New Mexico Road Trip - Cloudcroft to Albuquerque (Day 6)
New Mexico Road Trip - Cloudcroft to Albuquerque (Day 6)

We drove for about two and a half hours to reach Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. The first twenty minutes or so of the drive, down from the heights of Lincoln National Forest, were pretty and filled with trees. For the next two hours, our route took us along the east and then north sides of the Tularosa Basin, home of the White Sands Missile Range. The route was, in a word, desolate. Driving for two hours with basically nothing in any direction left me feeling isolated, as if our car’s interior was the entire world.

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Book Review of The Three-Body Problem Trilogy by Liu Cixin
Book Review of The Three-Body Problem Trilogy by Liu Cixin

This science fiction trilogy begins against the backdrop of the real-life Cultural Revolution in China, which occurred from approximately 1966 to 1976. The commentary, details, and perspectives offered about that time period are interesting and are told through the eyes of the author, who lived his formative years during this experience.

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New Mexico Road Trip - Cloudcroft’s Sunspot Observatory and Trestle Trail (Day 5)
New Mexico Road Trip - Cloudcroft’s Sunspot Observatory and Trestle Trail (Day 5)

We spent the fifth day of our trip exploring spots very near to our accommodation in Cloudcroft, nestled in the Lincoln National Forest. In fact, one of our destinations was even walkable from our B&B! You would think that our elevation in Cloudcroft - about 8,600 feet - was plenty high enough but no, we headed further up into the mountains, a far cry from the prior day’s visit to the low elevation of the desert!

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Book Review of The Essence of Nathan Biddle by J. William Lewis
Book Review of The Essence of Nathan Biddle by J. William Lewis

Life has not been easy for Kit Biddle, which is evident from the opening pages of The Essence of Nathan Biddle. Six years prior, Kit's beloved and special cousin, Nathan Biddle, had been sacrificed by his father in a modern-day rendition of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac.

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New Mexico Road Trip - Three Rivers Petroglyphs and White Sands National Park (Day 4)
New Mexico Road Trip - Three Rivers Petroglyphs and White Sands National Park (Day 4)

We have both had multiple opportunities as children and adults to view various petroglyphs around the United States and still find them fascinating and mesmerizing. For those less familiar, a petroglyph is a general term for any (human-made) rock carving, typically noteworthy for those from the pre-historic era. Petroglyphs, often referred to as “carvings” outside of the United States, were often made by using a chisel and hammerstone (or similar objects) to carve away the surface of the rock-face, leaving behind the lighter-colored rock underneath, thus illuminating the image.

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Book Review of The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin
Book Review of The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin

The Speed of Mercy immediately introduces a number of strong female characters that range in age from youth to elderly and are spaced across the two time periods through which the novel moves. The book is about friendships among women and their protection for each other - in a physical sense as well as in an emotional, a psychological, and even a magical way.

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New Mexico Road Trip - Artesia to Cloudcroft (Day 3)
New Mexico Road Trip - Artesia to Cloudcroft (Day 3)

For those readers unfamiliar with Roswell, it holds a place in popular imagination for some or as practically a holy mecca for others. What is certain is that in 1947, something crashed to the earth and a cattle rancher discovered it in his field, located about 75 miles outside of the city of Roswell.

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Book Review of I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde
Book Review of I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde

Salem, Massachusetts, is home to year-round witchery, a phenomena that shows up in most cities only around Halloween. The historic city is a mecca for those who are fascinated by the idea of witches, interested in the 330 year old history of the witch trials, and of course represents ongoing debate about the role of women throughout history and how the claim of witchcraft was used to subjugate and control the ‘weaker sex’, as it were.

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Book Review of The Real Valkyrie by Nancy Marie Brown
Book Review of The Real Valkyrie by Nancy Marie Brown

In the 1800s, a Viking burial site was unearthed in Birka, Sweden. The burial included a Viking ship, weaponry, game pieces, horses and riding accessories, and other tools. The grave was documented as that of a Viking warrior, as evidenced by the contents of the burial. As Brown shares in her book, most “sexing” (that is, determination of whether a skeleton is male or female) throughout the history of archaeology has been sexing by metal. That is to say, where weapons are found, it is deemed to be a male, where jewelry is found, female. There are a number of reasons why the field of archaeology has used this approach even as DNA testing has emerged, and Brown provides an interesting overview of this process.

