|
I couldn't stop saying it. “Who does that?” Rich and I were gazing at messages of hate taped to the front window of a restaurant I’ll call Ballistic Pizza. It felt like that moment in True Detective when they find the serial killer’s lair, lined with blurry photos and insane rants, and somebody gasps, “My God, he really is psycho!” We were in Petaluma, CA, a peaceful little city that was once America’s poultry capital; today it’s famous for community spirit, including the annual Butter and Egg Day parade. It was Easter Sunday and a glorious spring morning, so everyone was heading into charming bistros and sidewalk cafés for brunch. But inside Ballistic Pizza, not a creature was stirring.  Ballistic Pizza was completely empty Easter morning. I can't imagine why... Outside, a woman was weeding the edge of the driveway that had sparked all the ranting. For 120 years it had provided a convenient shortcut to the next block, and not surprisingly, neighbors continued to stroll through, ignoring the “Stop” and “No Trespassing” signs. Occasionally their dogs peed on the wall. Shocking human and canine behavior, I know. But worth all the fuss? Really?  Traffic cones repurposed to serve as warning signs. I briefly considered trying to interview the weeding woman, but that would have required venturing across the disputed territory, and I had no idea whether the situation might be escalating. Was she a gardener or a nutjob waiting for an excuse to photograph me for the wall of hate, zap me with a stun gun, and/or call the cops? After Rich’s brush with the law last week, I decided not to press my luck. Now that I’m back in the USA, I’m noticing a definite uptick in the amount of tension, rage, and anxiety all around me — more than I’ve seen in the past, and way more than I experienced in Spain over the last six months — or ever. Some Americans are expressing their angst in temper tantrums and hissy fits. Madness is becoming the new normal.  "His final Internet search was 'insane monkey how make calm down.'" Fortunately for humanity's last shreds of sanity, plenty of people are holding on to their decency and finding ways to help one another. I spoke with one of those helpers this week: Poppy Granger, who arrived breathless at the coffee house where we’d arranged to meet. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “The medical building where I work was on lockdown for the last four hours.” “Because…?” “A shooting.” She shrugged. As a social worker and psychotherapist in Richmond, CA, she found such events almost routine. “I need a hug.” Hugs completed, coffee collected, we sat down to talk about books.  Poppy Granger started the Blacklisted Bookshelf to help neighbors access books that have been challenged or banned. Poppy moved to California in 1993, the summer she turned fourteen. “The world outside had fallen apart," she said, "and my parents did not have a happy marriage. So the one place that was always safe in my house was reading books in our room. I learned how to read at a very early age, and I read a lot of books. I still read a couple of hundred books a year.” In 2023 she heard about the “Don’t Say Gay” law and learned one Florida county had pulled 1600 books off library shelves. When CNN posted the list, she vowed to read them all. She’s still working on it. For those who haven’t been following the skyrocketing censorship movement — which is understandable, as there’s LOTS going on these days — ultraconservative parents are on the warpath to prevent kids from reading about race, sex, or the viewpoints of uppity women. From 2021 to 2025 there were 22,820 book bans in American schools.  Just a few of the frequently banned classics that may soon disappear from all American schools because they don't meet the "moral standards" of politicians. How does it work? An objection by one parent can get a book pulled from the school library and curriculum while everyone debates its merits. Even if the ban is lifted, parents may launch online attacks on anyone who recommends it. To keep their jobs and reputations, many teachers and librarians stop giving teens To Kill a Mockingbird and no longer suggest James and the Giant Peach to younger readers. Utah, South Carolina, and Tennessee now have statewide “no read” lists. House Resolution 7661, which is up for a vote soon, wants to make such lists national. It would classify as “porn” any book that mentions adult nudity, gender identity, or (brace yourself) lewd dancing. Yikes! Can’t have kids discovering that! Such works of “porn” as Peter Pan and The Handmaid’s Tale could become illegal in all American schools. Seeing this coming, Poppy launched The Blacklisted Bookshelf after winning one of those Little Free Libraries at a Rotary Club charity auction. She decided to buy second-hand banned books to fill it and left a notebook for people to request hard-to-find titles. Poppy got many thank you notes and requests; she fills as many as she can at her own expense. Over time she’s added libraries specializing in Spanish works, romance, fantasy, and children’s books — all banned, all given away free.  Duck Duck Books is Poppy's latest, a Little Free Library of children's books that have been banned. “I went online at 9:00 one night and said, ‘I’ll give a book to anyone who wants it, if you can’t get it in your area,’” she recalls. “I woke up the next morning and had 117,000 views and over 1000 people asking for books.” She set up a Go-Fund-Me to cover the shipping costs. “And then came the government shut down. As a social worker in Richmond, I knew all of my patients’ SNAP benefits were ending, and so I put out an announcement saying I have enough funding to feed 150 families with bare minimum. And I'm pulling all my books and I'm turning the libraries into food pantries for the time being. Because I remember what it's like not to have food. It sucks. When the government reopened, I went back to books, but that first Little Free Library still has food pantry stuff in it.” That’s when the Golden State Warriors heard about Poppy and gave her their Impact Warrior Award, saying, “Whether fighting for literacy or tackling food insecurity, her compassion knows no bounds.”  Poppy showed CBS how her Little Free Libraries were being repurposed as food pantries. I don’t often feel like a total slouch, but listening to Poppy, I began to wonder if I need to up my game. She is inspiring — the kind of good neighbor who gives me hope. As for Ballistic Pizza Crackpot, here’s what some of his neighbors had to say about him on Reddit. “He gave me a hard time for taking one extra napkin.” “Creepy ass dude.” “Seems like in the time it took to make one of these signs, he could have poured a pitcher of water on 100 dog pees. I guess everyone needs a passion. I suppose he is following his bliss.” Well, that’s a charitable way to view it. As for me, I’m not wasting another minute thinking about Ballistic Pizza Crackpot. I have downloaded the list of 22,820 book bans, and I’m going to be far too busy reading to worry about who is peeing on anybody’s driveway. Curious to know more? Banned books lists, including the 22,820 Master List, the 25 Most Frequently Banned, Top 25 Banned in Schools Last Year, Most-Banned LGBTQ+ Titles, Top 100 Banned, Books Banned in California, and Statewide Bans in Utah House Resolution 7661 The Blacklisted Bookshelf  GOOD NEIGHBORS This is the second in my new series, Good Neighbors, which explores how people in my area and my nation are working to help each other get through these challenging times. I'll be posting weekly, on Tuesday or Wednesday depending on my travel and research schedule. WANT TO READ MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find them, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.
