I like Blue Highways and off-the-trail attractions.
I was in Cleveland.
So I examined exhibits for two hours, the only visitor at the Dittrick Museum of Medical History.
19th Century autopsy
Located on the third floor of the Allen Memorial Medical Library at Case Western Reserve University, the Dittrick is small, but immensely informative. Medical instruments (photo below), a [...]
(Continued from yesterday)
Madrid’s Plaza de Cibeles
We walk aimlessly but happily for the next five hours, strolling along cobble-stoned, curving streets, the planning of which must date back to a time when right angles were irrelevant or distasteful. Each small block reveals many restaurants, so many that we suspect Madrileños must live in kichenless homes. [...]
It was 20 hours from the time we awoke in San Francisco on Thursday morning to our next prone position in Madrid. Taking into account the mandated starts, stops, curious pauses, and fluid movements, our crossing nine time zones in just over twice as many hours did not seem either inefficient or onerous. [...]
Business is slow at the Marin County Indian restaurant that Ram owns. In my opinion, he should take this time to do some cleaning in the back, but instead he leans on an elbow and tells me about his last visit to Delhi.
“A friend whose car I am borrowing is warning me if the [...]
More of my trip south from Naples Airport, during which my driver, a 40-ish local with no pretensions about his hometown, his country, or his government, continued his expatiation on his hometown, his country, and his government.
On Cultural History:
Italy has been conquered by others many times. For 200 years (I checked: 1504-1707 it was [...]
A few minutes after leaving Naples Airport, my driver, a 40-ish local with no pretensions about his hometown, his country, or his government, began a 46-km exegesis on life in the south of Italy.
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Drive north in the belly of Oregon through long, rolling rise-and-falls, seer-suckered by sagebrush, past scruff and cattle, persevering on US 97 until you find a road at Madras that leads eastward toward a tiny brown square on your AAA map labeled Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. -After the intermittent, [...]
There are sage pronouncements that should never be ignored.
In his 1956 short story collection, A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren wrote: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s.” I have always avoided faux physicians at poker palaces, but once, after nearly two handfuls of [...]
One thousand words…
We scheduled our trip down the Keys so as to avoid the human embarrassments that attend Spring Break. We sought spectacular sunsets, coral reefs, beachside conversation.
We came for the waters. We were misled.
We didn’t know that the Florida colleges let out their students a week early, so that they will [...]
Everglades City, FL
I stood on the bottom coast of Florida, with the Gulf offshore, mangrove and grassy everglades in every other direction, two hours to Miami, but times away from big town currency and gloss. There are no big boxes, chain motels, or fast food franchises in Everglades City. It doesn’t look like Interstate Everyplace, [...]
