During this last trip I was reminded of one of the many reasons I love to travel. Solo travel in many ways leaves you more approachable as well as makes you more likely to initiate conversations with

There are only overnight trains running between Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk, my hometown. The journey takes at least 9 hours. Sometimes up to 12 hrs. Recently, however, an extra day train was added, and I

If you read my last post you know I’ve been in Washington D.C. visiting my friend Juan and his wife Margo over the past four days. Juan and I kept a longstanding tradition of going on one weekend trip

I’m preparing for a trip to Washington DC and it’s stirring memories of the past. Sometimes I think the pre-trip planning is as much fun as the actual trip. It’s been well over thirty years since I’ve

Although Minnesota has no shortage of faults, one thing it can still do well is host a fabulous state fair. We have a longstanding tradition of going to the Minnesota State Fair on the very last day, Labor

I logged into my SquareSpace account a few days ago with the intention of adding Walking With the Muse to my Books page and realized something—the old website is in desperate need of tidying up. There’s

The day has finally come. A long-awaited trip to the west of Ukraine, to relative safety. I went to visit my family and, at long last, get a good night's sleep. Kyiv has been under almost continuous attack

Launch day is finally here! Walking with the Muse is out now—a collection of short stories more than thirty years in the making. Thank you for following along these last few weeks. Hive has been the incubator

We’re quickly approaching book-launch eve and those old-familiar butterflies are setting in. It’s been a pretty intense past few months of gathering stories together, working on the cover design concept,

The US is a mere 24 hours away from experiencing the beginning of what will be a major shift in transportation. However, you won’t hear much about it in the mainstream media—that is, unless it fails miserably.

The title really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? 😂 Six more days until the book launch! I’m several days deep into the marketing blitz on social media to help build anticipation. For me, marketing has

It is often said that the "4 Blocks" in Kyiv’s Podil district are a textbook classic — one of the finest examples of socialist postmodernism in Ukraine. These residential buildings were designed

Three weeks to HiveFest Swarm. Propose talks, RSVP, vote the program into shape, all on Hive, signed by you.

I’m thrilled to share with you all that the release of my new book Walking With the Muse: A Collection of Short Stories is scheduled for September 4! After months of curating the stories, making revisions,

Hello, friends and strangers. It feels like I haven’t written anything in an eternity. Not because I had nothing to say. Quite the opposite, in fact. Time and again, I’ve wanted to write about what hurts

The crypto markets have seen some pretty impressive gains in the last few days (by today's standards anyway) and I see so many of the crypto-influencers on social media being swept away in the euphoria.

As some of you following this blog may have noticed, a couple months ago, @godfish and I kicked off a fun and quirky little passion project, which we called the Dead Pets Society. The? Is it just Dead

I’ve been thinking a whole lot lately about how fast time passes. Except for a few very minor aches and pains I feel the same as I did when I was in my twenties—which I’m very grateful for. My spirit and

The older I get the more I seem to be fascinated by basilicas and cathedrals. I think it's just a profound sense of respect and awe of the people, sometimes many hundreds of years ago, who built these

Since moving into our home in October of 2024 we’ve had to replace nearly every major mechanical thing in the house. The first thing to go was the furnace. Then the hot-water heater failed. That first