I had never been to Oracle Park, San Francisco, home of the Giants. Which, for those of you in the UK and elsewhere, is this city’s baseball team. Here, let me digress to say that I am somewhat “elsewhere” myself when it comes to baseball. I grew up in an isolated desert setting with no neighbors, a disturbed household which included one European doctor who had no real idea of what baseball was, let alone how to play it. But that’s history. Yesterday, I made my own history by finally getting Read more [...]

Defeated. That was the word that came to mind when Jane and I finally made it home. Our trip had been a spectacular one. Or spectacularly adventurous. But at that moment the adventure seemed foolish. Not to mention empty. I knew this was partly a function of mood. We had some bad luck at the end of our trip. Let me go there first. Queen Mary 2 has a way of stopping periodically to helicopter a passenger ashore. If this sounds like an exaggeration, consider our fairly recent experience. In March Read more [...]