This page contains longer, titled posts that I have made to my blog, so as to more easily separate them from other posts that I make here. If you would like to subscribe to the feed for this page, point your RSS reader here.
Monday, June 24, 2024
Monday 24 June, 2024 Dear Friends, Welcome to my newsletter coming to you from Barcelona. Last night was noise, noise, noise as Barcelona celebrated the Summer Solstice. I am writing this at eight o’clock on Monday morning and the fireworks only stopped going off a couple of hours ago. After almost three months in Europe, I’ll be starting my journey back to Maui on Wednesday. I’ll be sad to leave.
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Monday 17th June, 2024 Dear Friends, This one will be brief. My wife and I left Portugal yesterday and are making our way across Spain to Barcelona where we fly back to Hawaii. I hope to pull over during our journey tomorrow to add this to the newsletter - it’s just how the newsletter system works that I use. I have a window to add this initial letter. I’m sitting here in Madrid with a bunch of mixed emotions, reflecting on the last two and a half months which all started in Bristol, England with my mother’s 90th birthday party.
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Monday June 10, 2024 Dear Friends, I write this on Portugal Day, a national holiday, celebrated every 10th June. I did not know what Portugal Day actually celebrated and so I headed over to Wikipedia. According to the Free Encyclopedia’s entry for Portugal Day, It commemorates the death on 10 June 1580 of Luís de Camões, a poet and national literary icon. Wikipedia’s page for Luís de Camões states that,
Saturday, June 8, 2024
This story share by Robert Rackley on his blog Canned Dragons reminded me of a story that I heard about a Tibetan Buddhist nun. A friend of mine, herself a Buddhist nun at the time, was studying at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala in Northern India. I’ll call my friend Ani-la, meaning nun in Tibetan. A friend came to visit Ani-la. Ani-la took her friend on a walk around the Institute and Dharamsala, showing her North Indian home.
Saturday, June 8, 2024
I have long loved rail travel. Sitting in a carriage, watching life go by. Gratefully allowing others to take the strain of the transportation logistics. Perhaps striking up conversation with a fellow traveler, or more likely than not sitting quietly reading, writing, watching, sleeping. When I got older and threw a backpack on my back railway stations took on another significance for me. That of unknown adventure. Yes, I might have had a ticket in my hand stating an intended destination, but as I looked out at the train tracks disappearing into the distance from the station platform I had a sense of unknown adventure ahead.
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Monday June 3, 2024 Dear Friends, Welcome to the first newsletter of June 2024. Today’s letter will probably be brief (I say probably because I am still writing it!) as we are on the road for a couple of days. This time exploring the eastern Algarve - quieter (in terms of the tourism impact) and more nature. We arrived here yesterday and have been greeted with vast expanses of beach, mud flats, small boats (mainly fishing, a few pleasure), oyster farms, and grasslands.
Sunday, May 26, 2024
Monday May 27, 2024 Dear Friends, It’s early morning here in Alentejo, the region of Portugal that our house is in. Outside feels fresh and cool, but that won’t last for long. After some cooler weather last week, summer appears to have arrived in Portugal and the days are heating up. Clear skies and sun. I have said it elsewhere, but there is a quality to the light here that I have not seen elsewhere.
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Monday May 20, 2024 Dear Friends, Well I am getting this letter written by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin! We have family staying with us right now and have been busy entertaining, driving them around, showing them the Portugal that we know so far. I am aware of life, business that is passing me by at the moment and will need to be taken care of on their departure tomorrow, and at the same time I am trying to track what needs to be done while they are here.
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Two boys playing cricket just off the Karakoram Highway While traveling the Karakoram Highway through Pakistan I stopped in Passu for three nights. My memory of Passu in July of 1989 was it just being made up of a small collection of houses. Nothing else. One of those was the guest house that I stayed in. This was run by a lovely man who use to be in the Pakistan army.
Sunday, May 12, 2024
Monday May 13, 2024 Dear Friends, Greetings from an overcast Alcácer do Sal. The weather has been beautiful this last week. Very hot in fact. It is cooling down this week as the overcast weather might suggest. The fields around Alcácer have been ploughed and in preparation for this year’s rice crop. Some of the fields have already been flooded. We are expecting to see the fresh green shoots soon. We have also been warned that during the rice season the mosquitoes come out in swarms around dusk.
Sunday, May 12, 2024
We visited the town of Odeceixe just over a week ago. I was tasked with finding the destination for the day, somewhere where we had not visited and not far or on the coast. So I picked Odeceixe at random. At first glance there appeared nothing special or unique about the town. When we arrived it seemed very quiet. Situated about 3km from the coast there were few people around. We skirted the edge of town, and after two hours of driving I parked by what looked like some fields on one side which stretched to the coast, although out of view.
Friday, May 10, 2024
My wife and I were in Lisbon yesterday and met up with an old Portland friend who had been living Portugal for eight years. After lunch she took us to an art exhibition at the Estrela Basilica, by a young Ukrainian artist, Veronika Blizniuchenko. It is not an easily found exhibition, situated as it is in the former convent behind the Basilica. While visiting the Basilica, Bluzniuchenko noticed the convent from its rooftop gallery.
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Monday May 6, 2024 Dear Friends, I realized this morning that I have been on the road now for five weeks. The time has flown by and so far it has not felt as disruptive as I thought that it might. Maybe because the time has been spent at home in Bristol, with my mother, and now another home here in Portugal. I don’t have all my accruements with me, and I miss not being able to reach for some books at times, but I also find myself quite content here.
