I write on Substack at csandw.substack.com. I’m a travel writer, photographer and lifetime traveler. I’ve visited 120 countries and territories. My most recent book is a collection of thirty essays from 3QuarksDaily called Out There, published in April 2021. I’ve also written books about travel to the Arctic, to Chernobyl and a collection of stories from around the world. My wife and I live in Georgia and spend most summers in a cabin on Lake Saimaa in Finland. I write at CommonSenseAndWhiskey.com and curate 20,000-plus photos from around the world at EarthPhotos.com. Email BillMurrayWriter [at] gmail.com.
Website: http://csandw.substack.com
by Bill Murray Maybe it’s defeat in a short, sharp war far from home. Maybe Russia captures Ukraine, or China attacks Taiwan. Maybe nothing happens yet, maybe it’s four or eight years away, but however the big change comes we’ll all agree the signs were there all along. Our executive branch is hobbled by an…
by Bill Murray It’s raining in Russia. Thunderheads boil up in the afternoon heat over there, behind the limestone block fortress on the other side of the river. Which is not a wide river. You can shout across it. Here’s how close Russia is: on Victory Day, May ninth, commemorating the Nazi defeat in World…
by Bill Murray Countries can be sensitive as teenage girls about their names. The change from Turkey to Türkiye aligned Türkiye’s name in Turkish with its internationally known name, but mainly, disassociated itself from the bird with the goofy reputation. Some countries’ names become less ethnic (Zaire to Democratic Republic of the Congo) and others…
by Bill Murray A nasty typhoon punished southeast Africa in early 2023. Cyclone Freddy dropped six months of rain in six days, killed 1400 and pounded the poor, overmatched region for thirty-eight long days. From its origins in the Indonesian archipelago, Freddy wound up across the entire breadth of the Indian Ocean before battering the…
by Bill Murray First a note on the April 8th North American eclipse: Many people have seen a partial eclipse of the sun and wondered what all the fuss is about. The sky looks out of whack, things go all shimmery, you can see reflections of the partially occluded sun on leaves, animals act up,…
by Bill Murray The Balkans isn’t everybody’s first choice for summer holiday, but that’s where we’re headed this year. First we’re flying to Chișinău, while we still can, and I don’t mean to be flip. Forgive my wavering confidence in Western guarantors of freedom, democracy and territorial integrity. My idea then is to press south…
by Bill Murray Petro Oliynik wore a flag draped around his shoulders like a cape and didn’t speak. If it wasn’t an act, it was at least a presentation. You don’t often meet a man as unusual as Petro Oliynyk and the truth is, I haven’t really met him either. Maybe better to say I…
by Bill Murray This month’s travel column includes suspiciously little travel – just two short walks, to a courthouse and a jailhouse. I live in Atlanta, where quite a bit of national politics has happened in those two buildings these last few weeks. I walked downtown a couple of weeks ago when things were going…
by Bill Murray With earth set on a slow rolling boil through the rest of the summer, now might be a good time to mentally transport oneself to the cold. How’s about a winter weather sailor’s tale? St. John’s, Newfoundland and the Grand Banks People feel pain but too often fail to appreciate its absence.…
by Bill Murray In my exuberance after a spring trip to Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, I proclaimed Africa the world’s greatest travel destination. It’s only fair to defend my thesis, for surely others will disagree. First let’s dispense with the ‘Africa is not a country’ technicality by defining the travel to Africa that I have…
by Bill Murray We’re here early this year. June has just gotten started, and after a day or two of intermittent rain with a blustery sky and a stiff wind off Lake Saimaa, fifty degrees Fahrenheit feels a lot colder than the same back in Atlanta. I’ve just learned that it hasn’t been this cold…
by Bill Murray In the typical American city where we live, the average commute time is 78 minutes a day and 97.5% of these poll respondents agree traffic congestion is a serious problem. The last place you might expect to find people who commiserate is an island forty miles long and thirty wide, 420 miles…
by Bill Murray We left last month’s column worried about getting tickets on a train across a swath of Africa’s midsection, from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to Lusaka, Zambia. There’s a funny system for getting on that train. You can reserve tickets over the phone but you can’t buy them online. You must come to…
by Bill Murray Zambia is home to a near-blind species of Ansell’s mole-rats that can sense magnetic fields with their eyes. It is part home to the world’s largest artificial lake by volume, and home to the world’s largest curtain of falling water. But that’s not why I want to go to Zambia. I want…
by Bill Murray Fourteen months ago I wrote a 3QD column titled Among The Non-Humans about sometimes obscure, often extraordinary abilities of animals and plants. Today, let’s look at a few more: Groupers visit giant moray eels resting in their crevices and shake their heads three to six times a second directly in front of the eels,…
by Bill Murray I’m scared of birds. They’re dinosaurs, you know. They descend from the Jurassic when, just like in Jesus Loves Me, ‘they were big and we were small.’ Did you see those huge dinosaur tracks they found in Texas last summer? You were a scurrying little proto-mammal, foraging and minding your own business…
by Bill Murray After three years of pandemic and a year of war, could things be about to get better? With the defeat of Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil, President Xi’s Covid problems in China and President Putin’s all-around debacle of destruction in Ukraine, could the worldwide wave of authoritarianism be breaking? If so, the incoming…
by Bill Murray It’s 6:15 on the Erakor Lagoon in Vanuatu. Women in bright print skirts paddle canoes from villages into town. Yellow-billed birds call from the grass by the water’s edge, roosters crow from somewhere, and the low rumble of the surf hurling itself against the reef is felt as much as heard. Every…
by Bill Murray Charles Darwin was just shy of 24 years old, his eyes open in wonder as the HMS Beagle slid along the shore of the largest island in the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego. His eyes grew wider as bonfires flared along the water’s edge. “They must have lighted the fires immediately upon…
by Bill Murray In spring the pandemic lurked. Boris Johnson was Ukraine’s new best friend, Russia’s domination of Ukraine appeared imminent and the UK basked in the queen’s platinum jubilee. I’ve been away since spring. Have I missed anything? The war continues. Many who caution they can’t get inside Vladimir Putin’s head proclaim from in…