I have always wanted to ask a puppet, in private, what it is like to be enslaved and forced to do its master’s bidding, subject to being...

Hanoi (Ha Noi, “river’s inner”) is a large sprawling beehive(s) of activity, spotted with large construction projects and relentless...

I visited North Vietnam the first time roughly 10 years ago. The country then had already moved on from the previous century of...

“The swallow has set her six young on the rail, and looks seaward.” James Lee’s Wife (1864, pt 3 st.1), Robert Browning Before Autumn...

Tomorrow I leave for another visit to Vietnam and Cambodia for a couple of weeks. It has been 10 years since I was in these two...

Cuba Connection — 2018 (*Photos have been selected at random) A Metaphor Walking the streets of Havana in March 2018, I spied a man in a...

Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) never set foot or planted the flag for the Crown of Castille on North America. However, he found...

Even before touring the city of Havana proper, I am enthralled by the alternating flow of shiny and rumpled, rusting metal objects on the...

Before leaving Iran, it is only fitting in a way that I/we step away from the beauty and progressive qualities on display in the country...

On the western side of Isfahan’s grand square looms the Ali Qapu, a towering pavilion topped by pillars, under reconstruction, and behind...

In the wilderness about 200 miles south of Tehran is a place called “Half of the World.” Ishfahan, twice the capital of Persia, was the...

Shiraz, Iran is a poet's (Hafiz's) oasis, where the art of Islam has prominence

I arrived at the ruins of Persepolis, near Shiraz, with great anticipation. The skies were clear and the sun burned hot even in...

The historical vibrations of Persia really begin to hit home in the central desert towns of Iran, especially in the large city of Yazd —...

Modern Iran is certainly a paragon of Islam but the country’s culture also has deep roots in the ancient mostly unrecorded Zoroastrian...

Traveling through Iran-Persia from Tehran to Kashan

While Tehran has much human drama to keep a first-time or umpteenth-time visitor entertained, the heart of Iran still beats in the...

Whose head is that? The Lion and Sun (شیر و خورشید‎‎, Shir o Khorshid) emblem (holding a shamshir, scimitar) remained the official...

Iran/Persia is the torn heart of Central Asia (Asia Minor). Secular China is the body, Byzantine Russia the head, the Hindu Indian...

Cosmopolitan Smog - view from Tochal Ski Mountain Tehran, the largest city and capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, fans out below...