The Heart Of The Day

Well, Facebook has cut into my blogging time. But since I am living in Mexico I love to keep up with my couchsurfers and friends I have made traveling besides friends left behind in the U.S. People say they prefer face-to-face interactions with friends but in my case that is mostly impossible.

Anyway I’m off on another RTW journey using AirTreks which is less expensive and less trouble than trying to negotiate multiple airline web sites. A friend I met through Couchsurfing will be renting my apartment until April when I return to Oaxaca.

Left Oaxaca Nov 1 for Oregon where I had multiple medical check-ups and in the process missed my flight out to Hong Kong to see son Josh. But I will be seeing him at a family meet-up the end of January on Koh Samui Thailand.

So this is my itinerary this year:
Oaxaca>Oregon
Oregon>Bangok Nov 18
Bangkok>Oman Feb 12
Oman>Istanbul Feb 19
Istanbul>NYC Mar 13
NYC>Oregon Mar 19
Oregon>Las Vegas not scheduled yet…sometime after 1st of April
Las Vegas>Oaxaca middle of April

So if any of you friends out there will be in any of my travel destinations at the same time as I am give a holler!

Tourists looking around for smiles on the subway won’t find them…this is why:

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: June 25, 2007
New York Times

It’s nearly always a mistake to think of the subway as a public conveyance. This is a mistake that out-of-towners often make. They overlook the essential privacy of the subway, and by that I don’t mean the young woman at my end of the car who has made up her face in a compact mirror between 86th Street and Times Square. I mean the very fact that this is my end of the car at my end of the train. It’s 7:30 in the morning, and this isn’t just a subway ride. This is going to work. Nearly all the people on this train are in their usual spots, within a few minutes of their usual time, and the ride is not separable from the larger and more complicated rhythms of our private lives. It is possible to be on this train and not yet be in public.
[read on]

More on the beauty pageant to be staged at Monte Alban: Auditions to be Held April 18 in New York City Toward a Protest with Poise Aimed at Donald Trump and NBC By Cha-Cha Connor Spokesmodel, Popular Assembly of Models for Oaxaca "In solidarity ... [Continue reading this entry]

Good grief! Either I am following trouble around the world or trouble is following me! First a violent demonstration on a university campus in Istanbul...then the tsunami in Thailand...then the coup in Thailand...then the subway strike in ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bob left for Thailand on the 29th. Josh had to work at the restaurant so Amy and I spent New Years Eve drinking wine and champagne...good conversation with my daughter-in-law...and watching "Wedding Crashers." She spent the night and ... [Continue reading this entry]

One of the things I will miss when we leave for Thailand is watching Ellen DeGeneris on television. Her recent reruns of her shows produced in New York City...a stunning view of Columbus Circle through a three story wall ... [Continue reading this entry]

After rack of lamb marinated with fresh oregano, thyme, garlic and olive oil; tender gratin of baby spinach in a bechamel sauce with snow crab and east coast clams; brussel sprouts braised with bacon and deglazed with cream sherry; ... [Continue reading this entry]

and we are liberated!

We are grounded by the subway strike so have been reading more of the biography of Mao by authors Jung Chang, the author of the wonderful three-generation epic "Wild Swans," and her British husband Jon Halliday. What is especially interesting so ... [Continue reading this entry]

Yesterday, as Bob and I stepped out the door of the Thai Consolate on E 52nd St. where we were applying for our visas to Thailand, we were met by about 50 Chinese people holding up banners condemning the beating ... [Continue reading this entry]

A friend from South Africa sent me some geography trivia: The term "The Big Apple" was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s who used the slang expression "apple" for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City ... [Continue reading this entry]

According to the winter issue of BKLYN magazine, Brooklyn, N.Y., barkeep Andy Heidel has drawn a line in the sawdust, posting the following on recent Sundays outside the Patio Lounge in Park Slope: "THE STROLLER MANIFESTO" "What is it with people bringing ... [Continue reading this entry]

