St Louis, MO April 25, 2018 The beeping sound you heard last week was us backing up the truck in reaction to the “Family and Friends” sale from Duckhorn. Our thanks to Brian and Ashley for letting us in on this stock, and to Rita for exercising the options. The investment represents a diversified portfolio, […]
Portland, OR March 16, 2018 Little did I realize how fortunate I have been the last several years. St Louis is well-known as the Gateway to the West. It is perhaps less recognized as a gateway to the morgue. This week, at least, I chose the option of going […]
Ft Lauderdale, Florida January 4, 2018 This is the day the tree came down… …that we woke to find the sink piled with dirty dishes and the carpets stained with red wine and cigarette butts… …that we stumbled down the stairs, spread two fingers into the blinds, and gazed in bewilderment at empty bottles and […]
Between Haiti and Cuba January 2, 2018 I don’t recall the last time I felt so full and so satisfied as last night when we pushed our chairs from the table, thanked our waiter, and walked out of the Pinnacle Grill. Fortunately, this high-end dining option is located near the center of the ship, else […]
A few hundred miles from Jamaica (and that’s close enough) January 1, 2018 Every six years Christmas and New Years land on a Monday. This quirk of the calendar obligates back-to-back Masses on consecutive weekends; the first to recognize the Fourth Sunday of Advent and the Feast of the Nativity, the second to honor the […]
Cartagena, Colombia December 31, 2017 When the Phoenicians ventured from Tyre to found Carthage on the North African coast several centuries before Christ, they cannot have fathomed that among the descendants of that prosperous settlement, and its contemporaneous off-spring at Novo Carthago, in what is now Spain, would be Cartagena, in what is now Colombia. […]
Colon, Panama December 30, 2017 This morning the sun rose over the Pacific. Soon thereafter, we sailed not only upstream, but uphill. Both David AND Alexander were awake at 5a. Did Lewis Carroll script this day? What’s next? Negative interest rates? Five inches of snow in Atlanta before the first flake falls in Boston? George […]
Puntarenas, Costa Rica December 28, 2017 And God said: Let the waters that are under the heaven, be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. The plates beneath the dry land eventually began to separate, creating the contours of our current continents. From the deep, subduction […]
Corinto, Nicaragua December 27, 2017 The benefit of long bus rides is the time they afford to chronicle impressions of the previous day’s bus rides. Today’s, from Corinto to Leon, provided ample opportunity. Arriving in Nicaragua from Guatemala, we found another country with CIA fingerprints (some might say thumbprints) all over it, but also with […]
Antigua, Guatemala December 26, 2017 We had been to Guatemala only once. That occasion was 14 years ago, on a Thanksgiving cruise from Tampa during which we were pleasantly surprised to be joined by Julie and Steve Lux, as well as Julie’s parents and kids. The highlight of that visit was a river cruise Steve […]