Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
AUGUST 18, 2019 – Friday we picked up travelers from overseas flights—extended family and friends from France and Portugal. Our dual-national daughter-in-law Mylène had arrived Thursday from New York; our son Byron and his birth mother, Sang Hee, fly in next Tuesday. After clearing customs and baggage claim with extraordinary ease (our guests remarked how friendly …
AUGUST 13, 2019 – “Doc” Andberg, our town vet and family friend, ran his first marathon a few years after B.C.E. 490 when Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens. I thought Doc was too old to be doing such a thing. He was older than my dad, for Pete’s sake. However, one day on the golf …
JULY 13, 2019 – As an early post disclosed, in October 1981 I took a ride on the railroad—the Trans-Siberian—both ways. During the journeys, I drank lots of tea dispensed from the samovar at the end of the carriage. The attendant poured the tea into a tea glass in a commemorative (70 years of Communism), …
JULY 8, 2019 – From August 28 to September 13, 1981 my travels led to Poland. For a year that country had been in the news—Solidarność, the illegal workers union, had started a revolution against the Communist regime, and the world watched nervously to see how the Soviet Union would react. Would it invade and …
JULY 5, 2019 – Intrigued by Portugal during last year’s sojourn, my wife and I decided to explore more of the country after our son’s wedding there two weeks ago. Last year, our son and his now bride did all the planning, driving and navigation; managed every detail. This year we relied solely on our …
JULY 3, 2019 – In an instant the work of many hands turned into a magical scene. Script, setting, players—all fell into perfect place. An invisible hand directed the action into images indelibly written into our memories. We would share a bond among themselves as with no other people. Framing our memories were a late …
JULY 2, 2019 – Yesterday my wife and I returned from a 12-day sojourn in Portugal. It was an expanded version of our visit there a year ago. Last year the main objective was to meet our younger son’s future in-laws, António and Marie-Helena. This year the central purpose was the ceremony that would make …
JUNE 18, 2019 – Today my wife and I are bound for “Cortiços” (pronounced, “cor-TEE-sōsh”), a magical place unknown to us until a year ago. It is a village whose population matches its years—400. It lies amidst the olive orchards of Trás-os-Montes (“behind the mountains”) in the extreme northeast part of Portugal. What takes us …
JUNE 4, 2019 – Yesterday I yelled at four people—two by phone, two in person. I don’t mean “yell” yelled, but I was pretty steamed. In each case of “yelling,” two thoughts occurred to me: 1. I’m becoming a curmudgeon; and 2. The targeted person was probably less than half my age. (That would mean born …
MAY 21, 2019 – Prejudice—I’m as guilty of it as is the next person. One of my best examples occurred aboard an overnight train from Lyon to Paris. The train had originated in Rome and pulled into Lyon well past midnight. My reservation was for a second-class compartment already occupied by three other men about …
APRIL 27, 2019 – Last night I pulled from the shelf a small volume of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, translated into English. Inside the front cover I’d written, “Purchased in Moscow – October 3, 1981.” That was the day before the start of my seven-day rail journey across Russia—and seven days back—with layovers in …