For most of us, travel to a beautiful Caribbean island is a life’s dream, something for which we save, for which we plan. We want it to be perfect, that island scene from the movies: clean white sands, beautiful turquoise waters teeming with life, a tropical drink and a sunset adding some color. We are…
There is a difference between a country and a nation. A country is a political entity made up of a government and laws. A nation, on the other hand, is a people with a common identity. Sint Maarten is a relatively new country, having existed as an autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of the…
This is the center of Toulouse. That statement is true both from a literal standpoint - the Place du Capitole is about halfway between the Saint-Etienne cathedral and Saint-Sernin basilica, the two most important religious sites (arguably) in the city - and from a practical one. This is, after all, both Toulouse’s current city hall…
A couple years back, I wrote a story about William Henry Harrison, the shortest serving president in US history. I visited his mausoleum and a monument to the man outside of Cincinnati, and had a grand time learning and writing about this basically forgotten president outside of trivia contests. (Read the story here.) And then,…
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I’ll admit a few things here. Boise, Idaho has never been on my travel radar. I doubt I’d have been able to point to where the city was on a map of Idaho before coming. And prior to this trip to visit friends who…
On the morning of September 14, 1814, a 35 year old Francis Scott Key stood on the British warship HMS Tonnant. He was there to negotiate for the release of an American prisoner captured during this, the third year of the War of 1812. During the prior day, and throughout the night, a British fleet…
The Ohio Statehouse is a beautiful building. The crown jewel of downtown Columbus - itself a reasonably pretty place, although mostly empty on the day of my visit - it gleams white behind carefully planted flowers and trees. Its rotunda, built without a full dome, is iconic atop the columned facade. Inside, the building is…
Last year, I learned and wrote about William Henry Harrison, the shortest-serving US President, from his memorial outside of Cincinnati. (Click here to read that piece.) So when planning my trip to Cleveland this year, it came as a pleasant surprise to me that America’s second shortest-serving President, James Garfield, had his memorial there, along…
In his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding describes what happens when the worst of human nature comes to a tiny island paradise. Rather than work together, a group of people devolves into little better than animals, descending into a savagery that undoes any attempts at civility. And so it could have been…
For most of human history, the concept of “value” was immediate. My goat has value because it can be traded for x amount of money now, or because it will feed my family for x amount of time now. And for most of human history, that was the way we assigned value to nature. An…