Hello, World!

The Web didn't need another travel/photo/tech blog. And I certainly don't need yet another time-consuming task to my busy life, especially considering most of my life already revolves around technology and the Web. And yet, here we are.

My family, friends, and even a few strangers have expressed interest in my travels. And social media, with its focus on bite-sized, character-limiting media is starting to feel limiting. It's also increasingly (frustratingly and frighteningly) full of small-minded, hate-fueled politics hate. So I sought a refuge and decided to build one here.

This will be a place where I ruminate about my past and current travel experiences outside America (most of them so far in Scotland and Japan), showcase the accompanying media I gather along the way, and discuss the technology I bring with me to document my time spent in other countries.

In a broader sense, this page will also be a part of my quest to find a more substantive form of refuge. Because at the risk of bringing the politics here that I am attempting to escape, I increasingly feel angry and dissatisfied with my home country, as much as I still love my native New York and the diversity of my adopted home across the Hudson in Jersey City. In my limited travels, I have witnessed first-hand how many places do things better than our entrenched ways in America, and how most places manage to get along without the increasingly overt hate for refugees, minorities, and transgender people that we suffer through in America.

If my country can't do better than path it's currently on, then I would eventually like to find a home elsewhere, where my friends aren't persecuted and the government cares more about people than giving tax breaks to corporations. There I go getting political again. I can almost guarantee this won't be the last time. If there's one thing I hope never to be, it's quiet in the face of hatred and unfettered capitalism.

I look forward to adding my future travel experiences to this page. But until my next trip, I'll be posting about some of the most interesting and moving places I've been in the last five years or so. Expect posts about being at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial just a few days shy of the 70th anniversary of America's deployment of the first atomic bomb; the warm sliver of immortality I felt hearing the music of the Skye Festival as it floated across the water from Kyleakin (the Scottish town in the image above) to the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh; and maybe a post about the white-spotted black squirrels who punctuated a trip to Toronto.

In the meantime, keep scrolling past the sheep below for some highlights from past trips.

Thanks for visiting. And if you have suggestions or questions (I expect at least some rude ones), feel free to check the About page above and send me comments.

-Matt