2024 British Isles Cruise Day 8 (Ballymena, Dunluce Castle, Giant's Causeway, Ballycastle, Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge)

2024 British Isles Cruise Day 2 (Stonehenge Day)

Pearl Harbor: USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma Memorial, USS Missouri

On April 29, the seventh day of my fortieth anniversary Hawaii cruise with the lovely Robin, we sailed into Honolulu aboard our cruise ship, the Grand Princess. I took the above photo from our balcony.

Soon after breakfast, we boarded a bus to our excursion in Pearl Harbor.

After watching an amazing film that included much actual footage (both American and Japanese) of the Pearl Harbor attack, we boarded a tender to the USS Arizona Memorial (above). Wow. So memorable and profound.

We also briefly visited the USS Oklahoma Memorial before moving on to the decks of the USS Missouri. 

Amazingly, in just a couple hours, we stood where the U.S. involvement in World War II both began (with the sinking of the Arizona, among many other ships damaged or sunk on December 7, 1941) and ended.  The USS Missouri is the ship on which the scene below took place, as General MacArthur and others signed the surrender of the Japanese forces on September 2, 1945. 

Today, a plate (below) marks the spot where the surrender was signed. Incredible. 

After our guide (Bob) took us around the deck and expertly answered our questions, the lovely Robin and I toured as much of the mighty battleship below decks as we could, learning loads along the way. We were so glad to have included this excursion in our plans, something we will never forget. 

The First Folio at Cleveland Public Library

I've been looking forward for quite some time to yesterday's adventure. I left Tuesday morning to drive to the Cleveland Public Library main branch on Superior Avenue where just the day before a touring display from the Folger Shakespeare Library arrived.

First of all, what a magnificent building the library occupies. Majestic. Beautiful. Startling, from top to bottom, in its graceful, elegant design.

Shakespeare exhibits are found on the first and third floors of the library. Part of the first floor is a Fourth Folio (below), not as valuable or important as a First Folio, but important in establishing the canon as it exists today.

I presented my ticket (obtained at no cost via an online reservation) and was shown into the "holy of holies," a small room where the First Folio was kept under glass and with an armed guard nearby. I was told going in not to lean on or touch the plexiglass case. So, of course, the first thing I did was touch the plexiglass case--and the guard was quick to correct me. Fortunately I didn't get kicked out. Unfortunately, photos of the First Folio were not allowed. It was opened to Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy, the "To be or not to be" passage in Hamlet. I took the time to read the entire soliloquy aloud (no one else was nearby); the four-hundred-year-old print was perfectly legible (though the misspelling of "than" as "then" stood out to me!). What an experience.

I spent just short of ninety minutes in all, perusing the many volumes and informative displays, including a 1647 volume of Fletcher and Beaumont's Comedies and Tragedies, opened to the title page of The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tamed, Fletcher's sequel to The Taming of the Shrew. Amazing.

While no one pointed me out as the author of the soon-to-be-released The Bard and the Bible, I'm sure they knew. Nonetheless, it was a delight to read Hamlet from a text that (though no one could tell me the Folger number of that particular Folio) was printed a mere seven years after the Bard died, and no more than a quarter century after Hamlet was written. "Such stuff as dreams are made on."

Pinch Me Places: Twelfth Night on Broadway

One of the highlights of my year, and as theater goes, a highlight of my life!

Pinch Me Places: Matanuska Glacier

Late in July, the lovely Robin and I had a wonderful whirlwind visit to the forty-ninth state in the U.S.A., the "last frontier," Alaska. On the last day of our stay, we set out on Sunday afternoon in the company of our hosts, George and Jeanne Baker, and our friends Eloisa and Jeff Martin, for the Matanuska Glacier.

After roughly an hour and a half of driving (we started out forty-five minutes from Anchorage), the Matanuska Glacier came into view. Approximately twenty-six miles long (see the photo of the glacier's length here), and four miles wide at its terminus, it is classified as a valley glacier--a body of solid ice that flows like a river under its own weight through an existing valley.

We entered the Matanuska Glacier Park, a privately owned park that is the glacier's only access point and stopped at the office to not only pay the entrance fee but also to sign waivers saying any injury while walking on the glacier would be our problem, not theirs. Then we drove a couple miles on a dirt road to the parking area and started walking.

At first it was hard to believe we were walking on a glacier, because the ice was largely covered with rocks and grit. But after many steps on the darker surface, we reached the glistening white areas of the glacier, and many crevasses where the deep blue of the glacier glowed up at us!

Walking on the surface of a glacier is definitely a "pinch me place." I want to do it again--and I want to take my kids and grandkids, and maybe pay to go on one of the guided tours and ice climbing options that are available! 

Pinch Me Places: Storytime

I've visited many places on earth that qualify as "pinch me places"--spots so amazing or celebrated I can hardly believe I'm really there. Such as Machu Pichu. The Western Wall. The Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem. 221B Baker Street in London. And so on.

But a recent "pinch me place" was the couch in my son's living room, where I got to read (on four successive evenings) to my oldest grandchildren, Miles and Mia, from The Hobbit. Since they moved to California in early June, I haven't had that priceless pleasure, so it was a "pinch me place" to cuddle with them and choke back tears as I read of Bilbo and Thorin and Smaug in San Jose, California.

Pinch Me Places: Joseph Hochstetler Grave

In July 2013, the lovely Robin and I attended the Jacob Hochstetler Family Association's Sixth Quinquennial North American Gathering in Lewistown, PA. We attended (and I spoke) in the company of my brother Don and sister-in-law Arvilla, and took advantage of the occasion to drive to the nearby Mifflintown area to tour the homestead and burial site of my great-great-great-great-great grandfather Joseph Hochstetler (and the burial site also of his son John). 

It was definitely a "pinch me place" to see the site where one of the three captives taken by Delaware warriors in the famous 1757 "Hochstetler massacre" (which I've heard about since I was a wee lad, and recently written about in the novel Northkill) is buried.