Monthly Archives: May 2013

Buddhist temples in Myanmar are clearly loved and well cared for. Offerings of gold, flowers, and incense are everywhere, and the walls and floors are so shiny you can see yourself reflected in them: often the product of donated labour. Mahamuni Temple, Mandalay, and Soon U Ponya Shin Pagoda, in the nearby Sagaing Hills, which I visited one day […]

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One of the many beauties of Kosciuszko National Park in Australia’s alpine Snowy Mountains, is the assortment of walking trails. This makes it easy to find a walk to suit the weather, one’s mood, and the abilities of any walking companions. The 6.5 kilometre walk from Rennix Gap to a Snowy Hydro radio repeater station, high on […]

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The Wild West is a place of legends and stories… Few are more moving than that of Sacagawea (Bird Woman), the Lemhi Shoshone woman, kidnapped in 1800 by a raiding party of Hidatsa when she was about 12, and a year later, given or sold, along with another young captive Shoshone girl, to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Thirty-four year old Charbonneau was […]

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Rain. It was day nine of our walk around the Dingle Peninsula last June, and once again we woke up to rain. Soft, misty, Irish rain – but coat-soaking, bone-chilling, camera-splattering rain even so. Not my idea of beach weather! My walking boots were still wet from crossing bogs the day before, so the overcast skies […]

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Kermit the Frog lamented on the difficulties of being green. It’s not that easy bein’ green Having to spend each day the color of the leaves When I think it could be nicer being red or yellow or gold Or something much more colorful like that It’s not easy bein’ green It seems you blend in […]

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