4 Comments
 I’m not saying he’s on the FBI's Most Wanted list, but last week Rich was apprehended by police and detained to “help them with their inquiries.” It all started so innocently. Having just returned to California after six months in Spain, Rich took our dusty VW to the local car wash. Ready to head home in his sparkling clean vehicle, he headed out the exit onto a street with sporadic traffic. As he eased out into the street, he saw cars zooming up from the right and stepped on the brakes. Then three cars came from the left, couldn’t get past him, and stopped. After 20 seconds, one of the stopped drivers went ballistic, continuously honking and shrieking with fury. One minute later traffic cleared, Rich was able to make his turn, and Road Rage Lady leaned out of her car to snap a photo of him. He waved back cheerily and drove off. Half an hour later, Rich was flabbergasted to see flashing red lights in his rear view mirror.  A witness, said the cop, had reported that Rich’s irresponsible exit from the car wash had forced a car to slam on its brakes, causing it to be rear-ended. Having shown willful and wanton disregard for the safety of others, Rich should be arrested for (allegedly) causing the accident. “But there was no accident,” Rich protested. “Yes, I stopped and everyone else did too. That’s it.” At most, he was guilty of overcautious pausing. Incredibly, the cop believed him, and let him go with an apology. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes or even Veronica Mars to deduce this was the handiwork of Road Rage Lady. If so, she committed several very real crimes: filing a false police report, obstruction of justice, defamation of character, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and — for those who answer to a Higher Authority — bearing false witness against thy neighbor.  Remember this one? It's number nine on the Ten Commandments, right between not stealing and not coveting your neighbor's wife. Worryingly, America is the only country in the world where more than half the population views their fellow citizens as morally bad, according to a new Pew Research survey. Was Road Rage Lady expressing the zeitgeist of our times? Maybe not. That same week, while on an outing with her sister, my brother’s wife, Deb, keeled over senseless in a Silicon Valley railway train. The passengers sprang into action, offering help and summoning the conductor. He found doctors among the passengers and delayed the train at the next station until Deb regained consciousness, got assessed, and was deemed able, with assistance, to walk off the train to a waiting ambulance. Afterwards Deb asked if the other passengers were glaring at her in fits of — would we call it railway rage? “No,” said her sister. “Nobody looked upset or impatient at all. In fact, everyone kept asking, ‘Is she OK? Will she be all right?’” (Yes, she’s fine, thanks for asking. It was dehydration.)  In a groundbreaking humanitarian study conducted with Spanish college students, researchers determined that beer hydrates better than water. Apparently it's the electrolytes. Just a thought for next time, Deb. Another case in point: This week someone posted online that she’d run out of gas on the freeway and was stranded without cash or credit cards. “I don’t have a dime to my name right now so I don’t know how I am going to get gas. I am 8 months pregnant and it is hot inside my car. If anyone could bring me some gas or money for gas,” she wrote, “you will be a saving grace and I’d be grateful!!!!!!” Obviously a scam, right? While online comments ran the gamut from skepticism to concern, one neighbor jumped in her car with a can of gas and bottle of water and went to see for herself. Turns out it was a genuine distress call, and when the Good Samaritan posted, “Fuel and water delivered!” Another neighbor wrote, “Now that’s some good karma!”  In my experience, most people (with a few obvious exceptions) want to be kind, decent, and helpful. To test this belief, I’ve decided to spend the next six months writing a series posts called “Good Neighbors.” I’m going to check out how those around me — in my neighborhood and my nation — are reaching out to help one another through these dark times. Examples are everywhere. As food prices skyrocket, people are quietly stocking the community fridge at a nearby church with free food for those in need. In cities across the country, volunteers are delivering groceries to American citizens and legal immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes. People are pitching in, lending a hand, sharing the burden, and figuring out how to voice common concerns. You may have noticed eight million of us doing this last Saturday.  People took to the streets in Oakland, California on March 28 as part of the largest protest in modern American history. Last month, Matt Schumer decided to speak up, loud and clear, in a now-viral essay called “Something Big is Happening.” “Think back to February 2020," he says. "If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention.... Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. Your office closed, your kids came home, and life rearranged itself into something you wouldn't have believed if you'd described it to yourself a month earlier. I think we're in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid.” As a tech CEO, he is alerting us to the fact that artificial intelligence reached the tipping point last month. When advances in ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude were announced in February, “something clicked,” he recalls. “Not like a light switch... more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.” Yes, he includes suggestions for coping while he's sounding the alarm.  Remember when we viewed robots as our plucky little pals? (Sigh...) Industry insiders speak of AI as the biggest game-changer since we learned how to use fire two million years ago. Nobody knows what wonders and horrors we’ll see. But I am certain of this: we’ll get through the transition with greater wisdom, grace, and success if we do it together. A few days ago, Rich and I went to a talk on friendship by the actor Andrew McCarthy. You may remember him for his sensitive, nuanced portrayal of Larry in Weekend at Bernie’s.  Larry was just one of many buddies and sidekicks Andrew McCarthy played in 1980s comedies. Now he writes travel books exploring the meaning of friendship. Today he's a travel writer whose latest book is Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America. An impulsive decision to visit an old pal led to a 10,000 mile solo road trip, visiting long-lost buddies and chatting with random strangers at diners and road stops, asking them about the friendships that define their lives. “I kept walking up to men and asking if we could talk for a few minutes,” he said. “I did this dozens of times. Not one person ever said ‘no.’ Not one. America’s really open-hearted. Yes, even now.” Connecting with others started going out of fashion when TV came along, and the isolation epidemic surged with smart phones. If there is a silver lining to these catastrophic times, it will be the sharp and constant reminders that we can’t get through them alone. And luckily we don’t have to. We live surrounded by friends, family, and (if we’re lucky) some good neighbors. How do we connect with them? That’s what I’ll be writing about in the days ahead. I hope you’ll join me on the journey.  SO WHY DID WE COME BACK? Lots of people have asked us why we were crazy enough to return from Spain to the US at this moment in history. Rich and I are here because we love our country (warts and all), and we are ready to do our bit to help her in her hour of need. Yes, we'll head back to Spain in the fall, because we'll need some relief from the madness. WANT TO READ MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find them, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Proof that time really is relative. Photo: Place to Place Travel Ever find yourself in a situation that seems completely out of whack, and no matter what you do it just keeps getting worse? No, I’m not talking about global events (you don’t want to get me started on that topic!). This is about small, everyday nightmares that can make the simplest act — such as picking up a rental car — feel like being mired in some impossible, slow-motion escape room. With all the doors nailed shut. As my long-term readers know, Rich and I don’t keep a car in Seville. Having watched many a driver fall afoul of the Byzantine narrows of our neighborhood, we’re delighted to forego the nightmare of owning, parking, and above all navigating a vehicle in this city.  This spot, near my apartment, gives new meaning to the words "tourist trap." But this week Rich and I had an errand (more on that in a moment) requiring a car, and we decided to play it safe with a familiar brand: Hertz. Their current slogan is “Let’s go!” and apparently their staff took that to heart because they had disappeared without a trace. The internet insisted Hertz was part of the transit hub that included the railway station and every other car rental agency in the city. But there the trail went cold. Nobody could even hazard a guess as to where we could look for them. Their location was the best kept secret since the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden after 9/11. Finally some maintenance workers scratched their heads and pointed north, toward a remote, half-empty parking lot. I wondered what you had to do to get yourself ostracized to that Siberia. Incredibly, the lot did contain a Hertz kiosk. Less surprisingly, it was locked and empty, with a small sign directing us to a building another quarter mile north. On we trudged. You can imagine our excitement when we spotted the yellow Hertz sign. Yes, that’s it, over there on the far left, partially hidden by that tree.  