I don’t yet have any specific travel plans for next year, just as I didn’t have any at this time last year.

This time last year, it’d been nearly 6 months since I returned home to New York after living abroad in Bangkok for a spell. Given the circumstances, my chances of getting any extended time off from work the rest of the year were slim, and by the time the annual holiday visit to see friends and family in Michigan had come and gone, I was feeling antsy. Restless. Distracted.

I needed to get out of New York, soon, but making plans, picking a destination, and setting dates was difficult.

Bangkok was still in the rearview mirror of my not-too-distant past, as were all the places we’d visited during our time there. Japan. Taiwan. Malaysia. South Korea. Southern Thailand. I longed to return to Asia, both to places seen and unseen, but now budget constraints and limited vacation days loomed large over our trip plans. We’d have to stay closer to home this time, and while I’d love to one day travel to the Caribbean, Central America, and parts of Canada I’ve yet visited, at the risk of sounding a snob, none of those places carried as much luster at the time. My heart was still in Asia, and to make matters worse I was still in the deep, dark throes of “reverse culture shock”, too; the last thing I wanted to do was travel within the States.

And Then It All Started Coming Together

On January 18, my travel fortunes suddenly changed dramatically. I was essentially handed the keys to the world, and I used them to unlock romantic, faraway places that up to that point were nowhere near my travel radar.

Four months later I was pouring sweat in Sri Lanka on a bench inside the Colombo Fort Railway Station, waiting for the InterCity Express train that would take us inland to Kandy. There we met Kumar, the kind live-in manager of Kandy Cottage. He helped arrange a driver to take us to the ancient rock temples of Dambulla and onwards to imposing Sigiriya rock, which we scaled in spite of oppressive midday heat. The tea tree-covered hills of Nuwara Eliya were next, followed by safari in Tissamaharama, beachcombing along the southern shores, and quiet, rainy days in Galle.

In the Maldives (the Maldives!), we luxuriated in relative exclusivity for a few days on Furanafushi Island before heading to South Africa via Doha. In Johannesburg the legacy of apartheid hit hard, while in Kruger National Park I walked in the hoof prints of giraffes, elephants, and rhinos.

Further south, I felt exhilirated as we rounded the Cape of Good Horn, driving down the western coast of the tip of the Africa and heading back up the eastern. We embarked on an indulgent marathon tour of the Cape Winelands. I fell in love with mall sushi (miss you, Willoughby & Co.), stared wide-eyed at my luxurious accommodations in The Table Bay, and looked upon Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain.

Oddly enough, that day I shared Table Mountain with, amongst many others of course, the fine gentlemen of Uriah Heep and Deep Purple.

Until Finally…

Those five straight weeks of country-hopping held us over through November, when we somewhat randomly packed our bags for Copenhagen, Denmark. There we basked in the hygge of the season, strolling through Christmasy Tivoli Gardens, warming up one afternoon in front of a crackling fireplace with mugs of decadent hot chocolate at Nimb Hotel, and sipping cups of glögg and pints of fragrant Tuborg Julebryg at various pubs around downtown.

We paid a visit to the world’s most famous mermaid; one night we did what needed to be done.

As I sat here in my Brooklyn apartment at this time last year, I could not have dreamed my travels would take me to all of these places… maybe to any of them. I have nothing planned now as I had nothing planned then, but as ever, I know I’ll go somewhere. I can’t wait to find out where.

Photos Copyright Brian Spencer

What do the Web and the Middle Ages have in common?

Use the electronic one to enjoy the other.

One of my favorite, most atmospheric art museums is The Cloisters, which is the medieval arts branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

They are particularly well-known for their period garden, filled with historic herbs that sound so much more elegant with their Latin names….Calamintha nepeta, Tanacetum parthenium, Origanum dictamnus….

On my last visit there, I sat on one of the benches, closed my eyes and listened to the Gregorian chants that were piped through the outdoor speakers into the garden, and enjoyed the chance to drift back into history while firmly ensconced in the modern world.

Now, if I want to dive into gardening at The Cloisters or medieval agriculture or plants in medieval art, I can visit their blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed.  The major blog post author seems to be staff horticulturist Deirdre Larkin, who is featured in this article about the Cloisters gardens in The Herb Companion.

Holy smokes, but do I love the deep dives that you can make into the most obscure subjects, courtesy of the Internet.

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Thirteen acts bringing tradition and innovation from Rajastan to Cuba to Egypt will fill stages at Webster Hall in New York City on January 9th, while up in the Bosotn area twenty artists and bands from Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton traditions mix it up Celtic style that same weekend.

globalFEST is the name of the New York event. Its driving force it to present global music acts well poised for wider notice in North America. . It’s scheduled for a time when the Association of Performing Arts Presenters — the people who book schedules for arts centers and artist series across the continent — are meeting, but the Fest is open to all. Those who purchase tickets will be able to choose among three stages featuring artists including Yoro Ndiaye from Senegal, whose music takes a ballad driven approach to the dance based music mbalax, a style made widely know by Youssou N’Dour, the Pedro Martinez Group, whose music includes traditional Cuban son,and timba as well as jazz, and and Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole, with songs passed down through family generations in Hawaii. The Creole Choir of Cuba will also be there with traditions handed down across generations, in their case through the music of the Haitian community in Cuba. Rhythm of Rajastan will bring music of the homeland of the Gypsy people, and Zikrayat, from Egypt, will highlight the diversity of Arabic culture.

