Dia de los Muertos

Scrapbook

By John Weaver

Happy All Souls' Day, All Saints' Day, Halloween & Dia de los Muertos! Here's a calavera ("skull") from my scrapbook.

See more from my scrapbook

Elephant camp

Scrapbook

By John Weaver

This is out of my scrapbook from the 2010 trip my wife and I took to Thailand and Cambodia. 

We spend 3 days at an elephant camp in the north of Thailand near Chiang Mai, where we helped take care of the elephants. We went with the mahouts in the morning to get the elephants from the forest, brushed off their dusty backs, climbed clumsily onto their necks and rode them off to their bathing hole. 

We were with our elephants the whole day. We bathed them, fed them, paraded them and played with them. They were extremely gentle - not once were we scared of being trampled by their enormous size. 

Their giant feet stepped softly through the forest, one foot very carefully in front of the other, hardly making any sound. In fact, that's why in Thailand it's a complement to tell a woman, "You walk like an elephant." 

Not a recommended pick up line anywhere else though!

Here are some more pick up lines that may (or may not!) help you on your travels:

The enemy within

Scrapbook

by John Weaver

July Fourth always sneaks up on me. When you don’t live in the US, it’s a holiday that easily falls off your radar, only to hit you by surprise at some point on the day itself when you look at the calendar and say to yourself, “Oh yeah.” 

But while I didn’t BBQ or light any fireworks again this year, I did celebrate my roots when the US played Belgium in the World Cup this week. We lost, but the quality of the competition definitely made me proud to back the Red, White & Blues. In fact, that match put US Soccer on the map in Belgium, and I’m sure other countries took notice too. 

It also put Belgium on the map for many in the US, where more than 21.6 million people (not including those at bars and other public places) tuned in to watch.

So it was a win-win for me. But I was sorry to see Belgium get knocked out by Argentina in a lackluster performance Saturday.

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Something that did hit my radar this week was a comment by Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, when asked by the Huffington Post whether Dick Cheney was immoral or amoral: 

"I think amoral is a better and more precise, descriptive term…Immorality is something that can be ferreted out, checked and balanced. Amorality is an altogether different affair, especially when you're exploiting the politics of fear in order to carry out state purposes, which is what Dick Cheney's forte is.”