Memory is ridiculously fleeting. Almost instantaneously as we arrived home, we could feel the trip slipping from something we were doing to something we had done. It’s startling how quickly the present becomes the past. So on our fourth day back in Los Angeles, before we even officially returned to our house which was still […]
A WALKING SAFARI
Once we forded the river, we finally found the starting camp for our “Walking Safari.” Months earlier, when we signed up for this Walking Safari, we really didn’t know what the hell we were getting into. We were just following the suggestion of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance. See, for many months […]
HOW WE EXERCISE
A couple months back, we discovered an article about a new approach to working out that is very short and very intense. It requires nothing except your own body and a chair, and the entire workout lasts roughly seven minutes. There are twelve different exercises that you do for thirty seconds each with a ten […]
THE THINGS WE THINK ABOUT WHEN WE VISIT A CONCENTRATION CAMP
Outside Berlin, our family walks through Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in operation from 1936-1945, and our heads fill with thoughts.
THE SITUATION IN ATHENS
In Italy, in Spain, in Portugal and throughout much of the world, people are talking about the recent economic crisis and how it’s changed their lives. The Crisis has been a constant topic of conversation around dinner tables, in the homes of new friends, and a living study in real world economics for the kids. […]
WE CRY IN PUBLIC: KELLY GEISSMANN (1978-2012)
Today we lost a great friend who died way, way too young. Now we are slammed with the peculiar pain of anticipated heartbreak. We knew all too well that Kelly was sick, that she was down to her final months, weeks, and recently days. We had mourned for her many times in anticipation of losing […]
FRANNY REPORTS: LAOS JOURNAL
A thirteen-year old girl reflects on a hike through the bug-filled jungle on a sweltering day and what she discovers.
HARD LESSONS: THE KHMER ROUGE
Nowhere has history come alive for us more than Cambodia. Just forty years ago, the Khmer Rouge swept in, ostensibly as the “Peace Party,” after the wars of Southeast Asia, and proceeded to exterminate two million of their own people. A generation was literally wiped out. The Khmer Rouge regime executed almost the entire professional […]
A THANKSGIVING MESSAGE FROM FRANNY: ANGKOR HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN
We have spent the last seven days in Cambodia, which is a remarkable country with an amazing and also horrifying history. In my parents’ lifetime, two million people were exterminated by the Khmer Rouge. Many of the people we met had family members who were killed. The people we met were all kind and generous […]