The sign at the right says, "Street closed for repairs." To our amazement, there was a Hertz office, and the paperwork went quickly; getting out, past the labyrinth of road closures and unmarked detours, did not. We hit the road more than an hour late. Which was ironic because our first stop was the Palace of Time. One of Spain’s quirkier curiosities, the Palace of Time is a collection of clocks in a nineteenth century wine merchant’s mansion in Jerez de la Frontera. “Sounds boring, no?” said the ticket taker, pantomiming a yawn and grinning. “It’s not.” She was so right. The 283 clocks, some dating back as far as 1641, were gorgeous, most lavishly decorated with exquisitely wrought gold. But the best part was the symphony of ticking from hundreds of clocks. It felt like being tickled by time itself. Walking from room to ticking room, I could almost feel the seconds advancing crisply into minutes, hours, centuries. But as Einstein figured out, time does not march forward with measured steps but wobbles around like a drunken hooligan. Our image of it as a sort of cosmic metronome is an agreed-upon collective fantasy that helps us survive the present by giving us a framework for contemplating the past and imagining the future. This framework, which has helped us know when to plant crops and take well-earned siestas for the last 12,000 years, “might not be the fundamental backbone of reality that we once thought,” says a NASA Space News video. “In his special theory of relativity, Einstein proposed that time is not a universal constant but is relative, varying with the observer’s state of motion... a phenomena known as time dilation.”  Some of those notoriously kookie quantum physicists insist time doesn’t exist at all. “There’s no universal ticking clock,” says another NASA video, “just a network of interactions.” I’m not going to get mired in a controversy so dizzyingly above my pay grade. For now, I remain solidly on Team Einstein. Because that very afternoon I had proof that relativity is real. After our tour of the Palace of Time, Rich and I visited the US Navy base at Rota for Covid boosters (the primary inspiration for the road trip). Duly vaccinated, we popped into the commissary for pain killers, water, and — as it had been a very long time since breakfast — a nice, big chocolate chip cookie.  It looks so innocent, doesn't it? Back in the car, we each took the recommended one Tylenol and one Advil, then Rich pulled out of the parking lot. I called up Google maps for directions, propped the phone on my knee, opened the wrapper, and broke off a piece of the chocolate chip cookie. The cookie exploded. I entered an Einsteinian time dilation. In a state of horror, I watched events unfold in slow motion. Dry crumbs and globs of gooey chocolate flew in all directions like the Big Bang. I was going to have some explaining to do when I got back to Hertz.  "Yes, I do need help. Can you show me where the chocolate chip cookies are and tell me everything's going to be OK?" What fresh hell was this? Were ancient trickster gods toying with me? Was St. Christopher still grumpy over being debunked by the Catholic church? Did I have a bit of wonky karma to work through? Something was clearly up with the Universe. Because the very next day there was another oddball transit incident. We were back in Seville, our Home 2.0, and hanging about the bus station awaiting a couple of California friends who were due — overdue, actually — to come in from Madrid. When they finally arrived, our friends told a curious story about their driver — a stocky Spaniard who looked rather like Jackie Gleason .  Jacki Gleason in his iconic role as NY bus driver Ralph Kramden. “Three hours into the trip, we got this new driver," my friend said. "He drives on a little then stops the bus. He walks back, checks the toilet, then returns to the front and switches on the loudspeaker. “Huele mal. Huele a caca.” It smells bad, it smells like feces. “If anyone has urgent circumstances, we can make accommodations.” “Yikes,” I said. “I’ve never heard that one. Had you noticed the smell?” “Some. I thought it was sewage or something,” said my friend. “Either from the bus restroom or a farm outside.” Not surprisingly, nobody fessed up. Eventually the driver sat back down and restarted the engine. Then he stopped again, produced a can of air freshener, and walked up and down the aisle, spraying in all directions. Then he continued the journey. No doubt he was experiencing a disagreeable time dilation of his own.  Shaking our heads over the incident, the four of us made our way out of the bus station in search of a taxi. Suddenly my friend exclaimed, “My tote bag! It’s still on the bus!” She blanched. “Our passports… credit cards…” We raced back inside. The bus had departed, but the driver had not. He’d discovered the tote bag and was hanging around the station, keeping it safe for her. And just like that, he was transformed, as my friend’s husband put it, “from a schlub to an übermensch.”  I once was lost but now am found. Hallelujah! I love traveling in Spain, where anything can happen and usually does. I am frequently flabbergasted — yes, even now, in the midst of all the chaos and madness — by the kindness of strangers. “We have one life,” says Wylie Overstreet in his film about mapping cosmic time. There’s a hint of tears in his voice. “We are alive for the briefest moment. But that time is a gift from the Universe. It’s a tiny moment. But what a moment!”  Rich dancing on a hillside in Albania in 2019 SPEAKING OF TIME I'm heading back to California soon, where Rich and I will remain for some months before returning to Spain. During the uproar of the transition (or, as I now think of it, my opportunity to prove Chaos Theory) I'll be taking a few weeks off from posting on this blog. After that I'll be back with all new stories about how things are going in America. Wish me luck! HOME 2.0 This is the last in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. In my defense, the bar was dark, the menu’s lettering was minuscule, and my brain was fried. I'd been walking all morning, and the last leg of the journey had required pushing through the dense crowds thronging downtown Málaga, where every tourist currently visiting Spain seemed to be jockeying for the most Instagram-worthy place to pose over lunch.  Cheerful hubbub drew us to La Tranca on a quiet residential street in Málaga. Leaving the brouhaha behind, Rich and I found a quiet street with a small café-bar where the host was singing snatches of old Spanish songs, holding his grandson on one hip, and tallying tabs on the bar in chalk. I ordered some tapas, including the slightly unusual option I’d spotted: montadito de pato (mini-sandwich of duck). Then we heard our host call to the cook, “Montadito de pata” (mini-sandwich of foot). “Wait, what?” I said. “A foot? Whose foot?” But our host had already disappeared, so I was left to speculate. This being Spain, where the average citizen consumes 125 pounds of cerdo a year, pork seemed probable. Having spent decades idly gazing at hams hanging above tapas bars, I was well aware how little meat surrounded pig’s trotter. Was I about to be served a whole greasy hoof between two slices of bread? To my relief, when the mini-baguette arrived, it was hoof-free; instead, the inside was stuffed with the fatty bits of meat that bulge around the pig’s ankles. Tasty, but somehow I don’t think I’ll be ordering it again Málaga is one of those cities that changes radically from barrio to barrio, often from street to street. As on prior visits, I made a huge effort to avoid downtown's Touristville, but that day I’d soldiered through to pay homage to a true hero in the fight against absolutism. What’s absolutism? The ancient claim of some monarchs and dictators that their supremacy is all-encompassing and unfettered by any need to respect law, church, social norms, or the rights of anyone but themselves. (I know, right? Aren’t we lucky to be living in more enlightened times?) Historians view Louis XIV, the famous Sun King of France, as the archetypal absolutist. He certainly dressed for the part.  Louis XIV was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715 — 72 years and 110 days, the longest running monarch in history. Spain’s most emblematic absolutist was King Ferdinand VII, who overturned the new liberal constitutional government of 1812 and retook the throne with the help of the French army. One of Ferdinand’s fiercest opponents was young General Torrijos, who sought to spark an uprising in 1831 by landing on Málaga’s coast with 60 men. But it turned out he’d been lured into a trap by the absolutists, and Torrijos and his soldiers were captured and shot without the lawfully required trial. "This tragic end to his life explains why he has gone down in history, quite rightly, as a great symbol of the struggle against despotism and tyranny,” wrote historian Irene Castells.  The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga by Antonio Gisbert Pérez is considered one of Spain's finest historic paintings. When the absolutists weren't looking, Málaga laid Torres and his men to rest in their fanciest cemetery, San Miguel. Later, feeling even more glory was needed, they re-buried them downtown under a monument covered with frou-frou and well-deserved praise for their bravery. I never did find Torrijos’ original resting place during my visit to San Miguel Cemetery. My plan to ask the caretaker about it got completely derailed when he began sharing grisly tales of ghostly inhabitants. It seems a previous caretaker, the monk Brother Pepe, reported he’d heard a child crying, “Mama, Mama” and traced it to the grave of Antoñito, who died from leukemia at 14 months. Naturally Brother Pepe consulted a psychic about the phenomena, and she told him Antoñito was bitter about his suffering and needed candy to sweeten his soul. So the monk started leaving candy and small toys at the grave; later he’d find the candy half eaten, the toys gone. “Just local kids, eating the candy, taking the toys,” said today’s caretaker. “Mere legend.” “So you haven’t heard his ghostly cries?