PBS and NPR

I don’t miss having television.  It has been 2 years now, almost, since I’ve had a TV.  I do, however, miss a few key shows and stations.  Here is what I long for:
-News Hour with Jim Lehrer
-Washington Week in Review
-The Food Network
-NPR (any of it, any time – especially Storycorps but NOT Car Talk)
-Comedy Central’s [...]

Samskara

The imprints of everything we’ve done, said, thought, lived.  It all leaves a mark.  The reactions we have to certain people, the way we deal with stress, our exercise routine, our eating habits.
These things become indelible marks and our reactions are the pathways we’ve permitted our brains to create, to respond.
My yoga teacher training last [...]

Jack’s POV

A post from my friend, Jack, who visited me here in Taiwan…..
I had been traveling for close to three weeks already, which isn’t long except that I was on the move every four days and had to plan everything in advance. Most of my interactions were with non English speakers whose desire to help often [...]

Sigh.

Sun showers.  Glimpses of green loveliness between the cracks of pavement.  Smiles from Taiwanese walkers.  Three mornings in a row of runs.  Lighter food.  Less sugar.
Waking up awake.  Even after only five and a half hours of sleep.
A nudging of clarity.  Around the corner I find part of me hiding, head peeking around the corner.  [...]

The element of surprise

I have not posted in forever, it seems, though it is likely closer to three weeks. Post ideas have been flitting through my mind, but it seems the minute one begins to make an impression, indicating that it might make it to a full-blown written paragraph, it fades away and I am left with [...]

Lounge Access

Today marks the one hundred and twelfth out-of-body experience of this summer.  China contained a plethora of them as did some of the frantic traveling between there and here, back in Hong Kong.  Completing the loop of the summer is only fitting and I can’t think of a better way than right where I’m sitting.
In [...]

Summers

Over the years, I have had quite the ambivalent relationship with my hometown and, more specifically, my homecoming.   This homecoming usually occurs in the summer – as a student and now as a teacher, this is the time of year for family and friends.
Leaving college after my first year away to return to little Clarence [...]

Adopted Parents

From June 21, 2009…..
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“We are not French, my dear.  We are Swiss.  From Geneva, actually.”
It was clear from the beginning that Claudio had no qualms making his heritage explicit.  It wasn’t until later that we realized this candor extended to all aspects of interactions with him.
We met Claudio and Rita (or Anna and Michel as [...]

why shower?

Whenever I travel in developing countries, I come face to face with my western attachment to personal hygiene.  My childhood days of once or twice a week baths are long behind me, and I have been quite happy to shower every evening for the last twenty years.  Here in China, if I am lucky I [...]

Running without air

An attempt to catch up a bit from the summer travels.  Thanks to the Great Chinese Firewall, I hadn’t been able to post the whole time I was traveling there.
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Aching body, no yoga for days, and a wake-up to a hazy Guilin morning means that I am due for a run.  Grudgingly pulling on my [...]