Before arriving in the Philippines, we were delayed overnight in Shanghai, having missed that day’s single connecting flight to Manila. Honestly, coming off the hell trip described earlier, I was glad of the chance for a rest and shower before boarding another jet. But the delay offered another benefit: the chance to see China, however […]
One of the small delights of foreign travel is finding extraordinary bargains. Not necessarily what’s cheap, mind you. As Ella observed, some of the extremely cheap food available from Manila street vendors comes with a free case of Hep B. Even the sanitary street food sits out under the blanket of Manila’s thick, gray, choking […]
1/18/11 At one point in our trip to the Philippines, I had a chat with one of Eileene’s granduncles. He was eager to assure me that the Bautista clan—the maternal branch of Eileene’s family—was much larger than was in evidence that day. I knew it to be so; I’d seen far more assembled some ten […]
Writing over the course of our Philippine visit proved impracticable. We didn’t just have sporadic access to the internet; we had sporadic access to electrical outlets and even our laptops, which got shuffled around as much to avoid theft as to perform their jobs as computers. But we’re home, safe if not sound—jet lag and […]
12/27/10 If this isn’t the longest day of my life, it’s at least in the top twenty—probably because it’s more like two days, literally. Old man winter vented his fury on the New York area yesterday morning, just as I was to return home from visiting my folks: a foot or more of snow in […]
Aunt Linda has arrived early to spend Christmas Eve as well as Christmas Day with us, and with her comes Wrigley, the dog she stole from Mom and Dad’s next door neighbor. Good job, too; that jerk thoroughly neglected Wrigley. And he a minister. After lifetime penned alone in the back yard, and after a […]
We visited the Rockford Art Museum today, to see the “Spaces Within†exhibit. Very disappointing, and I say that relative to the modest expectations one might have of any large, suburban art museum. Judging modern, abstract art can be difficult even for aficionados; merely saying something meaningful about it lies on the edge of art-ignorant […]
No cloud but has its silver lining. My parents have hard water. It’s not so bad as the private well water they had when they lived on the farm just outside Rockford, but it’s still palpably hard water. That makes it somewhat unpleasant to drink, and I’m still on my 48-unwanted-ounces-of-water-a-day diet to prevent kidney […]
I flew into O’Hare today feeling somewhat harried by the season. I rode the bus into Rockford with a swelling Christmas spirit. What made the difference? A few inches of snow. It blankets the fields, turning the ugly stubble of November into winter wonderland. It dusts the trees, especially icing the evergreens. It feeds icicles […]
Because the radio couldn’t pick up NPR in our basement, where I was wrapping Christmas packages, I was forced to search the dial for another station. When I came across one playing Christmas carols, I stopped. Without any snow, I need all the seasonal signals I can find to get into the holiday spirit. They […]