I have two or three opinions about what one ought or ought not to do with a blog, you might have noticed. And the reason I’ve got to be so opinionated about this kind of stuff is that really, without this blog, well, I’d have a different life. This year, blogging sent me to crunch through the ice with penguins in Antarctica and to breathe the dust kicked up by zebras in the Serengeti and to a bunch of other places, too.  That’s freaking amazing, and sometimes, when I’m at home, I get dizzy with all of it.… continued…

I was in the airport waiting. I was in that post-security pre-flight zone, airworld, when I realized I’d short changed myself on reading materials for the flight, for my trip. I’d recently installed Overdrive, the app my public library uses for their digital collections, on my phone. Using Sea-Tac’s free wifi, I downloaded maybe half a dozen books, some of them audio, to my phone. My favorite was probably Peter Mattheissen’s “The Tree Where Man Was Born”, an amazing book about travels in Africa.… continued…

There’s still a little bit of Africa in my luggage and the shoes I wore for most of that trip are stained red from the Serengeti. I sacrificed two shirts, long sleeved numbers that I’d bought in Cambodia. I’ve switched to sweaters and rain boots here in Seattle, even while I’m looking forward to repacking my summer wardrobe for a trip back to warmer climates in November. And I’ve been writing, a lot, most of it for other publications.… continued…