Back in Chicago. Yay!!! On this trip, the only one of my Chicago photog friends who could meet me was Tom Tran, and that’s him walking toward me on the enormous question-mark shaped pier at Montrose Point. Tom grew up nearby in a neighborhood called “Asia on Argyle.” What fun it was to hear his stories of playing on Montrose Beach and fishing from the pier as a kid! I have been in Chicago much colder days, but see the ice forming on the pier? It wasn’t exactly warm, especially not for this mid-westerner who has, after 20+ years of…

Whew! It seems I will never finish this late-start Year in Review! I shall be short-winded about this because there’s an entire chapter devoted to this place in the book I am currently writing. Yes. I am. If you can’t reach me on a Friday morning, it’s because I’m writing. Yay! The first time I visited this place I call “Home of the Wounded Healer” back in 2010, it was all turquoise water and bare dirt. It was an eerily beautiful scar bulldozed into the face of the earth to get fill dirt for the expansion of nearby Highway 165…

Woohoo! Travel! I got home from a trip to a conference in March 2019 and immediately went into Covid-19 lockdown. Not until late September, 2021, did I board a plane again. Boy, did I miss it. I love where I live, but I also love to travel and specifically, I love to travel to big cities. I need my “city fix” a few times a year! It was quite wonderful to be back in Chicago. I wandered the streets camera in hand every moment I could. Yes, I saw an opera, and it was great to have opera back. But…

I am a wannabee biologist. When I went back to school in my 30s to begin collecting degrees, I chose the field of communication, and I love that field and taught in it for many years. I was afraid of the math requirements for doing natural science. But I was and still am a wannabee biologist. In retirement, I’m finally doing it. Not a degree. Haven’t time for that. But studying the natural world none the less, and hanging out with biology faculty–my former colleagues at the local university. So it was that I got involved in Dr. John Carr’s…

Beach walking pays off again! In July of 2021, I made it to the Gulf Coast of southwest Louisiana. The purpose of the trip was actually to deliver some furnishings to an Episcopal day school in Lake Charles, a task completed by noon. After lunch, I made a beeline for the coast, traveling straight south on La. Highway 39. Highway 39 is also known as the Creole Nature Trail, and when I have business in the southwest corner of the state, driving the Creole Nature Trail is a must. On this occasion, I drove straight south from Sulphur, La., to…