My mother-in-law Mary Schembari could probably count on her arthritic fingers how many times she has flown on an airplane. In the 40 years she has been in my life, I don’t recall that she ever did.  Only stories of two trips to Europe led me to conclude that she probably boarded an airplane a few times in her long life. Still, she needs no frequent flyer miles to have her place sealed in aviation history. She welded airplane parts for the Corsair Navy fighter plane, putting her among the six million women in America who supported the defense industry during World War 2. These… Read More…

The virtual traveler may be all the rage, but for those of us working at our computers during the coronavirus, more time in front of a screen seems like the opposite of a getaway. So on a recent walk not five miles from my home in Greenwich, Connecticut, I was delighted to find the ruins of a mansion hidden deep in the woods off the trail of a city park. I’m a sucker for the large historical artifact, which I wrote about in this article for The New York Times. I’ve written about my visits to historic sites in Iceland, England, Germany, Turkey and Syria…. Read More…