Posts by Ruth Anne Lawson
Leaving Louisville
It’s almost wheels-up time for us after an action-packed Presidents’ Day weekend with Harvey in Kentucky. It’s been a blast for all three of us. I thought I’d run back through my pictures while we wait for our homeward-bound flight and post a few random shots. This is Kentucky’s only Frank Lloyd Wright designed…
Read More »Abe’s Crib
“I don’t know who my grandfather was: I am much more concerned to know who his grandson will be.”~~~Abraham Lincoln It’s been like a time loop from the movie Groundhog Day. I’ve had the same conversation over and over for the last month or so. It goes like this: Random Friend: “Where and when…
Read More »Harvey’s Grand Slam Day
“The next time someone whines that baseball doesn’t have enough action, you can do two things: first, explain the planning, strategizing, calculating, and deception that take place before every pitch. Then quote Hall-of-Fame announcer Red Barber: ‘Baseball is dull only to dull minds.’”~~~Zack Hample, Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply…
Read More »The Mammoth Contributions of the Bransford Family
Jerry Bransford is a fifth generation guide at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. His ancestors were hardworking, excellent guides who probably knew more about the cave system than anyone in the state. They worked as explorers and guides for over a century, but the first Bransfords working there were not paid for their knowledge and expertise…
Read More »Beans for Breakfast
I couldn’t let it go. It’s been bugging me for years and I had to find out. I realize that I am not technically traveling right now, but this post is related to traveling, so I am going to write it. Think of it as a public service. Since the first time we set foot…
Read More »Dazzled, Bloated, and Crashed
The Aquila Private Game Reserve has a nice dazzle of zebras. They also have a pride of lions, a herd of water buffaloes, a bloat of hippopotami, and a crash of rhinos, among other types of wildlife. I started down the rabbit hole of the genesis of assigning groups of animals their collective nouns,…
Read More »The Lunar Landscape and Weird Welwitschia
The Welwitschia has been called many names and not all of them sound complimentary. Some call it “bizarre” and some call it a “living fossil.” Wait! Here’s a good one. I saw a book entitled, “Welwitschia: Paradox of a Parched Paradise.” Not sure “paradise” is the first word that comes to mind in the Namib…
Read More »Togo
Oh, my. We were blown away by the poverty in Ghana earlier this week, but it turns out that Ghana was the warm-up act for Togo. I think many people came in from the tours yesterday afternoon shell-shocked. It has taken a little time to process what we saw. I am going to write about…
Read More »Chocolate’s Dark Secret
It has been estimated that a billion people eat chocolate each day, so a post about chocolate should be the sweetest story ever told, but this week we heard a lecture that made it all so very bittersweet. The journey from cacao bean to chocolate bar leaves a wide swath of destruction in its…
Read More »The Island Nation of Cape Verde
Quick show of hands: who has ever heard of Cape Verde? I don’t see any hands, so I will move ahead with enlightening one and all. In the grand scheme of nations, Cape Verde is a new kid in town, only having gone out on its own in the seventies. Before then, Portugal was…
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