Professor Carol
Virtually anything we try to do nowadays, from buying tickets to conducting our banking to making medical appointments, requires that we fill out on-line forms. And these forms are rigid, demanding an arbitrary array of information—often intrusive information. All of this is annoying enough, but … Read more
Our nearby county pool is closing for the summer on August 11. I did a double-take when I read that date. How is this possible, I wondered, particularly since the eleventh is not even mid-August? Then I remembered: insidiously, someone at some point somewhere decided … Read more
I stare out my cabin window to watch the western shore of the Rhine pass by. The morning clouds, thick in our overnight port of Koblenz, disperse with each kilometer. At the river’s edge, snappy German trains weave in and out of tunnels in the … Read more
Summer began officially on June 21st, but the days are already getting shorter. And that fact makes me sad. I am an extreme morning bird. Yes, there really are people like me who wake up repeatedly during the night, grab the clock, and hope it’s … Read more
Departure Day of a tour never gets portrayed properly in the brochures. For many in each group, it starts with a brutally early hotel pickup for travel to the airport. No one likes it, of course, but if the goal is to connect to a … Read more
A wild storm is brewing outside my window here on Leipziger Strasse in Berlin. It might be a relief for Berliners after such an unseasonably hot day. Regardless of how much Germans yearn for hot summers, the reality of such temperatures does seem to cause … Read more
Glagolitic? Who knew a 9th-century alphabet would serve as the buzz word for my latest Smithsonian group as we traveled through Croatia? Briefly defined, Glagolitic is the earliest known version of a Slavic script. The name of this curiously decorative alphabet comes from the old … Read more
Here we sit at the eastern end of the Island of Hvar, in the Adriatic, waiting for the next ferry. Despite arriving two hours early for the 1 p.m. ferry, our bus was not allowed to load. Basically we got bumped for a group of … Read more
One of our grandchildren is undergoing early-intervention sessions in speech therapy. Problematic are his initial “r’s” and “s’s” as well as final consonants like “d” and “t.” Based on what I understand, this is a common situation, especially with boys, and a therapist can help … Read more
Yesterday, driving back from Pennsylvania to North Carolina after three days of filming a course on music for Classical Academic Press, Hank and I found ourselves inordinately captivated by the landscape. As we sailed through the stately hills and valleys of the Appalachian region I … Read more