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Christmas food Christmas traditions Italy panettone

PANETTONE SEASON

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judithworks

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November 30, 2017

Hooray! It’s Panettone season around here.

Actually, it’s the holiday season. In the US this means from Thanksgiving to New Year’s day. So I have about five weeks to indulge in my favorite treat: panettone, that traditional sweet and oh-so-delicious Italian Christmas bread. About the first of November the stores, even in my corner of Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, begin stacking up the colorful boxes in windows and shelves and I begin loading up the shopping cart.

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ancientgreece ancientreligions Delphi Greece pagans

SACRED SPACES I – Delphi

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judithworks

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November 12, 2017

What makes a site sacred? The atmosphere, the setting, the priests who declared it so, or the pilgrims who trek from far away to experience a oneness with their god or gods? Maybe all of the above.

My husband and I set out from Athens for a two-day trip first to visit sacred Delphi, once considered the center of the world. The following day we would visit another sacred site, Meteora, deep in the mountains of mainland Greece.

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London luxury Ritz Tea

LONDON – TEA AT THE RITZ

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judithworks

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June 28, 2017

It was easy to see where the term “ritzy” came from when the liveried doorman opened the portal for my daughter and me to enter the Ritz Hotel in London. She had arranged for tea at the hallowed hotel as a special treat. The lobby, filled with stylishly-dressed people who looked like they belonged there, was overwhelming with its marble floors, heavy silk draperies, enormous flower arrangements, and discreet shops filled with expensive jewelry. Anyone fond of minimalist décor would cover their eyes as they gasped in anguish.

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Arizona San Xavier del Bac Tumacacori

SOUTHERN ARIZONA: A TALE OF TWO MISSIONS

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judithworks

on

May 17, 2017

Time hasn’t been kind to the Mission of Tumacacori that stands in partial ruin three miles south of the flourishing artist’s town of Tubac in southern Arizona. Dreary weather added to the melancholy atmosphere surrounding the abandoned church when my husband and I visited. Although it is part of a National Historic Monument managed by the Park Service, other than a group of hikers who briefly stopped to use the facilities before they headed out on a birdwatching expedition, the grounds were empty of visitors.

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Cathars France Myths SW France

SOUTHWESTERN FRANCE – Myths and Echoes

By
judithworks

on

April 7, 2017

A bookstore will never lead you astray if you’re looking for something to carry you to mysterious places. Our local bookshop in Rome (actually in my office building) had a delightful name, “Food for Thought.” It also had a bin of older paperbacks toward the back where I regularly rummaged to find something inexpensive to read. And, one day, there was Holy Blood, Holy Grail at the bottom of the bin. With a blurb that said it was “explosively controversial,” I bought it.

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Cuba independant travel

GUEST POST: CUBA – Getting Around with Pens, Caps, Glasses and Maps

By
judithworks

on

February 14, 2017

It is a hot afternoon in Santa Clara, Cuba, and perhaps that is why we are the only ones standing at the Tren Blindado park, listening to an engaging gentleman share his adoration of beloved rebel, Che Guevara. We are trying to picture the bold Guevara using a bulldozer to derail the train that ignited the Cuban Revolution.

More vivid, however, is my memory of trying to give this older gentleman, a veteran who experienced the Revolution fifty years ago, a few coins.

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Bog Men Book of Kells Dublin Ireland Trinity Library

DUBLIN IN THE RAIN

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judithworks

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December 31, 2016

Whatever the weather, Dublin is a fine place to visit.

Of course it rained, but being from the Pacific Northwest, my husband and I felt right at home. The rain fell on the sad cluster of statues memorializing the Potato Famine and it fell in the city center. It stopped briefly for Molly Maguire before it began to fall on us.

We were armed with an umbrella but a vending machine would have saved us if we’d forgotten ours.

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Acadia National Park Fall Colors Maine Mount Desert Island

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – A study in scarlet

By
judithworks

on

November 8, 2016

Acadia – the very name brings visions of a dream such as that painted by Nicholas Poussin in 1639.

It also brings to mind the Acadians, French settlers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, who were driven from their homes when the British pushed them out. Many settled in Maine, although some fled to Louisiana and transformed into the Cajuns, famous for good music and good food.

But the word also reminds me of a recent trip to Mount Desert Island and a day spent in Acadia National Park, one of the nation’s smallest, established in 1919, and the first of our National Parks established East of the Mississippi.

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Acoma New Mexico traved

ACOMA: The Sky City

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judithworks

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September 25, 2016

My friends and I began our visit in the beautiful cultural center at the base of Acoma, about an hour’s drive west of Albuquerque. The ancient settlement itself is located on a mesa 365 feet above the desert floor, a broken land dotted with other rock formations. Settled around the year 1000 AD, it is one of the oldest continually-occupied areas in the country.

Where formerly there were only ladders and steps carved into the rock, a winding road now leads up the steep hill to the cluster of adobe buildings occupied by only 30 people due to the lack of water, sewerage, and electricity.

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Karoo South Africa Travel

IN THE KAROO

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judithworks

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August 14, 2016

A silent young man picked us up in front of our hotel in Cape Town near a post carved with animal heads depicting four of South Africa’s big game.

We climbed into an SUV for a three-hour trip to a game preserve north of the city in an area called the Karoo. As we passed the sad townships, some with small houses and others with tin shacks, we were reminded of the deep poverty that envelopes so much of South Africa.

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