Category Archive: people

I Met A Gish Galloper

I’ll spare you the details, which are simple yet labyrinthine, deeply boring, and inevitably leave you with an irritated disgust. By design. That is a mechanism of the Gish Galloper. It’s how you’d… Continue reading

Walking with a King on Romania: Day 5

Grand clashing tides of history shaped our world, but it’s hard to feel the normal humans within them. How do you get a feeling for Napoleon when he first woke up in the… Continue reading

Parisian Sidewalk

It’s possible hell is being a dog walked by someone wearing ear buds. Paris today offers a succession of such tortured pooches I’d love to pet, all proudly Parisian. Or maybe it’s the… Continue reading

Saved Twice

JFK pissed me off. The lack of important signage would have been embarrassing in any international airport, and I was flabbergasted that you have to enter the US in order to change flights.… Continue reading

The Real Story in Tskaltubo

The healing water has been famous for 1400 years and the buildings are relics of the 20th century’s greatest geopolitical tension, but the history I felt most keenly in Tskaltubo happened in 1993.… Continue reading

Five years

She avoided eye contact when she said it, kind of a “oh ho hum just offhand thinking maybe you could…” sort of thing. But when she said it, I wanted to hug the… Continue reading

Dentists, razor blades, and new friends

I didn’t know yet that another layer of institutional bureaucratic chicanery was going to keep me from getting my teeth cleaned yesterday afternoon, so I sat in the waiting room with the other… Continue reading

Krishna and friends

Somewhere along the line I stopped buying things. Friends back home were accustomed to my travel and didn’t need more stuff, but when some of my dearest folks found challenges early in 2017,… Continue reading

My criminal friends (India)

My laughter started it. Affable vendors on Dharamsala’s winding streets hawk metal trinkets and colorful scarves and (if the press of Indian reality hasn’t driven you out of your mind) it’s a ton… Continue reading

Working man’s Buddha

The street was the kind of dark you can’t find in America. But this was Ninh Binh, Vietnam, and the only thing to compete with the single tangerine street lamp were the blue… Continue reading