About the creative sense of humor Hello, friends, hope you’re enjoying the season, and staying cool if you want to. A comment: Whoever created flamingos must have had a sense of humor. For one thing, they can only eat with their heads upside-down. But also (according to Maja Salstrom’s Illustrated Compendium of Amazing Animal Facts) they cool off by [...]

Great escapes: Monument Valley Monument Valley is one place to go for some extra room. There’s a whole lot of space there, marked out for viewing by the rocky monuments that are the source of its name. In America a favorite collective title for places like this is “the wide-open spaces.” Considering that any kind of space is still [...]

Buoyant is what swifts do best. If you’re tired of being an Aries (the Ram) or Virgo (the Virgin) or the Dragon (in the Chinese zodiac, one born in a year like 1988 , 2000, 2012, or 2024) —or just plain tired of whatever your horoscope has been telling you, you might be able to invent your own sign [...]

[photo courtesy pixabay] There never seem to be enough of them. The concept of a freedom-loving person who lives on a horse on the wide-open ranges somewhere: now, that is a popular one. While most of us have not chosen “cowboy” or gaucho, vaquero or huaso as our profession, almost anyone you talk to, anywhere on the planet, likes [...]

Want to take breaktime in southern Spain today? Just watch (and hear) Isreali musician Anat Navarro playing “Malaguena.”  [photo courtesy Anat Navarro] To see it and listen, you’d think it was easy. The hours of practice she probably put in on this piece end up looking  like a passionate joyride up and down the keyboard. But she doesn’t leave [...]

To the ancient Greeks, Atalanta was a female hero renowned for her speed and strength, famed for many heroic exploits and for being the only female Argonaut. [For more on the Argonauts, see below.] When she was forced to marry, Atalanta would only agree to wed the man who could beat her in a footrace. Given her famous speed, [...]

When cyberspace just isn’t spacious enough. This week the famous Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is lighting up the skies in New Mexico. https://balloonfiesta.com/ Last year was the 50th anniversary of this festival, just one of many such gatherings of balloon enthusiasts worldwide. Advantages of hot-air ballooning as a sport include space, quiet, and a relaxed pace. Disadvantages? The same [...]

Will they let you pitch your tent this close to the ghosts of Chichen Itza? Dear readers, as you can imagine the answer is: probably not. However, even if the site guards would let you, you would have to call it adventure travel if you overnighted at Chichen Itza near the places where luckless animals, warriors, and assorted other humans [...]

Good news: you probably won’t need to shop or put up decorations. Maybe you already know this: every full moon has a name, almost anywhere on Earth. For ancient peoples, each lunar month represented an important one-twelfth or so of their yearly calendar. Each full moon — for example, the Sturgeon Moon on August 1 this year — meant [...]

What to do if that bus ride over the Andes is really out of the question this month It seems to be true: you never outgrow your need for escapes. That’s what stories are for.  Now, of course if you can hire a yacht, fly to Greece, or take a bus through the Andes this weekend, those would be [...]