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Besides, Antoñito isn’t even in this cemetery anymore.” Before I could ask why, the caretaker launched into the story of the Corpse Bride, Carolina, who was jilted at the altar and supposedly died there from lovesickness. Her faithless fiancé died a week later. Coincidence? Fate? A vengeful ghost? Who can say? In case our time in Málaga didn’t cover enough ghoulish ground, we also visited the city’s other famous cemetery, San Rafael. “Every day during the Civil War,” said a woman who stopped to chat with us there, “they brought in townspeople by the truckload and lined them up against that wall.” She gestured to an old stone wall, 100 yards long, crumbling and riddled with bullet holes. “They shot them and dumped them into pits.” Left-leaning Málaga was subject to some of the harshest repression of Spain’s White Terror; some historians say the total killed throughout the city was 20,000 — 10% of the population at the time. Records show 4471 townspeople were shot in San Rafael cemetery; their names are inscribed on a memorial pyramid. Lest we forget.  Paying our respects to the 4471 people shot against the wall in San Rafael Cemetery. And before I tell the next story, no, I didn’t risk getting shot, or even arrested, but I did run afoul of authorities at the cathedral. Begun in 1528, Málaga’s cathedral was designed to have two towers, but only one was completed, causing the building to be nicknamed La Manquita (the one-armed lady). At the base of the unfinished tower there’s a plaque telling how funds raised to complete the tower were diverted to help the American colonies free themselves from Great Britain in the War of Independence. Unfortunately for me, the plaque can only be viewed from the cathedral garden, which was currently closed for repairs. Standing behind the barricade tape, I could just glimpse the bronze rectangle. I glanced around; there was no one but a busy maintenance worker between me and my goal. Slipping past the barricade tape, I took off at a brisk, professional trot. The maintenance man shouted something, and I called back that I was a travel writer who needed a photo. I picked up speed — arrived at the plaque — got the shot! Whew! Three security guards materialized and politely but firmly escorted me out of the grounds. I explained my mission, and they seemed more amused than concerned. What I did not tell them was why I was so interested. Wikipedia says the part about helping America is quite likely a complete urban legend. According to the parish registers, that money was actually spent renovating a roadway. What? Bearing false witness on a church wall? Somebody is going to have a lot of explaining to do at the Pearly Gates.  One of the trip highlights was the night some kind Scots invited us to share their table at a crowded restaurant. The two adolescent boys were wide-eyed as I regaled them with tales of criminal trespass, ghosts, my foot sandwich, and as a grand finale, my famous snake-in-our-bed story (see that post here). And I thought about how lucky I am to have this blog to keep me perpetually inspired to take detours to lesser-known locales. It helps me embrace the world as my Home 2.0 and feel my connection with the human family, loony as it is. Not all my adventures are Instagram-worthy, but they sure give me plenty to talk about over dinner.  HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. Is the planet Mercury in retrograde? Could there be something in the water? Are the End Times really upon us at last? Because it seems to me that humans have been behaving very strangely lately. And now citizens of the animal kingdom are joining us on the wagon train to weirdness. Take, for instance, our furry friends who volunteer as crimefighters. My regular readers will recall my post about the attack squirrel that drove off a would-be thief in Idaho. And now a herd of llamas has become media celebrities for capturing a wanted criminal in Derbyshire, England. It happened one night. The hapless (alleged) criminal — who is no doubt rethinking his life choices at this very moment — assumed he’d made a clever move by evading police and taking off across a dark and seemingly deserted field. Suddenly he heard a beastly bray and found himself surrounded by a posse of eight belligerent llamas. “They circled this fugitive,” said owner Heidi Price. “And they started releasing this huge alarm call. Which sounds like an old man laughing.” OK, yes, that would be seriously disconcerting. The llamas kept up the cacophony until Heidi’s partner discovered the culprit and alerted police, who recaptured their man and declared the llamas “heroes.” No, I don’t know why our animal companions are taking up side hustles in law enforcement. I can only assume they are questioning whether we are up to doing the job ourselves.  "First, they do an on-line search." And it’s not just animals and humans; even inanimate objects are running amok these days. You probably saw the headlines about the horrific railway accidents near Córdoba and Barcelona. Now evidence is emerging of poor maintenance, crumbling infrastructure, and safety shortfalls so widespread and severe that train service is stuttering to a halt all over the country. If they’re operating at all, trains often move at a snail’s pace to avoid stressing decades-old, ready-to-fail rails. In some places, passengers are required to get off in mid journey, take a bus, then switch to a train again. In the middle of all this there was a national railway strike, which was ended early so that everybody could get back to full-time shouting and finger-pointing.  In 2019, I set off from Seville's railway station on a five-month, ten-country Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. (Sigh.) I'm really going to miss Spanish trains! When will things be back to normal? Possibly in my lifetime. Upgrading 10,000 miles of railway tracks isn’t going to happen quickly, cheaply, or without five-alarm political pandemonium. Rebuilding public confidence will take even longer. If you’re planning a visit to Spain, do not count on being able to travel by rail. Business is booming for the airlines and bus companies; their financial officers can hardly believe their luck at this sudden windfall.  Rich is never happier than when he's studying maps and transit schedules. "No big deal," he keeps saying. "We'll just take the bus." Rich and I have vowed this won’t put the brakes on our determination to travel the world via public transportation. In fact, our resolve proved a useful example in our discussions around this week’s Ideas Club subject: “What’s the purpose of purpose?” As my regular readers know, in October Rich and I started the Ideas Club here in Seville. The concept — stolen (with their permission) from some creative folks in Petaluma, CA — is like a book club, only we read articles and talk about issues. This year's topics: Artificial Intelligence, The Future of Work, Freedom, Enough, and now Purpose. How does purpose shape and direct our life? The Japanese speak of ikigai, the reason we get out of bed in the morning. Research scientists describe innumerable health benefits, demonstrating ways purpose can help us live longer, healthier, happier lives with better sex. But how do we figure out what our purpose is? How do we incorporate it into our daily lives? What if we don’t fulfill it? What if we become obsessed? What if we decide to hell with it and head off in a different direction altogether? What happens if achieving our heart’s desire isn’t enough?  “The majestic way they climb higher and higher until they kiss the sky reminds me of the huge pile of work I have waiting for me when I get back.” Our 15 participants divided into small groups for lively discussions that ranged over history, philosophy, and science, enriched by riveting personal anecdotes and blue-sky speculation about whether character drives purpose or purpose drives character. My group examined what happens when a rational purpose grows into full-blown obsession. One example was the recent case of a soccer dad whose love of the game and desire to support his own kid got him so overwrought that he ran down onto the field and (allegedly) slapped an 11-year-old girl in the face. Yikes, mister! It’s only a game!  Signs like this are cropping up all over America these days. Let's hope parents take the message to heart. After nearly an hour of animated dialog, it was all I could do to convince the small groups to quiet down for a moment so we could switch over to general discussion. Then the room was off and running again, comments flying back and forth. We didn’t reach any conclusions, but that wasn’t the point. We were there to speak our own truth. As I recently heard an artist say, “I could just actually look inside myself and find things that were worth sharing.” How often do you get to do that?  Of all the topics we’ve covered, the one that had the most impact on me personally was January’s theme, Enough. We discussed how, in our scarcity culture, we can we slow the ingrained habit of ceaseless striving for more of everything. How can we accept the fact we have enough time, food, interesting work, congenial companions, and so many other essentials? We talked about “time poverty,” the feeling held by 60% of adults that they lack enough time to complete tasks, do their work, and enjoy life; most feel they need an extra four hours a day. As a writer, I live by deadlines, frequently feel rushed, and often wish for that extra four hours. To counteract that tendency, I’ve adopted “enough” as my mantra for 2026, reminding myself (sometimes every five minutes) that there really is sufficient time to get everything done. Yes, there is! It has helped a surprising amount.  