Inspirational story of imara.in.mara, wildlife photographer.
Editor Sam Newton.
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Category: ethics
Visiting Berat, Albania
Everyone loves this quirky little town about 2 hours by bus from Triana. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.
In fact, Albania is a tourism hotspot in 2026. Berat had 50,000 tourists a year a decade ago. Today it’s 1 million.
BUT I recall when Albania was off limits to tourists. During the repressive communist regime of Enver Hoxha (1944–1985), Albania became one of the most isolated “hermit states” in the world.
Enver Hoxha was a totalitarian dictator who ruled Albania with extreme repression, paranoia, and isolationism from 1944 until 1985. He closed all churches & mosques, for example.
Like Trump, he wanted his name everywhere — including on this mountain seem from Berat. BUT in 2012 the first two letters were swapped to spell NEVER as part of an art project by filmmaker Armando Lulaj.
Brilliant.
Berat is much more than just “the city of a thousand windows“. There are NOT a thousand windows. That’s a marketing tag line that started as a language misinterpretation — but stuck. 😀
There’s a great hostel. I paid 12 Euro / night ($14) including breakfast. Sweet.
Berat was +45C recently, the highest temperature ever recorded.
SO I decided to climb up to Berat Castle in the cooler evening. It’s open 24 hours / day as families still live there.
Next day I climbed the slope opposite Berat Castle, Gorica Hill.
More great vistas.
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Geoship Geodesic Dome Homes
I’ve been following the tiny-house movement for years.
… an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces.
Tiny homes have been promoted as offering lower-cost and sometimes eco-friendly features within the housing market, and they have also been promoted a housing option for homeless individuals. …
Read their FAQs.
Delivery starts sometime in 2026 in California. The first ones will not be off-grid ready, but that’s planned for the future.
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We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
Author Amy Quan Barry played on the Danvers High School field hockey team in the late 1980s.
Many of the events around the infamous Salem Witchcraft trials actually took place in Danvers, Massachusetts, which at the time was known as Salem Village.
Barry’s writing touches on a variety of genres, including magical realism and speculative fiction.
We Ride Upon Sticks (2020) is the fictional story of the 1989 Danvers Falcons Field Hockey team.
This team is not very good.
BUT near the end of summer training camp, they call on witchcraft invoking new powers both on and off the field.
If you were alive in the 1980s, the highlight of this book are the many, MANY pop culture references.
It’s often laugh-out-loud funny.
A whimsical read.
If ReTrumplican politicians are looking for yet another book to ban in schools — this would fit the bill.
It’s all about personal identity in terms of the race, gender, and sexuality of 17-year-old High School senior girls. And one boy on the team.
REVIEW – BookReporter
The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly
Excellent.
The Proving Ground (2025) is 8th in the Mickey Haller (Lincoln Lawyer) series. Possibly the best yet.
A courtroom procedural. Mikey with a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder of a teenage girl.
It’s set post-Covid. During fires in L.A.
Very contemporary.
… a chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.
Representing the victim’s family, Mickey’s case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails.
Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy (The Poet), who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it.
But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy’s digging ultimately delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.
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The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith
Robert Galbraith is J.K. Rowling. I’m still reading her books — though disgusted with how she has made trans people miserable, driving some to suicide.
This is her legacy.
I haven’t cancelled J.K. Rowling as she’s not ALL bad. She’s donated much to charity. And may even be a good person who somehow stumbled into this issue, getting it way wrong.
She’s caused a lot of harm.
The Hallmarked Man (2025) is the 8th novel in the Cormoran Strike detective series, and a return to form.
Themes explored in the plot involve Freemasonry, human trafficking, the silver antiques trade, corruption in the media, secrecy surrounding the military and intelligence services, mental health issues …
That said, the book is too long, as are most of her books in this series.
The relationship between Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott is agonizing and stupid. I can’t believe so little has progressed over 8 books.
I used to be sympathetic for Robin, as Strike is such an asshole. But she’s just as bad.
The only person to cheer for is Office Manager Pat. 😀
Worse — perhaps — is the plot. WHY did they take on a case to identify a mutilated corpse? WHY spend so much time and manpower on this case?
Who cares?
Story line convoluted and hard to follow. At the end, I read some explainers ➙ and still can’t be bothered to understand the plot.
IF you can get past those flaws, I actually enjoyed this book.
It’s skillful, without question.
I actually like the pretentious epigraphs at the start of each chapter.
Worst in the series was Ink Black Heart (2022). I couldn’t finish that one. This one I can recommend.
BUT — for me — the Strike (TV series) is better than the books.
Monkey Island, Vietnam
There are a number of “Monkey Islands” in Vietnam. I visited the one out of Nha Trang.
… or was it Donkey Island? 😀
Monkey Island, Nha Trang, has more than 1,200 monkeys.
Few rules, I’m afraid.
Tourists feed them directly, risking scratches and bites.
I took in the “animal circus“, as well. Noting that dog tricks seem perfectly acceptable — but that monkey tricks seem abusive. No logic there, I’m afraid.
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The HIGHLIGHT by far was watching some of these beasts entertaining themselves by jumping into water. High diving!
There was no food reward for this. They were doing it strictly for FUN.
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And I did this stairway strictly for FUN.
Apple in China by Patrick McGee
I thought I knew the story of Apple. BUT what I really knew was the story of Steve Jobs.
Looking back in 2025 at what made the company thrive, it was 2 other men.
Market chain guru Tim Cook, of course.
But even more so, Terry Gou, who, in 1974, founded FoxConn in Taiwan.
Incredibly ambitious, by 2012 Foxconn made up approximately 40% of worldwide consumer electronics production.
Just one of his many huge factories in China produces the bulk of Apple’s iPhone line and is sometimes referred to as “iPhone City”.
Needless to say, there are many abused workers in those plants. They don’t last many months on the gruelling production line.
Over the years, Gou and others steadily wooed Tim Cook and Apple to move manufacturing to China.
Today over 90% of Apple products are made in China. A huge risk for the company if authoritarian dictator-for-life Xi decides to invade Taiwan. Or shut down exports.
Attempts to move production to other nations have been mostly experiments. Or motivated by politics, not business.
In the meantime, Chinese engineers — many trained by Apple — are building cheaper, better Chinese phones in China. They no longer need Apple.
It’s a precarious situation.
Apple in China is a 2025 book uniquely looking at the company from the viewpoint of China.
In her May 15, 2025 review for The New York Times, Hannah Beech called Apple in China “smart and comprehensive,” praising Patrick McGee’s clever and chronologically organized timeline of how Apple’s expansion to China manufacturing facilities under then COO Tim Cook created a global success but also an “existential vulnerability” for the United States.
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Surprisingly, he doesn’t talk about the future.
SOME DAY robots will do much of the assembly.
TV series – “A Teacher”
The FX miniseries A Teacher (2020) was filmed in my old High School, after it had closed and was scheduled for demolition.
… I don’t recall any teachers like Kate Mara when I was a student. 😀
Set in the span of 10 years, this series follows a female English teacher in her early 30s as she begins to groom and abuse her 17-year-old male student in the fictional high school of Westerbrook in Austin, Texas.
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Purging Your Worldly Possessions 😀
Having just cleaned out my parents final home, I was reminded of a great philsopher:
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
I psyched up for yet another purge. Organizing, donating, reducing, simplifying my worldly goods.
For example, how many pairs of socks do you think I need for the rest of my life?
Should I hang on to all the singletons — just in case the other somehow shows up later? 😀
… NEXT ➙ Underwear.
UPDATE. Here’s my 1st load of donations for the Sally Ann.
Rick McCharles 