Some of us took advantage of the one-two punch of Trump + Pandemic. With alternate mixtures of anger, depression and irresolvable feelings of capture we were motivated to learn a little bit about past U.S. pandemics and presidents.
My fascination with early man never reached the point of exchanging empathy with an Australopithecine, but boy do I feel brotherly closeness to the Republican reconstructionists and Boston priests and doctors conscripted for forced vaccinations! With a longer view of America than one lifetime there’s no democracy among angels. It’s been a sludge fest the whole way.
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Imagine at long last! You wiggle happily into your preferred economy seat that you agonized over buying. Not bad. As the stream of pushing and shoving passengers push down the aisle to the back of the plane you smile quietly nodding your head to yourself. Preferred economy was undoubtedly the first right decision. Sighing you just hope that all the other decisions will prove just as good!
I am so fortunate to have so many memories that when I sit down for tea with my bride of fifty years each morning squeezing out an arthritic knee or two, I wonder how the hell I’ve been to all those places! But you know no matter how depressed or infirmed or isolated I might feel under this era of darkness, when you stop making new memories the old ones start to wither away. So I won’t be posting several blogs in the next week or so, because I’ve got to make some new memories quick!
Britain’s House of Lords isn’t normally a cauldron for news. Scheduled tea breaks would likely prevail over debate of the imminent apocalypse of an asteroid racing towards Westminster. But Wednesday Lord Peter Hain managed to step onto the world stage to – with not quite these words – warn America of what has just happened in South Africa.
Western fixation with terrorism at the expense of poverty and basic human rights is finally coming home to roost in Africa.
As this (hopefully last) phase of the pandemic ends the tourism that’s left standing in the fields of Africa is fit for a king. In fact only kings. A safari post-pandemic will cost you twice what it was pre-pandemic.
If you’re a resident in one of the twenty Republican States that are currently prohibiting vaccine documentation you probably already know that it will be much more difficult for you to travel outside the country than before the pandemic.
Shortly after crossing the parched deserts of what is now southern Namibia the explorer Charles John 
Kruger National Park in South Africa remains the best managed large wilderness on earth. (Yellowstone is close but suffers from too little regulation because consumer demand is so high and ranchers so powerful.) But “best managed” does not mean most “spectacular” or “awe-inspiring” and definitely not “wildest.” Those attributes belong absolutely to the Serengeti.
I was 15 years old, wasting the last bits of summer wandering with my dog alone in the forests behind my house and the prairies behind the forests returning late for cold dinners.
Travelers’ frustrations are growing. … What a stupidly simplistic statement: everybody’s frustrations are growing. But I’m talking about travel and I’m about to scold you if you travel.
Minutes after Biden’s speech ended the media of sub-Sahara Africa fired up. No matter they were all ending their day: “Biden tears into Trump,” Nigeria’s Independent online news
I love Biden but boy do I wish Bernie were President. So do progressives throughout Africa and much of the rest of the world, including … Canada.
“We need a third element, a third vision, a third project” to rescue us.
There’s an intersection in the middle of Nairobi city which we used to call the Square of Churches years ago. There’s only one church there, the city’s main Catholic Cathedral, Holy Family Minor Basilica, and it’s a roundabout so I have no idea how the moniker developed.