As a reminder, I'm thinking of putting this picture, taken at a family reunion, on the wall above my desk. But the real payoff is knowing we’re building community here in our Home 2.0. The Ideas Club brings together people from various countries and social circles, who get to know one another on a deeper level through thoughtful discussion. Our participants can get pretty excited, so we start each session by reminding everyone to practice active listening, allow others to speak without interruption, and remain civil and open to new ideas at all times. This is not a debate but a civilized conversation. Because this was the last session of the season, we gathered afterwards for dinner, with heaping helpings of pork cheeks and artichokes and merriment passing up and down the table. I looked around and thought, “This is how we are going to survive these dark and dangerous years. Together.” Like the crimefighting llamas, we are finding strength in numbers and the unifying power of laughter. We can’t know if these are the End Times, an unfortunate but temporary misalignment of the stars, or mere potholes on the road to the next stage of our collective experience; that’s for future historians to debate. What we do know, as Kurt Vonnegut reminded us, is this: “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” WANT TO KNOW MORE? Here’s how our first gathering went. Subject: Artificial Intelligence Here’s how our second gathering went. Subject: The Future of Work Want to start your own Ideas Club? Here's how.  Some of the California family and friends we're counting on to help us get through this thing, whatever it turns out to be. HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Rich pauses during a leisurely meander around Huelva to wonder if it's time for lunch yet. Is it possible to go overboard with de-stressing? Oh, yes. Just look at Englishman Jeremiah Carlton, who in 1720 turned 19, inherited a vast fortune, and decided to spend the rest of his life in bed. He employed servants to give him sponge baths, spoon-feed him meals, and bring him stacks and stacks of books. He spent his days reading and napping until he died, at 89, in his sleep. Seventy years of hibernation seems a bit much, but I can see the appeal. In these jittery times, who hasn’t been tempted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over their head for the duration? But few of us have the money or the metabolism to become the next Jeremiah Carlton, known for 300 years as the World’s Laziest Man. On the other hand, I can see the value of — how can I put this? — making an effort to make less of an effort. Giving myself permission to do less. Taking time off from the headlong rush of daily activities. The Italians call it il dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. They embrace such simple pleasures as sitting in a sidewalk café watching the world go by.  While sitting at a sidewalk café in Palermo, Italy, watching to world go by, Rich samples the local breakfast special: brioche stuffed with ice cream. How sweet it is! In France, nineteenth-century poets coined the term flâneur for the artists and sophisticates strolling about Paris savoring the city as a work of art. To maintain a leisurely pace, flâneurs were said to amble about with a pet turtle on a leash. Naysayers have challenged this as une légende urbaine (urban legend) but I like to believe it’s true. I know it’s possible; just look at all the oddball pets people take into the streets. I’d always felt faintly surprised and slightly impoverished that the English language didn’t express an equivalent concept. And then, to my delight, this week my friend and fellow blogger Jackie wrote about “pootling,” a 20th century British term that means to move slowly, without any real purpose. It’s a variant of the 1930s verb “to poodle,” a blend of “potter” (to move aimlessly) and “tootle” (to meander). Apparently actual poodles are optional to the practice. It’s not surprising the term didn’t arise in America, as we do not generally favor such lackadaisical pastimes. Our sports are extreme, our cars are turbocharged, and all our children are expected to be above average. We’re raised on stories of people with extra get-up-and-go who worked hard and prospered mightily: Levi Strauss, Ariana Huffington, Joseph Pulitzer, Isabel Allende, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and so many other immigrants who redefined the upper limits of American exceptionalism. As for us mere mortals, we arrange our lives around more modest goals. One of mine is traveling with a purpose, finding a narrative that gives direction and meaning to my trips, blog posts, and books. Pootling is vital to my process; I have spent countless contented hours moseying up and down back streets and grand boulevards, inviting them to surprise me. They always do. Of course, I use my common sense. There are plenty of neighborhoods that are best avoided by the savvy traveler. Rich uses an app called GeoSure to check the safety ratings of unfamiliar territory. And we keep alert. If we see someone shooting up drugs, directing traffic in the middle of the street with no pants on, or running towards us shouting about the End Times, we remove ourselves from the scene with all due haste. But on most occasions, we ramble about quite comfortably, enjoying whatever beguiling sights surround us. I particularly like to check out the street art, which gets more wildly creative all the time. I haven’t seen the masterpieces shown below, but they’re on my list. One of the most delightful rewards of footloose rambling is stumbling upon obscure eateries you won’t find on Yelp or TripAdvisor. Here it’s important to use what Rich calls your “sniffer”— a combination of olfactory skills (“Mmmmm, that smells fantastic” is a good start) and your sixth sense about the atmosphere, staff, and patrons. Occasionally we settle at a table and then have second thoughts. Maybe the prices make us gasp, or we find there’s a fixed menu for a feast that’s beyond the scope of our appetites. I never want to insult the hospitality of our hosts by flinging down the menu and walking out, so I’ve worked out a tactful way to extricate ourselves. I pull out my phone, look at the screen and give a start, as if I’ve received an alarming message. I show the screen to Rich, and we exclaim, “I can’t believe it,” and “Yes, we have to go. What a pity!” We apologize (in sign language, if necessary) and slip out the door. But most of the time, we stay and take our chances, trusting our sniffers. We’re rarely disappointed. Last night, after our sniffers had led us to a cozy new wine bar in Seville, Rich and I fell to talking about the meaning of life (wine does that to me) and he brought up one of my all-time favorite quotes. It's from Joseph Campbell, a scholar who studied the world’s mythology to discover common themes that help us understand what it means to be human. He wrote: “People say that what we’re all seeking is the meaning of life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” To feel that rapture, to find the alignment between our innermost selves and outer reality, we have to pay attention to the world. And that’s a lot harder if we’re always dashing from one activity to another.  Now, I know what you’re thinking: Do I really want to pay more attention to the world right now? Good point! It’s only February and I’ve already had about as much of 2026 as I can take. I feel, as late night host Jimmy Kimmel put it, like I’m in the movie Speed, hurtling along in the back of a bus that’s wired to explode if it slows down. But we can slow down. In fact, we can get off the bus and wander around in a more congenial environment. For some of us that means relocating to Home 2.0. But wherever we are, it's about dragging our eyes away from the headlines and turning our attention to the things we find around us. The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. Indigenous peoples in the Americas head to sweat lodges for revitalizing temazcal rituals. The Spanish luxuriate every day in siestas. The Norwegians practice friluftsliv, embracing nature in all weathers. And now, at last, we English-speakers can indulge in pootling whenever and wherever our whimsy takes us. “Your sacred space,” said Joseph Cambell, “is where you can find yourself again and again.” And luckily for us, there is sacred space all around, just waiting for us to discover it.  HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  On a beach in southern Spain, a man who never existed turned the tide of war. Graphic: Detail from the original cover of The Man Who Never Was “You don’t want to go there,” a Spanish friend told me. “There’s nothing to see.” “Intercity tickets?” The clerk at the railway office repeated my words warily, as if I’d asked to be strapped to the top of a locomotive for a trip through Siberia. In winter. Naked. “Are the trains running?” I asked. There had been massive disruption of service following the recent tragic accidents near Córdoba and Barcelona, but I wanted to travel west, away from those areas. “Yes, trains are running.” Long pause. “I could sell you tickets." Longer pause. "But with the bus, you will have fewer delays, fewer cancellations; you will get there much quicker. Take the bus.” Which is how Rich and I found ourselves spending Friday morning jammed into the cramped seats of an intercity autobús, lurching over 55 miles of potholes on our way to the Spanish seacoast town of Huelva.  OK, so Huelva isn't as picturesque as my Home 2.0, Seville. On the upside, our room in this hotel cost just $67.50 a night. We were there to visit the grave of The Man Who Never Was. Fans of the book and movie Operation Mincemeat will recall that in 1943, the British were desperate to mislead the Nazis about the location of the upcoming invasion. “If the enemy is waiting for us on those beaches,” Churchill warned, “History herself will avert her eyes from the slaughter.” British Intelligence came up with a daring, high-risk ruse that required dressing a corpse as a British military officer, giving him false invasion plans, and slipping his body into the sea. They calculated the body would wash ashore somewhere around Huelva, where the area’s active network of Nazi spies would, with luck, manage to steal the papers from the Spanish authorities, copy them, and send the misinformation to Berlin, where it just might fool Hitler. What could possibly go wrong?  