The term “hearts and minds” was buried somewhere in me and sprang to mind as I was thinking about a title for this blog post. Hearts and Minds refers to a short lived campaign by the United States military during the Vietnam War intended to win the popular support of […]
In an earlier post, where I listed our Travel Pursuits plans for 2013, I included a thumbnail image of Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur L’Herbe (1863) to represent our Belle Epoque trip to Paris. Almost immediately, I received this lovely poem from Kathleen Kirk in Normal, IL. Woman in the Water […]
Details are being firmed up. Check back often. TRAVEL PURSUITS – 2013 MARCH – Richmond Virginia, The Civil War (4 nights) We will explore this wrenching era in American history that pitted neighbour against neighbour and in some cases, brother against brother through some of the finest American writing that emerged […]
Much as I wish it were otherwise, our human world often appears to operate according to the laws of the jungle, where might and power prevail over kindness and compassion. My spirits were, therefore, lifted high by a piece in the Toronto Star this past Saturday. It was is a […]
I hope you can join me for Toronto Pursuits 2012 in July for The Concerto: Studies in Contrast. We’ll be delving into the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach, the Clarinet Concerto by Mozart, and many others as we follow the development of the concerto through the centuries. Why did it change […]
Not one of Flora’s brilliant race A form more perfect can display; Art could not feign more simple grace Nor Nature take a line away. – James Montgomery, On Planting a Tulip-Root Everybody thinks that tulips come from Holland. Actually, Tulips are native to Central Asia and Turkey. In the […]
Los amigos buenos días, I was sorry to learn that one of our twelve travellers to walk the last hundred miles of the Camino de Santiago this October has had to cancel. TAKING YOUR SOUL FOR A STROLL: A hundred miles on the Camino de Santiago. I would now like to […]
“It’s in the nature of things that whole worlds disappear,” writes the poet Robert Hass in the foreword to Jimmye Hillman’s insightful memoir Hogs, Mules and Yellow Dogs: Growing Up on a Mississippi Subsistence Farm . “Their vanishings, more often than not, go unrecorded or pass into myth, just as they […]
I don’t know about you, but I was surprised to find that that commonplace expression originates with Napoleon Bonaparte. It refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible […]
A chance encounter (at a local meeting of Camino aficianados) resulted in an extended conversation about the ways and means and the whys of travel. David Levin has been a serious and life-long traveller. When he learned that Classical Pursuits will be going to Vietnam and Cambodia this fall, his […]