Actun Tunichil Muknal

Belize’s Actun Tunichil Muknal has been named the #1 Sacred Cave in the World by National Geographic. That distinction alone is enough to attract serious archaeology fans and spelunkers from all over the world. Add the fact that accessing the cave requires a one hour hike through the jungle, while crossing the meandering Roaring River […]

Babci and Me. Courage.

My babci (grandmother), Róża, was only seventeen when she boarded the train to Antwerp—alone— near Kolno, in northeast Poland. It was December 1911, three years shy of the turmoil of  World War I. Stars sparkled in the moonlight on the coarse crust of the deep frozen snow and young Róża drew her cheap coat closer […]

Attention, Whiners (That Would Be Me)

Midlife Crisis Alert. The day before yesterday, I had a weird day of self-pitying confusion. I was chalking it up to just general tiredness after a busy day, writing deep self-exploratory memoir material in a beautiful tropical setting that contrasted vastly with my frame of mind. However, this morning a link to an article about […]

Belize Day 3 – Synchronicity, continued

In 1970, I was an undergraduate student at UMASS Amherst trying to come up with a suitable subject for a lithography printmaking assignment. I wasn’t terribly inspired in those days. I had a Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary that had been a graduation gift from my local hometown newspaper, where I was a high school journalist. I flipped […]

Belize Day 2

It’s been less than 12 hours since arrival in Belize and, already, I’m back in the groove. Any thoughts I had of maybe going elsewhere next winter are slowly getting squashed by the synchronicity that I always experience here. syn·chro·nic·i·ty1 /ˌsiNGkrəˈnisitē/ noun the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible […]