I was staring down into the well of my martini, twirling the toothpick that speared the olive. I’d shut out the sounds around me; the ballgame on the TV, the usual bar chatter and the clatter of utensils on plates. Focused on the wakes in the crystal aromatic liquid, I asked myself the questions. “What …
The ninth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Note: This post rated R. It’s six o’clock in the morning and the day didn’t begin as planned – I overslept. Next stop is Pendleton in Northern Oregon. It’s a six and a half hour drive, and I’d hoped to get …
Banner Photo: Dorris, California The eighth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Eugene Charles Valla spent four years of his young life hanging onto the edge of his boyhood dream. Valla was 21 years old in 1947, when he was signed to a minor league contract with the New …
Banner photo: Detail of a mural in Oakland, painted in the aftermath of the slaying of George Floyd Tim Scott said it. Nikki Haley said it. Both are running for president and both are out on the campaign trail road testing the lie that’s become a GOP shibboleth. That these two are people of color …
Banner photo: Shipshewana, Indiana Dan, author of the site, Departing in Five Minutes, leads this week’s Lens Artists Challenge, and he’s selected the topic, Unbound: Escaping Your Confines And Seeing The World. Once again, I’m combining the Lens Artist Challenge with my Monthly Monochrome series. Dan writes, “From a day trip to a road trip …
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.” ― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul It’s a constant migration. Every hour of every day of every year. A single year’s migration consists of more than 200 million travelers on …
My good friend Marc David is a journalist, author, avid runner (he has an outlandish, blows my mind, years long streak of consecutive running days without a day off), cross-country coach, teacher’s aid and traveler. When he learned that The New York Times killed its venerable sports section and shipped the body parts to its …
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s the most quoted sentence from the Declaration of Independence, the document that America celebrates every July fourth. When he …
If I were asked to describe the face of Spain in two words I would offer, “joyful,” and “lighthearted.” During three weeks of traveling throughout the country, whether it was in the metropolis of Barcelona or stopping for an hour in little Plasencia, I rarely saw anger or gloom or pessimism. Okay, sure, there was …
“Renowned Bay Area wildlife photographer robbed of camera at gunpoint outside of Oakland park.” That was the headline of a story in the June 5th edition of The San Francisco Chronicle. I was initially made aware of this story while watching the local television news (link here). Stories of photographers getting relieved of their prized, …
The Life in My Years 