What Is the Camino de Santiago? The Camino de Santiago is a road that Roman Catholic pilgrims and others have walked for about 1, 200 years. The word camino means “trail,” “way,” “road,” "path," or …
Climate Activism: Paying Attention & Learning
The grim news, dear friends, is that we have only about ten years to save the Earth’s atmosphere from becoming so damaged that there would be no possibility of its recovery. That’s 2020 to …
Continue Reading about Climate Activism: Paying Attention & Learning
Woke: The Education of a Climate Change Activist
About six months before COVID-19 changed our world forever, I was house sitting in Albuquerque, NM. Somehow I learned there was to be a Climate Strike demonstration. Gee, I thought, it’s …
Continue Reading about Woke: The Education of a Climate Change Activist
Opinion: How to Get to Conversational Equity
Three of us sat at a outside café in a charming town on the California coast. I was in my last weeks of a house sit in nearby Sebastopol CA. A breeze blew from the Pacific and the air was fragrant …
Continue Reading about Opinion: How to Get to Conversational Equity
The Glory that Is Santiago’s Cathedral
I’ve been to Santiago de Compostela in Spain six times, beginning in 2008. In legend, the city was established in the 9th century AD as the burial place for the Apostle James. (He's known in English …
Continue Reading about The Glory that Is Santiago’s Cathedral
A Unique House Sit in Spain: Ribadiso Albergue on the Camino de Santiago
There’s hardly a more tranquil place on Earth. And I was lucky enough to be there, in a sort-of house-sitting capacity, in May. …
Continue Reading about A Unique House Sit in Spain: Ribadiso Albergue on the Camino de Santiago
*Santa Fe, NM: The Pilgrimage to Chimayó
It’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, at Easter. How can I refuse an invitation to walk the eight miles from the tiny village of Nambé to el Sanctuario de Chimayó? It’s the largest annual pilgrimage in America! …
Continue Reading about *Santa Fe, NM: The Pilgrimage to Chimayó
*PHOTO ESSAY: An Incomparable Dump—Island Recycling on Whidbey
One day while house sitting on Whidbey Island, I notice the recycling boxes in my homeowners’ tidy garage are filling up. I’ll be conscientious, I decide. I google and find the address for Island …
Continue Reading about *PHOTO ESSAY: An Incomparable Dump—Island Recycling on Whidbey
*PHOTO ESSAY: People’s Art on Whidbey Island
Certainly an advantage to being a house sitter in a new community, rather than a tourist, is that I have unrestricted time to mosey through market and residential areas that aren’t featured in Chamber …
Continue Reading about *PHOTO ESSAY: People’s Art on Whidbey Island
*HOUSE SITTING: On Whidbey Island
I’m house sitting in a beautiful home in the town of Langley on Whidbey Island in Washington State, way up at the northwest tip of America where it’s only a giant’s step into Canada. A large, mature, …