Back in 2007, I gave a talk to a small group of conservatives in Washington DC. It was recorded by C-Span. I hope you find it informative and entertaining. My talk lasted 26 minutes, the rest is Q&A, during which I was asked good questions. Enjoy!
The grape vines of Pico Island, one of nine islands of the Azores in the Atlantic, are enclosed within walls of black basalt rocks called currais (corrals). For over 500 years, the Portuguese villagers have been constructing thousands of miles of these currais walled enclosures to protect the vines from wind and sea spray.
The vineyards of Pico are so extraordinary that they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the wine is uniquely good! You can order a bottle here. Best, though, is to experience Pico and its viticulture yourself. That’s what we did last June on our Atlantic Paradises adventure with your fellow TTPers.
We had a wonderful time – and you will too this coming June. You won’t believe how much adventurous fun you’ll have on our Atlantic Paradises 2024! Click to join us… (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #213 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
We’re all familiar with the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead four days after his entombment in John 11:1-44. But what happened to Lazarus afterwards – what did he do with the rest of his (second) life?
He left Judea to live on the island of Cyprus. There he met Paul the Apostle and his evangelizing partner Barnabas who was a Cypriot. They appointed him the first Bishop of Kition (present day Lanarca), where he lived for another 30 years, then upon his second death was buried for the last time.
A church was built over his marble sarcophagus which has undergone many resurrections itself over the last two millennia. But here it stands today after all those ravages of time, Agios Lazaros, the Church of St. Lazarus, over his still-preserved sarcophagus. On every Lazarus Saturday (eight says before Easter), an icon of St. Lazarus is taken in procession through the streets of Lanarca. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #165 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Santo Antão island, Cape Verde. The world’s best moonshine, which the islanders call grogue, is made here. There are ten islands comprising the country of Cape Verde, some 400 miles off the West African coast of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean. For hundreds of years, Cape Verdeans have been making grogue but the folks like the fellow here on Santo Antão have perfected it.
You’ll find their stills out in the sugar cane fields, where they put the cane in to a press called a trapiche, then cook down the molasses in an old oil drum into a clear distilled rum that’s up to 140 proof or more. This fellow is pouring me a sample to taste in a coconut shell. You have to be really careful because it’s so smooth and silky it goes down like water – making it very easy to get quickly wasted.
If you like it – which of course you will – he’ll pour fresh grogue into an empty plastic liter water bottle and sell it to you for six bucks. People are always partying in Cape Verde, and why not with all this grogue. They don’t mix it with anything except some lime juice and an ice cube. Really fantastic. Come to Cape Verde and have great time yourself! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #171 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Many consider this the most surrealistic place on earth. The clarity of the air turns the sky deep cobalt blue, the dunes are so old they’ve rusted red, combining with the white clay floor to give the skeletal trees a scene out of a Dali painting or a science fiction movie. But it’s real.
A thousand years ago the river watering these trees dried up, leaving a white clay pan amidst red sand dunes almost as tall as the Empire State Building. It’s so dry here these acacia trees can’t decompose, their skeletons standing scorched in the sun for ten centuries.
Dead Vlei is in a region of enormous dunes called Sossusvlei. It’s a mind-boggling experience to float over Sossusvlei in a hot air balloon. Namibia, in fact, is full of such experiences – the largest fur seal colony anywhere at Cape Cross, the marvelous abundance of African wildlife at the Etosha Pan, the dramatic shipwrecks dotting the Skeleton Coast, traditional people living untouched by the modern world like the Himbas.
Plus it’s one of the safest and best-run countries in all Africa – certainly worth consideration for your bucket list. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #47 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
A Year of the Dragon – which this year is (beginning on February 10 in China) – can be one of audacious optimism and hubristic catastrophe. Put those together and it’s a year that’s ripe for a government to lose the “mandate of heaven” – the total loss of public confidence sending it into history’s dustbin.
It’s been like this for millennia:
It sure is true in America today. And in many other countries around the world. In 2024, national elections are scheduled or expected in at least 64 countries worldwide.
Many are laughable frauds, like North Korea, Russia, or Venezuela. Equally laughable is the London Economist claiming: Donald Trump’s Election Poses the Biggest Danger to The World in 2024. Wow – these normally sane guys have really lost it straight around the bend. They even have a cartoon entitled “Trump’s Shadow Looms Over the World.”
You’ll love this HFR, ‘specially since it’s filled with so many fun graphics. Here we go!
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on October 23, 2013 – so yes, the map of my travels above needs updating. It’s appropriate that we begin 2024 with the message here. For almost a half-century now I’ve made a living enabling people to respond to the Call of the World. In 2024, that response will be in Africa’s Serengeti, Albania, Scotland, Mongolia, Central Asia, the Himalayas, Bhutan, the South Pole, and Atlantic Paradise Islands. I hope to see you on (at least!) one of them, like Adventure Albania which is seriously cool. But the message here goes well beyond that. Happy New Year!]
TTP, October 23, 2013
As you may know, I’ve had memorable experiences in every country in the world. Ever since I was a young teen, the world has been calling me to explore it – and I’ve been responding deeply to that call for 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. To seek, to know, to experience, to explore is a very deep part of what it is to be a human being.
