Underused Words.

Today's candidates include:

Spellbinding
Mouldering
Distraught
Cock-eyed

Go forth and use these under-spoken gems!

Two Three Word Movie Reviews.

The Town:  Bloody Boston Valentine.

Winter's Bone:  Kickass Hillbilly Heroine.

Tooting My Horn.

I was thrilled to pen a cover story on Charleston, South Carolina (pg. 52) in the October issue of National  Geographic Traveler.  It's one of my favorite cities.

I've added the PDF to my travel website, http://www.wanderwomanonline.com/. 

Check it out!   The issue is on newsstands now.

Appetite Suppresant?

It may kill your appetite, but Diet for a Hot Planet is fascinating reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-Hot-Planet-Climate-Crisis/dp/1596916591.

Rockin' at The Boulders.

Just back from four days at The Boulders, an iconic resort hideaway north of Phoenix in the Sonoran desert.

The landscape is singularly stunning:  think Flintstones gone glam in private casitas hugging the rock piles with giant saguaro cactus reaching for the cornflower blue sky.  Saw a rattlesnake, cottontail rabbits, quail, lizards and piglike javelinas.

Fred & Wilma would be jealous:  the food, the drinks, the spa!  Oh, and the hot air ballooning, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, The Heard Museum North, shopping, hot air ballooning.

There's a reason the town is called Carefree:  http://www.theboulders.com/.

A Great Question for our Times.

Katie Byron, author of A Thousand Names for Joy, asks, Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

Is America Angry?

There's a man I've known for a long time, a man who people say looks bad. 

Folks are right: he does look bad.  Anger has settled in his face.  He looks calcified.

When I read Graydon Carter's column in the October issue of Vanity Fair it struck me how angry many of us are.

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2010/10/graydon-201010

Things are tough, true.  But anger is toxic. And deeply unattractive.

Aaaah, the Smell....

...of green chiles roasting.

Just back from ABQ, New Mexico.  My pal Phil took me to Corrales, a quaint rural community just minutes from the city, for the real deal.

Then dinner at Indigo Crow Cafe, http://www.indigocrowcafe.com,/ for a phenomenal meal including charlbroiled quail in a mint balsamic sauce, oven roasted duck breast with a cherry zinfandel sauce and New York strip with gorgonzola green chile sauce.

Land of Enchantment, indeed....