Tag: world
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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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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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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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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: 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: 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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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: 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: 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: 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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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: 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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2015: A good quote
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer
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2015: New Year’s, Boston to the Berkshires
1 Jan – 1:23 AM – Hanover Street, North End, Boston: On every block, another post midnight cliche… the fighting couple, the restaurant filled with revelers dancing to Usher’s last year’s hit, the brand new couple-maybe-to-be negotiating with their friends to be able to take the only available taxi by themselves, Boston boys with Bruins hats,…
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2015… here it comes
“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.” Charles Lamb, “New Year’s Eve,” in The London Magazine, January 1821
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Nepal 2014: Short Trek to the Annapurnas, the arrival
Jump head first into the deep end I say: no better reason to decide to take a trip with four days of trekking. Meanwhile, small detail: I don’t trek. I don’t even hike much despite living on the Appalachian trail and in the Berkshire hills, but I have two legs and I can walk so…
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Nepal 2014: Just a little bit about Everest
Saw many a t-shirt throughout my time in Nepal: a little up, a little down, little seems an understatement considering men and a few very intrepid women have trekked to the top of this mystical magical Himalaya mountain time and time again to seek the top – something like 4,000 success stories, hundreds & hundreds…
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Nepal 2014: every dog has it’s day
Kathmandu: as dusty and hectic as expected but even more crowded during the beginning of the biggest Hindu festival of the the year: Diwali, the Festival of Lights, celebrating the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil and hope over despair. What better to experience a brand new land. Five days…
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Dubai 2014: the getting to before the arriving
Airport hotel bars, flashback to 1985 on the radio, bizarre snacks yet kind of delicious. Having hurtled through space on a packed crying baby kind of flight, here I am in Dubai. It won’t be the gold plated, shiny Dubai of some of my fellow travelers. No, my time here feels more like Cleveland before…
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Nepal 2014: Just 3 days…leaving home
Home. Is it a place? Is it people? For me, it’s a term that contracts as much as it expands. My house, filled with my family things, that’s my home. My cow town filled with faces and places, home. I live in the USA – America is my home and even if I wander, this land…
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Nepal 2014: 4 days…
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ~ Terry Pratchett Packing list for Nepal:…
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India 2012: Varanasi
India, the most beautiful, most terrible place I have ever been and I ended those weeks in Varanasi. It’s taken me two years to even stop for a moment and write about being there, of all the spiritual places I have been, the one I felt the most from my feet to the top of…
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Nepal 2014: 8 days…
Lots of build up this time, but I know, I am setting myself up to deliver while overseas – however fleeting my wifi is in Nepal. It’s been a while since I’ve made myself write something every day and I am trying to be disciplined about this space I created, so my dear three readers,…
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Nepal 2014: Down to single digits
“It’s hard to go. It’s scary and lonely…and half the time you’ll be wondering why the hell you’re in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphorical flat tires. But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful……
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Nepal 2014: just ten more days….
“A person susceptible to “wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.” ― Pico Iyer
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Nepal 2014: Passports, visas, adaptors… it’s almost time to go
I took a rain soaked, muddy hike today…. which ended right by this flaming tree. Fall has brought out her best colors this year. Apparently, I cannot live and write at the same time. I think about this blog, the place I created to share my adventures and I greedily eat up all those stories…
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2013: the year in review, the year I did more living than blogging
I used to wish for peace but as this year unfolded I’ve realized peace is an elusive and hard to pin down thing and when you do find it, you usually loose it and begin the cycle almost immediately. So frustrating. So annoyingly brief. So little, after so much. Makes me think of that Greek…
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hitting the road, off to see some lions
“You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.” Karen Blixen, Out of Africa Months of planning, getting near time to leave. My duffle is almost packed. Farewell cow town – am waking from my winter nap & headed for the savannas, the deltas, the dust of the land where lions roar.
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Bridges 2013: Old and New
On a lazy Sunday morning recently, I saw a story on Bartonsville, a small Vermont town that lost a covered bridge in Hurricane Irene a few summers ago . The locals refused to accept this loss and one very determined woman, as she watched the bridge wash out in the flood waters, made sure it…
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Spring: Almost there…
Today in my small cow town it was sunny and warm… yes, does mean mud season is coming but I don’t mind that so much. As I wait for my next journey (two months and bring on the zebra, lions, and hippos), this brief rest from snow and cold, well, I did kind of feel…
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India 2012: Taj Mahal
This morning we woke up at dawn to get to the Taj before the masses and I learned, you can never ever beat the masses in this country, because they get up even earlier and maybe never sleep at all. I can understand now why my grandfather said it was the most beautiful place that…
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India 2012: Cows
Of course, I need to write about cows here. So many cows, every where I look, more cows. More like wild dogs, domesticated cows sitting in the middle of traffic. Here’s a photo series of the whole high way being stopped by a herd headed south. I have done so much more today and yesterday,…
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India: Delhi to Jaipur 2012
India is all I expected and more – it is dusty, chaotic and noisy… people, cows and monkeys are everywhere. Life happens on the street – sleeping, eating, fighting, bathing. I can see how so many people come here and hate it but I can also see how people come here and loose their hearts…
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Almost time: India 2012
Today, when I called my credit card companies to tell them I was leaving my normal cowtown land, a great small world moment happened. The operator at X Bank asked me where I was headed, when I said India, he told me how lucky I was, how it would change my life and that especially…
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India 2012: Packing it all in
There’s a time before a new journey when I always get to maximum velocity; a perfect storm hits of everything at the same time. A window into my mind (so sorry, it’s not as bad in there as it initially appears), I have this moment when I think because I am getting on a plane…
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Two week countdown
Seven years ago tonight, I was sitting around a fire in the middle of the Sahara listening to music, under a bowl full of stars, so far away from everything. Getting on that plane seems so close now and have to start really mentally preparing myself for the other side. Today, I realized I don’t…
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“Half the fun of the tr…
“Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.” – Ray Bradbury Cpuntdown to India: 22 days (it’s 9 pm here so maybe that’s really 21 and bit)
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Buenos Aires, March 2012
As I sort through all the wires, converters, lenses today, preparing for my next journey – here are some pictures of Buenos Aires. Alas, my camera was on the fritz… so just a few to share. Countdown to India: 29 days
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2012: India
“In India, I was living in a little hut, about six feet by seven feet. It had a canvas flap instead of a door. I was sitting on my bed meditating, and a cat wandered in and plopped down on my lap. I took the cat and tossed it out the door. Ten seconds later…
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Patagonia March 2012
“I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no…
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LIONSANDCOWS 