The organizers of globalFEST have noted that within the innovative approaches the artists they present offer. this year there seems to be an especially strong interest in presenting tradition along with innovation. That’s an idea familiar to the people of the Boston Celtic Music Festival.

Artist run and artist founded, BCM Fest, as it is known for short, takes advantage of winter days when many touring artists are home from the road to bring together not only members of the Irish music community that’s widely associated with the Boston area, but artists who work in Scottish, Cape Breton, and other Celtic traditions as well. This years the festival takes place January 7 and 8, with an opening evening featuring both a concert including Long Time Courting, whose repertoire includes both Celtic and American songs, and, in what has become a BCM Fest tradition, the Boston Urban Ceilidh, a high energy dance party which could perhaps best be described as Celtic music meets square dance party meets mosh pit, with really fine music to go along, this year including playing from fiddlers Laura Cortese and Hanneke Cassel. Saturday will be a day filled with concerts and workshops around Harvard Square,. The Festival will conclude with an evening concert at First Parish Church in Harvard Square, featuring the group Halali, comprising three fiddle players and a guitarist, along with special guests.

more about these festivals may be found at

globalFEST website
Boston Celtic Music Festival website

I really can’t recommend watching Roger & Me, Michael Moore’s seminal documentary on the decline of Flint Michigan, during the holiday season.

In hindsight, it was an especially bad idea the other evening. I was watching the movie on my iPad, while my husband was gleefully setting up the brand new giant television that was our holiday gift to each other.

I started feeling really guilty, especially during the parts  when the familes of laid off GM workers were being evicted from their homes mere days before Christmas. I’m totally in Moore’s camp politically, and very much wanted to feel like I was on his side. But a realistically assessing my privileged  circumstances, I realized that at least in terms of comfort, a neutral party would say I’m more like Roger…

All that guilt! What could possibly explain it?

Hopefully you’ve not forgotten that I’m Jewish?

I hadn’t forgotten, but ever since my recent visit to Michigan, I’ve become very interested in its challenges, and particularly those in Detroit.  (That eerie photo above is one I took of Detroit’s GM Renaissance Center, encased in fog.) Hence, my ill-timed screening of Roger & Me, even though I knew it’d probably unleash unfortunate feelings — and also my special interest in the release of Michigan’s Census data the other day. *

So the news for Michigan was not good: the only state to lose population over the past 10 years, and that includes Louisiana.** But here are two important pieces of perspective, if not comfort, both courtesy of The New York Times’ excellent Census coverage:

1. The state’s 0.6% population loss wasn’t all people running for the border.  It’s a net change, which also means that fewer people moved in.
2. In the sour grapes department, the state that grew at the fastest rate in the past decade, Nevada, has actually been hurting badly for the past three years, and people are leaving there now, too.

_{** Puerto Rico also lost population, and a greater percentage too. (It lost 2.2% of its population over the past decade, compared to Michigan’s loss of 0/6%) , but it is a “commonwealth”, not a state.}

As a general rule, airline in-flight magazines are location positive, focusing predominantly on the glitz and the glamour of destinations they fly into.

It’s a rule that’s all but ignored by the in-flight magazine put out by Safi Airways.

Based out of Kabul, this Afghani airline is not out to impress its passengers, most of whom are aid workers, security consultants, journalists, defense contractors, and diplomats.

Instead of providing the standard list driven articles showcasing a city’s best eats, sleeps, and attractions, the Safi Airways in-flight magazine’s articles offer readers grim realism, with real life stories focusing on uniqueness of a country that has long been at war.

On one page you may find an ad for mine-resistant sport-utility vehicles; on another, photos of  bullet-riddled tourist sites.

Featured stories in past editions include ‘Live Entertainment in Kabul: Dog Fighting’ (rest assured, the fight is not to the death, only until one has proven dominance over the other) and ‘Heroin Hell Kabul and the Way Out’ (a photo essay about the Wadan Drug Treatment Center).

Even luxury hotels aren’t immune, as this fascinating review reveals “The rooms are individually air-conditioned, accessorized with amenities you will find in four-star hotels abroad, sheets are clean, view from the room is nice, and – after the suicide bombing that took place – security measures have been implemented.”

Anyone flying out to Kabul on Safi Airways will find a copy of their latest in-flight magazine in the seat pocket.

The rest of us less adventurous souls can find the Safi Airline In-flight Magazine online.