Category Archives: Travel

Visit Bisbee

Posted on July 15, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

You might want to take a trip this summer; and you might want in doing so to visit the lost places in our own lands. So you grab the old road atlas that your dad left up in the attic … Continue reading →

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The Event Horizon of Africa

Posted on June 22, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

Last night I sat with friends in a run-down rooftop restaurant overlooking pockmarked streets and balding hills watching the sun set – again – over Africa. The smell of wood smoke lightly scented with beans wafted on high as we … Continue reading →

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To Talk of Many Things… (Vol. #3 – Dubai)

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

“The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand: They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand:” “What was your favorite thing about vacation?” I asked my little boy, to his thoughtful answer “Green Planet…! I touched … Continue reading →

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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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