Notions
March 31, 2015 / The Last Post
Hilary’s Places first went live on March 29, 2013, and now it is time for me to move on to something else fun and, hopefully, productive. There are 104 blog posts, one for each week of the two years, and 20 travel journals+images, on my website now. Those seem like nice round numbers. Where… Read More
March 17, 2015 / Your Eyes and Your Head
So—I just returned from a glorious and gorgeous week’s cruise in the Caribbean. Everywhere you look, from the ship or the shore (on these cruises) is that fantastical and improbable turquoise water. (Don’t the cruise lines put dye in there every morning??) Anyhow, I got thinking… Read More
February 25, 2015 / Words from the Dalai Lama
Just now I was doing my little exercises with my weights here in my office and my eye happened to fall upon a small wall hanging with some words of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Buddhists. Twice I have been fortunate enough to have been in his presence at a public… Read More
February 24, 2015 / A Mutual Language
Yesterday afternoon we trudged through the snow and ice and crowded onto barely-running public transportation to get into the city for a concert. We came to hear the Mahler Chamber Orchestra play three Beethoven piano concertos. Demanding of both performers and listeners. Complex, full of… Read More
February 21, 2015 / Terrifying Splendor in the Heavens
Did you see this fantastical sight in the night sky around 6:30 EST on Friday, February 20? Just past dusk, I was finishing my half-hour of meditation in my little office here at home. The gong sounded on my iphone, signaling the half hour, and I opened my eyes and sat quietly for a minute or so,… Read More
January 27, 2015 / At Breakfast, Virtually
A friend recently forwarded to me a set of cartoons showing folks attending to their screens while in situations one might describe as social in some way. The taglines were funny, joking about how people were interacting with the virtual instead of the real. Now, mostly I am distressed about… Read More
January 09, 2015 / African Circle
From the African Circle journal of June 2001: Suddenly, with no warning, as we walk in Zambia this morning, I am stunned to feel that I have come straight into a place of my childhood, a thicket of low curving-over shrubs, making a secret tiny glen, where with my little friend Chloe I used to… Read More
December 09, 2014 / Faithful in New Haven
Hello, person in New Haven, Connecticut, and how I wonder who you are. (But don’t tell me!) My web designer fixed me up with a Google service which allows me to see things about activity on my website, including, if I click enough times, the cities my visitors live in (or at least from… Read More
November 19, 2014 / My Water-Meadow
If you have read novels set in England maybe you have read the lovely word Water-Meadow. “Meadow” is one of my favorite words, and when I first read about water-meadows I saw a wonderful image in my mind’s-eye. A green meadow, sparkling with rivulets of water that glittered in… Read More
October 30, 2014 / Grief in the Funhouse
Yeah. Do you remember as a kid, at your local amusement park, doing the ride where you all got into a little car, which rode on a track into a dark tunnel, and the track and you in the car on it rode around in the stuffy blackness smelling a little of oil, around curves and maybe up and down… Read More