Monday, April 29, 2024
Monday April 29, 2024 Dear Friends, I have an early start tomorrow (today), driving to just west of Lisbon, and so I’m writing this letter late at night. This first week in Portugal has seen the temperatures drop from the high 20°C when I arrived, to topping out now in the high teens. Though the wind has been cold, the sun has been shining for which I am grateful. There is a quality to the light here that we do not get in Hawaii.
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Close up of a beach. This is a short story. As I go back through the slides of my travels, I am interested in what caught my eye. What I was seeing while I was on the road. One way I look at this is what my heart was drawn to, what interested me, what moved me. This slide could be from anywhere, at least from any beach in the world.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Monday April 22, 2024 Olá Friends, This letter is coming to you from Portugal. I arrived here from England two days ago. I had a good time back home but as always found it hard to leave. Hard to leave the UK, hard to leave my mother, hard to leave familiar surroundings and places that hold memories…but life moves on and I had to get down to Portugal ahead of my wife’s arrival this coming week.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
I sit here in 2024 in a house in Portugal, and a piece of music transports me back to 1985, to a hiking hut somewhere in mountains of the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Almost forty years have passed, but the memory is vivid and the effect of that time on my life feels as real now as it did all the way back then. Let me give you some context.
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Monday April 15, 2024 Dear Friends, Being home, being back in Britain, always fills my time. Whether that is sitting talking with my mum, catching up with friends (on the phone and in person), or going for walks. Routine is not so present in my life and I find that with that my writing diminishes. I want to write, but find myself either too tired to concentrate or in need to wind down from the last social activity.
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Monday April 8th, 2024 Dear Friends, Well the weeks feel as though they are creeping up on me quicker. Though this one could well be because I have had a lot going on. I am writing to you from the opposite side of the world. I have returned solo to England for my mother’s 90th birthday celebrations and am spending a couple of weeks here to catch up with friends and also some work as well.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Monday April 1st, 2024 Dear Readers, I had to laugh this morning. It’s related to the post that I put out yesterday around busyness (see it below). I had been trying to slow myself down, to be focused and get done what needed to be done, but obviously it was not working. I forgot that this newsletter was going out today. That’s humbling and at the same time an opportunity to try that little bit harder and see where I can improve.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Benaulim Beach, Goa, India. A month ago I explained how I was capturing the slides that I am using in the “Story behind the Photograph” series (all of which can be found here (RSS), or under the map emoji 🗺️ in the menu bar above). Well I have now found a gadget that I was given a number of years ago. Its purpose is to digitize slides and negatives. Due to the device’s age, the scans are probably not the best.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Monday March 25, 2024 Hello and welcome to another weekly roundup of posts to my blog. This has been a wet winter and as such some outside jobs that needed to be done in the garden have been sitting, waiting for the weather to clear up. Seasons here in Hawaii don’t have as clear a delineation as more northerly latitudes, but there is a definite change in weather patterns. In the part of Maui where I live the weather becomes wetter, and although the day time temperatures can reach the high 70F(21C), mornings and evenings are cold and the trade winds that blow through the islands can be chilly.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Every Thursday night I sit in a weekly men’s group. I’ve mentioned before the value that I get from sitting with this group, but of late I have been reminded of something else. Maybe it’s the same thing but I am just now finding words for my experience? It’s simple, common sense advice to “keep the company of good friends”. That is, the influence of those around me, rubs off on me.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Waiting at the border crossing I was going through some more slides of my travels last night and this one has stuck with me through the day. Taken in July 1989, I recognized most of the faces, as well as the nationalities of some of those standing there, but could not put names to them. I found myself wondering where they are now? What happened to them after we parted ways on our respective travels?
Monday, March 18, 2024
Monday March 18, 2024 Hello there. It is David Johnson here with a weekly roundup of posts to my blog. It has been a wet week here on Maui, especially in the area of the north shore where I live. This region is one of the wetter parts of the island, but even so this week saw more low cloud and persistent drizzle than we normally have. I love the moody weather, probably because of growing up in England, and anyway sun is not in short supply here on Maui - the change is welcome.
Friday, March 15, 2024
A rallying call since the devastating fires here on Maui last year has become “Maui Strong”. The words have lended themselves to multiple funds to help raise financial help, material supplies and volunteering possibilities, all for the immediate and long-term recovery needs of those effected by the fires. These include, Hawai‘i Community Foundation, Maui Strong Fund, which as of the State of the County address by Mayor Richard Bissen, Jr.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
A lot happened during my short time in Bodhgaya, and so I am spreading this section of the travels over a couple of posts. Arriving into Bodhgaya with the top of the Mahabodhi Temple peeking above trees One of the first things that we (myself and Ray, an American who I had met on the road and was currently traveling with) noticed on arrival in Bodhgaya was the number of people who walking around with patches over one eye.
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Maui has so many microclimates, and with that the weather can vary in a very short space of time. Yesterday from what I could see most of the island was covered in cloud. Where I live there was a lot of wind, but I had to run Upcountry and there the air was very different. It was still, so still. Even the landscape felt still. Being March there was a little chill in the air as well.
Monday, March 11, 2024
Monday March 11, 2024 This week has felt like a real mixed bag - work being done on the house, a visit to the doctor - both of which have follows this coming week….And then for my wife’s birthday we spent a night on the island of Oahu, in Honolulu. The Hawaii equivalent of a visit to the big city. Maybe by some world cities standards Honolulu is a baby, but for me coming from rural Maui the island metropolis is a visual and aural stimulant.
Monday, March 4, 2024
Monday March 4, 2024 Well it has been a long while since I sent out a newsletter to subscribers. The pause was initially caused by an illness last summer when I got pneumonia while visiting Portugal. Then that pause turned into a larger gap. I am now remedying this omission but with a slightly different frequency. Previously I sent out the newsletter on the first of each month with a hand curated selection of posts that I had made to my blog that month.