Don’t know about other people, but ordinarily the G7/G8 doesn’t even cause the slightest blip on my radar. Until Saturday, I couldn’t even name the participating countries. But since it was a very damp, drizzly day at Sea Island and a day totally unsuited for playing outside, we decided to take the G8 Summit tour…

    Our destination Friday evening was the North Pole. We left the depot in Bryson City, North Carolina promptly at 5 PM aboard the Polar Express and settled into our booths in the first class car dubbed Carolina Shine. We shared the car with other families also eager to get to the North Pole…

“We must build a tower here. We need that tower. I want to make a place for bats to roost and breed. In San Marcos, Texas south of Austin where I grew up they built towers to attract bats and exterminate the malarial mosquitoes.”                       …

First off, I probably have some explaining to do. No, we didn’t fly to Michigan straight from Yerevan, Armenia. We stopped in SC for a few nights first. We came to Michigan to attend a seminar series at Hillsdale College on the history and controversies of the United States Intelligence agencies. I’ll be honest, when…

Another epic journey has come to a close and we are awaiting our homebound flight in yet another airport lounge. We are the last of our little group to leave Armenia so we have had the day free, which has given us plenty of time to talk about what we have seen and learned over…

                         On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ~~Genesis 8:4   Mount Ararat, in the Eastern Anatolian Region of Turkey, is revered by Armenians the world over as sacred and as the site…

April 24, 1915 was a very dark day for the Armenians of what is today eastern Turkey. There had been rising resentment of the Christian Armenians by the Young Turk government before and during World War I. For centuries, the Christian Armenians had been part of the Ottoman Empire inhabiting Eastern Anatolia. The Armenians had…

  The wine world has definitely acknowledged that Georgia is the official birthplace of wine, so we were quite excited to get to the epicenter of viniculture in this fascinating country. The region of Kakheti is ground zero for Georgia’s industry, so a visit to that region was imperative. The road to Kakheti was flanked…

It’s not often that a hotel inspires me to write about it, but the Stamba is just one of those hotels. Located in old Tbilisi, Georgia, it is housed in a former Soviet publishing house; it’s a great example of Soviet architecture. The first Communist newspaper in Georgia was published in this location. The decor…

The Khachapuri Index: It’s a genius way of describing something in terms that all Georgians can understand and relate to their life. All Georgians know and love khachapuri. It’s the national dish. Georgians eat it at home, they eat it on the street, they eat it in restaurants. If they don’t personally bake it, they…