21 Dec
I heard they were building a motorway through an important historical site, the Hill of Tara, the seat of the ancient Irish Kings, just northwest of Dublin. I also heard there was a group of protesters camped up there doing an ongoing solidarity vigil and keeping a sacred fire going. I thought, “Now that sounds like my kind of place,” [...]
17 Jun
It was your average Caribbean afternoon: bikini heat and rustling palm tree shade, crystal azure water lapping at white sand beaches, and the waves glistening and winking gaily in the sun, carried from ocean horizons as far as the eye could see.
We were leaving the island, setting sail for Europe. [...]
13 Apr
The boat’s name is Asteroid. She’s a 68-foot Van Dam cruising ketch, custom built in Holland in 1986. She’s strong, safe, and easy to operate. She’s a million-dollar luxury motor-sailer, registered in the Caiman Islands, giving her a real off-shore-account black market feeling, though I’m pretty sure everything is legit. [...]
31 Mar
After my sojourn into the Ocala National Forest, I gratefully got back in the saddle and pedalled, free & easy, down Hwy.19, which goes through the same palm savannahs I’d walked the day before, cutting through the middle of the immense forest. It was an interesting change in perspective – the wilderness looks different from the roadside; less dangerous, less foreboding, but also less mystical. Just less. True nature can only be seen from the inside. [...]
3 Feb
It was the Wright brothers, those enterprising Ohio bike dudes of history, that discovered a way to keep airplanes in flight. They believed that flight technology would make wars of attrition obsolete – a noble scientific aim. But the inventor of dynamite, the inventor of the machine gun; they too believed the same thing of their own never-before-seen technological accomplishments. High hopes for the cutting-edge geniuses of our progress-hungry society.
Of course the airplane only changed the face of war – to something more expensive, more demanding of resources – it did not reduce the casualties of war. Technology, by its very nature, is complicated, and [...]
