Soujorns

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My back pages, New York, Soujorns, Travel

Vacations like other people

August 25, 2014

The sea air is a drug that addles reason. How else to explain the amnesia that comes over me every summer on the first bike ride back to the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island? I forget that its approach involves two short steep hills—the first brings you up to Little Ram’s Head Island, a…

My back pages, Soujorns

Paris Notes

August 25, 2004

Our guidebooks described it as a city swathed in gray. This week, that observation of Paris isn’t a myth, as many of our days have seen rain; observing the weather, I joked to my spouse Jonathan that if it weren’t for the language, we could easily imagine ourselves in London. Though it usually passes quickly, we weren’t…

My back pages, Soujorns, Travel

Drowning in Bath

November 29, 2003

“Bath?” exclaimed the bulbous figure behind the glass at Paddington Station. “Why would you want to go to Bath?” There was no mistaking his tone: we were about to embark on a pointless day trip. Suppressing my mounting embarrassment, I pursued his innuendo in an attempt to gauge the extent of our folly. He blew me…

My back pages, Soujorns

Hidden Oases

October 15, 2003

I want to be alone. Not surprisingly, in Manhattan I crave occasional solitude now as I did growing up a middle child in a midwestern family of twelve; back then my refuge was our backyard where, under an Ohio sky, I’d read in the shade of my mother’s rosebushes or unearth insects from the moist soil. It was the…