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New Mexico Road Trip - El Paso to Artesia (Day 1)
New Mexico Road Trip - El Paso to Artesia (Day 1)

The Guadalupe Mountains stand as a big, bulky mass rising out of the otherwise endlessly flat landscape of west Texas. They are startling and unexpected. The mountain range is also enormous, home to the highest peak in all of Texas, Guadalupe Peak, which measures 8,751 feet. For anyone who has ever been in a desert, grassland, or anywhere else that is very, very flat, you have likely experienced the inability to understand size and distance. Without any reference points, a mountain can appear close, and you can still spend an hour or more driving towards it. This was definitely our experience of these particular mountains!

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New Mexico Road Trip Overview - 1 Week in the American Desert
New Mexico Road Trip Overview - 1 Week in the American Desert

Enchanting is a word often used to describe New Mexico. I’m not certain that the English language has the right word to describe New Mexico, but that one might come closest.

In my years living on the East Coast of the United States, I have come across very few people who have visited New Mexico. Periodic stories emerge in the news about Americans who purportedly think New Mexico is in Mexico. True or exaggerated, those stories hit a very real nerve: New Mexico is probably underappreciated as a destination in the United States.

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Book Review of The Impudent Ones by Marguerite Duras
Book Review of The Impudent Ones by Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras is the nom de plume of Marguerite Donnadieu (and later Marguerite Antelme when she married), who lived from 1914 to 1996. The Impudent Ones was her first novel and, until now, is the only one that has not been translated into English.

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11 Tips: How to Survive (and Thrive) This Winter
11 Tips: How to Survive (and Thrive) This Winter

For anyone who has been reading our blog for a while, you’ve seen them: the little kicks and punches I throw in the direction of winter. Sure, winter has its sunny spots (pun intended) like unexpectedly warm days popping up every so often to remind us that the season will eventually end. Of course, most of the unseasonably warm days are during the work week because winter always has the last laugh (I did not fact check this statement, but it feels accurate).

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12 Favorite Reads of 2020
12 Favorite Reads of 2020

How many among us add “Read more books” to our New Year’s Resolutions? Every year, I set a personal goal in my Goodreads app, not so much to ensure I read a certain number of books, though that is certainly the surface goal, but to keep focused on my goal of reading and exploring new authors and new ideas. Some years I hit my goal, some years I don’t. Some books are really heavy and long and others are quicker reads. Regardless, every year certain books stick with me for different reasons. Sometimes I am enraptured by beautiful, lyrical language, other times a new perspective or new window into history or a subject changes forever the way I think.

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Reflections on 2020: Our Year In Review
Reflections on 2020: Our Year In Review

3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Happy New Year! 2020 started off with the great expectations that accompany a new decade. New Year’s resolutions seemed to come with an added dose of resolve.

Personally, we were coming out of 2019, a year of a record five trips, four of which were to new countries, and nearing our blog’s one year anniversary. We had five more trips planned for 2020, the year ahead - Italy, Iceland (for a second time), Utah, Colonial Williamsburg in our home state of Virginia, and a return to Oak Island, North Carolina for a beach Christmas. We were last-minute cramming Italian lessons on Duolingo, an effort that brought back distant memories of college Italian classes. We had started preliminary planning for 2021 trips with a hefty travel guide for Japan adorning our night stand.

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Book Review of The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Book Review of The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

Lerner draws a generational line from those coming-of-age in the late 1990s, an era of creature comforts and when youth could be disaffected by meaninglessness, pre-smart phone distractions, to the present. What happened to ‘lost boys’ exemplified by the character of Darren Eberheart? Or, in reverse: What is the matter with (some) adult - predominantly white - men? Where in the recesses of their past did they take a wrong turn?

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Book Review of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Book Review of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

That On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was writen by an author who is primarily a poet will not surprise anyone who turns its pages. The love of language, the descriptions, the musings are all tell-tale signs of a poet at heart.

Beautiful and stunning are two words that come to mind after finishing this novel in less than 24-hours. The world it portrays is all-encompassing and fully absorbed me. But this novel is not about sunny beauty but the beauty that can be found in life's darkest recesses, in its losses, in its pain, and and it's determination to keep moving forward in spite of it all.

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Book Review of Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Book Review of Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington

The auto-biography moves chronologically from Washington's earliest memories and experiences on the Burroughs farm as an enslaved child and his family's relocation to West Virginia upon receipt of their freedom. Washington's first-person account of life for an enslaved and, then, formerly enslaved child seeking to gain an education while working long, hard, scary hours in the coal mine is itself a fascinating window into the past.

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A Visit to Booker T. Washington National Monument in Virginia
A Visit to Booker T. Washington National Monument in Virginia

Born Booker Taliaferro in 1856, the infant’s lot in life was pre-determined: Booker was born to an enslaved mother on the farm of James Burroughs in Virginia’s Piedmont region. From an early age, Booker, along with all enslaved children, was put to work on and near the 200-acre farm.

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