travelswithkathleen

I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Sunday, September 28, 2025

Sunday bird blogging


King penguins and seals at Elsehul Bay in South Georgia on New Year's Day.

I've mentioned that I've been taking many more buses this year because my bad knee keeps me from walking as much as I'm used to. I took a crowded bus down Broadway on my way home from class yesterday, and though I had a book I was too tired to look at it and watched my fellow passengers instead.

And was struck, surprisingly, by the basic decency I saw. People were jostling for standing room with several large suitcases, a stroller, and one overloaded shopping cart, and maneuvering your way to the rear door to get off wasn't for the faint-hearted, but everyone was—nice. They tried to move out of the way where they could, and a blind man and a woman with a walker boarded and were immediately given seats.

It was a little bit of reassurance in these very dark times.

Friday, September 26, 2025

Urban poetry




Here's an old picture: a foggy wharf in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2019. It has been so unrelentingly humid here recently (like 90% or close to it) that any outdoor exertion, however mild, leaves me literally soaked to the skin with perspiration.

Which for some reason reminded me of the thick fogs in Nova Scotia, which were just as drenching but not nearly so unpleasant.

Sunday, September 21, 2025

Sunday bird blogging




Another towhee (or maybe the same towhee) in Berkeley a while back.

Yesterday I was waiting for the bus down Fifth Avenue after class—the knee was very achy and there was no possibility of walking all the way home—and when a bus finally came, it was so crowded it didn't even stop. The MTA app said the next bus wasn't due for another ten minutes, so I sat down on a bench by the park wall and closed my eyes. And one of my fellow passengers came over to get me a couple of minutes later. “A bus is coming! And it's empty!” I would probably have missed it if she hasn't alerted me and that little kindness made my day, almost as much as the student who'd told me my class was “awesome” earlier that afternoon.

It's difficult to feel optimistic about anything right now, so I try to revel in the positive moments when I can.

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Wild, wild horses -- we'll ride them someday




With the country growing progressively more insane by the hour, I find this picture of a wild horse wandering along the top of a ridge in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota very calming.

Monday, September 15, 2025

Just for fun




I took this picture at a rest stop somewhere in Minnesota: Doritos in mustard, ketchup, and pickle flavors. I've never seen these in New York—or the taco pizza, baby back ribs or fried pickle ranch potato chips in the next aisle—so I had not realized how much American ingenuity goes into coming up with new kinds of junk food.

The highway convenience stores in the Midwest are quite an experience. Some of the bigger ones have a hundred different kinds of prepared food, as well as the packaged stuff, but even the smaller ones have an amazing variety of different flavors of chips, cookies, beef jerky and candy, while those of us hoping for something slightly healthier are limited to a few shriveled salads dying of loneliness at the far end of an aisle that might as well be labeled Afterthoughts.

I have been to 7-11's in Tokyo that had candy offerings in some truly unexpected flavors—and colors—and in the UK you can buy crisps (potato chips) in roast chicken or steak, ale and caramelised onion flavors, but I think the United States remains the undisputed junk food capital of the world.

Monday, September 8, 2025

Sunday, oops, Monday bird blogging



A snowy egret wading in San Francisco Bay.

I really did mean to post this yesterday, but the amount of work after the first class of the semester is not much smaller than the preparation before the class. I have to grade the assessment tests and the writing samples. I have to post all the class materials in Google Classroom. I have to send followup emails to the students who registered but didn't come on Saturday. I have to verify all the email addresses and phone numbers and create a WhatsApp group. I have to crop and label the photos I take of each student so we can all learn each other's names. I made a good start yesterday, but need to finish up today. This week I have two tutoring sessions, several appointments, and a professional development class, and, oh, I also need to finish prep for the next class.

I love love LOVE this job, but it is part-time only in theory.

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam


Classes start on Saturday, so I'm buried in prep. My theme this semester is folk tales and folk songs, so I've found myself walking around singing Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo and Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, strummin' on the old banjo. I don't know if kids even sing those songs anymore, but I still remember all the words.

I don't have any pictures of deer handy, but here's a buffalo and an antelope, home, home on the range of Custer State Park in South Dakota.

Sunday, August 31, 2025

Sunday bird blogging




A California towhee enjoying the sun earlier this summer.

Saturday, August 30, 2025

Saturday reflections





I took this picture as we were trying to navigate our way out of the car rental lot at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. I liked the abstract weirdness of that grid and the reflections on the car.

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

The Black Hills


Since I was looking at South Dakota anyway...

The Black Hills are a national forest rather than a national park. I was expecting some interesting geology, because I never knew that the “black” in the name refers to how the hills are so covered with trees that they appear black. (Well, if you say so.)

But it is quite beautiful, and very different from the eastern half of the state.

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