Warm and Dry with a Glass of Wine

A basic tenet of outdoor leadership is to make sure novices have a positive experience when they encounter untrammeled nature for the first time. Their initial outing need not be grand, but it ought to be fun and non-threatening. Stark conditions and rugged terrain...

The Leaves Are Beginning to Change

The leaves are beginning to change. For it to occur this early in September, the reason might be more the lack of rain than the time of the year. It is more than leaf color letting me know that fall, if not already here, is only a week or two away. I wear a jacket and...

A Presidential Joint Statement

Ninety percent of the time it does not matter whether more than ten people read my blog. Friends look at it, and the effort put toward submitting a weekly entry is excellent writing practice. Those two not insignificant benefits are enough to keep me going....

A Statuary Graveyard

In last week’s blog I mentioned an outer suburb of Taipei called Taoyuan. When I lived in Taiwan during the early 1990s, Taoyuan was home to the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. Today the same airport is called the Taoyuan International Airport. Chiang...
Steven Simpson