From August 26 to September 8 this year, Laura and I went on a little adventure to Iceland. First we spent a few days with my dad and his partner Marion exploring the area around Reykjavik, then Laura and I went on a 6-day horse riding tour on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. Finally, we drove South […]

Last week, the Fagradalsfjall volcano in southern Iceland produced a new eruption near the Litli-Hrútur mountain. There is lots of beautiful drone footage of the eruption, but this is some of the nicest I have seen, so far. Here is a link to a live webcam of the new vent.

On April 25, our 18 year-old Russian Blue cat named Koklo died. She had been sick for a long time, but recently her health got worse and worse, and on Tuesday she passed away peacefully at home. Koklo loved – nay adored – Laura. Koklo always wanted to be near Laura and sleep in her […]

Winter came early and vigorously in December 2022, and then Spring popped in and out in January and February this year. Here is Patou enjoying spring weather in February. In fact, on Jan 2nd it was so nice I took my shoes off and went for a jog in the neighborhood, only to get attacked […]

For me, last year was overshadowed by the illness of my mother and her death in September. I ended up taking four trips to Germany this year, none of which were particularly relaxing. Of course this was also year three of COVID, moving from pandemic to endemic. And COVID rules also impacted most of our […]

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.Let it not be a death but completeness.Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.Stand […]

On May 12, our beloved, old gelding Wally died in the pasture where he had lived for the last 12 years. We purchased Wally in 2010 as a companion for our Tennessee Walker mare Cleo. He was already older – maybe 16-18 years old and scrawny, almost malnourished when we got him. But we got […]

Für DEUSCH hier klickenIn Early March, we bought a beehive from a local bee-keeper and set it up on our little farm. Laura had been taking beekeeping classes with the local beekeeper’s club, and one of the members put up his three hives for sale because he was planning to move to a different state. […]

Last month I moved out of my office in the Brightleaf Square South building, an old tobacco warehouse from 1904 that had been restored and converted to retail and offices in the 1980s. I had had an office in that building since I started working at Duke in 2002 – so for 20 years. At […]

2/22/2022

After a fairly mild December, this January has brought some actual winter weather to central North Carolina. This is a video I shot after this morning’s snowfall/ This is the third time we had snow this month, but this was definitely the prettiest morning, with a fresh blanket of snow and the sun rising over […]

Thích Nhat Hanh passed away today at Tu Hieu Temple in Vietnam. He was a wise Buddhist master who had a strong impact on Buddhist practice in the West.

Year two of the COVID pandemic was a wild ride, and once again we have to just count our blessings that we stayed fairly healthy, and did not experience any existential hardship. All four of us received our vaccinations in the first half of the year and we experienced no unusual or lasting side effects […]

After 16 Years in office, Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel hands off leadership of Germany’s government to Olaf Scholz. Chancellor Scholz will lead a historic 3-party coalition government of his Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, and the centrist Free Democratic Party, with Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Party in the opposition for the first time […]

This is the Perseverance Mars rover’s Mastcam-Z First High-Resolution PanoramaUse your mouse to move the image and zoom in. “Stitched together from 79 individual images, this Mastcam-Z right-eye 110-mm zoom mosaic is from the camera’s first high-resolution panorama imaging sequence. These images were taken on the afternoon of Sol 4 (Feb. 22, 2021) of the […]

Uncertainty was a worldwide theme for 2020 and last year, we too felt the hot breath of that unpleasant reality much more strongly than usual. We were lucky, and we did not experience the full brunt of that aspect of reality, unlike so many people who lost their livelihood and/or health and are facing uncertainty […]

A couple of weeks ago we had several days of warm weather, with high temps around 70F (21C) and the pear trees started budding! So when the inevitable cold-snap came I fully expected them to loose all those buds, but several night of lows in the 20s did bot keep them from flowering. Nice splash […]

For me, 2019 was a good year. No major complaints. I am healthy enough, I am happily married and no major crises happened to our family (except for one of our horses getting very sick). I got to do some interesting things and work was busy, but not overwhelming. Laura was hard at work keeping […]

This is some drone footage from this morning and a previous December morning of our house, me feeding the horses and emus, and a fly-over of our property. Enjoy! Dieses Video habe ich heute Morgen und an einem früheren Dezembermorgen mit einer Drohne gefilmt. Es zeigt unser Haus, das Füttern der Pferde und Emus und […]