Tucked away along a sleepy road in the picturesque Brandywine Valley is a personal heaven of mine: Baldwin’s Book Barn, a 19th-century five-story milk barn converted in the 1940s into a book store. Today, over 300,000 rare and used books, maps, prints, manuscripts, paintings, and other collectibles fill rooms upon rooms, shelves upon shelves inside … Continue reading
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
Costumed demonstrations at El Morro and Mount Vernon aside, I’ve never been to a large-scale reenactment. With Civil War sesquicentennial upon us, we thought we’d go big and head to Gettysburg, where annual battle reenactments have been drawing crowds for the past two decades. July 2013, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, seemed like … Continue reading
I visit Philadelphia’s art museums several times a year, but only recently, to my embarrassment, got to explore the city’s Historic District. The cradle of the United States, this was where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written and signed and where five of the country’s first presidents lived, at least temporarily, … Continue reading
Autumn is in the air. Pumpkins and raspberries are ripening in my garden, the air is cooler, and catalogues already celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. Off-season prices are about to kick in: it’s almost time for spontaneous getaways. One of my favorite autumn memories is going to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. We … Continue reading
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