2017

New Year's Eve 2016 was one of my favorites. After the insane everything-in-a-year that was that year, it was glorious and perfect to finish it in a town I'd never visited before, on the cusp of a trek out to a beautiful and alien landscape, with a river view, a small Scottish fireworks display, and time to reflect on all the good seeded throughout a tough year. It was quiet, it was meditative, it was perfect - and a good reminder that patience, with myself and with the world, pays off far more than my more-frantic desires sometimes want me to believe.

In the leadup to this NYE, I felt the tug of desire for a similar getaway, the same pull that I had in Inverness when I suddenly felt like driving as far north as I could get in mainland Scotland for midnight. It's an impulse that reflects how I've come to realize I like to celebrate the holiday. While some people emphatically need the party/dance/music/crowd/adventure vibe, something to validate the years as ended and begun in celebration and plenty, I prefer the quiet alternatives suited to thoughtfulness and a quieter variety of joy. Even solitude, sanctified by a new geography and unfamiliar air, suits me better. But this year, I'm glad to be among friends, and will mark the passing of the year surrounded by some of my best and oldest. I'll take my solo moments to breathe, explore, and feel my place in the world on New Year's Day - I've got some destinations marked out and a few things I'm glad to be doing, but mostly it'll be time to take stock and rest in the peace and tranquility of silence and self-reflection.

For now, though, I wanted to repeat last year's ritual and free-write a list of memories that give me joy as the year ends. And so, before I hurry off to a li'l joy-gather, here it be:


First things first, I pulled together a Youtube playlist of my travel/music videos from the past two years here. (Link cued up to the first days of 2017.) I think it's a pretty swell soundtrack, and if you're reading this on a groggy New Year's Day in the mood to daydream-travel, have at it. Now, as to those "the year in good things" memories...

1. New Year's Day. Fresh newness on an empty-roads drive past Eilean Donan castle and through Skye, still probably the most stunning place I've set foot thus far in this life. A perfect balance of occasional encounter and solitude, I couldn't have designed a better start to the year.

2. Sagrada Familia. The interplay of colored lights as the sun swam across the abstract stained glass, the cascading pillars unfolding as they ascend through the light. I don't know how you could stand in this space and not be shaken by it.

3. The surprise and thrill of a fling in Florence, which doesn't need any help to make wandering its streets an exercise in in-the-moment nostalgia and dreaminess. (For real, Florence is an A+ first-date city.)

4. A final brunch in Boston with my buddy Pete, who got me through some of the most difficult chapters of my life.

5. Reuniting with my Tufts crowd in Atlanta, and an excursion to the Puppetry Center where it felt like we reconnected with the giddy delight in performance that got us all into the field to begin with.

6. Annoying my friend Danielle on a night out in Milan at a canalside cocktail bar
7. An 18-hour, hell-for-leather drive from Boston to Chicago with my dad and a truck full of my belongings, talking about our mutual experiences with depression, goofy pieces of pop culture, and the odd shape our lives have taken these last several years.
8. The early-days-in-Chicago, sweaty, crushingly frustrating moment at the end of a house-sit in which I took a temp job paying less than half of my former day job, and knew it was a transitional moment even if it felt like a dead end. This was just three months ago, but it feels a lifetime away.
9. The first time, a month or so later, that I texted a friend to grab a drink, and had them on my couch with a tumbler of whisky less than twenty minutes later, and knew my geography felt right again.
10. A long night swapping breakup stories with Emily at a Turkish grill in Dalston, London, realizing even in the moment how meaningful our new friendship was going to be.

Not Turkish, but eggs, months later.

11. Baking in the sun on the roof of the bus station in Mostar, Kate and I both grumpy about our nonexistent crack-of-dawn bus, but taking only about 20 minutes before I could verbally process my frustration and we could both move on, eventually finding the fun and adventure in a mishap that cut Plitvice Lakes out of my travels.

The Grumps.

12. That perfect moment of "God of Loss" coming on the radio as I wrote in the cafe at the Museum of Broken Relationships on the anniversary of my divorce
13. Walking the cobbled streets of Paris to the skittering mandolin strains of "Harrison Ford" by Darlingside, which I did not stop playing the entire week I was there.

14. Crying my eyes out at Coco
15. Climbing to the Oyster Shed on Skye on a damp, gray, foggy morning and soaking in the gloomy atmosphere

16. Solitary climbs to the Old Man of Storr and elsewhere, feeling as if I had the entire island to myself save a handful of sheep roaming free

17. Meeting the llama from whose fur (wool?) my Scottish host had made the winter cap I now wear
18. Arriving at Kate and Stuart's to a pile of ridicule over the various pajamas and slippers I'd had shipped to them in my desperately sublimated desire to have a home of my own

19. Accidentally throwing my phone in the toilet (it's complicated) and having the ensuing weekend of tech-free, pre-cell-phone living turn out to be one of the best, most present ones I've had in a while.
20. A perfect, mouthwatering slice of cream cake in Lake Bled

21. Dinner with my Berlin host Brian in a dance hall that had been abandoned since the Weimar era, and which retains its scars from the war, with bullet-ricochet divots splayed across the wall and gorgeous, shambly mirrors and chandeliers
22. Mosque visits in Mostar and Vienna, the former a surprisingly moving meditation on architecture and space, the latter marked by a great conversation with an Imam the day before he left for his pilgrimage.

23. The gleeful mess of the Deutschestheater's Ubu
24. Choking up at United Flight 232 at the House Theater, realizing that stories about humans being kind and caring to each other zap me right in the gut these days.
25. The adrenaline rush, joy, and stumbles of my first performance as an actor in something like four years.
26. Being in the massive crowds in NYC at the Women's March, which for all its sometimes-disappointing ripple effects does seem to have indicated a seriousness of intent that might get us through this nightmare.

27. The occasional getting-jumped-on moments scattered through the fall of my return to Chicago as I ran into my people for the first time (this kept up to as late as December, which was amazing), gradually regaining confidence in the idear that I'm #good, and not something to be put up with. (Weird how that stuff can hang on you after the fact.)
28. On the same note, finding out that Steppenwolf's Front Bar space has now joined Clark St and Lincoln Ave as spaces that it's real hard to meander/hang without running into a delightful human being I know, or several.

29. Helping Emily go through her box of Chicago stuff, sifting through ephemera dating back to her childhood and watching all of it play across her face.
30. So many amazing dog pets from all my Chicago friends' new hounds.

