November 2019 The title encapsulates a topic of supreme importance to me at present. The challenge has always been with us but over the past several years things have gone well over the edge and the job of keeping your wits about you has become herculean. I write this on a weekend while recuperating from the onslaught of news generated by impeachment hearings in the House, mayhem in Hong Kong, madness in the UK, pandemonium [...]
November 2019 If you do due diligence in your travel planning for a jaunt around the Yucatan Peninsula, you'll come across Izamal as one of the biggies. It's known as the "Yellow City" because most of the buildings are painted in the same shade of yellow. This isn't something that dates back very far, however. It was a response to the visit by the Pope in 1993. There's some scuttlebutt afoot that it also [...]
November 2019 In the course of my research for my two-week trip to the Yucatan Peninsula I came across the news that Campeche has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Them's pretty big potatoes. So in my planning I put in a side jaunt to Campeche from Uxmal, which is about 2 hours northeast. There's a main highway -- we'd call it a freeway in the States -- going between Merida and Campeche [...]
November 2019 Following hard on the heels of the last post on Labna comes this one on Sayil, just a few kilometers down the road from Labna. Though they are a stone's throw from each other on the ground, they're completely different and if you're in the area both sites should be on your bucket list. Don't think for a moment that if you've seen one Mayan archeological site you've seen them all, not [...]
November 2019 The Ruta Puuc -- "the Puuc route" in plain English -- was a fuzzy concept in my mind until I was actually on the ground in the Puuc region, at which point all was revealed. So let me clear it up for you if there's any doubt in your mind. The Puuc region is an area in the northeast of the Yucatan Peninsula. It's crammed full of Mayan ruins, including Uxmal, one [...]
October 2019 It surprised me to come across an early review by Woolf of Elizabeth McCracken's book The Women of America. The review appeared in The Guardian of May 31, 1905, written when Woolf was only 23 years old. She has some interesting points to make. Let's have a look. Let me begin by quoting the review, since we need Woolf's words on which to operate: "There are many types of the American woman -- more, [...]