Well well, another year gone by. I’m not sure if this is an excuse or a reason, but I just didn’t feel like I had a whole lot to say.

That’s changed.

I just returned from a trip that was part reconnaissance, part bucket list and part classic road trip fodder. My family spent nearly three weeks in Amsterdam and parts of western Germany. I got to worship in Amsterdam’s old — yet vibrant — Portuguese synagogue. I got to stalk Spinoza to his no longer existent birth house and then to the place he called home for several years in Rijnsburg — meeting an ecstatic museum docent along the way. I got almost nose-to-nose with several Rembrandt paintings and then invited myself over to his home. I took a private canal tour with my sweetheart and discovered so many things I got wrong in my manuscript’s first draft. I strolled around the underbelly of a Roman colosseum — in Germany. We sailed down the Rhein. We ate sauerbraten. We stared Charlemagne in his big golden eyeball. We saw the home my grandma was born in. We had, as they say, quite an adventure.

And then I got COVID.

But no matter where we were or what we were doing, travel did what travel always does (when you’re doing it right) — it made me think. I thought of the past and how it connects to the present. How our present will unfold to unknown futures. Of my own past. Of my family history. On the balancing of risk and reward. Of the disappointing quality of Amsterdam weed.

There are quite a few things I have to say again. Finally.

Ok, but give me just a minute. I’m still getting over COVID and there’s a nap to be taken first. Enjoy some vacation photos until next time.