On the way to Berlin last fall, I started making notes about cities I’ve visited in Europe, North and South America and New Zealand. It didn’t add up to an especially impressive list in this age of relatively inexpensive airfares, but it seemed to me I had interesting stories about quite a few of them.
In time, my notes expanded into an A to Z collection of stories of my misadventures and observations in cities and regions (I didn’t have a U city, but I’ve been to Utah; I haven’t been to a city that starts with X, but I’ve been to the Mexico City district of Xochimilco).
What started as a series of very short travel stories grew to include a number of longer autobiographical entries covering my childhood fantasies, youthful dreams and adult ambitions, as well as experiences of marriage and parenthood and intimations of mortality. They’re all illustrated with photos culled from decades of trips, so if nothing else you can follow the upward migration of my hair.
As I pondered what to do with this document, I decided it was time to shift most of my new writing from this website to a new Substack page. For those who don’t know, Substack is an online platform that allows users to create newsletters and other documents that can then go out to subscribers via email.
Compared to this blog, Substack offers a better ability to get my writing out to readers and it even provides the potential to get paid if I find enough people are interested in my work to become subscribers. For the time being, I’m giving away free subscriptions to my Substack.
You can find the first entry in what I call A Personal Global Alphabet here, and you’ll also be able to see a few other stories and essays I’ve written recently. If you like it, sign up for a free subscription. Happy reading and happy travels, whether by plane, train, automobile or printed word.