Notes From A Bear's Journey

     Lisbon is a city not unlike San Francisco or DC, as the hectic yet cosmopolitan feel of visitors and tourists mixes in easily with business workers and local residents (Lisbon also shares a similar latitude as those two US cities).  It is here at Lisbon that the 600-mile-long Tejo river spills into the Atlantic, although more than a few local residents may inwardly harbor thoughts of seeing tourists also flowing out into that ocean.  That push-pull of wanting and yet  not  wanting ever more tourists and elderly expats arriving to their city hides the fact that (as with so many other tourist-dependent cities in the world) nearly 70% of the jobs here in Lisbon are in the service industry (for a few of the Canary Islands, that number can climb to over 80%).  But there is another love-hate clash at work in this part Portugal, and that is one happening right next door in Spain.  As the Rick Steves guidebook wrote: The Portuguese seem humbler and friendlier than the Spanish.  V isitors

      There's still something magical about being at a window seat and watching your plane take off.  That rounding of the corner after a slow taxi out, the feel of the plane straightening itself along the runway, and then that sudden surge of power.  And no matter the size of the plane, I still have to wonder how such a massive chunk of metal and fuel, much less its heavy loads of passengers and their ever-larger pieces of checked luggage, gets off the ground with such ease.  Even when driving in my car, I am baffled that a simple push of my foot somehow causes a mist of gasoline to enter a chamber and ignite flames thst wll then power pistons and valves not much different from the stream trains of old.  How is that it is all so controlled, and controlled in such a manner that most of us can just take all of it for granted, never even considering a simple crack in the line may cause the entire thing to burst into flames as easily as when our Cub scout manhood brains shot lighter f

      TRIP (the noun): The  Oxford dictionary  defines trip as: ... an act of going to a place and returning; a journey or excursion, especially for pleasure.   So that was us, now in  Portugal .  We knew (and still know) next to nothing about the place, other than it being the oldest nation state in all of Europe.  Yes, we knew and had tasted the "fortified" wine called  port , of course (from the city north of Lisbon appropriately named Porto).  And of course we'd read about the country being yet another ex-pat escape for oldies, many of them spreading like a virus as they depart the U.S. for cheaper digs in foreign lands to end their days.  But that wasn't us (yet), since we were only in Lisbon for a day: no extensive  Camino walk , no stunning  Sintra  beaches, no ventures up to the  Basque country  or doing coastal drives inland to enter Barcelona and Spain.  Instead, we were soon leaving the mainland entirely, venturing far out to sea once again, modern-day expl

     Not to belabor the point but somewhere along the way we seem to have lost Thanksgiving.  Oh they're will be cases of turkeys and pumpkins, and watching college football games.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Perhaps I've just noticed this more each year since Halloween decorations now began appearing in August.  Yes, August!  And this year they were huge...and expensive.  But really, who buy these monster figures, say, other than my neighbor who has already put up his Christmas lights (didn't we just begin fall not that long ago?).  And I couldn't help but notice that even at places such as Costco and Home Depot, the Halloween displays are quickly being shoved into smaller and smaller sections of the stores, the part with all those patio furniture closeouts.  A few pallets of bagged candy, one rack of cheap, glittery costumes aimed at parents with 2-year olds, and it's time to make way for Christmas!  What has happened to us?  How did a candy-filled fest

     You have to love those hooks, those words that either pull you in or baffle you.  Take the piece in The London Review which featured words such as corbels and gibbets, precentor and prising (what??).  I had to look them up; cool words but really, who uses them in everyday life?  Advertising is sometimes like that with catchy phrases or jingles (We Are Farmers...), or more often a play on words.  That Rolex watch ad from the last post came from the same book that these award-winning 1989 ads did, a book which i remember from way back when the idea of spending $40 or $50 for a book was far out of my league.  This was 1989 after all and that amount of money, in today's dollars, was over $125.  Who'd be crazy enough to spend that amount on a book?  And an advertising book, no less.  But I went ahead and got it...go figure.  As it turned out, it would be the first time such a book had been put together for such "awards" (the annual versions of The One Show continue