All I could think about was dinosaurs, but the handsome young Russian sitting next to me on the final leg of my journey to Mongolia was aghast. He shook his floppy blonde hair. Dinosaurs were not the issue, he thought. My destination was. “I live in Khabarousk, 600 km. north…

PayPal! The name is either an oxymoron or a bitter joke. Maybe it’s a bitter oxymoron? Fact is, this company tries everything NOT to pay you, and they are no pal to anyone, except maybe their shareholders. I have been trying solidly for 18 months to extract a pathetic amount…

It’s all about being trapped at a metro station. Left stranded by a cancelled train. Stuck in a closed car on a hot day. Life today is supposed to represent the apotheosis of technological development but recent history suggests that the opposite is happening. I was returning from Washington D.C…

Like a cat, my husband was born with nine lives. He is lucky that way. Unlike a cat, he has already burned off way more than nine. He is unbelievably lucky. I can’t figure out why the celestial cat-life counters haven’t caught up with him. Not too long ago, they…

The cobras in India were less of a threat than the water buffalo, the elephants commanded as much respect as the lions in Botswana, and mad dogs were the biggest danger in Mongolia. In other words, trekking on horseback in developing countries means you are not riding in Kansas anymore…

The first time I set foot in Venice, I had just seen an Italian film, Anonimo Veneziano, and it seemed that life was imitating art. The film follows two lovers wandering around the city in wintertime when the sky is grey and bleak and the cobblestones are dripping with atmosphere…

Exactly a year to the day from when I left Italy, I went back to the town in Lombardia where I had spent the last 20 years. …

Last weekend marked my first experience at a US National Park in decades. I have been to dozens of national parks in countries on five continents during this period so it was a re-acculturation to visit one on my home turf. Shenandoah National Park was established in 1935, but its…

A neighborhood Facebook group had an upsetting new entry about our apartment complex. Someone living here was stalking unaccompanied residents with a camera dangling from his arm, taking a barrage of pictures uninvited, following them from their car to their door, persisting in unwelcome conversation. The description of this stalker…