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A Living History of the Great Wall
Frequent visitors to this blog and my website are likely aware that my grandfather, Dr. William Edgar Geil, was the first person ever documented to have walked the entire length of the Great Wall of China. He did this in 1908. After writing books and touring the world with stories of this and other adventures,…
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The Gift of Turning 70
Old friends invited my husband and me to dinner last weekend. The weather was delightful after the storms, heat and humidity of recent days. We shared stories of old times and people, which doesn’t always come easily anymore. What was his name?… I think it was 1975? 1976?… That was before, no wait, it was…
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HEY… It’s Not Your Father’s Email
Email is indispensable in modern life… and inescapable… and the bane of existence for many of us. There’s way too much of it, especially on our jobs. Before retiring I got over 400 emails a week at the office. Some people get that many in a day! Home is no escape either. I use email…
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Society Needs a Collective ‘Time Out’
An article in yesterday’s New York Times got me thinking. It described the latest round of something we see constantly these days: speakers (usually conservative) being shouted down or denied a platform altogether by (usually “progressive”) students or activists. The right does this too, though in their case it’s often more institutionalized than ad hoc. Examples include…
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Two Brothers Walk China’s Great Wall End-to-End
This post has been updated to include the complete set of 22 videos recorded during the journey of James and Tommy Lindesay along the Great Wall. You can follow the Lindesay Brothers directly at YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. My grandfather, Dr. William Edgar Geil, walked the entire length of China’s Great Wall in 1908. He…
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My Liberal Turn
I became a socialist in the early ’70s before attending college. While never a member, I’ve been involved off and on in different capacities with the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) ever since — until last spring. In April I broke off my formal connection over political differences. This has led to a series of…
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A Day to Remember a Lifetime of Memories
Souls tend to go back to who feels like home. N.R. Hart This past Friday is a day I will long cherish. My college friend, Wendy, lives in Australia now but comes back home to the states from time to time. We last saw each other before the pandemic — too long! Freed now of…
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Missing the Point: Meditation, Rumination & Journaling
I’ve come to realize that 2022 has apparently been a very hard year for me emotionally. A series of big events have apparently thrown me for a loop: a life-changing political upheaval in April, a distressing family hospitalization, and several months of chaos & disruption with two home renovation projects. I didn’t fully appreciate the…
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National Coming Out Day 2022 — It’s Never Been More Important
A list of support resources is provided at the end. October 11 was declared National Coming Out Day in 1988 to mark the first anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It had been almost 20 years since the 1969 Stonewall riots when thousands of us descended on Washington DC…