Notions
November 29, 2013 / All Those Pictures
The other day I read somewhere that 216,000 photographs are posted online EVERY MINUTE. More or less. That’s almost 13 million every hour. Good grief! I got to wondering why we “take” pictures. Of course, it has gotten so easy now that even very small children can make their… Read More
November 14, 2013 / Attention Must Be Paid
A week ago this morning, 96 of us eclipse chasers filed onto the large chartered plane to begin our flight to London after our trip off the coast of West Africa. Most if not all of us were in the midst of, or edging along to the end of, large lives, as doctors, business executives, scientists,… Read More
October 17, 2013 / Beyond the Web
It’s getting colder at night now, so I brought the pot with my big mandevilla vine, covered by its showy pink flowers, inside from the deck. I am going to try to overwinter it in a sunny spot in the living room. It turns out I also brought in a tiny spider with it, some kind of orb-weaver,… Read More
September 30, 2013 / The Packing List, or, Running the Videotape
In about three weeks we will be off on a trip, chasing our tenth solar eclipse off the west coast of Africa. Three weeks—time to make the packing list. Of course, at our house we have everything around us which we need, as well as many things we don’t need, I am afraid, in the manner… Read More
September 25, 2013 / Up, Up and AWAY
A few weeks ago, Voyager 1, the little spacecraft that could, did. That is, did cross over into Another Place, another Space—interstellar space that is, the place between the stars. Now, instead of mostly particles (don’t ask!) from our local star (named, in grand human fashion, The… Read More
September 09, 2013 / In Thrall to The Green Flash
For years I’d looked for The Green Flash. The Green Flash is an optical phenomenon that is sometimes visible as the sun sets (or rises) in a clear sky over a calm sea. In all my travels I’d had plenty of opportunities to see it, but no luck, not once. I asked my friend who’s… Read More
August 20, 2013 / A Tiny Trip with Alzheimer’s
One of our family members has Alzheimer’s Disease. He and his wife, who is lovingly caring for him at home, had been world travelers, but now those big trips don’t work for them any longer. I thought about a time I had taken some Alzheimer-afflicted people on a tiny, tiny trip. At… Read More
August 13, 2013 / Things Travel, Too
Usually I guess we think of “travel” as something people do. But of course things travel, too, even more than people. I am sitting here in my office and I’m just going to pick three things at random. Let’s see-- I use my office for a lot of things— OK. My first… Read More
July 29, 2013 / Doing Nothing
A dear friend of mine just posted a vacation image on his Facebook page. “All” that it shows is a small line of cream-colored sand and an eye-filling chunk of gray-blue water. That’s it. Not even a bright blue sky. He says that he is sitting by the ocean doing nothing. No… Read More
July 18, 2013 / Fractal Travel
So: fractals. I never use images in these Notions posts, so I will have to use words instead. Well, I will turn to Wikipedia. It describes what is called the coastline paradox, the fact that “the measured length of a stretch of coastline depends on the scale of measurement…the… Read More