31. The zen comedy of arriving in Brussels during a baggage handler strike, almost immediately realizing I had no way to control the situation, and laughing as I tried to figure out what form to fill out in the hopes of someday seeing my luggage again. (I did! Belgians are great.)
32. My first shop visit in Paris, to a cheesemonger stall near my flat, discovering that I still had just enough French (and decent enough accent) to make it through without the leap to English
33. Perfect weather for a morning-long walk along the canals in London, walking beyond the point of any reason.

34. A miraculous Christmas Eve snowfall just as the last family members got home, followed by two days of near-perfect family time. Probably one of the best Christmases in the past... 5 years? More?

OK fine this is my neighborhood a few days after Christmas, it was all extremely pretty.

35. Regent's Cafe in London, whose owner knows your name by the time you finish your breakfast, and which is incomprehensibly cheap for its location

HIS name, by the way, is Marco.

36. Roti King in London for the most stunning flatbread magic I've ever eaten (with my hands, sopping up curry in my hotel room like a wild animal); the realization that my tastes have shifted toward things like this, just perfect unpretentious food done brilliantly at bargain prices with no fuss.
37. Wondering, the afternoon of my Muppet Party, if it would be my last, a little bummed about some last-minute cancellations... and then in no time at all being reminded of how fun it is, what a joy it is to gather my disparate friend-groups, and to learn that it matters to other people and not just me... Well, as I say, I'm relearning a lot of things this year.

38. The apparent decision that I'm going to meet Kate (and maybe Stuart?) every summer for SOME kind of travel, and that our friend Anne might join. Fun people are fun!
39. Spontaneous Viennese sidewalk haircut. ALWAYS GET THE SPONTANEOUS VIENNESE SIDEWALK HAIRCUT.

You know... as with last year, the list could go on (and probably should) but there's an evening to dash off to, and ultimately any year has probably got a small miracle a day if you go hunting for them (and are in a place to see and experience them). So let's wrap it up here.

Basically: this year started very strangely, unsettled and woven through with anxiety. (I still find it hard to believe that the Women's March happened this year.) And while globally it's hard to say the year has been good - for every Doug Jones win there are dozen to hundreds of ways that the world is manifestly rotting - as a human, I'm beyond grateful to be ending it with a sense of security, purpose, and clarity. I don't know that I've felt much in the way of stability since... spring 2015, probably, and if the year had contained nothing but this seed of stability that I feel as it closes, it would merit all my gratitude and joy.

So anyhow. I'm off to celebrate with some lovely people, and then starting 2018 with a solid unplug before I dive into the next chapter. More on what this (I'm already kind of excited) year holds on the other side. Til then, try not to let auld acquaintance be forgot, willya.

Happy Holidays!

Gang, one of the best things about being back in Chicago is being back near family for the holidays. A short commuter rail ride out for a couple of my favorite days of the year - that's awful swell. We were lucky to have a white Christmas, and for the whole fam (including my sister's thoroughly excellent partner) to make it in for a little bit. It's been yammery and joyful, and I'm reminded how lucky I am to be a part of a family that talks, that loves well, and eats well.

Settling House

After the jump, some settling-in navelgazery!

What's Good

I'm hoping, in the last weeks of 2017, to have a few listy/year-in-review posts on personal/cultural levels. But in the meantime, in the spirit of gratitude journaling, a brief snapshot:


Tonight, I spent the evening making a huge batch of chili con carne for a party I'm throwing this weekend - my eighth annual Muppet Christmas Special party - having spent the last few nights baking cookies and bonbons. I'm writing this in a comfortable armchair by the glow of a Christmas tree in an apartment that already feels cozy and is beginning to feel settled and homey. I'm drinking a wee pour of Jura Scotch brought by a visiting friend who gave me a solid weekend of heart-satisfaction. I've been lucky enough to land employment that pays the bills, and to be near enough to friends to make plans on the spur of the moment, to feel loved and supported and connected to the world outside myself. It is a good time, and in the dark of the night and the glow of the tree, I feel hope and joy kickin', jumpin' and scrappin' like ungainly goats.

I'm still chipping away at the dissertation, and I have days that fatigue, depression and anxiety nip at my heels, that I get frustrated at our reactionary politics. But there's so much foundational support close at hand these days, and I've been through enough wringers by now - to ride those out. And so, I'm happy.

And I'm lucky! Things are good. This too will pass - as will whatever comes next, and whatever comes after that - but in this moment, I'm mindful of the great good given to me, and eager to keep nudging into the future to try to repay the world around me in kind. Here's hoping your holiday season gives you moments to take stock, hold up the things that give you joy, and know that you're loved and essential for the world to be what it can be today. (Oh, and if your life's set up for this, find yrself someone nice to snuggle with and cuddle up somewhere that makes you happy. What's the point of all this cold if not to carve out a little warmth in the midst of it all?)

Remains of the Day

After the jump, a political post! And sort of a literary one! What kind of blog is this these days anyway!

I've had the great pleasure in working my new job of a gentle commute with some reading time built in. Since my dissertation work requires more sprawl and often translation work that isn't train-friendly, this has necessarily become pleasure reading time, for which I'm wildly grateful. One of the first books I took on was Kazu Ishiguro's  Remains of the Day. I'd read his Buried Giant, coincidentally, right around when he won the Nobel Prize, and quickly snapped up a few others. (Shout out to the Sulzer Public Library and libraries in general!)

As I suspect may be true with others, I mostly knew the book from its movie adaptation, and not even really from that so much as from the movie's cultural reputation as a Merchant/Ivory production. Not having seen it, I'd filed it away as a sort of period-set "repressed British brooding" piece and figured I'd get to it eventually. The novel does have a heartbreaking portrait of a man profoundly out of touch with his emotional life to an almost pathological degree, but what I wasn't expecting even slightly was its political content.

Without getting too detailed about it: Remains of the Day is in part about its protagonist's gradual awareness (though: does he ever fully understand? It's not entirely clear) of how he absented himself from the great political debate of his day, namely the treatment of Germany between WWI and WWII. The novel is deeply sad in capturing both the cruel postwar treatment of Germany and the perverse manipulations of German agents winning over British sympathizers during Hitler's rise. But Mr. Stevens, the figure at the novel's core, simply... stands by. Some of this is related to Ishiguro's portrait of the serving class in pre-war Britain, some of it is his incisive deconstruction of British stiff-upper-lip mentality, but it was rather shaking to read it in the middle of the Trump regime.