Nanny's pushing babies in strollers are everywhere in Brooklyn, we noticed soon after arriving here, so it was no surprise when the New York Times ran a story December 1 called "The Children Are Back" ... "Babies Take Manhattan" a ... [Continue reading this entry]

When we were in southern China last year we spent some time hiking and driving through parts of mountainous Yunnan Province that are populated primarily with, not Han Chinese, but with "minorities." (Their word.) So when I saw that ... [Continue reading this entry]

Last night Arlo Guthrie outdid himself in Carnegie Hall 40th anniversary of his song "Alice's Restaurant." Updated a little of course! What 50's and 60's folkie nostalgia with Pete Seeger (maybe in spirit) in the audience! Arlo was ... [Continue reading this entry]

It's cold and snowy outside and right now I am deep into the recently published biography of Mao Tse Tung by Jung Chang who also some years ago wrote the respected three-generation epic "Wild Swans." Jung, born in China, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Thanksgiving morning Bob took off for the New York Athletic Club and his ritual Starbucks ice-coffee thinking we would have plenty of time to do the turkey before Amy arrived with her mother who was flying in from Denver at ... [Continue reading this entry]

Our son, Greg, flew in from Las Vegas for a long weekend last weekend. It is the first time we have been with more than one of the progeny since I can remember...and was great fun...out to dinner at the ... [Continue reading this entry]

I knew we were living in a country other than the U. S. A when I dropped into a Dunkin Donut shop (hey it's been three years!) for a couple sugared donuts. "I'll have two sugared donuts," I said ... [Continue reading this entry]

It's good to be back "home" in our apartment in Brooklyn from our trip to Washington. Early this morning we walked down a couple blocks to 4th Avenue to watch the NYC marathon runners....after we watched the winners finish ... [Continue reading this entry]

We had been years since we saw Odetta so when Bob read that she would be performing in a Village club we jumped at the chance to get tickets. She walked in dressed in a dramatic multi-colored red and ... [Continue reading this entry]

Looking for a restaurant one afternoon on the Lower East Side, we happened by a tiny bakery with huge savory knishes displayed in the window...potato, kasha, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, mixed vegetable, sweet potato, mushroom...and sweet ones too. The glass window ... [Continue reading this entry]

After getting through Phil & Adri's New York Times and Wall Street Journal that arrive on our stoop every day it is difficult to find time for other reading. However, Amy's mom gave me a book I couldn't refuse. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Around the corner from Josh's apartment in an almost all-Polish neighborhood Bob and I found an authentic Polish restaurant. Blackboards behind the cashier list items in Polish and English. When our food was ready we carefully delivered it ... [Continue reading this entry]

Most everyone in New York is interested in looking stylish. The definition is different, however depending on the neighborhood you are in...whether on the affluent Upper West Side or on the Lower East Side. It also makes a difference ... [Continue reading this entry]

I've never been in a city that has such diverse but tight little neighborhoods. The first question asked by anyone you meet, after what do you do, is where do you live. Soon you know the tenant ... [Continue reading this entry]

A call from Amy: Would you like to run into Manhattan with me to pick up Josh after work tonight? Of course, I said! Bob had already eaten stir-fry at home and preferred to watch the world ... [Continue reading this entry]

There are 13,000 restaurants in New York City and urbanites, with cramped apartments and schedules, often eat out...whether take-out, order in, pizza slices or, on special occasions, in one of the more elite culinary establishments. Eating out at one ... [Continue reading this entry]

Big Onion Tours, the word "onion" being a play on the Big Apple, offers tours of neighborhoods of NYC. We chose the "immigrant tour" which shows how different ethnic groups variously settled and replaced other groups around the ... [Continue reading this entry]

In any given week in the summer you can choose from any four or five street fairs and on this day we chose the Columbus Street Fair on the Upper West Side of Central Park. Stall after stall for ... [Continue reading this entry]