Naval officers sliding "Major William Martin" into the sea off the coast of Huelva in 1943. Yes, I know it sounds like the plot of a lurid spy novel, and no wonder; the concept sprang from a memo drafted by Ian Fleming, a young Navy officer serving under Rear Admiral Godfrey. The deception worked so well that for weeks after the invasion, the Germans remained convinced the landing was a feint and the real assault was still to come. Thousands of Allied lives were saved, and — spoiler alert! — we went on to win the war. In 1953 one of the plot's leaders, Ewen Montagu, spent a weekend dashing off a history of his team’s exploits; his book, The Man Who Never Was, sold two million copies. Montagu never revealed the true identity of the corpse, which was laid to rest in Huelva’s Soledad Cemetery under his false identity, Major William Martin.  "Major William Martin" is interred in Huelva's Soledad Cemetery with full military honors. Then in 1996, amateur historian Roger Morgan turned up evidence that the body was Glyndwr Michael, a Welshman down on his luck in London, who’d died from eating rat poison. His name eventually went on the tombstone. Rich and I decided to go pay our respects and incidentally discover for ourselves whether Huelva was as underwhelming as everyone said. Huelva’s bus station did nothing to dispel its lackluster reputation. It was vast and empty, with flickering lights and cracked flooring. Our hotel, a short walk away in a cluster of slightly shabby high-rises, had a façade so self-effacing we had a hard time finding it, even when we were standing on the doorstep. But the staff welcomed us warmly, and our room was great: big, clean, comfortable, entirely bed-bug-free, and — as Rich frequently pointed out — just €57 ($67.50) a night. It was one of the top hotels in town.  The staff called a taxi to take us to the cemetery, and our driver, Adriano, turned out to be a knowledgeable and engaging onubense (as locals are called, from the old Phoenician name for Huelva). He was proud of his city and immediately began filling us in on what had been happening around there for the past few thousand years. He explained that Huelva sits between two rivers, the beautiful Odiel and the Tinto, one of the most toxic bodies of water on the planet. A hundred kilometers upstream lie the oldest mines in the world; humans have been working them for 5000 years, since the days when metal was extracted using a rock lashed to a stick.  The Museum of Huelva's outstanding archeological collection demonstrates how they did it back in the day. In 1874, a British firm bought the Rio Tinto mines and made Huelva their base of operations, building a clever railway and pier system. In their spare time they taught locals the game Americans call soccer and launched Spain's oldest football club, Recreativo de Huelva. A century ago they built Barrio Queen Victoria, a cluster of disconcertingly English-looking houses on a hill near our hotel. And a few years back, some long-term British residents formed a society to maintain the grave and the memory of “Major William Martin.” Arriving at the cemetery, Adriano jumped out and escorted us to the famous tomb. We all stood for a moment over the body of the man who had helped save an earlier generation from Nazis and fascists bent on world domination. I silently thanked Glyndwr Michael for his service and thought of those who have lost their lives in a similar cause in modern times.  Adriano helpfully adjusts the Welsh flag on Glyndwr Michael's grave, which now includes Michael's true name, his parents' names, and a large inscription about The Man Who Never Was, courtesy of the Major William Martin Association. Rich and I spent two days in Huelva strolling around visiting sights Adriano had mentioned and sampling local bistros. The best meal of the trip — possibly of our lives, we agreed — was our post-cemetery lunch at Zancoli. All the tables were reserved but they kindly managed to squeeze us in at a miniscule table behind a pillar. The bullia — convivial noise — washed over us like a blessing. We ordered a lovely local wine and were given an amuse-bouche of gorgeous little sausages called chosco de tineo made from (and thankfully I did not know this at the time) a mix of pork and tongue, seasoned with garlic and paprika, stuffed into pig intestines, and smoked over a wood fire. There followed a dazzling plate of artichokes with ham and shrimp, and fresh-from-the-sea merluza (similar to American hake or whiting) baked in wine sauce. As you can imagine, we slept well at siesta. Huelva is a great place to take siestas, because — as Adriano pointed out — it is tranquilo. Tranquil. By Friday lunchtime, the restaurants were filled with large congenial groups, seemingly ready to let go of the cares of the week and relax into the weekend. By Saturday afternoon, everyone was strolling lazily in the sun or lifting a cold beer in a warm circle of laughing friends. It was like a poster for Life As It Is Meant To Be Lived. Whenever someone tells me “you don’t want to go there,” the contrary part of my nature senses adventure and starts reaching for maps and train schedules. “There are deeper reasons to travel — itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind,” wrote author Jeff Greenwald. “We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we’re doing there.” Words to live and travel by.  One place I'm not itching to go: the Rio Tinto, near the mines, photographed in all its technicolor pollution by blogger Caracol Viajero. HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  An arctic weasel performing the manic moves known as the Weasel War Dance. Who acts completely crazy on purpose? Weasels, for one! If they spot a rabbit they'd like for lunch, they'll suddenly start acting like lunatics, leaping in the air, rolling around on the ground, and doing backflips. The bunnies are so stunned at this peculiar display they stop and stare until the weasel works their way close enough to pounce. I think we can all sympathize with those bunnies about now. This past weekend, the world seemed to go mad before our eyes, pouncing on a law-abiding citizen as if he were lawful prey. Throughout a shocked nation, citizens are voicing a new sense of purpose, vowing to put an end to the madness. Purpose, which can give direction and meaning to our lives, comes in two types, according to psychologist Rob Archer. There's self-related, which is focused on personal goals such as earning money and getting ahead, and what he calls transcendent, defined as broader, more outward looking, and contributing, however modestly, to making the world a better place.  Whenever I feel gloomy about the state of the world, I go stand in front of this mural in my California town and feel grateful to my public-spirited neighbors for installing it across from the park. We are all hard-wired to pursue self-related interests, such as finding work and surviving our first day on a new job. The other night, seeking some lighthearted entertainment as a break from the news, I came upon a British comedy about a rookie animal control warden sent to remove a wild weasel from someone's attic. And before I write another word, let me assure you the weasel is FINE. So the rookie sticks his head through the trap door into the attic, the weasel jumps him, and the two tumble down the steps into the living room. The panicked animal runs into the fireplace and moments later runs out again — with his tail on fire. You can guess the rest. The ottoman, couch, and a large throw pillow go up in flames. After considerable pandemonium, the rookie smothers the blazing furniture and the room in fire retardant chemicals. The door opens, and the weasel — tail extinguished — races outside. The rookie’s supervisor steps in, looks at the homeowners, and says, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate our service today?”  In the sit-com Animal Control, Michael Rowland's character faces off with a formidable weasel. This is a handy reminder, as if another were needed, of the wisdom of Robert Burns’ famous line, "The best-laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley" ("often go awry”). Clearly that adage applies to the plans of weasels, too. I imagine this little fellow down at the pub afterwards, telling his mates, “I was just browsing around for dogfood or cookies, and it morphed into a scene from Stranger Things!”  Giant monsters and flaming hellscapes abound in the Netflix series Stranger Things. No matter how often our efforts spiral into disaster, we all continue to hatch schemes in aid of some purpose we hold dear. The internet is awash with articles such as The Importance of Living a Purpose-Driven Life, reminding us that purpose can fill us with energy, give our lives meaning, and offer a staggering array of health benefits. “Imagine a drug,” wrote Professor Victor Strecher, author of Life on Purpose, “that was shown to add years to your life; reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke; cut your risk of Alzheimer’s disease by more than half; help you relax during the day and sleep better at night; double your chances of staying drug- and alcohol-free after treatment; activate your natural killer cells; diminish your inflammatory cells; increase your good cholesterol; and repair your DNA. What if this imaginary drug reduced hospital stays so much that it put a dent in the national health-care crisis? Oh, and as a bonus, gave you better sex?” Interested? Who wouldn’t be? Of course, this imaginary drug is actually — you guessed it — purpose. Clearly a wise choice.  