Stevens, as a butler, feels it is not his place to form opinions or offer his voice on the pressing issues of his time, instead believing it his duty to offer dignified service to his master, to whom he owes deference. Much of the book's undertow consists of his grappling with whether his master was in fact worthy of this deference, or whether he did the right thing, though Stevens never quite brings himself to ask these questions.

I keep thinking of Remains of the Day as the daily outrages of the Trump administration roll out. There's a sense of hapless resignation that feels common to both pieces: "what can I, one person, do in the presence of such monumental events?" I've seen this expressed many ways by others; some, like Stevens, simply say that because they don't know enough to consider themselves an expert, they're not sure they ought to have a voice; I've seen some Christians lean on verses ("render unto Ceasar" and instruction to set your mind on higher things) as a justification for, essentially, silence.

And while I can understand the impulse - my midwestern polite genes are unbearably resilient - Ishiguro's novel puts forth a compelling case for silence as complicity, for taking no stance as enabling accommodation.

So this is where I want to close this quick thought: especially if you live somewhere with a GOP representative or senator, please make your voice heard. You may be laughed at, you may feel awkward, you may be made to feel ignorant (let's not forget that some people - Peter Roskam is a great example - have become fast studies in lying to their constituents to defend indefensible votes, so don't take this last bit too seriously) but speak. Identify the issues that animate you, and let your representatives know that you are paying attention, that you care, and that you expect the right thing from them. (Eventually, you'll probably have to vote them out of office, but that's for another day. Right now it's about attempting to constrain the attempt to dismantle the twentieth century through public pressure.)

Not sure where to start? Hey, it is an administration of unendingly wretched venality! Here's a few places you might want to be heard, limited mostly to national issues (though local issues matter a lot, and you might in particular for instance want to talk to your local politicians about racial justice and police misconduct):

1. Trump's repeated attempt to install a Muslim travel ban and his unacceptably-frequent attacks on Muslims. He's openly racist on this and other fronts, and many GOP congresspeople have opted for silence in the hopes that they won't offend anybody. Ask them to take a stand and let them know your disappointment if they don't.
2. The tax bill. A lot of this is esoteric and creates winners and losers, but either version of the bill will necessitate huge cuts to Medicare and other social services due to the sequester. The GOP has managed to mostly dodge those questions, but you can let them know that you expect better, and that you will count their vote for this bill as a vote to attack a lot of necessary government services. (Bear in mind, the Senate and House versions have to be reconciled and re-voted on, so there actually is a narrow, bad-odds window to try to push back on this.)
3. Education. One of the things the tax bill will do, at least in the House version, is triple the tax burden on graduate students by taxing their waived tuition. (Think living in Boston on $20k/year is fun? Try being taxed on $50-60k at the same time.) They're now, per the WSJ, working on ending loan forgiveness programs for students who go into public service or nonprofit work. These moves will functionally demolish higher education in America, which perhaps it's obvious I think would be Very Bad, unless you've built a party that can only continue to function if their public grows increasingly ignorant and uncritical.
4. Oversight. It's hard to remember in the century that's passed since the Obama administration, but Congress technically can exert oversight over the executive branch! (Look up "Benghazi" sometime, if you want to see what it looks like when the GOP pretends to care about this stuff.) There's a lot to ask for here: I would start by asking them to conduct hearings into the conduct of, let's say, EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who has basically turned his agency into a fire sale on the environment, and who might doom our children/grandchildren to an uninhabitable planet? (For a bonus, if your representative claims to be a Christian, see how they think the Parable of the Talents might apply here.)
5. Sexual abuse. Congress has, as we're learning, a terrible procedure for reporting sexual harassment or assault; as a body of predominately powerful men, it's not surprising that we're starting to learn of what one can only assume is the tip of the iceberg. Ask your congressperson what they are doing to address this systemically - not whether they want Al Franken or John Conyers to resign or Roy Moore to be elected (although if your representative/senator disowns Moore without saying a vote for his opponent would be the right thing to do, they have in fact taken no morally meaningful stance) but how they want to protect victims, to make it safer and easier to report and be believed. It's hard to believe a party whose leader has bragged about serially raping women will do anything real about this, but it's worth demanding it of them.
6. Serve the poor. This one is huge for me personally. If your representative professes Christian faith, press them on whether any of Christ's teachings on our responsibility to the poor and marginalized have an impact on their legislative work. If their answers aren't to your satisfaction, let them know. It's decades past the point that Christians ought to have held their alleged standard-bearers to account, and while I'm mindful that there's always the worry of hypocrisy - we're all broken and fail constantly to live up to our charges - it still seems of value to ensure that people don't profit from a pharisaical public pronouncement of faith that has nothing to do with their behavior.

Finally, if any of you are from Roskam's district or similar, and my rhetoric feels overheated or unfair to your representative: let's talk, truly. With Roskam in particular I've been incredibly lit-up about researching his voting record and his statements, and feel pretty strongly about his lack of legislative moral character (obviously) but I'd love to discuss all these things in a way that's perhaps more effective than me hammering out a post online that you read at home while vaguely grimacing and wondering when Pat got to be such a socialist crank.

OH AND ALSO: read Remains of the Day. It's really, really, really good, humane, and incisive, beyond its political overtones. There's a lot to love!

Gratitude

Yeah, this site ain't dead yet (and there are some posts likely yet to come as we head into mission drift generally). After the jump: A Thankgiving update!

Dribs and drabs

Wrapping up my last-stray-thoughts posts from this summer's Euro-hopping, this post is just a straight-up collection of notes I jotted down at some point in my pocket notebook (the ones about travel specifically; for once I'm keeping my personal thoughts to my self). After the jump: think-o-blots!

Scotland: An attempt at guidance!

I would never have guessed, when I left for my first massive trip last summer, that Scotland would become one of my most-revisited destinations, but after three visits in a little over a year, it's safe to say I love that land something fierce. This post is an attempt to organize my experiences into a semi-useful tipsheet of sort for any pals thinking about skipping over to the land of heather, tartan, and haggis. After the jump: thoughtblobs!

Spoiler alert: it is my recommendation that you get out of the cities for quite a bit of time?

Planning Your Time
It's inconceivable that you'd spend any time in Scotland without hitting Edinburgh, but I'd recommend giving Glasgow about an equal shake of the stick, and I would strongly suggest that on any trip longer than a weekend, you err on the side of time outside Scotland's two major cities. On a packed long weekend, I'd say a day per city isn't crazy, and I'd use the third day on one of the van-or-bus day trips on offer. (You'll have more variety booking a departure from Edinburgh, and it's worth opting for the longest trip possible.) These typically give you some kind of trio chosen from the pool of a Loch, a castle, a distillery, a Glen or other natural landscape, or maybe Hadrian's Wall, though that would likely be its own thing. The caveat here is that I never did one of these tours, opting instead for DIY options, but spending time in Scotland without getting out into the wilderness is something of a waste, frankly.

