Saw a blush of robins on the walk today. Read up about them, some facts stood out: -Robin eggs are blue due to biliverdin. -Robins are the most common vector for West Nile Virus -While they eat insects in the spring and summer, in the winter they survive on berries (see photos below). Sometimes they…
A good book to understand Russian and Baltic history and geopolitics. Excerpts: The sound between Big Diomede and Little Diomede, which is part of Alaska, is barely five kilometres across, but the International Date Line runs down the middle. In winter, when the sound is frozen, it is in theory possible, though of course strictly…
Plan to read this again for my 50th birthday. This is definitely a book that needs 2-3 readings before the message sinks in. I LOVE how he starts the book: This book is not a typical “how to” book. My chief desire is to stir thought, trouble sleep, and provide some wider perspective. It will…
More Celtic wisdom from John O’Donohue. “So many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence.” One of the reasons that we wonder is because we are limited, and that limitation is one of the great gateways of wonder. Martin Heidegger said that when you can conceive of a frontier you are already…
A small collection of essays that Sacks wrote just before he died. Worth reading. LAST NIGHT I DREAMED about mercury—huge, shining globules of quicksilver rising and falling. Mercury is element number 80, and my dream is a reminder that on Tuesday, I will be eighty myself. I often feel that life is about to begin,…
A family from Hanover, NH takes a gap year (9 months) around the world trip! Definitely can relate to this, except I did it as a single parent with 3 teenage girls!! Sophie’s relationship with the truth has improved steadily over the years. The underlying stubbornness has not changed much. One of the most appealing…
Paul Theroux is one of my two favorite travel writers along with Pico Iyer. I have read all his nonfiction books. I read this book when it first came out (it’s a Mexican journey but focuses quite a bit on the South of Mexico) and felt compelled to revisit it after reading The Oaxaca Journal…
Supposedly a book about ferns, which it does a good job with. Delves into a brief history of Mesoamerica, specifically Oaxaca in typical Oliver Sacks fashion. Amateurs—lovers, in the best sense of the word Ferns had survived, with little change, for a third of a billion years. Other creatures, like dinosaurs, had come and gone,…
Tragicomic story about the famous food blogger remodeling his Paris apartment. On the surface it is a series of rants about the remodeling, but it delves into the psyche of the Parisian. It may help you navigate your life if one day you find yourself living long-term in Paris. The part of being French that…
A history lesson about a much forgotten (and ignored) genocide and how it was avenged. Also a very informative book about the geopolitics of Armenia, USSR, Ottoman empire and Germany in the World War I era. To the million and a half Armenians who perished at the hands of Ottoman Turks during the First World…