Nagas are multi-headed dragons who rise up to protect the former royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang. The city along the Mekong River has been the center of Lao culture since the 600s. The Kingdom of Laos, “Land of a Million Elephants,” had to struggle for centuries to avoid being absorbed by the empires of Siam and Khmer (Cambodia). It was the French who wrested Laos from Siam (Thailand) in the 1890s, giving it independence in 1953.
For centuries, devout Buddhists have been building beautifully ornate shrines and temples called Wats here in Luang Prabang. Every day at dawn, hundreds of red-robed monks living in the Wats parade through the city streets for donations. Since the Pathet Lao seizure of power in 1975, moving the capital to Vientiane, Luang Prabang is free of politics, preserved as a religious haven and treasure house of Laotian culture.
Ever see the 1980 movie Popeye starring Robin Williams? It takes place in the seaside town of Sweethaven – and you’re looking at it. The film set was built in a cove on the northern end of the island of Malta in the Mediterranean just for the movie.
JW’s world travel map up 2013, needs updating to the present
As you may know, I’ve had memorable experiences in every country in the world. Ever since I was a young teenager, the world has been calling me to explore it – and I’ve been responding deeply to that call for well over sixty years now.
And yet… and yet… I must confess to you that I’ve barely begun, barely scratched the surface of the wondrousness of our Earth.
There is a literal endlessness to what there is to learn, witness and infuse your soul about the history, culture, people, and sheer magical beauty that surrounds our planet.
Can you feel it – the world calling you to experience and explore it? The call may be loud and persistent. It may be faint, drowned out by the daily humdrum of life – or under the illusion that you’re too old or somehow unable. But however loud or faint, it’s there in most of us – for how else did we humans populate the entire globe? To seek, to know, to experience, to explore is a very deep part of what it is to be a human being.
The Call of the World is part of the glory of being human – of using our unique, unique of all life on earth, capacity for self-consciousness, of our human ability to appreciate and live in gratitude for being a part of this glorious Earth and Universe.
You know that for almost a half-century now that I’ve made a living enabling people to respond to the Call of the World. This year, with the two year-long Dark Covid Winter ending, that response will be in the Himalayas, Central Asia, Atlantic Paradise Islands, and so much more.
I am hoping, of course, that you will be joining me on at least one of these explorations. More than that, however, I want you to answer the Call of the World that most resonates within you.
Is there a forest, a scenic wonder, a historical town or place near you that you haven’t been to and wondered about? Bet there is. What about somewhere nearby that your kids or grandkids don’t know about and would think is very cool?
Leave it to America’s best, coolest and totally awesome governor to signal his support for Canada’s Freedom Truckers by tweeting simply: Truck Yeah!
Smart politicians know that when there’s a parade had in the direction you want, get out in front and lead it. That’s RDS in spades. And what a parade – the Canadian Trucker Freedom Convoy is the longest truck convoy in world history, over 60 miles long.
Now it’s gone global, from all over Europe to Australia and on the way to Washington, massive trucker convoys demanding freedom instead of fascism.
That’s only the start of an HFR that’s simply revelatory….
[Note by Jack Wheeler: This explanation by Jim Stansbury is extremely and succinctly informative. Please consider sharing it with those you know. And okay, I couldn’t resist the joke lead graphic.]
Joe Biden claims this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated and wants everyone in the world vaxxed with the “safe and effective” vaccines. In addition, he plans to distribute millions of "effective" N-95 masks. Anyone paying attention knows this a Big Lie. Really Big.
Masks may be a comforting placebo, but even the N95s don’t work as advertised. And new revelations about dangerous vaccine side effects have surfaced despite media suppression.
I was taught the only way to fight a lie is with the truth. However, I also know those who placed all their hope in the big COVID lie will do whatever it takes to silence anyone who disagrees. Just ask Joe Rogan about being silenced. It is nearly impossible to overcome emotion with facts for many – but not with TTPers, so here we go.
The tally for how much the federal government spent to combat COVID-19 is now estimated to be $5 trillion. It is more than the combined costs of World Wars I and II. The left is celebrating that politicians in Washington saved us. Really? From what exactly?