Ideally? Spend at least a week in Scotland, and don't spend more than half of it in Edinburgh and/or Glasgow combined. Where should you go? Read on, cats n kittens!

Edinburgh

The apex of the Royal Mile, I guess this is fine if you have to hang out in a dumb ol city.

What to do
The two things I think are essential Edinburgh are Arthur's Seat and the Royal Mile. The former, a crazily windswept mountain, gives you great views of the town and is just a fantastic physical climb. With good weather this is a great way to fight jetlag your first morning in Scotland. The latter, while the tourist epicenter, is picturesque, a cobblestoned path up to the really-impressive castle. It's also worth exploring Regent Gardens, a less-daunting climb with some appealing and half-finished monuments at the peak. For me? This is about it. Edinburgh is a lovely city, but its cultural attractions aren't to my taste, with much more afoot in Glasgow that struck my fancy.

Beyond this, the reason you might spend more than a day in Edinburgh is if you're there for the Fringe. If so, some notes: first, the Royal Mile gets insane. If you want to see busking and weird street theatre and lots of "come see our show!" pleas, you're in heaven. If you're there for the architecture or atmosphere, it'll be lost if you're not there at the crack of dawn. The Fringe is a hoot, though, and if you're in the theatre/performance world, worth taking in just to careen around trying your luck on whatever you can catch. Grab the impressive program and see what looks good! Most of the high-profile stuff will sell out fast, but the fun is in gambling on the unknown...

What about food though
Edinburgh was where I spent time with my Fancy Food Friend Anne, so my recommendations here are all a bit tony, but that's right for Edinburgh. Gardener's Cottage is a delight, hearty seasonal fare served in an unassuming communal-style dining environment, where you're likely to befriend neighbors over an ever-changing menu. Ondine is rather a bit more sleek, a seafood-oriented spot with an impressive wine list, and more city-centre. Also near the thick of things is The Dogs, a kind of gastropub with delicious, seasonal, creative riffs on traditional Scottish cuisine. All three offer affordable and/or set menus at lunch, which is as ever the best way to save money on eating out on the road. (As usual, my advice is lunches out, dinners in, use the markets, and you'll feel more extravagant than you're actually being.)

Glasgow

People Make Glasgow

 What to do
Full disclosure: my fondness for Glasgow has a lot to do with having friends who live there, and for the ease with which we've used the city as a springboard to get out into the countryside. But the city's got a lot on offer too! GOMA is the most iconic, the modern art museum with the Wellington Cone (look it up) out front. That's about the best distillation of the Glaswegian spirit: here's this impressive sculpture, let's stick a traffic cone on its head. Look at these clowns...

Apart from GOMA, there's a robust art scene fed in part by the city's affordability and anchored by the Kelvingrove Gallery and Remy Mackintosh's Lighthouse, the latter of which offers views of the admittedly grubby city. Near the gallery, on a pleasant day, make the most of Kelvingrove Park, a superb sprawling green space cut by a river and climbing to a hilltop.

If you're interested in Scotch and won't have much time outside Glasgow and Edinburgh, you may consider a half-day excursion to Auchentoshan distillery. Just off the commuter rail line out from Glasgow, they offer tours and tastings, with a friendly and scruffy staff happy to walk you through the distilling process, highlighting what makes them unique from most of their Scotch-distilling brethren across the country. (I'd suggest opting for a notch above the baseline tour, for a bit more personal touch and a wider tasting of their offerings.)

Finally, performances! There's a robust music scene year round, and Glasgow is also home to the National Theatre of Scotland, a stupendous and inventive organization, as well as the Scottish Youth Theatre, which counts among its alumni Gerard Butler, Karen Gillan, and lots of others I'm not hip enough to know. It recently expanded to a national ensemble, drawing performers from across Scotland. Both do excellent work, and there's also solid ensemble and devised work in the fringe scene. Glasgow is a city to go and do, not to go and look; take in a show and go for a drink afterwards. Explore. Adventure!

There's some ril stupendous mural and street art here toooooo

Food and drink?
You've got some stellar Indian options here, starting with Mother India's small plates and Ranjit's Kitchen for some of the most delicious vegetarian Indian you'll ever have. Ashoka Lane boasts a few more curry shops and pubs, and will put you in the relatively trendy West End, with a solid student trade from the nearby University. As you may imagine, coffee shops proliferate; Artisan Roast is a favorite for both the brew and the atmosphere.

Finally, Glasgow has potentially the best Scotch bar in the world: The Pot Still. My guy at Auchentoshan pointed me there, and as a relative newbie (now much wizened and educated) there couldn't have been a better introduction. My bartender listened to me describe my tastes (mostly a bourbon fan at the time, but looking to edge into peat/smoke) and then grabbed five bottles from everywhere: up a ladder, around a corner, along the bar, up another ladder. She talked me through them, let me take a whiff and pick one to start with. (Later, another bartender would disappear down a trap door because he remembered off the top of his head having a specific vintage of Lagavullin 12 Year stashed in the basement.) Incredibly friendly, approachable, and un-snobby, the combo of this and Auchentoshan are as likely as anything to turn a curious visitor into a whisky enthusiast. Note that this'll be a madhouse on the weekend, so adjust accordingly if you can. Also note, after sampling whiskies here and elsewhere ranging from £2-10 a pour (and those £10 pours are rarities) you will permanently resent the pricing of Scotch back home.

Skye

Skye is a not-unpleasant place to be even when it rains. But also when it's sunny it's maybe ancient and magical.

If you can spend a few days outside the main two cities, this is where I would send you. Inverness may be a more convenient tourist hub (proximity to Culloden Battlefield, Loch Ness and the Cairngorns make the sales pitch) but Skye is a place like no other, up there with Norway's fjords in the land of "the air is different, and I cannot capture this landscape on film."

