Belgium has the oldest compulsory voting system in the world, and goes to great lengths to enforce it. Matthias received a ballot and voting instructions all the way in the States for the election that was held here on Sunday (we voted last week, and it was kind of fun…
Beinvenue à la maison doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Another one of those untranslatable things. There’s a massive canvas of the Brooklyn Bridge in our Brussels apartment. There are Burton and all manner of other snowboard/skateboard/surfing whatnot stickers and decorations and knickknacks around the apartment. We pity…
Back-dating this to Saturday, October 21st, 2017, even though it’s June 6th, 2020 by the time I’m posting it So, full disclosure, I’m writing this post from 35K feet, more than two full years after it happened. I’m on my way to Asia for the first real time (that one…
Back-dating this to Saturday, October 21st, 2017, at the time of the train ride mentioned, even though it’s June 6th 2020, by the time I’m posting it Our journeys to and within Marrakesh are exceptionally sound. I should here take a brief moment to make a public service announcement in…
Back-dating this to its draft date, Friday, October 18th, 2017, even though it’s June 6th, 2020 by the time I’m posting it In 1492Some Jews painted Chefchaoen blue Spain for a while existed in relative religious harmony between Catholics, Moors, and Sephardic Jews. In 1492, however, the old xenophobic pendulum…
Meow. Et je te manque aussi. Je sens : je suis très drôle.
Today we walked around the Medina in Fez, the old walled city. If you’ve never been in an old city, you need to imagine a place with not a square inch of public dirt or grass. The cobbled lanes have narrow low gutters on either side, and shops and doorways…
I hadn’t prepared myself for Morocco smelling like Africa, too—that sweet, earthy, dusty smell of sand, vegetation, and fires. As soon as I step off the plane, I take whole lungfuls of that sweet air, smiling as I saunter down the stairs of the gangway onto the tarmac. This land….
I Love You, Always Will ‘I love you,’ I told Julian as he scooped up his bag and swung it over his shoulder, heading out the door. ‘I love you,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘Always will.’ I walked him to the door, kissed him goodbye, and bade him safe travels on…
This past Wednesday, I left the house just after 7AM in order to be able to report for jury duty promptly at 8:30AM at Quincy District Courthouse. I left the courthouse that day around 4:30PM, sharing handshakes, well wishes, and gratitude with the other six members of the jury of which…
Two months (and one day) after we returned home, I wanted to write down some final reflections of our trip. I’m delayed, yes. But I’m also doing this for myself, so being on time matters less. This will be question-and-answer style—the questions that I asked Daddy as we mused over…
Well, I wasn’t going to post tonight, which is why I didn’t have my camera, which is why you’ll forgive me these pictures. ‘What’s that?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I answered Daddy, staring into the night sky, forgetting whatever our topic of conversation was. ‘It looks likes flames.’ ‘Yeah, it does,…
Tags: cities > Dublin
Wicklow is called the Garden of Ireland. By colonists, who usurped the land from its Irish inhabitants and refused to give it back for centuries, or ever. (The Irish make light of their subjugated past now, but even this good-naturedness helps me to sympathise with fomenting dissent. There’s this quintessentially…
Tags: scenery > villages Read More
On our way from Kinsale to Wicklow today, we stopped at the Rock of Cashel. The Rock is a mass of stone piled systematically atop a hill in order to form a habitation. It was a castle where kings lived until the thirteenth century or so, when it was repurposed…
Tags: scenery
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