Been a while….

PARIS, France—Unfamiliar with Paris Nord railway station I approached a group of men for directions. Gauging from their clothing the men didn’t look either like passengers or police, but they did look like authorities of some kind, who’d likely know where to direct me. One man, a hulking brute, stepped forward to reply: Do I […]

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View To Grenfell Tower, West London [VIDEO] 

LONDON, England – On June 14th a 24-story public housing apartment building caught fire killing at least 80. A faulty freezer-fridge in an apartment sparked the blaze, but police say flammable insulation and exposed gas pipes along the building’s only staircase fueled it. The death toll is expected to rise, so it’s no wonder police […]

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Adventures in Eldercare 

I spent the last several weeks in Tucson helping my mother transition to “independent living” after she’d suffered a mild heart attack and stroke.  The first takeway – in Tucson (and probably in most retirement communities) elder care is not a service, it’s an industry.  Before her discharge from the hospital a case manager told […]

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Rooks, Crooks, Bishops and Pawns 

Nairobi is the Maasai word for “cold water”. With an elevation of 5,889 feet above sea level, it is by altitude the 9th highest city in the world, higher than Denver, Colorado, “the mile high city” in the storied American west. Developers and businesspeople seem to be scrambling to get out of the Nairobi’s congested […]

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Geographical Doppelgänger 

Portugal hardly ever seems in the news. I never gave the little country next to Spain much thought. Recently, however, a writer friend of mine and his wife first told me about Algarve, a largely undiscovered coastal region of Portugal. I haven’t seen refugees from North Africa or the Middle East yet. However, I guess […]

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