If you can, come here with a car, and off-peak-season. While a surprising stretch of the island is served by one-lane highways, it's actually easier to navigate than the more bustling two-lane highways in northern Scotland, without abrupt curbs, and with more communication between drivers. Look, if I did my Northern Scotland driving in this beast, you can do it too:

Driving will let you get an early start exploring The Old Man of Storr, the Fairy Pools, and Quiaring. It'll also let you roam a bit beyond your home base (likely Portree) for food and drink. Talisker Distillery is well worth a visit, on a moody and mist-sprayed coast. Given Scotland's strict laws on driving under the influence, you'll want to follow that visit with a walk up to The Oyster Shed, whose name completely lit up the face of a weaver I chatted with on Skye, and for good reason. Cured, raw, or simply-steamed seafood and other provisions sold out of a sortakinda market stand, with picnic benches to the side. Grab some oysters, a shellfish plate, or maybe some pate, and look out over the landscape. At the other end of the rustic-refined spectrum is the "oh my god every BBC inspired daydream come to life" Kinloch Lodge, a worth-the-trek hotel/restaurant in the wild landscape of southern Skye with satisfying food and enough relaxed countryside-elegant atmosphere to choke a horse (this is I THINK their official motto).

Finally, if you can, stay 2-3 nights and take your time. Find out what artisans (weavers, artists, potters, etc.) have their studios or shops open and arrange visits if they're by-appointment-only. They'll be delighted to discuss their work, and at least in my experience, won't pressure you to buy (though you'll probably want to...)

Further Afield
One of the reasons I keep going back to Scotland, beyond the presence of excellent friends, is its seemingly endless variability. I've yet to make it up to the Shetland Islands (a real dream), into the Caigorms, or out to Islay; I'd like to spend more time in Glencoe than my drive down to Glasgow from Skye; and I'd like to spend a bit of time in Oban. There's a lot still on my horizon, but what's nice is that nothing's all too far away. Inverness is only a three-hour drive from Glasgow or Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow are only an hour apart, and even the long haul drives (John o'Groats or Skye to Glasgow) max out at about six hours. Almost any trip can bounce you out into some adventure depending on what you like. Here, a few of the miscellaneous spots I've gotten to see...

I liked this pit stop more than most rest stops in America, frankly. MOST, anyway.

Near Inverness
Culloden Fields are the grounds of the last battle fought on British soil, and is beautifully converted into a grassy, expansive park; on a gray day (odds are you'll get a gray day, if not a rainy one) it's somber and desolate, counterbalanced by its frequent use as a dog park. Doggos > war, is I guess the point?

Clava Cairns is nearby Culloden, both an easy drive from Inverness; these ancient burial grounds are pretty impressive, not so much visually as for how accessible the cairns are. Walking among them you get an easy sense of their scale and significance. Again, if you can do this outside the summer crush of bus tour season, all the better.

Food: just northwest of these two spots, the Cheese Pantry has an awe-inspiring cheese cave with overwhelming selections to choose from. It's a nice stop on your way to Elgin if you're thinking of taking in the Johnston's factory for an overview of Scottish wool manufacture, which why wouldn't you.

Loch Ness: I just drove by this on my way to Skye, and most of the Ness kitsch isn't to my taste, but it's gorgeous, and on a fine day, probably worth one of the many boat tours that take you out into it. But I don't know if it gets better than viewing it from the road at dawn on New Year's Day... And personally, I wouldn't work too hard to make your itinerary work around it. (My apathy regarding Ness and Edinburgh makes me the outlier, I know.)

Eilean Donan Castle: En route to Skye, this is one of the most stunning castles in Scotland. I'm usually a "meh" on touring the inside of these buildings, unless they're well-contextualized, but even stopping by on a day which saw the castle closed, walking the grounds and seeing the surrounding lakes was a real treat.

Near Glasgow
The Highlands are stunning and windswept, but don't sleep on the lowlands! The countryside near Dalmellington or Craigengillan is serene and varied, and you're much less likely to be sharing space with tourist groups. Likewise, Loch Doon is an impressive body of water for water skiing, boating, or hiking around (with a castle we never got around to seeing). It may not be as dramatic or otherworldly as Skye, or as famous as the Inverness-adjacent sites, but it's a beautiful corner of the world nonetheless.

In short, not much in Scotland disappoints. (Aberdeen isn't on this list, largely because I've only spent a late night and a morning there, and while it's lovely I didn't feel I missed an ocean of adventure by not sticking around longer.) There's a lot I still want to explore, but if you're looking for some starting points, hopefully these are useful! Me, I'd steer you to a day or two each in Edinburgh and Glasgow, a night or two on your way up north, whether in Inverness or (my preference) a small town near Glencoe or the Caigorms, two or three nights on Skye, and a sweep back down on your way out. But who knows; maybe a few visits from now I'll be pleading with everybody to catch a puddle jumper to Shetland, or a ferry to Islay. What I know for sure is, it is worth the return just about every time.

Even in the gross, cold, damp. Just a dang heckin' good place.

Up next: miscelanea, and the future of this space!

World Mental Health Day

A quick post here for World Mental Health Day. Jump!


Obviously most of this blog is about travels and fun and adventure, and those things are all real, and generate my profound and enduring gratitude. But I've tried not to shy away from the rough, hard edges of the past couple of years. That's partly because I've learned - thanks, therapy! - that I function best when I function openly and without operating in fear of voicing What's Happening. But it's also at least a little bit because of what today's about, which is: it's important to talk, and to create a culture that normalizes the discussion of things like depression, anxiety and a whole arsenal of mental health issues.

World Mental Health Day is about raising awareness of mental health issues; there are lots of ways to interpret this. In the US, for instance, we have spectacularly poor policy around mental health (and the repeated attempts to repeal the ACA would restore an even worse regime in which treatment for depression could lead to uninsurability, and basic insurance plans failed to cover essential mental health treatments). But at an individual level, I think it's most useful as a day to talk about and destigmatize mental health from a personal standpoint.

I'm lucky that I came to a crisis point of depression and anxiety late in life, a quick and unpleasant spiral driven by a combo of internal self-perpetuating behavioral patterns and external triggers and stress factors. I don't stack up my experience against anybody else's, and count myself incredibly lucky to have had university sponsored mental health care at hand to catch me, and an army of friends and family to help me back onto my feet. But two things are worth emphasizing in this: first, that I did go through it, and second, that way way way more people than I had assumed would be there for me stood up when I reached out.

Being vulnerable in the paralysis of depression is difficult to the point of seeming impossibility, but if and when you do reach out, you find people more patient than you hoped they'd be. You find kindness you didn't expect. And you find that many more people than you knew have struggled with the same. It's not perfect, and some people will be jerks. (Some People Will Always Be Jerks is the mantra in my sequel to Glengarry Glen Ross.) But it is so much better than going it alone, however wrong that may sound before you start reaching out.

