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Wi-fly
If you’re like me, the only time you’re not tethered to the Internet is during that no man’s land between the airplane door closing and your flight reaching cruising altitude. You know what I mean:...
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Fair Warnings
When students step into my office at the California college where I teach, they’re greeted by photos of danger signs posted on the wall behind my desk. “If you lose your footing, powerful currents...
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Calls from the wild
My husband and I took a road trip earlier this summer. We headed north from our home in Oakland, California, looking forward to losing ourselves in the beauty of Oregon’s pristine lakes, energetic...
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Eat, Pray, Run!
Like most people, I have a complicated relationship with animals. I hate to see them hurt, but will happily place their body parts between two slices of bread. I’m desperately afraid of being mauled...
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Home away from home
Like most men, I am a fantasist. Every time I get into a taxi, I have to fight the urge to say “Follow that cab!” In supermarkets, I’m incapable of pushing a cart three yards without making a skidding...
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Make Room for Daddy
TWO YEARS AGO, I HAD THE PERFECT life. As a London-based freelance journalist, I was sent on a variety of international assignments. In one year, I traveled around southern Africa with Bono, underwent...
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Tout de Sweet
The flag of Finland, home of salmiakki salty licorice IN 1990, WHEN I WAS 13, my dad’s company transferred him to its office in Brussels, Belgium. My parents were thrilled about the move, partly...
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Perk Up the Workplace
For Dwight Schrute of “The Office,” spring water and morning calishtenics are invaluable perks. IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS COFFEE. Although his name is lost to history, it’s safe to say whoever came...
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The Best-Laid Plans
IT WAS ALMOST 10PM when I took a seat in the nearly empty train car in a desolate port city near Rome, bound for the capital. As the train began creeping out of the station, I could barely keep my...
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Meeting Mr. Peanut
AS A SOUTHERN GIRL, I’ve always loved the boiled peanut, a true down-home delicacy. But when I moved to New York City after college, the love became a solitary one. In fact, I was a laughingstock of...
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Chili Dog to Go
AS ORIGINALLY PLANNED, our midwinter Mexican vacation was supposed to be a sedate, even sophisticated affair: nesting in a sun-dappled house in historic San Miguel de Allende, strolling the cobbled...
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Mother Courage
HE DID NOT GO QUIETLY into that good night. Far from it. My father, Robert Whitehead, was an elegant character, a revered Broadway producer who put on original works by Arthur Miller, Tennessee...
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In Praise Of Jet Lag
I was in tokyo a couple of weeks ago. After clearing customs in Narita, I did what I normally do when I get to Tokyo. I did something really stupid. It’s become a little ritual of mine, though I mix...
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To Hall and Back
“TO LIGHT A CANDLE, NOT FILL A BUCKET.” It might sound saccharine to some, but that quote from National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum curator John O’Dell—a reference to his goal of inspiring...
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A Passage Through India
MISTY MOUNTAIN STOP The author’s “rick” during a pit stop on the road to Darjeeling. THERE’S A SAYING IN INDIA that’s often repeated to newcomers: “If you come here without patience, you will learn...
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Ramblin’ Man
I’M WRITING THIS not from my apartment in New York but from my parents’ South Florida living room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Why? Because three days ago I needed to do laundry and wanted to go...
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The Great Escape
Image – Emiliano Ponzi HILFE! SCHLUSSEL! HAUSMEISTER! BITTE! “Help! Key! Superintendent! Please!” Useful German words for when one is trapped in an apartment on the sixth floor of a creaky, late 19th...
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An Early Spring
ADULTHOOD TENDS to sneak up on you. One minute, you’re an easygoing kid; the next, you’ve got a house, responsibilities, assignments piling up. You still listen to the music of your youth—only now...
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The incidental Tourist
There are few things in life more dispiriting than a shoddy circus. I say this from a position of authority, having recently witnessed the most unsuccessful circus since Leonardo and His Lovable Lions...
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Wish you weren’t here
All of Paris glowed beneath them on the night Elizabeth Simmons and her husband sat at a table in one of the restaurants at the Eiffel Tower. Leaning forward in the candlelight, she sighed at the...
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