Thanks for reading. This blog is an opportunity for me to capture some of the diversity of my writing interests. My muse tend to appear on my shoulder as I board an international flight although not all of my writing is inspired by travel and foreign places. These blogs have been the basis of a novel (Flowers of Baghdad) but there are a few other writing projects in progress besides. Please feel free to leave a comment. Or two.
Poetry out of the mouth of a cowboy, inscribed among other quips and observations about life on the cattle trails lifting up from southern Texas and headed for the railheads at Kansas City and else where, and eventually to the slaughter yards in Chicago and New York. It is carved into the flagstones of a…
(Whole conversation carried out in earnest seriousness) “Excuse me, Sir, excuse me… Can you tell me where I can get a dog like that?” (Shuffles over) “Ysmm’ sir, you gotta go to the empty beer bottle competition booth. It’s a special one. We go there every year.” “Every year?” “Yes, sir, we have been coming…
Our flight into Fort Worth is a bumpy one – it looks like a hot day in Texas. As we swing from compass point to compass point we cut over railyards, sweeping freeways, sprawling acres of warehouses and endless suburbs. I think “this is a place of endless possibilities”, an indelible impression imprinted as we…
Being in the US over the last couple of weeks has allowed me to witness first hand turmoil laid upon confusion – fragile financial markets mixed up in an election campaign. (I hope there is no Superbowl pending!) Whatever the debate, pitch, argument or defence from the Capitol, there is almost always fall back reference…
Departing Washington on a clear fall day with a low rising sun and blue sky. The sun at that angle highlights the deciduous woodlands and between them and the placid Potomac, with early morning rowing teams sliding into their day, I am reminded of what a beautiful part of the country this is.
We flee from New York at a clickety blur at the end of the day. We have done so for an hour now and the sun is just setting across an industrial landscape that is old brick buildings (a few soft with refurbishment, the rest hard in broken abandonment), vacant weedgrown lots, rail-tracks, water towers…
What is it about New York that gives you the sense that absolutely anything is possible? Just around the corner is another world with another language and another teaming population.
Overheard (not of this guy) at Washington Union Station… “Hi, yeah, it was so like, well… like you know, like… you know. Uh huh, uh huh, No like, I was so, like worried, like, ….I don’t know why I was like, but I was like, really, you know… uh huh, uh huh, No, like he…
Here I am ten years later in Baltimore and on a very different “mission”. My earlier visit was in the company of some crazy Hungarian and other European counter intelligence officers. We were on a “school excursion” hosted by Uncle Sam to visit the National Aquarium. (Definitely worth a look).
The squirrels jump around in the lawn of the late afternoon and are (hopefully) oblivious to the fact that they are nut hunting and burying in the shade of the building which best symbolises the power of America, perhaps even more so than the White House. That is only the working office of the President.…