So yeah. If you struggle with stuff, you're not alone. Reach out, talk to friends you can trust, talk to loved ones who have been there for you in the past, find a therapist. If your therapist sucks, find a new therapist. Interview your therapist. It's normal to be nervous about therapy; pop culture, even if it hasn't been hostile to therapy per se, uses it as a narrative device when catastrophe strikes (West Wing PTSD!) or to explore rich psychological trauma for dramatic effect (Tony Soprano!). But if you find the right therapist for you, it's not about confirming that there's something wrong with you or that your world is on fire, it's about a medical professional giving you tools you didn't know existed, and telling you you're not the only one dealing with what feel like completely individual, isolating issues.

For those of you who have people in your lives who struggle with depression or anxiety: I get it. It's a drag. It can be hard, it can feel like you're rolling a rock up a hill forever. The two best pieces of advice I've seen to help in moments of frustration are these:

1) This is water. David Foster Wallace's so-famous-it's-a-cliche-but-nevertheless-brilliant commencement speech is a powerful call to live outside the natural urge toward self-centeredness, the misery-inducing tendency to forget that everyone around you is fighting a battle.
2) Comfort in, dump out. I love this model. Even when going through the divorce, I tried to keep it firmly in mind. Everyone is fighting a battle, and supporting your friends and loved ones does take something out of you. Comfort in, dump out. Get the help you need and support the people who need you. It's a big old world, and we can all make it work if we're good to each other this-a-ways.

Happy World Mental Health Day, gang.

Art Shay, Be Kind Now

Oh, and a bonus shoutout: check out The Hilarious World of Depression, John Moe's excellent and frank podcast exploring depression with comedians, actors, musicians, and all kind of folk. It's a mosaic of coping strategies, shared stories, and funny from-the-future perspective on dark, hard times. It's goooood.

Berlin: Arguably Useful!

Wow, remember this blog? I sure (vaguely) do! Been a madcap set of weeks between a series of writing and short-stint work assignments, and the excellent but exhausting goodness of a move into Chicago proper after a transitional month in the burbs. I'm rooting and nesting in an excellent deal of a place and getting my feet under me in a more long-range way, and now, almost a month after my last post and ages since my return, I'm catching up on some Useful posts. Up first: Berlin! After the jump, random advice from a dubiously educated cat.

Logistics
Berlin has one of the all-time great transit systems in the world. Sleek, fast, reliable, and relatively affordable; it's also run on the "no barriers, but transit cops may check for tickets and fine you hundreds of euro if you're cheating" system. I went almost a month without encountering a check, but that's not a bet I'd advise making. Instead, go with a pass that matches your time there - you can go with a tourist pass that offers local discounts, or the more local-oriented time-linked passes. If you're there long enough to consider a monthly card, you might also consider the "10-Uhr" card, which is valid from 10 AM til 3 AM daily. I slightly regretted going with this (you save €20-30, as I recall) but if you're there for fun and not for work, you can ensure you take relaxing neighborhood morning time and save on transit to boot.

Beyond this: get to know your Kiez! These micro-neighborhoods will always have a bakery (or two), usually a local grocery outlet, and a few cafes/bars/etc. If you're there for any length of time, it pays to become a regular - try the rich variety of breads at the bakery over the course of a week, get to know the folks at your favorite cafe, etc.

As language goes, you'll have no trouble finding English-speakers anywhere you go. If you're looking to practice your German, spend more time out of the major tourist zones (Alexanderplatz, neighborhoods near Museuminsel) - but even in Charlottenburg or Prenzlauer Berg you'll find lots of spots where German is the go-to language.

Food
Berlin's a stellar street-food and fast-food city. Dönner kebab and currywurst are the famous ones; most major U-Bahn stops will have stands nearby serving these, though the stand near the Ka-De-We (huge shopping mecca in West Berlin) has locally-sourced, tasty options. Currywurst stand Konnopke's in Prenzlauer Berg is famous, and... fine? There's not a lot of quality variation here, to be honest; I can't even tell if Curry 36, my favorite, is just my favorite because it's the first I had last year. If you're not feeling street food, still keep an eye out for places called imbiss - these tend to be cheap options, though some are still from-scratch, daily-changing menus.

International food is thoroughly on the scene; there's been a ramen explosion, and a weekly Thai market in Preussen Park offers legit homemade stuff that's cheap and tasty. Kantstraße is another area to seek this out. The big player here, tho, as the origins of the Dönner kebab suggest, is Turkish, with Neuköln still the place to look for a range of delicious options. (Imren grill may have given me the best kebab of my life.)

Beyond this, options abound and the city changes relatively quickly. Some specific recs from this summer: Italian restaurant Lavanderia Vecchia offers a steal of a lunch menu, and is reputed to have fantastic family-style feasts at night. Shiori is excellent for clean, slightly forward-looking Japanese food in a killer environment: less than a dozen guests at a bar surrounding the two chefs for the night. The Bird is a highly-praised steakhouse whose burgers are viciously good. The people at all these spots were a huge part of their excellence, but the food was right on across the board.

Entertainment
Because of the timing of my trips, I've not been able to be in Berlin during the full swing of their cultural season. There's tons of summer programming (movies in the park, dance classes in the parks, an open-air theater near the river) worth digging into, and in the regular swing of things you'd want to check out affordable access to concerts and opera, but I'm me so we're gonna focus here on theatre!

The big houses in town (at least within my limited early-stage experience) are Volksbühne, Schaubühne, Berliner Ensemble and Deutsches Theater. There are a few others that probably belong in the conversation, but these are the ones I've seen, so we'll focus on them.

Volksbühne recently had its artistic director pushed out after decades at the wheel; his house style had been fairly political, energetic, and playfully avant-garde. (I saw their Apokalypse, whose text was the Book of Revelations, and which was funnier and livelier than just about anything I saw that year.) In my (again, extremely limited!) experience, Schaubühne, while similarly experimental, was more dour and grim in their approach to Schiller's Wallenstein Trilogy (even cut down to a 3-hour no-intermission rendition). I can't speak to the Deutsches Theater's approach much beyond their rowdy, throw-everything-at-the-wall-who-cares-what-sticks Ubu Roi, which I loved. And Berliner Ensemble is probably, to most casual theatergoers, the most famous, Brecht's old company, still performing a repertoire of his work along with a rotating array of new pieces and classics from the canon. Their artistic director left this past season as well, though most of their productions will stay in rotation for the time being; I believe their Robert Wilson collaborations may be departing, however.

All companies offer extremely affordable tickets, with starting prices at €7-15, depending on the company, the theatre space, and in some cases the production. If you're a student, you have tons of discounts available to you for advance purchase, starting as cheap as €5. Same day returns and standing-room tickets are similarly cheap.

