Category: Travel
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Review: If You Turn to Look Back
We’re with him now, vibrant present looking back at blurry past, teased as much from this vital trip as from old photos, journals, and letters. He has three more stops to make.
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Live on, Scarlet Tanager
The Scarlet Tanager mostly hangs out in the upper canopy, making it a rare sighting for hikers in the Shenandoah National Park. This one visited us in the lower canopy, hunting insects for his mate or flashing his red plumage to make her love him. Mohan later rendered it in pen and color pencil. It…
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Poe’s Pigeon: “Poop Galore”
My son asks how my satire of The Raven is coming along. It’s stalled, I say, and explain the problem. The first seven stanzas, more than a third of the poem, have nothing to do with the bird. Yet the inspiration to write this satire flaps all around me, every day, unavoidable reminders of their own absurdity:…
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Lockdown Countdown
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last night announced a nationwide lockdown, freezing 1.3 billion citizens in place starting at midnight tonight (coinciding with Ugadi, the first day of the New Year on the Hindu calendar). What a relief! For weeks I’ve been grappling with the lack of an end to coronavirus anxiety. Now we know.…
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The United States Department of State
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by
Referred to as the State Department, State, and DOS, the U.S. Department of State has recently been called by an unfitting new label. I don’t care about the insult. Hearing it called “deep state department” glances off as a meaningless jab. I’ve long inured myself against the public bluster. What concerns me more is the…
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Gandhi at 150
It’s been 150 years since Gandhi’s birth, initiating a circle that goes round today. This year Gandhi Jayanti falls on the fourth day of Navratri, and so we’ve made his iconic ashram part of our annual display. It’s nearly finished, this replica of his simple home on the banks of the Sabarmati River in Gujarat.…
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Holidays Upon Us
It’s that time of year! The lights are out and the home is warm. For the next weeks and months we’ll enjoy the soft glow of string lights. Here in Western India Navratri begins tomorrow. It lasts nine nights. Throughout the period, in this part of the country, we’ll recognize the victory of good over…
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Swipe-N-Wipe?
The Internet can solve a lot of problems, but not this one. Spotted this sign in heavy traffic on the stretch between Navi Mumbai and Mumbai proper. Never did spot the facility itself as promised, 100 meters on. Or was that the place where all the cyborgs were lined up, that most human of all…
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It Rains, It Pours
Tuesday I flew to Delhi, this kitchen knife concealed in my shoulder bag. Security missed the 5-½” blade. Wednesday my phone blew up during a seminar I was conducting with 90 colleagues, a deluge of messages from Mumbai, much of the city underwater, including the 5km stretch between my son’s elementary school and home. A…
Ben East Books 