Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 14: Meet the Finns — and hop a bus to...

 Accompanying these recollections of my travel year 1985 are some of the songs I kept hearing while on the road. This video features an...

The Euro ’85 Pilgrimage Compendium

The Euro '85 Pilgrimage Compendium collects the installments of my series about "the first time" (the one you remember?) wandering the continent in 1985...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 13: Introductions to Oslo, Bergen, Stockholm and Uppsala

Previously: Euro Pilgrimage '85, Ch. 12: Omaha Beach to the Manneken-Pis and Little Mermaid. In retrospect, the itinerary I sketched out for the waning days of...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 12: Omaha Beach to the Manneken-Pis and Little Mermaid

Previously: Euro Pilgrimage 1985-2025 Pt. 11: Sligo respite, Live Aid, then back to France for the D-Day beaches. (I’m not a Bryan Adams fan, but his...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 11: Sligo respite, Live Aid, then back to France for...

Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 10: Irish history with musical accompaniment and a Guinness chaser. I exited the Sligo train station on a pleasant, sunny day...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 10: Irish history with musical accompaniment and a Guinness chaser

Van Diemen's Land was the original name for the island of Tasmania, located 400 miles south of Melbourne, and notorious during the 1800s for...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 9: Lizard King in the City of Light — and...

Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 8: At long last, glorious beer in Salzburg and Munich. Air travel digression: I wasn’t a very good flier 40 years...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 8: At long last, glorious beer in Salzburg and Munich

(I’m including songs I heard while moving through in Europe in 1985. I’d like to say that I recall music of local origin, but...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 7: Vienna and the dawning of a Habsburg fixation

Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian excursion. During my stay in Rome, a veteran Australian wanderer taught me a “wedding...

Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian excursion

 (I'm including examples of songs I heard while in Europe in 1985. I'd like to say that I recall music of local origin, but...

Latest article

From 2009: “Senior editor graces inner pages of Today’s Woman magazine, world gasps”

Egads. I'd completely forgotten about this photo op and interview, fortunately recorded at NA Confidential (August 5, 2009). Noting that for the moment I cannot...

1970s-era albums for December, 2025

Updated December 10, 2025 Nostalgia regularly afflicts me, and as a result, I endeavor to keep it at arm’s length. But 2025 has been such a...

John Lennon: Life (and death) is what happens to you while you’re busy making...

(An essay originally published at NA Confidential in 2005, and often repeated. It has been lightly edited.) On the morning of December 9, 1980, I...