Category: Uncategorized

Inspiration for a story on siestas. “The trouble with my line of work,” a clergyman once told me, “is that every little thing that happens during your day makes you think, ‘Is this material for a sermon?’” Being a travel blogger has much the same effect. At home or abroad, even the smallest stuff –…

Howler monkeys: unimpressed with my freshly ironed dresses. Before Rich and I started our global wanderings, I had no idea how to pack. I remember on our honeymoon ( Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 1987) taking contact lenses, must-iron cotton dresses, and a tiny steam iron that for some reason required salt. I used…

“Cleveland isn’t all smokestacks and slag heaps,” said the guidebook, in a desperate attempt to find something positive to report. This was 28 years ago, on the eve of our marriage, when a recruiting firm was trying to convince Rich to leave San Francisco for a job in Cleveland, a gritty industrial city defined by…

Been on an airplane lately? The one I flew on last week ­– a ten-hour jaunt from London to San Francisco – sounded like the hospital in one of those sci-fi movies about an outbreak of plague. Everyone seemed to be sneezing, coughing, and blowing their nose. But was I worried about catching anything? Not…

Breakfast in our room at the Oxford Airbnb “It’s all about expectations,” our Oxford Airbnb host said on Monday, as he led the way up several flights of stairs. I caught glimpses of rooms crammed floor to ceiling with books and toys, including a vintage Howdy Doody puppet – a relic, our host explained, of…

To me, the idea of running out of books is only slightly less frightening than running out of food or air. My greatest packing challenge used to be figuring out how many books I could jam into my luggage for long trips. If I used up my supply, I’d find myself scrounging desperately in hotel…

My grandmother, the silent film star Ramona Langley When my grandmother came to stay for the holidays, she would sweep up the driveway in a champagne-colored car with huge tail fins. Wearing rhinestone-studded sunglasses and an ancient fur coat, she’d spring from the car and shout, “Darlings! I’m here!” And then proceed to turn the…

So yesterday I was making my rounds of the shops in downtown Seville, collecting last-minute essentials such as gift tags and stocking stuffers. I was buzzing along towards store number five, thinking that I was doing pretty well, when I glanced down and realized that I had the last store’s plastic shopping basket slung over…

A Christmas card photo from our Ohio years One December, while having lunch in Seville with a British friend, I mentioned that I’d just finished composing my annual holiday letter, and he looked at me in astonishment bordering on horror. “You actually do one of those?” he said. “Well, yeah. It’s a great way to…

Bambi’s mother, killed by hunters, in the Disney film During my long-ago vegetarian phase, I visited friends in Alabama and happened to be seated next to an avid hunter at a dinner party. He talked in a sweet, lazy drawl about his father showing him how to stalk, kill, and skin animals in the woods,…