Around Town with Marketa 

I love hugging and even more the sincere cheek to cheek touch while embracing. It gets me all I need and enjoy:  closeness, affability, giving love, accepting love. 🙂 Yet, hugging, upon my move to this beautiful wonderland, was confusing and stressful. I felt lost in the arms of total strangers. I  did not know how to respond. I tried to reason: How this rather prudish society, not allowing nude beaches or nudity in films can do something so intimate as hugging? And how com

We left the Christmas season several weeks ago, but I am purposely keeping close to my heart that warmth, that peace, that joy, holding on to the pleasant feeling of the most wonderful time of the year, in this loud world.  So goes my post-script to Santa: 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were

I grew up in a country with two small nations under the same roof.  We share similar language, cuisine, and customs.  Women have high cheekbones, and men are handsome.  We love music,  sports, sauerkraut and dumplings, and we prefer beer over wine.  The children are raised strictly and hardly praised.  We give standing ovations rarely, but clap for many curtain calls if we are moved.   We do not smile at strangers, and we do not hug. We discount any compliments and expect non

Perhaps because I am in Prague today, on August 21, I decided on this reprise. Perhaps today's NEVERMORE1968 happening in Prague with its...

And here I am on a hot July day, walking into a Grassroot Pub in Lower Manhattan. I stop in the middle of the tiny dark bar relieved from...

It is a charming warm October Sunday with blue skies above,  sun shimmering our bare arms,  a cute Spanish hacienda village hugging a...

Finally! It is two thirty and off I go! Good bye everyone! I kick my yellow slippers into my cubby, quickly put on my outside shoes,...