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The Closet Creative
Food tour of Seattle’s International District
Chemo Gifts: When delight and need intersect
Discover hidden worlds in your own neighborhood

How do you discover hidden worlds in your own neighborhood? As we saw last time, part of it means being open and paying attention to what goes unnoticed even around your own house or backyard. You can also take this one step further and discover other neighborhoods that you’ve either not known about or ignored for years. Such was the case for me with Seattle’s Chinatown and International…
Discover hidden worlds in your own backyard

How many hidden worlds lie in your own backyard? More than you may realize. Literally, if you were to pay close attention to all the details of your home or backyard, you’d be amazed by what you find. Xavier de Maistre did just that. Journey around your own room In 1790, de Maistre wrote a book, A Journey Around My Room. According to Alain de Botton in one of…
The myth of the unique travel experience

You travel far off any known tourist map to encounter what you believe will be a unique travel experience. No one there speaks your language or appears to have ever encountered a Westerner before. You learn enough of the local language which, combined with gestures worthy of Marcel Marceau or an Academy Award, get you by. You come home from this seemingly unique travel experience. You post stories…
How to use textures in Photoshop for better photos

Learning how to use textures in Photoshop has been one of the best ways I’ve found to add interest to some otherwise so-so images. In particular, applying textures in Photoshop to travel photos can add depth and meaning to your trip images. How? Because you’re able to add associations to the image that may convey more of how you felt when you captured the image than the photo…
Get the most out of a guidebook

How do you get the most out of a guidebook? In today’s interconnected world, you wonder if the guidebook itself is becoming an anachronism, a throwback to a time when people read actual newspapers and a social network usually involved a potluck. So I’m less concerned with the medium in which the information is presented – books, printouts of PDFs, downloadable e-books, podcasts, phone apps or live access…