A few days ago Cyrus asked, “Hey mom can you do a new job?” Confused, I replied, “What do you mean?” He explained: “I want to go back on the round-the-world adventure. So I need you to not do your normal job and become a scientist instead for a while so you can build us…
I had forgotten how enormous the Forbidden City is. Thank goodness. If I had remembered, I may not have so enthusiastically dragged my husband and kids there. Still let-lagged. In a heat wave. Or at least I would have insisted we take a taxi, instead of walk, from our (allegedly) conveniently located hotel, so we could…
We are driving to the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu. We’re out of the city, mostly on straight roads now, so I’m braving the use of my laptop as we drive through a thunderstorm. No plan yet as to how we’ll stay dry (we probably won’t) while we explore the wall, but we’re OK…
The Pyramid of Djoser does not look like the kind of pyramid you are picturing in your mind right now. It’s not a smooth, pointed shape with clean lines reaching toward the heavens, angles aligned with the sun’s rays. It’s not the shape that has become ubiquitous with the very idea of Egypt. Djoser’s pyramid, also known…
Somewhere in my research for our time in Dublin, I stumbled upon an article about Kevin Woods, the Last Leprechaun Whisperer of Ireland. (And yes, it is capitalized.) As his website describes, in 1989 a leprechaun suit, bones, and gold coins were found on Carlingford mountain in Co Louth Ireland. No was was more skeptical than the…
God as a person. I’ve always loved this about Christianity. I love the idea that God wanted to be close to people, so went to all the trouble to be born as a baby, and took all that time to grow up into a man who could walk and talk with people, and sit and…
“Mama. God needs a snack.” Asa, our three-year-old, pressed his face against a rectangular plexiglass box, fixated on the statue of Jesus lying inside. He couldn’t stop staring at the plaster God-man there, bloodied and gaunt and grimacing – and, according to Asa’s diagnosis, in urgent need of a granola bar or some Goldfish crackers.…