So what kind of purpose are we talking about? A grand passion that lasts a lifetime or a sudden impulse to sneak into someone’s house to snack on dogfood and cookies? While we all act in self-interest, Archer’s research found those who also have some transcendent purpose tend to interact with the world in a richer, more fulfilling way. I'm lucky that living in Seville, my Home 2.0, and traveling the world creates so many opportunities to connect with people and learn about life. On my journeys, often I have an ostensible purpose, such as sampling traditional recipes for The Great Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour, and the deeper underlying goal of creating opportunities to chat with grandmothers willing to share their hard-won wisdom and young entrepreneurs exploring their dreams.  Chef Michail shows us how he prepares a delicious Corfu Pastitsada with Free-Range Rooster and Pasta on a rooftop terrace in Athens, 2019. I have become addicted to being thunderstruck, a trait I share with many travel writers. Douglas Adams, best known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, expressed this in his own wry way in his travel memoir about endangered species, Last Chance to See. “Some fish were jumping up the beach and into the tree,” he wrote, “which struck me as an odd thing for a fish to do, but I tried not to be judgmental about it. I was feeling pretty raw about my own species, and not much inclined to raise a quizzical eyebrow at others.” I learned these tree-climbing fish, known as mudskippers, are at risk because their coastal habitats are disappearing fast. But because they are (and I say this lovingly) among the least attractive species on earth, and have a lackluster name to boot, efforts to save them aren’t attracting much attention.  Hard to understand why the mudskipper has failed to become a media darling. I haven’t managed to see a mudskipper yet, but on our honeymoon in Costa Rica I encountered its cousin the Jesus lizard, which walks on water. When startled, the creature rears up on its hind legs and sprints across the surface of the nearest puddle or pond, its webbed feet catching air bubbles, its light weight making it possible to traverse distances up to 66 feet. Watching one in action all those years ago, I remember thinking, “You really have to love a world capable of producing creatures like that.”  The basilisk lizard, also known as the Jesus lizard, is a miracle of nature. Photo: Bence Mate / naturepl.com I still feel that way. Yes, in spite of everything that's happening right now. One of my overarching purposes in life is lifting the spirits of my readers, to remind us all of the persistence of joy, even in dark times. So here's one of the most uplifting wildlife pictures I’ve ever seen: a weasel riding on the back of a flying woodpecker in a London park. Is it real? The BBC and world press confirmed it, and as it dates back ten years, to a time before everyone had ready access to AI graphics, I’m going to say yeah, I believe it's genuine. How did it happen? “Green woodpeckers actually feed on the ground,” explained a BBC commentator. “The female lesser weasel weighs about the same as a Mars bar — but is as ferocious as a lion.”  The weasel pounced, the startled woodpecker took off, and Martin Le-May got the photograph of a lifetime. You can imagine her surprise when she leapt on her prey and the bird took flight. When amateur photographer Martin Le-May snapped his now-famous shot, he distracted the weasel just enough for the woodpecker to shake free and fly off. I like to picture that little weasel down at the pub afterwards, telling the one from Animal Control, “Oh, yeah? Well, wait till you hear what happened to me!”  HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  This may sound a little squirrelly, but hear me out. As you no doubt know, today is National Squirrel Appreciation Day. Yes, it has rolled back around already! Time to get out your squirrel-themed dinnerware and gather the kids to listen to classic tales of squirrelly derring-do. Like the one about Idaho’s heroic Joey, who leapt on a burglar who was trying to steal the household guns. “Damn thing kept attacking me and wouldn’t stop till I left,” said the suspect, who was soon apprehended by the cops; positive identification was easy thanks to all the little claw marks on his arms.  Joey has become a national celebrity. "Any squirrel would have done the same," he modestly told reporters. Incredibly, not everyone celebrates this uniquely American holiday. My sister-in-law dismisses these fluffy-tailed rodents as “rats with better PR.” But squirrels are amazing creatures. They can leap across a space ten times their body length. Arctic squirrels spend eight months a year in the longest and deepest hibernation of any animal. Their California cousins can survive fights with rattlesnakes (scientists are still trying to figure out how they metabolize the venom). Do squirrels deserve their own holiday? I say hell, yeah.  Thought I was kidding about the squirrel-themed dinnerware? Apparently some people go all out on this holiday. No, I'm not sure if Sophia is the squirrel or the householder. Photo: Rosabella Designs on Etsy Why not let squirrels have their day? By this time of year, the big annual festivities are (thankfully) behind us, leaving time to celebrate simpler joys. Today, for instance, is also International Sweat Pants Day, National Hugging Day, and National Grandma Day. So pull on some sloppy athletic pants and go hug your Nana — or the nearest squirrel. Your choice. This past week Rich and I celebrated National Shop for Travel Day, although to be honest I had no idea such a holiday existed, let alone that it fell on the second Tuesday in January. But when I happened across that fun fact online yesterday, I considered it a good omen. Clearly the Universe is supporting our intention (NOT a New Year’s Resolution) to travel more — and with even less baggage than usual. As my regular readers know, Rich is a die-hard fan of luggage-free travel. He’s never happier than when he’s strolling to the train station with nothing but a toothbrush, a passport, and a few odds and ends in his pockets, wearing sturdy outerwear and the world’s fastest-drying undergarments.  This is everything Rich brought along our first luggage-free trip, back in 2015. Going baggage-free is fun from time to time, but I generally like a few more creature comforts. (Call me a hedonist.) For road trips lasting weeks or months, we typically each take one small rollaboard, with mix-and-match clothes that will stand up to lots of washing. But for our current long-weekend road trips, we are going even more minimalist, sharing a single small suitcase, one that divides in half with zippered compartments to keep us sorted. Because how much do you really need for a couple of days without any social engagements beyond hanging out together?  Rich and I began considering ways to downsize our luggage following our January Ideas Club gathering, where the theme was “enough.” As you’ve no doubt observed, modern society pushes us toward a sense of scarcity in hopes of influencing our behavior, mostly our buying habits. We’re always being told that standards are rising and frankly, we’re not measuring up. Despite the fact that most people reading this blog have more than enough of life’s essentials — food, clothing, shelter, and heat, to name but a few — we’re told we should be as worried as one of our cave-dwelling ancestors who has just been chased out naked into the snow by a bear. No wonder 62% of Americans admit to overpacking. We modern humans may not have to dodge too many bears these days, but we are constantly chased by the expectation to compare ourselves to celebrities and 20-year-old influencers. And that requires massive amounts of clothing and grooming aids.  "There is no such thing as overpacking," wrote geekgirltravel on Instagram. She says she doesn't mind hauling that much stuff around to feel well dressed. You have to admire her stamina (and her hair). Luckily for me, I’m traveling with a man I’ve been married to for nearly forty years. He does not take me for granted, but I can’t say he’s always a keen observer of my wardrobe. Just the other day he glanced at the trousers I was wearing and asked, “Hey, are those new?” They were the oldest pair of pants I own, faithful companions on fifteen years of journeys around the globe. You can see why I don’t worry too much about satisfying his need for novelty in my attire. So what is enough stuff for a relaxed three-day, two-night road trip?  Everything I need tucks into half the suitcase, with room left over. The bag is an American Tourister two-wheeler, which I find maneuvers better on cobblestones. Basically I wear one outfit: pants (often those comfy old favorites), a warm sweater, a long-sleeved t-shirt, sneakers, puffy vest, long puffy coat, scarf, hat, and gloves. In my half of the suitcase I pack several long-sleeved t-shirts, socks, underwear, loose yoga pants, a pajama top, and furry slippers. I just bought a smaller toiletry kit for the bare necessities. That’s it! Rich packs even less. Which means there would be plenty of room for our devices (one laptop and two e-readers) in our common suitcase. But I prefer to keep those over my shoulder in a separate bag. On crowded trains we sometimes have to leave luggage in the common shelves by the exit, and why chance losing expensive electronics? This way, in the unlikely event someone ever swiped our suitcase, they would be deeply disappointed at the meager pickings, and it would be easy enough for us to replace our stuff. Now, some readers may be wondering why, if I am in southern Spain, I need a puffy vest, puffy coat, heavy scarf, hat, and gloves. Shouldn’t I be basking in warm sunshine, here in my Home 2.0? Yes, I should. But we’re experiencing an unusually cold winter, with temperatures often hitting freezing and lots of fog and rain. If you’re coming here in the next week or so, pack for London, not Seville.  