The annual two weeks up north was the usual balm for the soul, despite rainy weather the first week. I went swimming twice (given that the second time was on September 15th, I thought that was pretty good. It was … not warm). I did my one annual ride on the rail trail. I got […]

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I am not an art critic. These days, I feel barely able to throw together a coherent thought about anything. But I had a lot of thoughts, coherent or otherwise, while viewing the huge show by Damien Hirst (or Damien Fucking Hirst, as one of my friends calls him) in Venice. It spans two locations and includes […]

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We spent two lovely weeks in Italy in May.  This time it was one week in Venice for the Biennale plus a few days in Lucca and in Florence.  Because we’d hit all the big sights last time, we were able to take things at a more leisurely pace, which involved a lot of long […]

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Not very original, but hey, I’ve been sick.  We spent 10 days in California and returned to fever, weird dreams about Escher bodies, architecture and Hillary Clinton. First stop: San Francisco.  We went to a distillery in a old airplane hangar, to Alcatraz, to a free museum full of arcade games, to the Japanese Tea […]

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I find visual inspirations very helpful when working on a book (see my earlier posts about the “mood boards” for the novels).  I’m just starting on what might be the new novel, but I already have a couple of touchstones. This girl with the wary eyes is part of the painting The Coronation of the […]

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Because I can happily blather on about our trip… I realized I’d been remiss in not providing a link (mostly because WordPress appears to have changed something and I haven’t figured out why the link function doesn’t work anymore).   Until I figure it out, here’s the info, old-school:  www.flipkey.com/marcilhacsurcele-cottage-rentals/p250972/    Or just google “Marcilhac stone gite” and you’ll find […]

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      I’m a rotten traveller.  I get horribly stressed about missing flights and trains, I agonize over picking places to stay or eat, and I generally spend a good portion of any trip in a state of subdued anxiety.   As a result, I was inordinately proud of myself for taking two trips to France, one in […]

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