Luggage is My Life

Found alive by a bright idea

St. Louis, the Arch: Click any image to enlarge

MSU lost that evening, jinxed by our indifference to sports?

Note: I see a lot of men's rooms in my travels. I've started documenting them. This one for the toffs in MSU stadium is really good.

I highly like CLT

Click an image to enlarge and savor the pretty airplanes and their micro-dramas. That's a sushi bar below.

SF: Looks like this 2 th in&out biz traveler

L-r: hotel, overview, airport.

In chronological order

Road trip: Out

L-r: It rained the whole way. Rain so heavy it required metaphors: "cats and dogs." Twelve hours of driving from Rhode Island to mid-Michigan. We came within a micro-second of dying in a high-speed car crash. And didn't: that was the highlight. My life did not flash before my eyes. But time did slow down significantly. Later I saw the end of a rainbow ... as solid as a fence post. The end sat in a field harvested months ago. It wasn't magical. There were no leprechauns. The rainbow dented the mud like a plank. The border crossing was bilingual. Canada was a shortcut (saved us a couple of hours) to East Lansing, MI. Where I donned the colors. And Jane, our matriarch, bought dinner for Simone and me at the University Club, originally the "country club" (think swimming pool, golf and outsiders) for MSU professors. That failed. So they let in the riff-raff: local lawyers and doctors. Better; not great. Today, I think pretty much anyone can join unless you're another species. The food ("it used to be awful!") has aimed straight up. Jane worries about her wrinkles. But her facial structure is cathedral-worthy. CLICK any photo to enlarge and breathe the carbon emissions.

We like Newark, NJ

Despite what our limo driver said.

Simone in French gloves; winter has arrived

Flying to Frederick, Maryland

4 AM wake up, for a flight to BWI, an airport with some second-look-worthy public sculpture. Then a drive to Frederick, MD to speak with the board of the Maryland Humanities Council, an extraordinary brain trust that includes luminaries like Walter Leonard. The small city of Frederick itself was a delightful discovery, maybe the most Halloween-obsessed place I've visited yet, filled with gentrifying pre-Civil War architecture and something both sides could agree on, the need for battlefield medicine. Click any photo to enlarge and hear the cackle of witches.