Dressed for chilly weather in Córdoba The upside of this kind of bad weather, which I’ve now experienced in Cádiz and Córdoba as well as Seville, is that it helps me catch up on my sleep. I get up late in the morning and take long afternoon siestas, made all the more blissful by the sound of rain on the windows. I can see why many anthropologists are now coming around to the idea that proto-humans used to hibernate. That theory sprang from discoveries in northern Spain’s Sima de los Huesos (Pit of Bones), one of the world’s most important fossil sites. Skeletons from 430,000 years ago included adolescents with marks of a particular kind of malnutrition associated with going into hibernation without sufficient fat reserves. The adults apparently did just fine.  And if Sigourney Weaver and her spaceship crew are anything to go by, humans will be hibernating successfully in the future, too. Our furry friends in the arctic ground squirrel community get a solid eight months of sleep a year, which strikes me as a trifle excessive. But I can see the appeal of a long, deep sleep. Imagine being snug underground with a tummy full of fat and nowhere to go, nothing to do, no headlines to read. I don’t need to tell you this has been a tough winter — in many ways that have nothing to do with the weather. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” said patriot Thomas Paine. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” So what can we do? “In winter,” wrote Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, “we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths.” And remind each other that spring always comes.  Hibernating ground squirrels. I want to take a moment to thank all those who reached out to us after the terrible train crash in Córdoba on January 18. Thankfully, Rich and I are fine, although horrified at the tragedy that has rocked Spain. We’re also a bit shaken to think we were riding those same trains on those same railway tracks just one week earlier. We are counting our lucky stars. HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. MORE ON HOW TO REDUCE LUGGAGE OR GO WITHOUT PACK LIGHT QUICK & EASY TIPS FOR TRAVELING EVERYWHERE WITH EXACTLY THE RIGHT STUFF WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  This weekend in Córdoba I don’t know why I bothered with the twelve grapes and red underwear on New Year’s Eve, because it has now become clear to me that the real luck around here is to be acquired in Córdoba. I’m just back from a long weekend in that city — a mere 75 miles from my Home 2.0 in Seville but light-years ahead of us in terms of opportunities to entice good fortune into our lives. And couldn’t we all use some of that right now? Naturally, I visited every luck-luring locale mentioned in the old legends. And although it wasn’t even on my wish list, right away I got a delightful little gift from the Universe. As my regular readers know, I love discovering offbeat words I can play with, words like gobsmacked and cattywampus (so emblematic of our times!) and recombobulated (a state I hope we’ll someday experience collectively). This weekend’s delectable new word is snicket. Of course I’m familiar with Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I always assumed it was a made-up word blending snicker and snippet.  But this weekend, when the term cropped up in the novel Out of Time, I learned snicket means a narrow passageway between walls or fences. One online dictionary added helpfully that synonyms include ginnel, vennel, wynd, and twitten. My cup ranneth over, indeed. I wasted no time putting my new word to use. “Rich, Córdoba has a snicket I’d like to visit. It’s called the Calleja Pañuelo — Handkerchief Alley. That’s how narrow it is.” We found it and discovered the skinniest part was just 20 inches, the width of the traditional cravat that adorned the necks of horseback-riding gentlemen of yesteryear.  Today's gentlemen favor somewhat more casual attire. Sadly, the oldest good luck source in town vanished millennia ago: Lake of the Tendillas, home of a wish-granting nymph. She was generous to a fault, oldtimers said, but selfish supplicants wanting wickedness would disappear into her waters forever. Today the spot is marked by a fountain, and I like to think she simply retired and downsized to more compact urban lodgings. On the off chance she was still listening, I went to pay my respects and mention a few requests. The town’s most famous wishing spot is on the outer wall of its most illustrious building, the Mezquita. This was the Great Mosque built in 785 when Abd al-Rahman I founded the Islamic Emirate of Córdoba and wanted to create a mosque so magnificent people would talk about it until the end of time. And he succeeded. The interior was simple perfection, a vast forest of columns that were ancient even then, stretching as far as the eye could see, enlivened with striped arches that were almost playful. Everyone who saw it gasped in wonder.  Repurposed Visigoth and Roman pillars, somewhere between 850 and 1250 of them, created a vast, non-hierarchical space for prayer. When the city fell to the Christians in 1236, a chapel was installed but the mosque remained more or less intact. Then in 1528, despite the furious opposition of everyone in Cordoba except the scheming local bishop, King Charles V ordered the center of the Mezquita to be hollowed out and turned into a massive Catholic cathedral. It’s horrifying what treasures some of those ignorant old despots would tear down in order to build a monument to their own ego. (Thank heavens we are far too enlightened to indulge in that kind of barbaric foolishness today.) Spanish amigos told me when Charles V finally saw the cathedral and realized what had been lost, he wept, saying, “They have taken something unique in all the world and destroyed it to build something you can find in any city.”  You can see where the cathedral was stuck into the center of the mosque. In our era, a further attempt was made to erase even more of the mosque. Church officials began quietly deleting references to the Moorish past from the site’s literature and signage. When Google Maps changed its designation from Cordoba Mosque to Cordoba Cathedral, that was the last straw. Irate citizens and local authorities raised such a ruckus that Google Maps quickly re-labeled it Cordoba Mosque. When I visited, the Moorish origins featured prominently in all the signage and materials I saw. Meanwhile, on one of the Mezquita's outside walls, a section of limestone has crumbled away, revealing the star-shaped fossil of a sea urchin. Naturally (or possibly launched by wily marketing people centuries ago) legends sprang up about this curiosity. Now viewed as an amulet, the Estrella de los Deseos or Star of Wishes, is supposed to make your dreams come true; all you have to do is touch it. As a modern, rational woman I know just how much faith to put in such allegedly lucky charms, but hey, I figured it couldn’t hurt. I couldn’t find any record of actual results produced by the Star of Wishes, but nearby, halfway across the old Roman bridge, stands one emblem of good luck with a solid track record: San Rafael. He’s the city’s Guardian Angel, credited with saving the populace from the plague in 1650, and his images, known as “triumphs,” are scattered all over town.  The Archangel San Rafael, 1651, watches over pedestrians on the old Roman bridge in Córdoba. Photo: Mariajo V. on TripAdvisor San Rafael is the perfect emblem for Córdoba, because he is honored across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, religions that famously managed to co-exist peacefully for centuries in “the City of Three Cultures.” Yes, my friends, it is possible. During the city’s Islamic era (711 to 1031) Córdoba prided itself on being a center of enlightenment and learning, attracting scholars, scientists, philosophers, artists, and architects of every nation and creed. They had this wacky idea that studying the universe, learning how to think logically, and applying human intelligence to solving our most persistent problems might save our bacon someday. And who knows, maybe it will. Of course, human nature being what it is, there were plenty of egos, biases, and injustices at work, and not everyone flourished in Córdoba. For instance, in the 11th century residents were pressured to convert, causing the Jewish family of ten-year-old Maimonides to leave the city. Living in Morocco, Jerusalem, and Egypt, he picked up a wealth of esoteric knowledge. Maimonides became a rabbi, the most influential Torah scholar of the era, and author of many books including the marvelously titled Guide for the Perplexed that seeks common ground for scientific and spiritual principles.  Notice how shiny the tip of his beard is; people love to visit this statue, which stands in downtown Córdoba, and rub it for luck. When Córdoba put up a statue to him, it soon became another good-fortune charm, which according to scholars who know such things, would have appalled the ultra-rational Maimonides. Yep, I visited him too. And what was I asking for, at all these magical places? Well, I don’t want to risk jinxing things by revealing full details, so I will just say that if you have been at all worried about the state of the world lately, I’ve enlisted the most powerful thinker, angel, nymph, and fossilized sea urchin available, and they’re now working on the case. You’re welcome.  HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. |
This blog is a promotion-free zone.
As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful. 
I'm an American travel writer dividing my time between California and Seville, Spain. I travel the world seeking intriguing people, quirky places, and outrageously delicious food so I can have the fun of writing about them here.
Don't miss out! SIGN UP HERE to be notified when I publish new posts. Planning a trip? Use the search box below to find out about other places I've written about. 
And check out my other bestselling travel books
Winner of the Firebird Book Award for Travel
BLOG ARCHIVES
April 2026
CATEGORIES
All
|