Finally, most theatres will note if they have performances with surtitles in English; if you know the shows well, it seems to me it would be just as fun to attend without them, but they're there if you want 'em.

Museums
Berlin has a stupid-huge number of museums, with focus areas ranging all over the place. They're strong on antiquities - Germany being where, in large part, the 19th-century vogue for archaeology first took root. The Neues, Altes, and Pergamon Museums work in tandem on this; the Neues and Altes are a bit more traditional as museums go, where the major appeal of the Pergamon is their full-scale reconstruction of relocated buildings/facades from the ancient world. At present, the eponymous Pergamon Altar is off limits to the public, but the Ishtar Gate and a Roman forum facade are both on display. Particularly if your travels take you to Berlin and you're unlikely to make it to, say, Rome, this can be a great way to start getting a sense of scope.

All three are on Museuminsel, where you can get a combo ticket; if you want to see the Pergamon, however, make sure you book in advance with a timed reservation. The lines out of this place are outlandish, so just hack through their website. More on this later in this section.

My favorite museum from a collections standpoint was the Hamburger Bahnhoff, a converted train station that's now the modern art museum. They've got a great, succinct collection of twentieth-century artists (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, many others), a central gallery with rotating installations, and another wing of exhibitions that, on my visit, showed a retrospective of installation artworks since the mid-twentieth century. It's a handy short walk from the central train station, should you find yourself in that area.

Finally, if you're visiting for a week or longer and plan to spend a decent amount of time in museums, seriously explore getting an annual city museum membership. For €25, you get time-limited access to seventeen museums and a few more cultural and research institutions (basically off-peak entrance hours daily). At €50, you get entrance without time restrictions, and even better - if you're a student, you can knock that €50 down to €25. Note that if you go this route, you may want to book timed entry tickets (free) to the Pergamon or Neues museum, lest you get stuck in line. Those tickets will come via email, but you can just show your phone when you walk up to the door past the queue.

Miscelaneous
Berlin is an all-time great thrift city. Shops are fine (again, probably better for womenswear than menswear) but the weekly "flohmarkets" (flea markets) are what you want to find. The biggest and most famous one is the one in Mauerpark, with its karaoke pit and a huge sprawl of vendors. But it's very much been discovered, and a lot of what's there is new made-in-China cheap stuff designed to be sold in that environment rather than what you're really after, which are the oddball finds, whether that's Cold War era tea tins or military surplus or discarded A-frame dresses. For those - well, check out Mauerpark, because it's a scene worth seeing, but also check out the neighborhood flea markets on Saturdays and Sundays. Neuköln's is quite good, as is the RAW Flohmarkt in Friedrichshain.

Finally, I'll just add that Becketts Kopf ("Beckett's Head") is a thoroughly great cocktail bar in Prenzlauer Berg. Not just because last summer I had a sprawling discussion with a pair of Swedes, an Irishman, and a German about Brexit and the EU and Whether Sweden Was Any Good, although that helps - but it's a great, swank little spot with solid cocktails and good folk running the joint.

Up next: some UK usefulness! See you in 2019, probably!

Witness Me

One of the clearest things to re-learn this summer - that I knew, but needed reminding of - is how much it matters to be seen, to have people bear witness to your life. I started jotting down some thoughts about this after my early days in the UK visiting friends old and new, and in the past few weeks I've found my mind wandering the same territory, so I returned to those notes and tried to flesh 'em out a lil bit. After the jump, scribbles!

Pictured: human beings in their natural habitat, honed by years of adaptation and natural selection to drink rosé on the quay of a Bristolean harbor

There's something powerful about people you've known forever - or people you've known more recently who cut straight to the heart of who you are - that's exhilarating to me, mostly because those people see you with such clarity that they reflect you back to yourself in ways both familiar and totally full of discovery. At some point years ago I remember reading an author describe marriage in exactly those terms: that marriage, or life partnership of any serious commitment, is choosing someone to bear witness to your life. It makes sense why this can be... intense, I suppose, and as with all such ways of being in the world, there are healthy and unhealthy iterations of it. And at some level, it ain't for everyone. But after a couple of solid months without friends close at hand, I was reminded on my return to the UK of how energizing it is for me to be with people who engage deeply, who want to dig in on the complicated and hard stuff, and who see you straight down to your bones.

People think horses are intuitive and beautiful? Well guess what, chumps, I think, FRIENDS are intuitive and beautiful! Take that, horses, you smelly idiots.

Spending time with Sarah (Glasgow), Emily (London/Glasgow) and Kate (Bristol) was, as ever, good for my heart. I've known them for varying lengths of time, but what I love about each of these stellar human beings is that they share my inclination to kick around experiences/thoughts/feelings, fully engaging in the reality of each other as we figure out what's what on this dopey li'l planet we all blunder around. Part of the joy in this is that people who like to witness/engage/delve are also real good at calling you out and seeing through your nonsense, though the best humans among them manage to do so from a place of love and construction. And I guess that's why my favorite memories of the UK, as much as I can rattle off things to do in London or where to spend your time in Scotland, are almost all sitting at a table with a loved human being, in those gloriously unspooling conversations where you spread your lives out in front of you, cock your heads, and mutter "well gee, lookit that." Not just being seen, heard, and understood, but getting to share that experience and process, to look back into someone else as you commune, is I think one of the great privileges of being alive. It's a vital connection for me.

In short: it's neat!

Look, I know this is a lot of photos of horses for a post that's basically about how it's nice when people are humane and empathetic and engaged, but it's established canon on this blog that I forget to take photos of my friends whenever we're just sitting around having heartfelt conversations (seems like a creep move frankly) so horses it is. 

Being witnessed can be fraught. Laying out your vulnerabilities is an act of trust (kind of my favorite theme in this past year?) and to some extent I think you have to accept that intentionally or not, it's going to misfire from time to time. You'll get called out on some self-serving line of thought, or a half-considered remark, and get that vertiginous gut-drop of failure, Wile E. Coyote realizing he ran out of cliff about ten feet back.

Part of my journey these past coupla years has been about staying open in those moments, still listening, still open, still vulnerable, rather than shrinking from the exchange. I remember feeling stunned at some point in early 2016 to realize how closed-off and emotionally defensive I had become. In revisiting all this stuff in late 2017 I realized that some of that was about falling out of the habit of openness. I'm wickedly grateful (as Bostonians don't say, but I do, because I'm mostly just an annoying chump) for the many people in my life who have, wittingly-or-un, helped me re-acclimate and retrain the muscle of vulnerability.