This famous cartoon from the Irish magazine Weekly Freeman in 1881 depicts law-abiding Pat Murphy being goaded by a policeman and soldier into fighting so it can be blamed on him – with the Emergency Man behind them saying, “That's right! Prod him and club him, ‘till he turns on you! That’s our little game.”
That will be the Democrat/Woke Left game for 2024. Expect them to create a whole flock of Black Swans between now and the election, their purpose being to goad patriots into over-reaction which can be demonized – even to the extent of declaring martial law by November.
J6 was just a prelude to:
Welcome to 2024. “May you live in interesting times,” the Chinese saying warns, and so we are, ready or not. Here we go…
[This is to introduce a new feature on TTP -- a column by TTPer of many years who often posts insightfully on the Forum: Mark Deuce. After serving America as an Army paratrooper, Mark’s career has been in community law enforcement. He brings life-long street experience to the reality of today. His column is entitled – what else? – Deuces Wild. Welcome, Mark!]
One lesson I have learned in law enforcement is to be attentive to the behavior of humans you encounter. A cop’s job is dealing with people—often at their worst. Most other cop skills can be taught; but an inability to assess and react appropriately to human behavior will guarantee your ineffectiveness.
For cops, a common sign of trouble with a person you contact is them not obeying your lawful verbal instructions that you give them in order for you to do your job. For officer safety, you need to mentally switch gears when you see this in an encounter and regardless of what they are saying, notice: (1) you gave them a command and (2) they haven’t obeyed it.
Let’s apply this thinking to how we deal with most Democrats, RINOs and liberals. We have given them numerous commands—to keep our streets safe, to secure our border, not to steal from us, leave our freedom alone – and they keep refusing to obey. What’s to be done?
There have been more than 8 million illegal entries into the United States since Joe Biden was elected president. He appointed Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, whose apparent prime directive was to destroy the southern border.
That task is precisely what Mayorkas has now accomplished. The result is that the border is neither “porous” nor “problematic,” but nonexistent, kaput, vanished—and by design.
In one of the most surreal experiences in the history of the United States, each night Americans see video clips of thousands of foreign nationals crossing the border en masse with complete impunity—as if the entire corpus of federal immigration law has been dynamited.
But by whom? And why?
January 2, 2024 — Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day, military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
"This is a devastating loss for our organization and the world," said Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh while throwing a dart at a dartboard with a picture of a Jew on it. "Al-Arouri helped mastermind our glorious murder/rape party of October 7th, 2023. Claudine Gay presided over the preaching of our message of Jew-hatred in America's Ivy League. This is an incalculable loss."
Ismail Haniyeh then went back to his game of darts while sitting in a jacuzzi and having his shoulders massaged by a high-priced escort from Dubai.
Eyewitnesses confirmed that al-Arouri was blown up by a rocket while innocently meeting with other innocent Hamas officials planning totally innocent and harmless military operations in the West Bank. Sources also verified that Claudine Gay was forced to step down. Both attacks are being blamed on the Jews.
At publishing time, Hamas had put two “help wanted" ads in the New York Times to help them fill both positions.
- Babylon Bee reporting
Every year on December 31st, a glimpse is revealed of an impenetrable world. On Chinese state television, Xi Jinping delivers his new-year address to the nation.
China’s netizens pore over the footage: on no other occasion do they get to see their leader sitting at what purports to be his desk. They swap analysis of Mr.. Xi’s collection of photographs displayed on bookshelves behind him. And they parse his ponderously delivered words.
“Along the way, we are bound to encounter headwinds,” he said this year. Many will see that as an understatement of China’s current woes.
The economy failed to gather momentum. Youth unemployment soared and the property market continued to slump. Foreign investors in China grew more nervous. The headwinds were fierce.
That was 2023. 2024 looks hardly less troubled.
August 1977. High in the mountains above the source of the April River, a tributary of the Sepik in Papua New Guinea, I had a First Contact with an undiscovered tribe calling themselves the Wali-ali-fo. They ate “man long pig,” cooked human meat and lived in thatch dwelling built up in trees. Here I am in one with my Sepik guide Peter who got me here.
Peter translated a description of their practice: “When a man dies, we take a pig to his wife and exchange it for the body of the man. We take the body out into the forest and…cook ‘im eat ‘im. We do this so the man will continue to live in the bodies of his friends.”
Not something we’ll do but something we can understand, yes? These are people we could laugh and joke with, tell stories with, enjoy being with. A very different culture, but human all the same. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #148 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
The School of Athens by Raphael (1483-1520) is one of the greatest artistic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here you see the two principal figures, Plato on the left and Aristotle on the right. It is a classic example of the picture worth a thousand words. Plato is pointing to the heavens and his imaginary world of Forms that didn’t actually exist, while Aristotle has his outstretched hand towards the earth – cautioning Plato to pay attention to Reality. For only in the real world can Plato’s ideals of Truth, Justice, and Virtue actually exist, expressed in concrete human action.
Raphael’s masterpiece was commissioned by Pope Julius II for a room in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican – just as Julius commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Apostolic Palace’s Sistine Chapel at the same time! Raphael from 1509-1511, Michelangelo from 1508-1512.
While the Apostolic Palace is the official residence of the Pope, the part of it containing these masterpieces can be open to the public. It is one thing to see a photo of them, and quite another to contemplate them in person. Only then can you be appropriately overwhelmed by the superhuman genius it took to create them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #257 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
