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 …
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 …
After an uneventful flight – except for the peculiar, but now familiar, experience of being folded like strange origami figurines in order to fit in coach seats for nine hours – we arrived in London right on time. It always takes a week or so to get used to new signage (as in, what a …
We live both in the reality that our world does not have clear lines in the sands of space or time, and in the fiction that it does. A season starts on a particular day and we welcome it ritually as if we have crossed that threshold completely and cleanly. But, of course, we haven’t. …
One of the most beloved books of my middle-school years was Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, written by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimborough about the hilarious (at least in retrospect) trip they made to Europe following their graduation from Bryn Mawr in 1920. Which, if you have never read it, is still quite …
We are well into the last month of Samhain. Although the morning darkness will continue for another month or more, the daylight is almost perceptibly longer and Imbolc (the spring quarter) will be upon us very soon. Whether Samhain has brought rest and renewal and refreshment; or a growing sense of peace with the soft, silken darkness; or …
Many years ago, when my husband and I were preparing to take our first long trip together (which happened to be our honeymoon), I (re)discovered that not everyone prepares for travel the same way. At the time, he operated on the theory that there was no need to start packing until a half-hour before we …
My apologies for the broken link in my last blog mailing. There was an error in copying the URL. Six days ago, I set out from Denver by car to visit my daughter in St Paul. Our schedules have been such that we have not seen one another in person for several months and …