Caitlyn Jenner just graced the cover of Vanity Fair – and it was, indeed, a grace-filled gesture, sharing her transition from a male-bodied Olympic athlete to the woman she knew herself to be. Caitlyn’s decision to reveal her new name and her new person was a very public risk…just as the transition itself was a …
As we are traveling on this sabbatical, we are using a Tom-Tom (GPS, SatNav) to guide us from place to place. It is working just fine and we are – with very few exceptions – getting exactly where we want to go, with a cheerful voice telling us, “In 200 meters, go right around the …
Almost 40 years ago I crossed Salisbury Plain for the first time and saw Stonehenge right there in the middle of a kind of unkempt meadow — which was how it looked at that time. It was utterly breathtaking even then, partially hidden by the exhaust fumes and solid bulk of tour buses in a …
Today we are hovering from Dublin to Holyhead on the next part of our journey. I think of it as ‘sailing’; the ferry company thinks of it as ‘flying’ (presumably since we are not in the water, but over the water.) Since Ireland is our point of departure, I also get to participate in my …
On 30 January 1816, the military transport ship HMS Seahorse went aground off Brownstown Head in Tramore and sank. Of the 402 people on board, 376 drowned. The ship was carrying men returning from the Napoleonic Wars. It was also carrying wives and children who had ‘followed the drum’ during the military campaigns that eventually …
For those of you whose vocation does not include long periods away from a specific location you call home, you may not have had the opportunity to experience the rather remarkable ability you have to create ‘home’ in unfamiliar surroundings. In fact, to create it so effectively that after a few days in a formerly …
Beltane, the summer quarter, is about fire and sunlight and warmth, about sweat and bare arms and hats that shade our eyes from the intense light. Except when it isn’t. Because whatever we may want, not every day of every Beltane is bright. Not every sky is blue. Not every day is warm enough to …
What are the material givens and ‘essentials’ of your life, the devices and possessions you take for granted? What is so common to your daily round that you would be startled to live a week, a month, six months, without it? What, for you, comprises ‘normal’? For what do you reach without thinking…and how does …
Beltane can come as a somewhat discomforting quarter in our staid, puritanical 2ist century northern hemisphere cultures. It is the season of fertility in every area of life; all the rituals and traditions associated with it are intended to honor the fertility of the earth and to insure the fertility of crops and herds through …
My priceless son-in-law was due to travel to Nepal sometime around May 12 as part of a geological research team, exploring rock formation and tectonic plate shift in that area of the world. By sheer happenstance he is still safe in the United States while the world watches in horror what happens when one of …