The 2002 movie was named My Big Fat Greek Wedding. With apologies to Nia Vardalos and everyone else involved in the hugely successful movie, those of us who came to Hydra this week saw a real Greek wedding, and not the North American celluloid version of same. The couple being married were Greek and American, […]

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We were not at all unhappy to leave behind Athens. A battered taxi down to the ancient port city of Piraeus, through depressing neighborhoods, and there we were, in the town Greek fleets have sailed from for more than 2,500 years. While waiting for the ferry, we withstood the constant attentions of beggars and peddlers […]

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A coincidence: The same week we are talking about San Bernardino, California, we arrived in Athens. Greece, not Georgia. The Parthenon, et cetera. And we did not spend any great time in the cradle of Western civilization, but we were around long enough to be pretty certain we will never return. Not until they fix […]

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He is not forgotten, exactly. The older generation remembers Gary Player. Little guy from South Africa. Always wore black. For a time was considered part of a Big Three with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. I imagine I covered a golf tournament he played in. The Bob Hope, maybe. I do remember a co-worker, Katie […]

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Soccer in Asia tends to be predictable, when it comes to teams showing up at a World Cup. It will be Japan, South Korea and Australia, and the fourth will probably be Iran, though China someday may seize the last berth. Or maybe Uzbekistan. Or the UAE. But getting there, during qualifying, that’s where Asia […]

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Interesting concept. American college kids, in 2015, don’t know how to laugh. Or perhaps they don’t allow themselves to laugh. That is the notion posited (at the link above) by a regular contributor to The National’s Arts & Life section, who was quoting “the great” Jerry Seinfeld. Wrote Rob Long: “University-aged young people – or, […]

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I was not born in San Bernardino. I didn’t go to school there. I lived inside the city limits only a few years. Pretty sure I won’t die there. But I worked there as a journalist for more than three decades, and during that stretch of time I felt like I knew the city pretty […]

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Abu Dhabi, capital city of the UAE, now has two Catholic churches. St. Paul’s Church was inaugurated this weekend, and will serve the significant Christian population of Mussaffah, the suburb on the outskirts of the Abu Dhabi where many of the blue-collar expatriates live. The Catholics, many of them Filipinos or Indians, living around Mussaffah […]

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I doubt many people in the Gulf region know that the Women’s World Cup is going on. Women’s soccer is not big here. Sometimes, it’s not played at all. (Hello, Saudi.) The UAE and Bahrain, to name two, recently ramped up their support of women’s soccer, but it will be a while before any team […]

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I am a big fan of the Volvo Ocean Race. Sailing around the world in eight legs, going through all the oceans, circling the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn … one of the last great romantic/daredevil adventures we can have on a planet in an era when we can get nearly anywhere by […]

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