Category Archives: Travel

The Hard Work of Understanding

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

In this sordid age of journalistic wickedness when those of that treasured profession have decided against their ancient sacred trust of informing, of shining beautiful white light into the darkened corners of our tired world, sometimes nevertheless you come across … Continue reading →

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I Will Write More of Africa

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

I will be writing more about Africa. For I am to leave this place, and proximately she will exist only in my memories; in my hopes for a better tomorrow and in my sadness at things unchanged, at suffering unstemmed … Continue reading →

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The Wave Held

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

The children over the walls and the concertina wire are in school. The chattering of recess which belies the poverty, reminding we who live in Elysium that all people are the same; the same, equality – that wicked word, harsh … Continue reading →

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Marco Polo’s World – A Book Review

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

Curiosity – and a joyful quest for wonder. For wonder is not something that hangs low on branches for the feckless or lazy to grasp. Wonder is a reward for hard work, searching and understanding and discovery – a journey … Continue reading →

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Pinker, Progressives, and Plastic in our Oceans

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

Following on my theme of our arriving ordeal, juxtaposed as it is against the narrative of our ‘great escape’, I read this weekend a long interview by Stephen Pinker defending his book Enlightenment Now. The summary of his defense in … Continue reading →

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Do You Consider the Lost Places?

Posted on January 16, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

Do you consider the lost places? Of course why would you, you who read this. You are probably American, from Seattle or Miami or Biloxi. If its early morning, before your day starts you have a fresh cappuccino steaming in … Continue reading →

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The Quiet of Unknowing

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

A quiet has descended upon us, a quiet which no longer boasts the great bonfires of old over which the legendary men gathered to tell tales, but which belies the burning manifest instead in trifling tongues which still flicker at … Continue reading →

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Chattanooga

Posted on December 20, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

I often have a difficult time writing travel posts. My musings are very rarely the normal fodder for that genre: a description of a Michelin star meal, how crunchy is a salad or how al-dente a bowl of pasta. Whether … Continue reading →

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Burmese Days – A Book Review

Posted on November 8, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

This was a novel about loneliness. Most people who post on travel blogs or the quotidian social media photograph parades of beachgoers and beer do not do justice to the loneliness of a life lived away from what one knows, … Continue reading →

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Our Rolling Road of Wonder

Posted on November 5, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

I grew up in the haunted northern valleys of Argentina’s Andes mountains. Snuggled up against Chile’s Atacama and Bolivia’s Altiplano, for those who can make the trek and brave the 20,000 foot peaks and passes is an escarpment, a quebrada, … Continue reading →

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