“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” ― Simone de Beauvoir
There’s always a sense of heartache when you leave a place you’ve traveled to and loved. It comes with the knowledge that the odds are you’ll never return and the memories will slowly fade over time. Like most heartache, though, it’s more a feeling that is more beautiful than painful, because it comes with the knowledge that, though temporary, you’ve experienced...
When I got off of the bus after my six-hour trip from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo, I have to admit that my first thought was something like “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” The bus station was even worse than most, dirty and abandoned, other than the groups of young men lurking outside the station who didn’t exactly fill me with confidence as I wandered out with my...
“…and every Allied government gave me a decoration — even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!” Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them — with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro’s troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of national...
The contempt airlines seem to have for their passengers is staggering. We pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for the privilege of flying on increasingly packed flights with an ever-decreasing list of amenities on board only matched by the growth of various fees and charges that complete the frustration of commercial flight. In exchange for those hundreds of dollars...
As the snow falls again in Helena today, I’m finding myself more excited about my spring break trip, one that will involve three nights in Munich, six on Malta, and about 23 hours in Reykjavik. While I have been to Reykjavik more times than most people deserve to and have a pretty good sense of how I’ll spend my time there (hello, Sandholt, Harpa...
It’s hard to be a teenager. On Thursday, some of my students were trying to process their fears about what happened in Florida while others were dealing with the no less real pain of hearts left just a little battered by Valentine’s Day and the pangs of unrequited love. Whether it’s the fear that their schools might not be safe places or the world...
December 20 will always be one of those uncomfortable anniversaries for me: it’s the anniversary of the day that my father passed away. No matter how many years have passed, I’ll always wish that I could talk to my Dad just one more time today, but even with his absence, every year is an opportunity to take stock of my life and think about whether I’ve become...
When I was very young, I dreamed that I would one day own a home with a library. It was a strange dream for a kid from a working class family, but I had rather vivid and specific expectations for what my library would one day look like. It would have been filled ceiling to floor with heavy, leather-bound books, hold a reading chair with perfect light, and definitely...
The photo on the right was me six years ago. After years of failing to control my weight and pretending that I was going to do something about it, something clicked and I was able to shed weight rapidly and reasonably healthily. After a six-month diet (that extended to eighteen months) I lost a significant amount of weight, and more importantly, felt better than I...