TRAVEL

Even a hack jazz pianist like myself cannot go too long without sitting down to a keyboard and seeing what one can do with the chords and melody lone of…

Sweet tomatoes and melons grown by computers was fascinating stuff.   But I had finished my interviews and, being a city boy, was ready to forsake the rural for the…

 Americans Abroad No. 6 [Three more archetypical American tourists, not meant to expose any actual people who have been on my tours . . . really .] Every tour group has at least…

Americans Abroad No. 6 Heliopolis, Egypt, 1989.   Mahmoud looked worried.   That wasn’t a good sign; after all he was my Egyptian tour manager, the guy who was supposed…

Why did I do it!?   After many abstemious years and I light-up like country singer who just lost his truck and his girl.   Why!?   I knew if…

On an almost fully-booked international from Europe a few years ago I was having my usual trouble trying to sleep in my aisle coach seat on a 747.   Added…

A few years ago the last “Five and Dime” in San Diego closed its doors (it’s now a Payless Shoe store).   I loved five and dimes when I was…

Americans Abroad No. 5 Typically, after a foreign tour arrives back on home soil a tour leader does not hear again from all but a small fraction of his tour…

Since the advent of the Souvenir Shop the word “souvenir” will connote to many, if not most people, something kitschy :   the pillow with “Honolulu” embroidered on it; the Eiffel Tower…

Americans Abroad, No. 4 I can still hear Sal’s hoarse voice as we stood side by side at urinals at a rest stop on the Italian Autostrada: “Makeh pisshata,   makeh pisshata ,” he…