meanderings, wonderment, and observations
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On the Street
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The latest in street performers in Rome. What are these people looking at? This is a street performer unlike any I have ever seen on the street. Perhaps this pediatric attraction has been around for awhile, but not in my experience. I happened upon little big blue…
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Hurry Up and Wait
I have often said, the Italy of my dreams is the Centro Storico. Not necessarily the real Italy. Here I am smack dab in the middle of the train station in Milan. Just one of the Great Unwashed. Oh yeah: fair Italy — where is the goddam romance now. The plan seemed pretty solid. To…
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Thirteen Years Later
9/11/2014: A day to remember how I once remembered “Black Tuesday” WALL OF GHOSTS At a hospital near my home, there is a memorial to Nine/Eleven. It is a brick wall hung with hundreds of “Missing” Flyers, sealed behind plexiglass. These are the faces of those who were lost that day. I call them ghosts.…
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Riding the Rails
I admit, I have a romantic view of riding trains. Perhaps because the paternal grandfather I never met was a train man, or the fact that Dad would seek out some vintage train on an unused track and take my brother and me on a Choo-Choo train ride (old whistle and all), or that my…
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Time for Reflection
I have always regarded travel as a chance to learn about myself by seeing the reflection of who I am through the eyes of strangers. So, for me this has been a time of self-awareness. And, also a time to see what it means to be an American at this particular moment of history. I…
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A Day at the EU Commission
You could not find a better time to visit the European Commission. The crisis in the Ukraine being front and center of their attention — the signing of the “association” agreement happening a little over a week from this post. We are coming to the end of our two-week adventure, we 13 U.S. journalists…
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An Eye-Opener
I have certainly heard about Radio-Free Europe, but in Prague, I learned how very little I understood about that service. Right up front, RFE, as it is often called, does not even broadcast to Europe. Instead, it aims its signals, its journalism to Asia. I and 12 other journalists were given the chance to…
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Don’t Head to ATM without your Friends
Our group of 13 journalists arrived in Prague rather early for check-in. Which meant some of the group got rooms, most did not. And so we set out in small groups for a quick lunch and a bit of exploring. “I”m going to a cash machine to get my Czech Koruna” (the euro likely works…
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Really, We ARE Working
Lest I give the wrong impression that all I and 12 other U.S. journalists are doing is eating and watching the World Cup here in Germany — we are learning an immense amount about Germany and the reunification of East and West Germany. I am taken by all that I am learning. Whole populations…
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World Cups and Stuff
The image of this naked Don Juan was all over Berlin. I am pretty sure it is for the opera. But how cool is it that commuters are seemingly unphased by imagery like this. It is likely universal that provocative subway ads invite, how you say, “rider enhancements.” Thus, we see Don’s brassiere, or…
Got any book recommendations?