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 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…
by Bill Murray I Russia’s war on Ukraine is realigning geopolitics everywhere you look. The Germans and French want the conflict to end immediately. Others won’t be heartbroken to see fighting continue to degrade Russian capabilities. The UK, Poles and Balts come to mind here. An idea is settling in that the US, too, doesn’t…
by Bill Murray Anticipating war in Europe, 2022. Thursday, 13 January If an attack is imminent, Kyiv’s air raid sirens will alert residents to tune in to emergency service announcements. Cars equipped with loudspeakers will also patrol the streets to announce important information. The Kyiv City Council has posted an interactive online map, which shows…
by Bill Murray I The boundaries between tectonic plates are where big things happen, lasting geologic things. They are among the most remarkable bits of land on earth. The mid-Atlantic ridge is one of those boundaries, the longest mountain range in the world, separating the diverging Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. Trouble is, it…
by Bill Murray Ukraine is surrounded by 100,000-plus miserable, freezing, foot-stamping Russian soldiers who are Chekov’s gun on the table in Act One of our new post-Cold War epic. We’ve moved from “surely he wouldn’t?” to “he’s really going to, isn’t he?” It’s the moment when Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff but…
by Bill Murray 2022 is alive, a babe come hale and hollering to join its sisters 2020 and 2021, siblings bound by pandemic. Everybody stood to see off 2022’s older sister 2021, like we all did 2020 before her. Out with the old. Quickly, please. 2022 debuts with a striking resemblance to her sisters, just…
by Bill Murray Cogito Ergo Sum? Welcome to the party. There’s a lot more going on out there than we sometimes think: Cephalopods memorize, learn, invent, and play; indeed, they acquire information about the outside world while still in their eggs. • The small, flowering thale, or mouse-ear cress, can detect the vibrations caused by caterpillars…
by Bill Murray Consider the medieval mariner, slighted and sequestered, hard-pressed and abused, gaunt, prey to the caprice of wind and wave, confined below decks on a sailing ship. If the captain doesn’t get the respect he demands, he will impose it. So will the sea. The sailor found solace in ritual. You get the…
by Bill Murray Last month, local people drove fourteen hundred dolphins to the end of Skálafjordur Bay near the capital of the Faroe Islands and killed them. It is a tradition called the grindadráp. In Icelandic, one of the neighboring languages, “Good luck” is hvelreki, with an idea something like “may a whole whale wash…
by Bill Murray It is time to go home. You can pull down the window shade for some relief; then it’s only 100 degrees. An Air Burkina Fokker F28 has sidled up to join us on the tarmac in Bamako, Mali. Not quite home yet. “Pull the strops around your west,” explains the flight attendant.…
by Bill Murray It wasn’t effortless but we managed to mollify, sidestep and defy enough authorities to be legally resident in Finland for the month of July. Never mind shoes and belts off and toothpaste in a plastic bag. No, do mind; do that too. But add PCR test results, Covid vaccination cards and popup,…
by Bill Murray If you’d like to start at the beginning, read Part One here. On a piercing-bright, dripping-humid Irrawaddy delta morning in the 1990s, wild, screeching fowl wheeled over trucks full of boys in Chinese dragonheads banging on the side panels, driving in circles, celebrating the new year. The year of the pig had…
by Bill Murray Aye Chan Zin, a 22 year old competitive cyclist, once raced from Yangon to Mandalay and back. He fell and lost both incisors to gold teeth. “Road very bad out there,” he grinned, goldly. Aye Chan was a child of privilege, a third-year vet school student with parents with government jobs. His…
by Bill Murray They call it the Sargasso, this grass. It is the bane of Belize, an invasive floating weed that keeps pitchforks flailing along the waterfront. The Sargasso Sea, we know where that is. But this grass is from Brazil, Réné says. It’s a new challenge from a new place. It isn’t challenge enough…
by Bill Murray Larger than life writers always have that one extra experience, the one that puts your trip to shame. Lawrence Ferlinghetti did when, having achieved the Russian east coast via the Trans-Siberian railroad, he was ordered clear back across the continent because of paperwork. His calamity leaves most of us with nothing to say…
by Bill Murray Former Finnish President and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari once gave a talk in our town and we went to see him. The distinguished gentleman who introduced him at Atlanta’s distinguished Piedmont Driving Club listed among Ahtisaari’s achievements “helping to achieve independence for Nambia.” We visited Nambia a few years back, and found…
by Bill Murray Politics as the family business works out better for some than for others. Last year Turkish President Erdogan had to fire his son-in-law Finance Minister. And the Trumps, well … you know. But things are working out pretty well for the Rajapaksas of Sri Lanka. The President is Gotabaya Rajapaksa, nickname “the…
by Bill Murray In this column I write about international travel, especially travel to less understood parts of the world. This month, with such travel still a wee bit constrained, we start a two-part look back at Sri Lanka, April/May 1999: There are certain things a guidebook ought to level with you about right up front, before…
by Bill Murray This column is about travel to less understood parts of the world. In yet another travel constrained month, how about a little political tourism here in Georgia, where none of us really understands the sordid late-Trump morality play swirling around our dual Senate runoffs. We still have thirty days to go. Unlikely…