read more

read more

Wednesday 1 April at seaWe were off the coast of Cuba so I changed my Facebook profile to reflect that I was in Havana. April Fools Day joke.We were back to being served nonvegetarian regular meals which means variety and ve

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the souland sings the tunes without the wordsand never stops at all. Emily DickinsonFor billions of people around the Globe in some form of lockdown or whatever the days are prolon

DANIEL MORGANDaniel battled his way kicking and biting into the cosmos on July 6 1736. His folks were James Morgan 17021782 and Eleanor Lloyd 17061748 perhaps living at the time of his birth in North Hampton NJ. All four of his grandpa

Wednesday 26th June 2019My second half of the day was spent onboard the Nozomi N700 Shinkansen services to the city of Himeji some 455km away on the island of Honshu. It was amazing that the journey only took slightly less than two hours to co

AMUSING FAMILY CONNECTIONSA girl named Laura Ingalls was born in 1867 and grew up on the prairie. One of the first places she lived was on a hard scrabble little farm a few miles southwest of Independence Kansas. Her dad Charles Ingalls was a

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings hope too can be given to one only by other human beings. Elie WieselThere is no doubt social media has had a strangely perverse impact on this whole Covid19 pandem

THE LION OF MISSOURIAs part of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 the State of Missouri was admitted to the union as a slave holding state. Slavery was part of their statehood charter. When the Civil War fetched loose in 1861 Missouri did not have

BAPTISM OF FIREOur sixth cousin four generations removed was a fellow named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain from up in Maine. At the beginning of the Civil War Joshua was teaching the German language at Bowdoin College conducting Sunday school le

WE HAVE RUN AGROUND CAPTAIN RANEYThe Arkansas and Colorado Rivers originate only a few miles apart in the Rocky Mountains near Leadville Colorado. They are however on opposite sides of the Continental Divide. Snowmelt in the Arkansas River d

Whoever originated the clich that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings. Eric Hoffer21st April 2020 and the dashboard on the World Health Organis

THE GREAT SPACE ALIEN MICROBE CONSPIRACYIt remains a mystery how space alien microbes arrived on the planet. It seems likely that they may have hitched a ride on cosmic radio waves. Rotation of the planet as it revolves on its axis and orbits ar

JOHNNY'S JOURNEYS CALIFORNIA and NEVADA 1980 November 26 1980 Wednesday My dad has temporarily transferred to Oakland California. The Bell South Telephone Co. inMontgomery AL will pay for him to fly back home every three weeks. Or

Im very much a believer that its action that matters much more so than you know the flurry of political promises and statements and slogans that are used during political discourse. Christine LagardeThe WHO dashboard as

SPORTS HEROESIf I had to make a list of family sports heroes it would be a short list. Jim Forsberg would be on it for football. Jim is also a war hero. Jims brother Richard and Richards son Andy would be at the top of it for over 50 yea

FORT GIBSONThe 1830s would have been amusing times to have gone forth in America. In 1821 the Mexicans finally kicked the Spaniards out of their country and began to move forward with plans to settle Texas. In 1824 America responded to Mexican e

They say a person needs three things to be truly happy in this world someone to love something to do and something to hope for. Tom BodettThe latest statistics from the WHO dashboard published at 0200 am on 1st Ma

Sunday 30th June 2019Breakfast was a happy affair at Royal Host one of the nicer restaurants in the city that opens early in the day and closes late into the night. I liked how well my scrambled egg turned out to be creamy soft and f

SOMETHING FOUNDOne of the best western movies ever made was called ltem stylemsobidifontstyle normalgtThe Searchers starring John Wayne. It was about a little girl named Cynthia Ann Parker who was abducted by the Comanche

KNOXVILLEThe Department of Energy got underway as a branch of the Tennessee Valley Authority beginning in about 1940. The Manhattan Project in which we developed the atomic bomb originated at the Oak Ridge Laboratory outside of Knoxville. Scie

Negativity is like burning plastic while destroying itself it annoys everyone with its stench. Charbal TadrosNo point kicking off with WHO statistics on Covid19 as it is very easy for anyone to access the data on their websit

COMMUNITY PRIDEWinnemuccca is a bustling five brothel railroad town in north central Nevada. When you next visit there and perhaps might grow weary of drinking and carousing make your way the northwest corner of Bridge Street and 4th

OLD HICKORYAndy By God Jackson was our fine countrys seventh President. He was a war hero too by virtue of defeating the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend and stealing their land and then by defeating the pesky Redcoats at the Battle of New Orleans.

And how could we EVER forget it 87hours four nights 5 time zones and 5185km on a 55 year old train that smelt of man sweat and cigarettes lolWe started our journey by getting the metro to the train station not an easy feat when you have the eq

ltstrong stylemsobidifontweight normalgtSYLVESTER MOWRY Sylvester was born in October of 1830 and graduated from West Point in 1852 near the top of the class. As a sparkling new second lieutenant he went west and took part in the su

A touching video of Jane Goodall releasing a chimp into the wild makes my son sob. His tears may reveal frustration over our coronavirus-altered lives.