Two years later, it is time for an honest assessment. Could things have worsened for the country if the government had spent nothing and done nothing? What would have happened if we had not shut down our businesses? Our churches, schools and restaurants. Our parks, basketball courts and playgrounds.
Would the public have made worse decisions regarding protecting its health and the health of its families and its employees than the politicians have made? In a word… No.
From the moment Joe Biden stepped into the Oval Office as president, it became clear that he had stolen the job in order to destroy America from within.
12 months later, as Border Patrol and ICE agents can attest, Biden is now a full partner in collusion with the drug and human traffickers that are the cartels. In fact, Biden is probably, it’s fair to say, the largest sex- and human trafficker on the planet right now. When will we learn where the many thousands of unaccompanied children have been shipped and to whose “care”?
The volume of fentanyl flowing into the U.S. has gone up 300%, as have overdose deaths in this country. In short, the Biden presidency is a terrible blight upon America. This president has done more damage thus far than any foreign enemy has ever done in our nation's history.
If you’re a Democrat, things are going very, very badly for you. And it’s not going to get better.
According to a recent McLaughlin and Associates study, 65 percent of likely voters believe that the United States is on the wrong track. That’s hardly surprising considering the multitude of poor decisions the fascists in charge have made since taking power.
In short, Grandpa Dementia is the proverbial albatross around the necks of Democrats who were already wearing concrete boots and standing on the edge of a watery abyss.
But while everyone is focused on the federal elections—and with Trafalgar’s Congressional Generic poll showing Republicans with a nearly 14 point lead, it does look like a wipe out at that level—we shouldn’t forget the state and local level opportunities this fall.
Americans want an autonomous Ukraine to survive. They hope the West can stop Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strangulation of both Ukraine and NATO.
Yet Americans do not want their troops to venture across the world to Europe’s backyard to fight nuclear Russia to ensure that Ukraine stays independent.
With Putin’s nemesis, Trump, gone, Russia assumes the appeasement years of the Obama-Biden administration are back again. As in 2014, once more Putin is moving against his neighbors.
Where does this entire mess leave America? In trouble.
Three more years of this? No wonder Rasmussen poll’s of likely voters shows 50% favor impeaching Xiden right now - including 50% of Blacks and 34% of 'Crats!
As a father of adults who were once teenagers, I’m all too familiar with the popular response: “Whatever.”
I much prefer how Paul uses the word in Philippians 4: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”
“Whatever” takes a much different tone here, doesn’t it? And it reflects a profound truth about what we bring to our own experience, and to our relationships. Whatever we think about, look for, and expect – to a much larger extent than many of us realize, this is what we will find.
By understanding and owning this concept, we can profoundly improve our effect on others, and find greater joy for ourselves in the process. Here’s how.
Many centuries ago, a tiger was plaguing the Naxi people who live in the mountains where the Yangtse River cascades off the plateau of Tibet. He was eating the goats the Naxi needed to feed themselves. So Naxi hunters chased the tiger into a deep narrow gorge of the Yangtse where they were sure they had him trapped. Suddenly, the tiger sprang onto a large rock in the center of the raging river and from there leapt to the other side and escaped, never to be seen again.
This is a Hoatzin. I took this picture in the Amazon jungles of Colombia, its native habitat. It has no genetic relationship to any other bird, and thus has its own family, the Opisthocomidae, and its own suborder, the Opisthocomi. Extensive DNA-sequencing demonstrates that “the hoatzin is the last surviving member of a bird line that branched off in its own direction 64 million years ago, shortly after the extinction event that killed the non-avian dinosaurs.”
Sometimes you run across something that no matter how it grosses you out, you have to take a picture of it. The thousand year-old medina or walled city of Fez is a World Heritage Site as the spiritual and cultural capital of Morocco. Uniquely epitomizing this is the stall of the camel butcher in the medina’s vast bazaar. To garner the attention of ladies shopping for their family’s dinner, he proudly displays the head of the camel whose fresh meat is on sale. Traveling in Morocco is always an adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #188 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
