Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.

So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.

You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

My mom, with me hiding inside, 1970, Les Dents de Midi, Canton de Valais, Switzerland, though the view could be in Vaud, as that’s where my dad was from.

I recently discovered a stash of slides of my mom from that summer, when she was pregnant with me, her only child. They were taken by my dad where they lived in Kinshasa, when they visited his family in Switzerland, and then hers in the US. He collected and sequestered just these few slides into a cool cigar box, and it/they survived the house fire. It was almost like my dad’s ghost pushed me to select and look at this specific set, right as her health took a turn.

ps – all image enhancing suggestions welcome via email. I have PaintShopPro and am not really graphically skilled. I am scanning in old slides from the 40’s-70’s, many with fire/water/chemical/atmospheric/mold residue. Most were processed in top-class, professional-service labs in Switzerland, NYC, Houston, Bogota, Lima, Tulsa, etc. – oil towns, if you will (though I doubt my dad trusted the local outfit in Cochobamba, TBH). The oldest have very washed out colors, but many from the 50’s are surprisingly good. It’s so neat to see pics of Manhattan that my dad took to then take back to his family in Switzerland to show – he was very academic, in a totally Swiss way.

Pro tip: when 1 hour into a 4.5-6 hour surgery of a loved one, the phone rings, and it’s the surgeon, don’t lose focus – it’s not necessarily dire, and good question and listening skills are critical. But it wasn’t good news either – the cancer has spread onto my mom’s liver and surgery is thus off. Chemo will be scheduled tomorrow, likely beginning in two weeks. Not good, but I’m not preparing a funeral for next week, thankfully. I’ve been there, since my father didn’t tell us he was (non-cancer) terminal and his death was a shock (well, just the timing was for me, but that’s another painful confession for another day).

So I needed some joyful pics, and luckily we have a wonderful bird expert who also has a way with words. No – not Betty!

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