Back in 1986, when I first was accepted into the U.S. Peace Corps, the head office said I was headed to the Seychelles to teach swimmimg to children on the main island. The Seychelles?  I’d never heard of it. But then again I was only 20 and hadn’t heard of much.      The Seychelles is an archipelago…

Maybe I shouldn’t have had the strawberry camel milk for breakfast yesterday because something went very wrong this morning. Woke up happy and early. Sipped Starbucks coffee and watched CNN. Took painful note of the escalating problems in Yemen, about 1,000 kilometers to our south. Woke David up for his first day of spring-break camp. Instead…

A few weeks ago, we had a sand storm that lasted for days. The situation made me claustrophobic. The sand was closing in — making it hard to see, drive and breathe. I felt panicky enough to take a tiny dose of Xanax, a medication I no longer seem to need on airplanes. (Though that may…