It’s over. I have two days left in the United States of America, three if you count the 12 hours I will spend in a train on Wednesday returning from San Francisco to LA, four if you count the day I spend in US air space getting from LA to JFK in NYC, airport to [read more ...]
Squirrels, apparently, are the most dangerous animals in Grand Canyon National Park. They are also the mostly likely to approach humans, particularly those of us who produce snacks from our packs. If you consider plague and rabies cute, pat a squirrel. I don’t and I didn’t. Instead, whether three feet or three miles into the [read more ...]
I have lapped the USA. Returned to my point of departure on the train. Run the borders: Mexico to the south, Canada to the north, the oceans east and west. I have ridden the night plains and the dawn mountains, the swamplands, the forests and the foodbowl. The white moon above has rolled along with [read more ...]
This morning I walked to the Whole Foods Market in my neighbourhood (OMG there’s a WFM in my neighbourhood!). That is neighbourhood relatively speaking. It’s about six miles away. And I decided to walk for two reasons: 1. I don’t have any other choice, and 2. if I walk I have to carry everything back [read more ...]
I’m walking home from the Lake Bar in Oak Park, enjoying the evening tide – kids running in the park, frazzled parents getting home for supper. I’m surprised to find myself in a leafy green neighbourhood among big houses. Surprised, because, among the soot and grime of this functional industrial city I’d been wondering where [read more ...]
It’s not often I go out of my way to please a man, but today was Ian’s lucky day! It was lunchtime, I’d come from a TV interview on the outskirts of the city; I was without breakfast and my phone company had temporarily abandoned me, I was hungry and unimpressed with Chicago. I was [read more ...]
Yes, rub your eyes as you please, I know I did – here is my lift ‘home’ in Chicago – a black, very shiny Corvette. Don’t you love the way that front wheel winked at my camera? That’s my suitcase peeping out from the back. Along with Jim, who with his wife Jane are my [read more ...]
There is a conversation waiting to be had in the United States of America. It is a difficult conversation, a painful conversation, one that once ignited takes the lid off a pressure cooker of discontent that will cause tears to flow from human hearts like steam from a valve. The price of this conversation is [read more ...]
The other day I ate dinner on the west balcony of Grand Central Station (with Sydney Wolfe Cohen, more on Sydney another day) – and there beheld below me the subway rush that marks New York City’s workday’s end. If you blur your eyes, somewhat like the blurry photo taken by the waiter, the people [read more ...]
Okay, so that’s not really me in Times Square. THIS is me in Times Square, singin’ in the rain.