Filmfest DC Turns 30!

Hello friends, I invite you to join me at Filmfest DC — Washington’s only international film festival — celebrating 30 years! The festival opens Thursday, April 14 and closes Sunday, April 24. This year’s anchor venues are Mazza Gallerie and Landmark E Street Theater, with special screenings at the Embassy of France. Tickets are on … Continue reading →

Travel Theme: Routine

My January is half melancholy, half relief. I slip back into well-worn patterns, and find comfort in the familiar. There is beauty there, and surprises too. Ailsa’s Travel Theme, Routine, made me think of these — glimpses of other people’s ordinary moments. 1. Early commuters streaming to work in São Paulo. An hour earlier, I ambled through the sleeping city to São … Continue reading →

Travel Theme: Pink

It is almost time. It may snow next week, but — no matter. The trees are waking up, the earth sighs with its first blooms, the birds are looking for mates. Spring is about to burst. And in DC, spring means Pink, like Ailsa’s Travel Theme this week, the pink of the cherry blossoms. My … Continue reading →

WordPress Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition

This week’s WordPress’s Photo Challenge is Juxtaposition. Here are some images that sprang to mind: 1. Two soldiers lost in conversation at the Gettysburg 150th National Civil War Battle Reenactment 2. An idyllic statue of James and Dolley Madison against reconstructed slave quarters at their Montpelier estate 3. A colorful kite against the weathered walls of El Morro, … Continue reading →

Travel Theme: Connections

Ailsa’s travel theme challenge this week is Connections. Here are some of mine: 1. Locking eyes with an osprey at the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve  2. Reliving the past at George Washington’s Mount Vernon 3. Listening to sheep cry out to each other in the fog near Rijsterbos 4. Watching for our destination on the Grand Canyon Railway  … Continue reading →

Happy National Train Day

“Railroad iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844) Did you know that 11 May is the National Train Day in the US? Celebrations, big and small, are taking place around the country. Sadly, I can’t go this year, but what a … Continue reading →

Travel Theme: Dance

Dance is this week’s travel theme from Where’s My  Backpack? So, here we go, a collection of colorful frolicking from the months past. A king and the Maypole at the Maryland’s Renaissance Festival: Montresor and Fortunato, doomed by Poe long ago, stumbling over the bones at the Westminster Hall & Burying Ground: Performers practicing backstage at the DC Turkish … Continue reading →

My Garden, in Spring Color

And just like that, at long last, my gardening season begins in earnest. I love the newness of it all: Everything is crisp, fresh, and, for the moment, somewhat in order. Each day, I begin with my spring color survey. Here’s this week’s palette. My greens:  Maroons: Purples and blues: A blaze of yellows:  All … Continue reading →

Travel Theme: Pale

I did not have to travel far for my contribution to this week’s Travel Challenge: Pale. Spring is taking its time to reach the garden this year.  But, at long last, one of my woodland favorites is here: Jeffersonia dyphilla is venturing its first white blooms. This lovely native wildflower was named after Thomas Jefferson … Continue reading →

Into the Brave New World: Transplanted Tatar on Facebook

Friends, readers, travelers, lend me your eyes. With the new blog theme introduced, I thought I’d continue to live on the edge: The Transplanted Tatar Facebook page is now LIVE. Please come visit us there. I hope it will be a diverting complement to this little blog of ours. See you soon!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Home (and Garden)

This week’s photo challenge is Home: “share a picture that evokes HOME for you.“ Apart from my family–the one I was born to, and the one that grew around me over the years–my home is the garden that embraces our house. When I garden, I imagine myself the Little Prince, tending his planet against the catastrophe of … Continue reading →

Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

This week’s photo challenge is Love. As I close my eyes and think of it, several images assemble, each a memorable moment from someplace that comforted or surprised me. Here are five of them. 1. The feisty old goat Crackerjack snuggling with his friend at the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, one of my favorite peaceful places. 2. The … Continue reading →

Travel Theme: Multiples

I loved the whirlwind of color, movement, and imagination stirred up by this week’s travel theme challenge from Ailsa’s Where’s My Backpack: Multiples. There are so many great responses. I’d like to add mine to the chorus. My swarms, rows, and badelynges of multiples are grouped by season and month when I encountered them. 1. Winter  2. … Continue reading →

One Lovely Blog Award: Thank you!

I am very grateful to be nominated for One Lovely Blog Award by two bloggers whose posts I enjoy very much: thisfloridalife, full of great insider tips for all the best central Florida has to offer from a native who loves the place, and joytourandtravel, a tour company’s treasury of travel advice that’s bound to inspire bouts of … Continue reading →

Marscape of the Red Rock Canyon

I am in the midst of two days of meetings in Detroit and Ann Arbor, my first time in Michigan, but my mind wanders further West: Here, a once-forest of burnt Joshua trees in the Red Rock Canyon, only half an hour away from the Las Vegas strip…