It's an awful feeling, being alone. Your thoughts ping back and forth, like a mental game of bumper pool. Staying productive? Staying on schedule? Sticking to my routine? How much social media? How about the cellphone?  Texting, emailing, zooming, surfing? How about writing & recording? How about walking, driving, meditating? How about age, I'm in the COVID death zone.  This is how it began, the signs were ubiquitous.  " FREE COVID-19 TESTING, HAMMONASSET STATE PARK, 8AM TO 4PM, SUNDAY THRU SATURDAY." I said to Julie, "we should do that, why not, it shouldn't hurt and we'll be supporting the Governor's initiative to improve the state's database, that's good for everyone." I decided to do a trial run and check the wait time before Julie took a test. It's a Saturday, the line is long, I wait almost an hour before entering the testing tent. I complete a simple form, name, address, phone, email, age, gender, and a few health question...

Montenegro is a hidden gem, a tiny Balkan country on the Adriatic Sea, bordered by Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Albania. I was stationed in her capital, Podgorica, a charming city of red roofs, fabulous food, charming cafes, and extraordinarily attractive people, tall and beautiful, both men and women. The Adriatic is a sailors paradise, with calm blue water, and a rugged coastline dotted with inhabited islands, especially off the coast of Dubrovnik, Croatia. I was working with the timber industry, we were repositioning nationalized sawmills for resale to the private sector.  I worked and socialized with a mix of Montenegrins, Russians, Croatians, and Serbians, now that was an experience, When they sat in a local cafe they ordered Vodka by the bottle, shot glasses all around, and water on the side, that was for the pussies.  These guys spoke broken English with accents so strong I needed interpretation. They loved to tell stories about life under the strongma...

 I didn't take this photo, but I could have! Kazaks living outside of Almaty and Astana, their two largest cities, often live on the steppe, that vast wasteland, and trade route between Europe and Asia. Here, life is hard, but life is real. The people respect each other and support each other, there are no fences. On the steppe, there are no police, no courts, no lawyers. These people take care of their own, both good and bad. Disputes are settled on the spot.  Once I was visiting a cotton farmer on the steppe, I asked him about lawlessness on this vast land far from the authority of cities? His toothless grin preceded a story about a horse-thief. On the steppe animals range free, the horses, sheep, goats, yaks, and camels wander miles from the farm but always find their way back to water and feed. There are no branding irons, farmers know their stock, even when there are hundreds or thousands of them. When a thief is caught there is negotiation, usually an exchange of another...

She was probably in her early fifties but looked twenty years older as she shuffled around the room bent over at a ninety-degree angle and muttering to herself in Urdu. I was in the Marriott Lahore, arguably the best hotel in Pakistan. My sponsor, USAID, provided a modest per diem for consultants, barely enough to cover necessities. As usual, I upgraded at my own expense for security, comfort, and convenience. Pakistan, like most Muslim countries, is misunderstood in the developed world. I was there doing economic development work under a foreign aid grant. Part of a team of American ex-pats working for a small consulting group retained by USAID to implement an agribusiness competitiveness project. The COP, Chief of Party, had a PhD in economics from Harvard and was a brilliant, if not reckless, project manager.   At first, I didn’t feel it, that strange sensation that comes over you when first entering a new country. I knew Pakistan was Muslim, I was well briefed on its history go...

It's said, written, felt, shouted, and whispered millions of times a day in every language on earth but how many of us have any idea what we're talking about? "Love is when you choose to be at your best when the other person is not at their best." Wintley Phipps Think about that, and how hard it is to put into practice. Love is not an emotion, that's easy, love is doing, that's hard. Today's blog came to mind yesterday when attending a memorial service for someone who was important to me during a challenging period of my life. The Phipps definition of Love was the perfect metaphor, my friend had always been at her best when I was not and that made all the difference in our friendship. During this pandemic it's important to be at our best, it's important to understand that friends, family, and colleagues may not be at theirs.  Your best means patience, understanding, and support. It means being there when others aren't. We're not out of the ...

 My body traveled, my soul took me there. It's difficult to separate body and soul but C.S. Lewis does a pretty good job of it. What we think, what we decide, what we feel, that's soul;  what we do is body. My travels to exotic places didn't change my body, but my soul reinvented itself over and over changing who I was and how I perceived the world.  I've read about places and cultures but never understood them until I went there, lived with the people, and experienced their dreams and fears, so different from my own. Travel softens the edges of your humanity, you become more empathetic as you realize there is more than one way to live. It's not always your way or the highway it's your way and their way, parallel universes spinning in the same direction by differing means. I'm often asked what was my favorite country during my travels, that's the wrong question. The question should be why did I drop a life of comfort and convenience for one of adventure ...