Tag Archives: Egypt

New Magazine Feature

outpostcover8.jpgMy latest magazine feature has just hit newsstands across Canada and select international magazine stores in the United States.

It’s the main feature and cover story: an exploration of time, culture and change, and of two completely seperate worldviews which have coexisted in Egypt for centuries. Alexandria, a Hellenistic city, has always looked towards the Mediterranean, while the rest of Egypt has always looked towards the Nile.

What does this mean for the modern nation, and what does this mean for us as travelers? Pick up the September/October 2009 issue of Outpost to find out!

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Volumes Have Secrets

 

 

library2.jpgNo matter where I am in the world, I feel immediately at home in a library. Oriented in space by the catalog system and the temple-like, almost ritual regularity of checkout desk, reference section, fiction and nonfiction. I also feel oriented in Time–through the mathematical chronology of the history section, and in terms of the linear development of human thought through the eras of literature and poetry contained in the vast, sprawling fiction section, ordered only by the author’s last name and the alphabet.

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A Postcard from Alexandria

 

library1.jpgTo me, a library has always been a sacred place. I went there as a child in search of silence and reflection, just as others seek the dim solace of a church. I went there to find answers to my questions, just as others might seek a priest in times of distress. Sometimes I went there simply for the atmosphere–the smell of the books, the soft tread of shoes on worn green carpet, the weight of the silence. The smell of old books takes me back there with the same immediacy that the smell of incense and candle wax has for the Catholic.

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