For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with travel, perhaps a manifestation of my Celtic-Gypsy soul. Even in utero I was transported across the country from Boston to Los... read more
From a museum library to a prison library, I’ve worked in all kinds of libraries. I’ve also traveled to many countries such as the U.K, Russia and France to see their libraries and... read more
I try to make conversation with the furred woman who takes too long to arrange herself to my right in the window seat next to me, I fail. I reach down to the... read more
Some bored friend of mine had driven me to the airport and we talked about boredom. We felt it but remained skeptical about it defining our generation. I said I was keeping an... read more
“Bet you don’t know what they’re saying,” the Frenchman said to me in accented English as he clicked on the laptop that sat on his desk. Intrigued, I listened. To my surprise it... read more
The tall thin man with the wispy white beard proceeded his wife down the aisle. He was schlepping two black suitcases and a round black hatbox; she grasped a large Bloomingdale’s holiday shopping... read more
When I read that Thomas Mann likely chose the name Tadzio because it held the word Tod, which means death, I felt satisfied, but then I noticed a gauzy cloth had fastened itself... read more
He sat in the window seat, immersed in a magazine. I registered little about him other than he’d crossed his legs, he wore cuffed business slacks, and his thick hair was graying at... read more
The commercial pilot has pretty well completed the transition from hero to robot that Roland Barthes explored in 1955 in his essay “The Jet-Man.” The jetliner itself has lost the appeal that once... read more
“Over there is your airplane, sir.”
The Munich airport employee had checked my one-way ticket to Rome, then gestured to the bright tarmac of that reflected a bright winter day. There, over a ways... read more
