The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: Canada

  • Picasso’s Women

    I absolutely love Vancouver, Canada! I had the pleasure of visiting a dear friend there recently, and one of the things we did was go to the Vancouver Art Gallery to check out an exhibition called “Picasso: The Artist and His Muses”. This shined a whole new light on Picasso for me, because the show…

  • Exploring Vancouver: Fireworks without the Patriotism

    I absolutely love fireworks. I think of it as art, writ large. Light is the paint and the sky is the canvas. It’s the purest form of joyously explosive creativity. That’s why the 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays here in the US. So when I heard of the annual Celebration of…

  • The Doukhobors

    It’s amazing what you can learn by randomly surfing through Youtube. Today I was once again presented with the uncomfortable truth that there is a heck of a lot that I don’t know. It’s also an exciting truth, because I love it when my horizons are broadened, and there’s a world of potential out there.…

  • Waking Up in Vancouver

    It’s usually kind of weird waking up in a strange place, but oddly, I felt right at home in my friend’s apartment in Vancouver. He made me feel quite welcome, even making sure to hang a curtain in my alcove to give me privacy, and getting new towels for the bathroom. It was a nice…

  • Vancouver Not Exactly According to Plan

    I just got back from my first ever visit to Vancouver. What a fantastic time I had! I was meeting up with a friend (more on him in another blog entry) and I figured he’d be more comfortable with a specific game plan, so I read my guidebook from cover to cover, and set out…

  • Have We Forgotten the Ukraine?

    I get it. We have neither the money, the time, the moral currency, nor the manpower to intervene in every international atrocity. God knows we’ve left Tibet dangling since 1951, Burma since 1962 and I could talk for hours about various coups in Africa and the Middle East. But what stuns me is how quickly…

  • Travel Sounds

    Have you ever noticed that a sound or a smell can instantly transport you back to an experience in your past? A certain song always reminds you of your first kiss. The smell of baking bread takes you back to your mother’s kitchen when you were a child. I love it when this happens. Unfortunately,…

  • Our Expanding Family Tree: Cousins Coming out of the Woodwork

    One of the largest and oldest organisms on earth is Pando, a Quaking Aspen clone in Utah that covers over 106 acres. Looking at it, you’d assume that it was just a bunch of individual trees, but it’s actually one organism, and it’s thousands of years old. We didn’t know that until recently. I think…

  • Two Short Steps Away from my Life’s Dream

    Wow! The other day I wrote a blog entry asking for a reader from Greenland, as that was one country I had yet to hear from. And within 14 hours, I got one! That left me marveling at the power of the internet and this blog. I mean, that country doesn’t even have a total…

  • My Four Compass Points

    I’m recovering from a cold and completely devoid of inspiration today, so I’ll leave you with the 4 extremes of my travels. The furthest west that I’ve been is Santa Monica, California. The furthest east that I’ve been is Göreme, Turkey. The furthest south that I’ve been is Mitla, Mexico. The furthest north that I’ve…