Lessons from a time of Covid
Six years ago, the COVID-19 virus choked the world and brought it to a standstill. Governments and the world’s health care systems were unprepared to handle a pandemic of such magnitude. Millions of lives were lost, millions more fell ill, business shut down, people lost their livelihoods. I was spared in 2020, but the virus…
Living in a dream
There are places in our part of Monterey County in California that you can visit for free, which somehow offset the high cost of living in this popular tourist destination. The impetus for this post (and please pardon the pause in postings) is the recent three-week visit of family members from the Philippines, one of…
A New Year’s Resolution
(This piece appeared in the Jan. 15 edition of the Monterey County Weekly) This year, I added to my list of New Year’s goals and resolutions: to read the stack of free books that I received as a Christmas gift from Old Capitol Books in Monterey. Old Capitol had announced it would be open on…
Candy Cane Lane
Christmas is for children. Well, children of all ages. And nowhere did we feel it more than at Candy Cane Lane in Pacific Grove, California, where it’s become a tradition for homeowners to put up a display for Monterey County residents and tourists. Along with the dazzling lights that adorned trees, fences, roofs and eaves,…
Navigating Airline Baggage Issues: A personal story
(This is a long overdue follow up to the previous post. My bad. Personal and professional commitments got in the way. ) I am picking up on that air travel thread of baggage problems. At the outset, I have to say that most people go through their flights without a hitch, but once in a while…
Baggage
Many travelers put a lot of thought into packing, to the point they often overthink and overpack. I am one of them, and I have many times in the past overestimated things, thrown good sense to the wind, and departed with heavy luggage. As a result, I have found myself exhausted in strange and not-so-strange…
Anywhere, everywhere
It was freezing that December in Belgium and the only place to offer warmth and a seat without me having to buy anything was the Catholic church, and so I quickly dashed into it, hoping to also light a candle and say a prayer. The church was a cavernous Gothic structure designed to make you…
“A fruit whose seeds are on the outside”
I was recently reminded of a fictional conversation that took place at a poker game in a popular TV series some 25 years ago: CJ Cregg: (dealing cards to other WH staffers ) King… possible flush… ace no help…. six… possible straight…. Dave of love for the dealer… ace bets…. Mandy: Check! Sam: Check! CJ: Check!Leo: Check!Josh: Check!Toby:…
Rain
The sound of steady rain woke me one recent midnight, and I imagined monsoon clouds irrigating the land as they always do this time of the year in the home country. It’s the kind of soothing sound that makes a person sink deeper into bed, an announcement that the season has simply arrived and is…
“Big Sur”
For the past two weeks, I’ve been taking my daily walks around the neighborhood in the company of Ben Tucker, more precisely, his mesmerizing voice reading the 1962 novel Big Sur by Jack Kerouac.* Big Sur is a first-person stream-of-consciousness account of a summer the alcoholic writer Jack Duluoz spends in the San Franciso-Monterey-Big Sur…
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On the road 