Potential Credentials

[Cue the upbeat game show music]  [Cue the bright lights and title card] VIRGINIA OR COSTA RICA! [Cue me in a suit and blinding TV host veneers] Now for the game you've all been waiting for! The rules are simple. I have posted 6 photos below, and you have to guess if it's the Commonwealth of Virginia, or Latin American paradise, Costa Rica. Your prize for a discerning eye? I will post your name and a sincere personal compliment in the next blog entry. Submit your answers via text or by responding to this email. Here is an example of an acceptable response format  1. Virginia 2. Costa Rica 3. ---- you get the idea.  Here's your hint: It's hard Good luck, contestants! [Cue the music again] ___________________ Dr Derne was my favorite sociology professor at Geneseo. He taught theory and looked the part. He wore all black and rocked a thin scarf year round. If the dry erase marker he grabbed didn't...

My great grandmother Josephine came to America from Italy via Ellis Island. She was a tween when she settled in the little Italy neighborhood of Niagara falls. Her Italian last name was Americanized, then she was promptly greeted by the Great Depression. Talk about a bummer. That era of American life instructed the way she rationed food and home goods, and steeled her attitude towards wastefulness and finances. Grandma Jo only passed out half paper towels and squirreled away small parcels of cash in strange places around the house. My current lifestyle would be confusing for her without any context. Hell, with context, she might be more concerned. I think about her when I wash out a nice zip loc bag in a motel sink after its third or fourth tour of duty. I feel like she's looking down on me from heaven, clasping her hands together and tilting her head, cooing, "oh, he's being such a good boy." Except, probably something in Italian since she stopped speaking English in...

There are a bunch of cute little sayings out here on trail. "You carry your fears" or "hike your own hike." These phrases can be offered as sympathetic advice or as pithy retorts. If someone directly contradicts your idea or plan with their superior opinion, "hike your own hike" means "go fuck yourself." (coffee at "sunrise" at McAfee knob) "You carry your fears" exposes where you think your hike might go wrong. Why is your pack too heavy? Food? Water? Clothes? That's probably what you're afraid of being short on, and it's worth examining if that fear is rooted in reality or your own fiction. I had a great idea for getting in and out of town without lugging all of my possessions through a Chinese buffet then grocery store, so obviously I was afraid of nothing. Here was the plan. Leave my pack and poles at a shelter with trusted companions, and hitch in and out of town, lickety split. Brilliant.  ...