in real winter and then a few starts and stops with false spring but then it really kicks off with a lot of mud, then finally a hint of REAL spring, the world waking back up from it’s winter nap (and then maybe a…
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Coffee Cups: 2021 The Berkshires
I want more. I want moments on top of moments that don’t involve the inside of my house. Soon right? Soon. Along with spring and the GD vaccine (anti-vaxers, please move along – this is a place for travel, thoughts dreams and science too). A cafe coffee on the regular, too please. I broke out…
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2021: missing the airport
Airports – magical doors that open and close a journey. Travels are bracketed by the halls of transportation – a start and an end, the in between home and place. The hustle, the bustle, the beeping of electric carts, the smell of coffee and off food combos, strangers, stores selling things that are emergency needs…
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Coffee Cups – 2012 Heathrow
Coffee. How I love it. Is it a genetic trait? I hope so. Where my Cuban battery can only be recharged by the jolt of caffeine and sugar? After three weeks in India, this cup was part of the in between travel fogged transition from a new land to me, to the ritual of home.…
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2020 The Year That Wasn’t
Not one shared word from me. Not one post. Here instead one month into the new year are the pictures. It was a lot of these beautiful moments and also a lot of unknowns, worry, tears, love, laughs and all the rainbow of feelings. Family and friendship. I am ok. My family is ok. My…
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2019: A year in pictures
I didn’t spend any time writing this year, except to friends and family which is really a tragic shame that I have to spend some time on to make sense of why that was so, not for you dear reader. Today, I was googling artists and writers that spend time doing what appeared to be…
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2019: Fall at rest
My favorite tree. In my favorite hometown spot. Five years ago, she was on fire. Orange as ever. I felt like I was on fire too. About to head off to Nepal, I was ready for what was next. That fall was spectacular. This fall, she’s not so orange. No so well. Maybe she’s older,…
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2019: Florida
Time away is time to clear out the cobwebs and to put my house in order. Distance from the churn of life. If I haven’t spoken of it here before, I should have. Lots has happened this winter and early spring and also a lot of nothing has happened. Suddenly the nothing is something. Somehow…
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2019: New Year, Same me
Time for a pep talk. I always have better years on the odd ones. Even if the events of the year are not great, they are always transformative? Glass half full? Seems people miss that the glass has something at all – water or wine, still something. So, my good people, going to try to…
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2018: Dog days of summer
“To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.” – Ann Patchett
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2018: Cow Town Summer
“I could never in a hundred summers get tired of this.” Susan Branch
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2018: Back to East Africa
June 2018: I wrote most of the below and forgot to publish it as anyone who has visited East Africa the network is a mercurial and not always reliable thing. So here you are…. a month later – the thoughts all still stand, my readers. I just didn’t officially state it live time. I know…
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2018: Newer New Year
Month and a half in and already, while my feet may be firmly planted in my cow town, I have been moving mental mountains. I haven’t really been anywhere but I feel like it’s been not an Everest sized trek, maybe a trek to a smaller kind of craggy peak. I can see the top,…
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2017: Christmas Eve, in Cow Town
Probably the reason we all go so haywire at Christmas time with the endless unrestrained and often silly buying of gifts is that we don’t quite know how to put our love into words. ~ Harlan Miller Happy Christmas Eve to one and all – a bit more special this long and strange year. It’s…
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2017: Iceland, again (and again!)
Don’t everyone get excited at the same time. I left the country – I have been grounded for ages here in my cow town, dealing with some real life stuff. All is now well but it was not well most of 2017. Here’s a real deal travel update with some links, some pictures. Maybe I…
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2017 Giving thanks
Making memories, living life doesn’t mean I have stopped reflecting. It’s been an intense time of real adult style stuff. You can either go deep and connect through the story or you can instead share memories of happier times. This summer and fall I could do neither. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, something…
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2017: Half Done
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s…
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2017: In like a lion, out like a ram
Winter cannot give up her grip on these New England hills. I am not going to be one of those surprised people that it happened again, happens every year. In a few months, when the green busts out all over, it is more than worth it. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel a bit battled by the…
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2017: New Moon, Cow Town
The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone.…
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2017: Valentine’s Day, a bit late
Hello my Valentines, hope Tuesday was all it should have been for all of you. I am not and never have been a fan of this day (except for the chocolate – that’s the best) but 2017 is all about being different. I might have to learn to love love after all. So happy wishes…
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2017: Sunshine and Miami
This year didn’t wait until March to come in like a lion. Living in the USA, life as we knew it has been changed every day just a little bit since our new president took office. Know this space isn’t for politics but be warned it’s going to come up for certain for me. Since…
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2017: Day 2, Cowtown
Don’t be so surprised my readers, I promised more this 2017 year. I don’t have any travels on the horizon that I can share about yet – some ideas and some dreams are swirling in my mind. It won’t be a year to sit still for certain. Today, I worked on my intention of kindness.…
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2017: new year, new deal
Happiest of New Year’s wishes to all. 2016: I promised stories. I promised pictures. I promised much. Unfortunately, I am not the best at sitting down and writing. I had a great year of travels to Martinique, Canada and my amazing and special time in East Africa this fall – as deeply in love with that…
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2016: Tanzania
Still processing an amazing adventure. Came back to a country on fire. I will just leave you all with this snippet of a video of a Lutheran Choir practice in Karatu, Tanzania. A very special moment in the middle of my trip. Voices unite us all.
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2016: Kenya
I write this on the shore of Lake Elementaita. Listening to the waves crash and the calls of the remaining flamingos. Most have moved on from here. Their food source depleted by pollution. Reality of conservation and sometimes lack of conservation. Kenya. A beautiful land facing such challenges to their north. Here in the south…
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2016: Back to East Africa
“Africa has her mysteries and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.” Miriam Makeba (South African singer and civil rights activist) Tomorrow it is – meanwhile, surrounded by piles of clothing, twists of plugs, missing adaptors, stray Euros, matchless socks, you’d hope that someday I get better at this part,…
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2016: Back to East Africa
“Africa – You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the Hand of God. You watch the slope lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see…
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2010: Tanzania
As I wait for next weekend, here’s why I could go again and again to East Africa. And again and again. And again.
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2016: Back to East Africa
“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.” ― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa / Shadows on the…
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2016 – 2001: Remembering
I was rushing to work that horrible day, September 11, 2001, trapped in the normal Boston traffic listening to NPR. I knew I was late because it switched over to the BBC broadcast at nine am. I heard the news of the first tower falling in an English accent. It took me a moment to…
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2016: Cape Cod Birthday Sail and Sunset
Yesterday, I went sailing. The wind was just puffy enough on our little bay. The sun was shining. It was perfection. The sun said goodnight in a blaze of orange goodness. Except every year I forget that the sailing part can only follow the contortionist upside down yoga rigging the boat time, various bumps and…
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2016, A Cowtown Chapter
Home. I haven’t been on any airplanes. I haven’t seen any exotic sights. I haven’t had jet lag. I have been with my people. I have been learning life lessons, the hard ones, the funny ones too. I am stronger, I am centered. Happier is a work in progress but it’s coming. And with that surely will come…
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2016: Martinique (in pictures)
Just a few days away, to see the ocean and sea. Quick hop south on the new Norwegian Air Shuttle flights from the USA. Recharged and renewed. The words don’t seem to be coming to me again so I’ll rely as one does on the pictures. Enjoy!
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2016: Finally, an airplane ride
To start to this year, I fell down, metaphorically and actually (hello pavement, this is my face) but I am on the move headed for some island breezes. Escaping the brown winter. A broken nose (you can barely tell now), the stomach flu, life troubles be damned. Traveling is a funny thing. I have done…
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2015: Cows, California, Cafes and Chalupas
“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Even if I didn’t write about them, I did have some lovely adventures and I love a sunset all over the world. Here’s 2015’s collection. California for some calm and a birthday, Mexico for some chalupas and time with my cub, Michigan…
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2015: Christmas in Cowtown
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What…
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2015: Cowtown diary
I went to visit some cows this week. When missing lions, sometimes a gal just needs to be with some cows. You can all connect the dots to a deeper meaning but trying to get back to basics after this long winter and challenging spring. Get outdoors.
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2015: Mother’s Day, the woman who took me out my first door
Many moons ago, my mother told my father that if he was going to Europe to work for three months, well, then, despite being over forty and a new mother to two small girls, she was going as well. And so, the die for my life was cast. At 18 months old, I boarded a…
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2015: Spring, in Cowtown
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust. – J.M. Barrie
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2015: Cowtown Diaries, April 1
Even the gods love jokes. ~Plato Something to remember this sunny April 1 – Happy April Fool’s Day all.
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2014: Nepal, a few pictures of the Annapurnas
Sometimes it’s just easier to let pictures tell the story…. here are some from my fall trip. I already am plotting when I can go back.
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2015: Cowtown diaries
Home and home again. Sometimes I just have to stay. At least spring is coming and the sun is shinning more. The mud is coming! Here’s the sky tonight and maybe even the Northern Lights later. Clear cold sky tonight. Happy St Patrick’s Day to all.
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2015: Cowtown, home again
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month. ~Henry Van Dyke Slushy, snowy, gun metal grey skies…. March is a tough month here in the Massachusetts Berkshires (just in case anyone thought I meant English Berkshires, alas,…
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2015: Mexico
Sometimes the pictures just speak for themselves. A trip to the supermarket, fish tacos and some sea. Such an amazing restful place.
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