Category: Real Personal History
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Passports 11: Morris Dancing: Another Way for the English to be Silly or an Ancient Cultural Tradition?
I had my hand on the door handle of the Antiquarian Book Store in Moretonhampstead village. In a moment, I would be lost among my dear friends, the arcane tomes and dusty volumes of local history and regional literature. My thumb was on the latch. I pressed down. It gave way under my pressure. The…
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Passports 9: Guests and Ghosts in an English Hotel
We chose to be guests at the George & Pilgrim Hotel in Glastonbury, England. What we did not choose was that a few other guests were quite dead. Yes, there were a fair number of living travelers that night but occupying the same space and the same time, were the resident ghosts. What else would…
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Passports 6: The Quiet Skulls Beneath Paris
A small quiet square, Place Denfert-Rochereau, in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris looks like so many such places. Beautiful and expensive apartments line the streets that radiate out from the plaza. Small gardens and vest-pocket parks abound. The locals and tourists hurry along…heading into the Metro or hailing a taxi, catching a bus…or simply strolling…
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Low Tide at Mont Saint-Michel
There was a time when you needed to watch the rising sea water if you found yourself on the Mount of St. Michael. The abbey and village were situated on the tidal flats of the second largest bay in the world, off the coast of Brittany. You would cross to the abbey during low tide,…
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Passports I: East and West of the Sun
The great city of New York was behind us…and the sun was setting in the west. We flew into the approaching darkness of night. As I was planning this blog series, I was sitting on the American Airlines 767 trans-oceanic super jet propelled airplane. My problem, right from the ‘get go’ (God, I hate that…
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The Brick Pond
I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. The name is Owego, which is derived from a Native American term that means “where the valley widens” or something close to that. The village has everything that a typical small American town should have. There is a beautiful cemetery on the hill…
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Good-bye Blip
I will miss the blip. The blip and I go back many, many years. I saw the blip when I was very young but I didn’t know what it was back then. Over the years, the blip took on a special significance when I would look for it in dark movie houses, from the next-to-last…
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The Thing
A few months ago, I stopped at a small country deli for a turkey and swiss cheese sandwich. The store was in Keene Valley, New York. There are fine views of the High Peaks of the Adirondacks from the porch of the deli. I had some brown mustard and low-fat mayo on rye bread. The…
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The Skeleton in the Taxi
The Division Head in the private school where I taught was very adamant. “All this stuff has to go, Pat. Everything you don’t use in a year should be cleaned out.” I looked around the Middle School lab and began to make mental notes of what needed to be tossed. The chemicals, of course, had…
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