Habitat
My month-long stay in the Comox Valley is almost at an end, so today I took one last walk to the tidal estuary a few minutes from the place I am staying. The water is so shallow that at low tide as...
View ArticleWhale Time
I haven’t posted in quite a while. I’m not sure why not, other than it must be a mix of having simultaneously not much and too much to write about. I suspect this is a common state of mind for people...
View ArticleWhat I Remember
I am feeling melancholic in a way I didn’t expect, as I come to the last few days in Iceland before the ship turns south for the British Isles. I’ve been in Iceland a month now, for all or part of...
View ArticleMaybe It’s Not About Iceland at All
Today is my last day of a month in Iceland. What was supposed to be a shorter assignment was doubled when the speaker set to replace me canceled suddenly. The lovely thing about the way I am living...
View ArticleTouching
My mother used to say I was “so demonstrative,” because I loved to hold hands with my boyfriend, or put my arm around a friend. It was meant as a criticism, because what she really meant was that I was...
View ArticleSpared
Watching footage of the destruction of Lahaina, I have been thinking about the idea of being spared. We hear about how some people’s houses were spared, how the lives of people who escaped were spared....
View ArticleChoosing Life
Moses tells his people in Deuteronomy 30:19, “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live!” Jesus, ever the good rabbi, speaks...
View ArticleForgiving Better, Part 1
The High Holy Days are an immensely helpful and mercilessly focused guide for the process of self-inventory, seeking forgiveness, and atonement, and they can serve as a template for non-Jews as well....
View ArticleForgiving Better, Part 2
Note: I posted the first part of my Rosh HaShanah talk yesterday. If you didn’t see that, you might want to scroll down to the bottom of this post and open the link to that one first A very smart...
View ArticleNine Months
Ivan died nine months ago. Today is his birthday, so the time after Ivan has now been the same length as the time before he was born. In between were forty-three years. This photo was taken forty-one...
View ArticleThe First Woman to Drive Around the World Was a Teenager in a Model T
I haven’t published a book in the last decade. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, just that developing cruise lectures and dealing with other life challenges and opportunities took up my time....
View ArticleAll Love All the Time
One year ago today my son Ivan was in the last hours of his life. Although his body was not found immediately, I know in my bones he chose the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Five hours away as...
View ArticleYou Are a Soul
‘You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” I read this somewhere and it has been rattling around in my head ever since. Like any really good philosophical observation, it sends the mind...
View ArticleDancing with the Daffodils
It feels odd to be writing about daffodils, an early sign of spring in Victoria, while I am sweltering in Panama City waiting for my cruise assignment to start tomorrow. Here the plants change with...
View ArticleThe Judgment of the Birds
A few days ago, my ship stopped in Cabo San Lucas. I am not a fan of the noisy, characterless places that most big tourist ports in Mexico have become, but I wanted to get off the ship for a while, so...
View ArticleOnce Upon a Time
When I was flying to England three weeks ago to begin a research trip before embarking on a cruise assignment, I found myself thinking about the most painful flight I ever took. I was in Florence...
View ArticleThe Grateful Sleep Deprived
Sometimes I get so busy that I forget I have a blog, and I’m surprised to see how long it has been since I posted. When the leaves are falling and the last posts are about springtime, that is quite a...
View ArticleBecoming
Any writer is a word nerd, and I plead guilty. Finding the perfect word or making up a new one lifts my spirits in a way unlike anything else. Another category of word fun is dictionary digging—playing...
View Article’I Hope for Nothing. I Fear Nothing. I Am Free.”
These are the words on the tombstone of Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek and many other works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy. When I was in college, I inhaled every word he wrote and...
View ArticleReturning Home
I love living in Victoria, and when I am away I always look forward to coming back home. That’s why I have always been surprised by how returns bring with them a touch of depression. I have attributed...
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