That’s what I kept asking myself as I was watching the PBS Nova episode Petra, Lost City of Stone, which I somehow missed when it first aired six years ago. This amazing archaeological site in Jordan competes in quality with… Read More ›
Travel
A Moroccan teen blogs about linguistics (and other matters…).
How many Americans know that Morocco is in Africa? Probably not very many. I’m guessing 4%. And half of those know Morocco’s location only because they’ve seen the world’s best movie (Casablanca, of course) and have paid attention to the geography…. Read More ›
What are your favorite poems?
What are your favorite poems? Is an epic poem too long to count as an answer to this question? I hope not — but I’ll play it safe and split the difference. My favorite pair of poems are… drumroll, please…… Read More ›
How about a nice, relaxing cross-country bus ride from NYC to LA?
“Miles on the MBTA.” That was the clever (but unobtrusive) title of Miles Taylor’s original blog, written for years while he was a high-school student in Cambridge. His goal was to visit and review every station on the Red, Blue,… Read More ›
Seattle 4: The Food
Seafood and Asian food — that’s what you would expect in Seattle, amirite? Well, one of two ain’t bad: we did have lots of good seafood. The first night we went to RockCreek Seafood, which was spectacularly good. It turned… Read More ›
Seattle 3: The City (with insufficient rain)
This was supposed to be a mini-vacation along with Hannah and Ben’s wedding, but was it? Yes, it counted as one in my book, even though there wasn’t a whole lot of down time. Here are a few of the… Read More ›
Seattle 2: The Wedding
As I indicated yesterday, our principal reason for this long weekend in Seattle was to attend the wedding of our niece, Hannah. Although I had worried that I would be overwhelmed by the large number of guests (over a hundred),… Read More ›
Seattle 1: Chihuly
Barbara and I are here in Seattle for our niece’s wedding and a mini-vacation, while Barbara’s sister Brenda house-sits and cat-sits. William appreciates her long fingernails, which are designed for scritching. Anyway, all the details about Seattle will come in… Read More ›
Greek to Me
The best book of the year! Yes, I know that the year is only half over, but I’m still going to nominate Mary Norris’s Greek to Me as the best book of the year. Equal parts travelogue, memoir, mythology, and… Read More ›
Not a very large fraction of the whole world
By the way, MapLoco, someone should tell you that Puerto Rico is part of the United States and not a separate country, no what what Donald Trump thinks. Other than that (and a couple of other similar gaffes), this is… Read More ›