The comment I got from Diana last week really got me thinking about the word home. Why do any of us live where we do and when we move somewhere new, how do we make this new place a place of our own? There are so many phrases when it comes to the meaning of the word: “Home is where the heart is”, “My Home away from Home”, “There is no place like Home”, just to mention a few. When you really think about the word in these contexts Home is not just a location, it is a place in your heart, a feeling, a sense of being in the right place.

For those of us who have wanderlust and the travel bug and the need to go and see the world, does this mean that we don’t have a sense of home, or that we are looking for home? Are we are more nomadic than people who are born, raised, live and die in the same town, or even the same state? Why is it that some people move all the time and some are content to stay where they are?
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This is the premise for the article I wrote for online travel magazine: Brave New Traveler!

Check it out!

I am always looking for good getaway spots. Somewhere you can go to just relax, eat some good food, sit on a beach and just get away from it all. Granted I do enjoy busy vacations full of historic sites and things to do, but lately, I have really enjoyed just sitting back relaxing and watching the waves come in. Anna Maria Island, near Bradenton Florida, just outside of Sarasota, looks like a good candidate. Unfortunately the day we went, it rained…all day. No sitting on the white sugar sand beach for us, no strolls along the surf looking for shells. But we were not to be deterred. We came for relaxation and a nice day trip, so we were just going to have to make the best of it, by eating our way through Anna Maria Island.
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There is a new restaurant that has opened its doors in Ocala that everyone is talking about. If it is not their beautiful décor and “to die for” salad bar the topic of conversation usually turns to the prolific amounts of meat one ingests while dining at Ipanema Brazilian Steakhouse. This is not a restaurant for the faint of culinary heart, but surprisingly it CAN be for vegetarians! For someone who is always trying to cut down on their meat consumption, the salad bar at Ipanema is more than enough to fill you up while at the same time allowing you to indulge in top quality ingredients without straining your stomach or your purse strings.
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Here you can read my latest article for Brave New Traveler on my thoughts about The Travel Bug and where it comes from! Click Here to read the article!

As many of you know, the situation on Black Mesa, is something near and dear to my heart. This is primarily a travel website, so I thought I’d pass this along to any interested parties! This is how I got involved with the situation in Northern Arizona and this is how I helped. If you are looking to travel to Arizona and want to combine travel with human rights relief work, this may be the post you needed to see most! The experience changed my life and is one of the best things I have ever done with my life!

Summer 2007
CALLS FOR SUPPORT AT BLACK MESA, ARIZONA.

Greetings from Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS),

We have several calls for support that we want to relay on behalf of The People on ‘The
Land’ (Black Mesa). You may have heard that the decades-long ‘Land Dispute’ has been
resolved. Indeed, there have been messages coming from the political establishment that are quite a bit different from the daily life of the People on The Land but this is nothing new. The Dine’ (Navajo) families that we work with are still struggling under Federally backed Hopi/Bureau of Indian Affairs jurisdiction.

Native peoples in the Black Mesa area have been living under relocation laws that
have devastated their community for over 30 years. Dine’ homesites and camps are
subjected to a “Property Dismantaling and Disposal Project,” where families’ property and
physical history are hauled away to “return the land to its original condition, protect
natural resources, environment, and interests of the Hopi Tribe and the Hopi People” (Office
of Hopi Lands website). These “interests” include the expansion of Peabody Western Coal
company’s 100+ sq. mile strip mine.

Dine’ communities have refused and resisted repeated orders from the federal government to
vacate their ancestral homelands of Black Mesa. Elder resisters have been acknowledeged as
heroic and their efforts have generated worldwide support. But the Dine struggle for autonomy
on Black Mesa is not over. Even with all the increasing awareness about man-made climate
change and advocacy for environmentally friendly living that ‘leaders’ such as Al Gore are
raising globally, coal-mining continues to threaten the people, their ancestral homeland, and
culture.
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