While I cannot invite you to Newfoundland, I can invite you to do the next best thing — journey imaginatively with me and fellow travellers for a week (July 14-19, 2013) to Michael Crummey’s fictitious rugged outport of Paradise Deep, the setting for his epic novel Galore. In 2011, my […]
I love good books! I’m reading Anna Karenina right now, just for fun, but I recently finished two of Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” novels and The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I’ll read Ripley again, as will I AK, but once is enough for a Jack Reacher novel. After AK, I’ll […]
In Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris, the central character gets into a taxi and finds himself transported back to the 1920s. He walks into a cafe and sits down next to his literary heroes Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds. Wow. But then he meets a beautiful girl who dreams not […]
A perfect prologue to Toronto Pursuits (July 14-19) is a weekend of world class theatre at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Pat and Gary Schoepfel will host another excursion to charming Stratford, Ontario, prior to our week of seminars at Toronto Pursuits. Our theatre experience includes three wonderfully diverse productions. Brian […]
Rosemary Gould, of Charlottesville, Virginia, will lead our trip, The American Civil War, to Richmond, Virginia from March 1-5,2013. Rosemary has led numerous poetry seminars at Toronto Pursuits and the wonderful 2011 trip , Thomas Jefferson at Home. On the Civil War trip, she hopes to discover, together with other non-partisans, what […]
Our last days in Cambodia were packed with magnificent and mysterious Angkor temples and local culture. Heat and humidity sapped my remaining energy, so I am now composing a final post from the comfort of home. Click on thumbnail images to enlarge. CAVEAT: Please understand that a trip of several […]
When I travel I sometimes forget my ears. I venture out with camera in hand and eyes wide open. I search for the perfect photo op: that traffic stopping almond-eyed girl, the perfect sunset or moon rise, the Buddhist monk wrapped in mysterious yellow-orange, the twilight mountain silhouette, or that […]
Trying to explain Vietnam in a few sentences is like trying to complete a large abstract motif jigsaw puzzle in one quick setting. There is no one quick way and understanding comes from many discussions with both locals and fellow travellers. There is no one way of understanding, and things […]
It is cocktail hour on the ‘sun deck’ of the RV Bassac Pandaw. It it pitch black outside and we are on a narrow portion of the river. The warm and humid breeze is strong and luscious. We can see the occasional electric light or fire on shore and hear […]
This is the Chinatown of Saigon and the primary setting of “The Headmaster’s Wager” by Vincent Lam, the book were ‘advised’ not to bring with us. We can picture the Percival Chen English Academy operating right here. These children are almost certainly ethnic Chinese and students in a private school […]