Aerial Views of Shanghai and Stuff

Of all the places your stuff could be from, Shanghai ranks at the top. It’s the place where new things are packed into innumerable colored boxes bigger than your living room. Those suburban living room sized boxes are stacked by the thousands like Legos…

Pigeons and Buddha

How many pigeons? How long did it take you? Did your eyes deceive you?  (answer below) (Don’t count the tiny chunk of a tail on the far left) Did you count ten?     There are eleven pigeons. I looked at this image (it…

Notes from Seoul

I find this a perfect moment to be completely inappropriate. In a story. On the way back from Nepal last year, our layover in Seoul was 18 hours. Once you’ve been trekking, living with the locals in the back country and without watches (or…

Christmas in Summer

This is the second year that my immediate family has kissed off the regular Christmas routine and headed to warmer climes. Last year we hit 4 theme parks in 5 days in San Diego. This year we went a little outside the box. We…

Time and Nepal Cartography 101

After a week home only a small handful of people have been able to ask me about the trip. The stories are beginning to unfold, but I am still very much in re-entry mode, so even now it mostly comes out all jumbled. I remember that…

From Plans to Photos

I was going to write this post about trash cleanup volunteering in Tapting. I am excited to get into that part, but so much needs to happen face to face that planning is not moving forward right at this moment and there is not…

Visual Post Story #1

[I know, the photo runs over the edge, but I needed it this size so you can see details] I took this as a simple documentary photo. I meant to capture the group, pre-dawn, in front of Everest, getting ready for an event. I…

Over East Asia

On occasion I think of a description or passage that existed in one of my early drafts, and I don’t remember if it made the final cut. Then I sprint to my nearest copy and flip through pages until I find the answer. Here…