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Boys in the Boat
Posted on August 24, 2013 2 Comments
Sipping a tall glass of Czech Republic pilsner in a Prague cafe the other evening, I began to notice how extraordinarily smooth the glass felt in my hand. I turned it around and examined it more closely, when suddenly it dawned on me: It wasn’t the glass that was smooth — it was my hand. […]
Siren Songs
Posted on August 18, 2013 Leave a Comment
“Then, for coffee, I pulled up a chair in the smoke-and-coffee-stained Café Hawelka, where intellectuals like Leon Trotsky once stewed. The decor was circa-1900. Old man Hawelka himself was snoozing on a Biedermeier chair near the bar. His granddad could well have served a Mélange (as they would have called their cappuccino) to Trotsky, Hitler, […]
Good days, bad days
Posted on August 16, 2013 4 Comments
Try as we might to avoid them, mistakes are inevitable — traveling in a foreign land is never problem free. Homer was pretty emphatic on that point (i.e. the day the temptress Circe turned all of Ulysses’ shipmates into pigs, or that singular unpleasantness with the giant one-eyed cannibal…) Some things just can’t be sugar-coated. […]
Raise a glass
Posted on August 14, 2013 Leave a Comment
Climb with us now aboard the bus we chartered to safely transport our rowing team to and from a winery in the hills of northwest Italy. Plus a side-trip to a castle to visit the local nobility. We’re at the World Masters Games in Torino, and it’s the evening of our last day of competition. […]
Those Alaskan girls …
Posted on August 14, 2013 Leave a Comment
If I was asked to write a press release, reporting back to media outlets in Alaska exactly what transpired during the four days of rowing events at the just-concluded 2013 World Masters Games in Torino, Italy — as in fact I was — it would look pretty much like the report attached below. Which is […]
Crossing the Alps
Posted on August 13, 2013 Leave a Comment
Years ago a good friend gave me a book of poems, reflections and field sketches by the German writer Hermann Hesse, who most college students of my generation knew primarily as the author of Siddhartha. The book was titled Wandering,and it celebrated exactly that. It began in narrative verse with Hesse describing the smells and […]
First principles
Posted on August 9, 2013 Leave a Comment
“… Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses,” 1833 The first purpose of this public journal (or at least a convenient excuse for it) will be, simply: To report on the collective experience of about three dozen Alaskans, myself included — all members of the […]
Rowing with Ulysses 