Two parts of a Fez tannery: white side for softening; colored pits for dyeing.

Just hold your nose and go: The Fez Tanneries

Moroccan leather doesn’t just happen to be colorful, soft, and naturally dyed.  That’s just how we, the consumers, find it.  The real process of softening/dyeing/drying is labor-intensive, to say the least.  But thanks to the families who continue to do the work, tanneries like Chouara Tannery in the Fez medina continue to produce highly prized […]

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Seen better times in McClellanville.

Creepin’ out in McClellanville

I’ve saved this story until Halloween, but I’ve thought of it several times since this past summer.  Each July, we leave our hometown of Knoxville to vacation at Pawleys Island, South Carolina, for a week.  On the way home, we take different routes home just to see more of those sweet coastal towns you read […]

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Parting shots: London

Not many people would spend such a short time in London — only a day and a half for us. And most visitors would want to see all the places marked in bold print in their tour guides.  But since we’d checked off the Tower, Buckingham, and Westminster Abbey years ago, we decided just to […]

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Travel theme: Dried — Pueblo of Acoma

Pueblo of Acoma is a mesa community that may have been inhabitated even before the time of Christ. It’s a place where adobe homes are inhabited by strong people, who have managed to live without running water or electricity even during modern times. The word acoma, you come to find out, means “a place always prepared.” Most dwellings at Acoma began […]

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