Those months of solo travel this summer really clarified a lot for me. How much I need my tribe (in whatever geographic iteration it may be) to be happy; how keen my nesting instincts are; how structure helps me get infinitely more accomplished than the wide expanse of an unscheduled day. But I think this act of witnessing-while-being-witnessed was the big one. It's also the one that I've been finding in abundant supply back in Chicago, again with both long-ago pals and newly-discovered humans, to my immense gratitude.

This isn't Chicago (remember? I'm bad at remembering photographs, what a chump) but it's my favorite photo from Bristol, a selfie Kate took while Gillian was facing the wrong way and a woman was rushing in front of Stuart and me. It feels like the truest expression of our friendship as a group.

The city is, in many ways, shifting from what it was when I left; five years will do that, obviously. Rents are rising more than people can afford; chains are taking over once-independent spaces; arts organizations and theatres have vanished or appeared; the cultural conversation is on all kinds of new pages across the city. And it's impossible to know where all this is heading, or what good will be interred with the bad (and vice versa). But today, for me, the great joy of rediscovering the city as my home has been rediscovering the people who share this sense of openness and discovery. It's been the joy of finding people for whom an afternoon spent talking through a million confounding and ecstatic aspects of life is an afternoon perfectly spent.

tl;dr: PEOPLES IS KIND SOMETIMES

Tune in next week (or whenever!) for the very exciting essay "Berlin has some good theatre and museums" and the thrilling expose "the United Kingdom has points of interest for travelers." This blog is mega-vital, how lucky we all are to read it for some reason.

CO-TRAVELERS ON THIS METAPHORICAL "RAIL ROAD TRACK" THAT CARRIES US ALL INEXORABLY TO THE GRAVE PAST ADVERTISEMENTS FOR VINYL SIGNS (A METAPHOR FOR FRIENDSHIP?) AND I GUESS TODDLERS ("BUSINESS ACCOMPLISHMENTS"?) It's naps o'clock here folks.

Site Biz: A quick programming note

Hey cats n kittens!

Just a quick note, to those of you who track such things: it's obviously been slow going around here, as Chicago's been pretty whirlwind. And great! But also busy as heck. So it'll be slower going getting the last few updates from this summer up, though I do anticipate the blog staying live going forward as I get the great pleasure of crafting a new life in this city that's already making me feel real loved and at my best. But as I get up to speed on a couple short-term projects and the larger settling-in project, this has necessarily taken a back seat. I'm still hoping for roughly weekly updates, but we'll see how it goes!

The other note is that thanks to Vimeo's kinda extortionate practices, video may be hit and miss in the coming month. When I upgraded to their paid tier a year ago, they hadn't noted that if you ever step down to the free tier again, they'll remove all but 10 gigs of your uploads (despite the fact that their free tier lets you upload 25 gigs a year). It's pretty transparent hostage-taking, and really took the shine off a company whose practices I otherwise have liked a lot (no forced ads like Youtube, etc.) but while I figure out whether to migrate back to YouTube, re-up with Vimeo for exactly the wrong reasons, or... something else, it's possible that some videos may go missing. If you're looking for those, you can find them here.

Okay! I think that's it for now! I hope you're having a great fall! I'm going to make things with apples this weekend, it's a real exciting time for e v e r y b o d y!

London, On the Knowledge

The return to Chicago has been way busier than I'd anticipated (entirely to the good! but extremely busy) and so this is a bit late, but: London! It's all very "hat on a hat" at this point, but I'm still feeling grateful-within-my-gratitude for the time - and the quality of that time - that I got to spend there this August.  After the jump: videos, photos, ramblings, all the gumbo you've come to expect...

My last full day in London: reading Emily's copy of High Fidelity on the South Bank before diving into the Tate Modern, an ocean of happiness unfolding before me. THIS WAS NOT A TERRIBLE TIME, GANG.

I'd initially only planned to spend about four days in the city, which is about par for the course given its expense, but when Emily offered up her place for about an extra ten days and an ocean of guidance about her pocket of non-touristy London, I tossed my plans and jumped. Between a haven of a home and some real treats around and about, this was a grand stay - a nice local-routines gearshift from my initial burst of tourist goofiness. That's all thanks to Emily, who was both patient with my nonsense ("Let's go to Fortnum and Mason! Oh, to be able to afford the uh... lifesized leather pigs? OK this is a shop for insane people") and generous in showing me all the best tucked-away cafes, running paths, and so on.

Even on a cloudy day, the Lea Valley canal (from the Regent's Canal) is a superb and glorious spot to roam

The best of these, as you'll see in the video above, was the Dalston Curve Garden, an amazing and free community space full of plants, families, kids, couples, dogs, and hipsters, sitting and chatting, drinking coffee or beer, or taking in a concert. As with so many places like this, it's under threat thanks to high-rise condo development (late-stage oligarchic capitalism! Is there anything it can't ruin?) but for now it's a special enclave, and an essential part of a neighborhood that feels populated by ordinary folk in a city that's increasingly the realm of the monied classes.

I think this is actually technically Hackney, not Dalston (I will learn these things better someday) but the street art in this neck of the world was extremely solid, I THINK.

But you know: the grand stuff is grand too! I loved the chance to meander around Savile Row and Jermyn Street, checking out incredibly well-made and beautifully-designed garments that I'll only ever be able to afford secondhand, as well as top-flight butchers and stationery shops who do what they do out of love and passionate commitment. The apex of this line of exploration came in my trip to Northampton - from whence, my dad reminded me, my great-ancestors came to found Northampton Massachusetts - to visit a handful of the best shoemaking factories in the world, and to geek out at their factory shops.

Here's the thing, most grand 19th century European department stores still have great architecture but the second you step inside you might as well be in an H&M in Indianapolis. Fortnum and Mason is insane and ridiculous but hokey smokes it is one of those places where you know it has a history and a tradition to it...

And leather pigs and rhinos, this was not poetic license, that's just how things go sometimes, I don't understand it either goodnight.

But really, this leg of the trip was a time to downshift a bit, to soak in the perfect oasis of Emily's backyard garden, to get work done at the British Library, and to find the routines that would keep me pretty well balanced as I headed into a huge pivot into my return to Chicago. It treated me well, and now I find that I miss it - one of a handful of spots for which I'm homesick even as I find myself back in the home I love best. London: I'll be back, and that right soon.

My happy place, built by a gal who knows how to make with the humane empathy, joy-of-living, and design-of-space.