Power-hitting outfield prospect Zak Reks has packed a lot into his 26 years, and now he is focused on contributing to the Dodgers.

Heathrow, previously the busiest airport in Europe, did not even make the top three on 14 April

Webster's Emmitt Holt spent 64 days in the hospital, lost 50 pounds, had eight feet of intestines removed and returned to play college basketball.

Cheeky behavior can be a cover for inadequacy.

By the time Martin Smith reached Syria this past summer, the war was already in its fifth year, but life in regime-controlled areas was still largely a mystery.

Omar D. Fernandes
Jul 1, 2010; 23:194-198
Care Innovations

I am not poor. I am not weighed down. I am not ugly, fat, inadequate. Not good enough, not pure enough, not strong enough. I am rich. I am free. I am free. ♦Photo – Persian Blog, Omid♦ -short, evocative poetry-

This MPI Europe webinar examines innovative ways to better design and implement predeparture orientation programs for resetttling refugees. The discussion features observations from a refugee who went through an orientation program before being resettled in the Netherlands, and a resettlement agency official in Norway.

This event marked the launch of New York Times reporter Jason DeParle's book tracing the arc of migration as a phenomenon, witnessed through three decades observing a particular Filipino family moving from Manila to Texas. The conversation explored both the human and policy aspects of migration and development.

My first exposure to Robert Macfarlane happened a year ago when I picked up a battered copy of The Wild Places in order to shelve it. Instead, I checked it out from my branch and stayed up past midnight to read it. Thanks to Macfarlane, I was exposed to Roger Deakin's Wild Wood and Notes from Walnut Tree Farm. I found photos of Walnut Tree Farm, the late Deakin's house, much visited by Macfarlane, while searching for more information about both of them online.

I am from probably the last generation of American children to be raised on English children's books. I know that there is a generation of Quidditch-playing adults that were weaned on the Harry Potter books of British-born J. K. Rowling. While the Harry Potter books are gripping, they lack an essential British characteristic shared by many successful authors of British children's books:

• Rudyard Kipling - the two Puck of Pook's Hill books
• Rosemary Sucliff - all of her books
• Elizabeth Goudge - Rowling helped get Linnets & Valerians and The Little White Horse republished
• L. M. Boston - the Greene Knowe series
• William Mayne
• Robert Westall
• Diana Wynne Jones - the British landscape of an alternative Britain
• J. R. R. Tolkein -The Hobbit
• Kenneth Graham - The Wind in the Willows
• T. H. White - The Once and Future King
• Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising series

Macfarlane likes to walk. In The Wild Places, he visits mountains, woods, water. In The Old Ways, he follows the ancient paths that cross the British isles, that go through wood, by the sea shore, and over the downs. His England (and Scotland) however, is multilayered; he is aware not only of the physical landscape surrounding him but of the history of the land through which he walks. A walk take him from point A to point B in physical space, as well as through centuries of time. In his author's note, Macafarlane observes:

"It is an exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt ancient paths, of the tales that tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and trespass, of songlines and their singers and of the strange continents that exist within countries" (p.xi).

While Americans are criticized for being such a highly mobile society, humans have always traveled. Early hunter-gatherers did not stay in one place, but roamed within a fairly wide territory. The early sea-farers such as the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans (marine archaeology has shown that they sailed more than we have associated with them) and the Vikings all traveled the roads of the sea. The medieval Crusades were holy wars, but they were also the mass movement of men, women, and children walking across Europe, then by boat from southern Italian ports to the Holy Land. Within Europe itself, bands of pilgrims walked from their homes along the tracks to Canterbury or St. James de Campostela. Merchants in ancient and medieval times traveled in caravans along the land and sea routes of the Silk Roads.

The difference between the modern traveler of today and that of the past is that travelers today are less exposed to the world around them. When you are encased in a plane or enclosed in a fast car, you lose awareness of the physical world outside of you. The electronic devices that we use to distract ourselves during our journeys - our DVD players, Ipods, tablets and ebook readers, all cut us off from the landscape and  fellow travelers around us. Macfarlane deliberately chooses to travel on foot (and by small boat) to connect with the physical world around him during his modern secular pilgrimage.

Marking the launch of New York Times reporter Jason DeParle's book tracing the arc of migration and its impacts through the life of an extended family of Filipino migrants over a three-decade period, from Manila and through Dubai to the Houston area, this conversation with MPI's Andrew Selee and the World Bank's Dilip Ratha explores migration at both a global and very personal level.

Greenland -- Discovery and exploration.

Mayor, Thomas -- Travel -- Australia.

Pac-12 Networks' Ashley Adamson speaks with former Arizona State women's basketball player Michelle Tom, who is now a doctor treating COVID-19 patients Winslow Indian Health Care Center and Little Colorado Medical Center in Eastern Arizona.

Hewish Henry -- Family.

In 1799, Alexander von Humboldt set foot in the jungles of Cumana, in present-day Venezuela. What ensued was a detailed scientific mission to learn more about the natural world.

God uses Janet to reach people through one-on-one encounters at a bookshop in a closed country.