70 Books, Movies, TV Series for Escape Now and After Quarantine

These works are by authors and screenwriters who are the best escape artists I know. Books, movies, and television series have the power to transport us now to dream locations and inspire us to go there for real one day. Helping me with this list are pro travel bloggers who were moved…literally…to explore a place abroad they’d experienced on the page or screen.

Top 10 Romantic Movies for Celebrating Valentine’s Day

Below are my classics–tried and true– for celebrating Valentine’s Day, romantic as much for their settings as for their stories. While living abroad since 2014 I’ve seen most of them broadcast repeatedly in English on television stations in Morocco and the Dominican Republic. Valentine’s Day Movie Marathons are as popular in these two countries—one Catholic, the other Muslim– as they are in the US….

New WEEKEND ESCAPE Series to Inspire Travel & Global Experiences at Home: Dinner and a Movie

I’m starting this series to inspire real life travel, celebrate global culture found at home, and feed the soul. In the summer of 2014 just before I moved abroad from Nashville, I saw Chef at the theater and loved it. Although the soundtrack has been on my plane playlist since I rushed home and downloaded it, I hadn’t seen the movie again until last…

From the Desert to the Daily: First Three Months

November 18, was Morocco’s Independence Day, the 58th anniversary of freedom from the French Protectorate lasting from 1912–1956. It was a milestone birthday of my cousin, Annette, a loving lady who hosted our family reunion in Kentucky last summer.  And it was a marker for me. Three months ago I landed in this country and began a new era in my life. I’ve thought…

I Am Love…a Two-Sided Tale

The movie was eleven years in-the-making. It raises questions that have plagued us for centuries. As the intensity crescendos toward the climax and the resolution resonates with the deafening score, we’re moved to look at our lives to be sure we’re not one of Thoreau’s “mass of men (and women)who live quiet lives of desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

The Twilight Years of Benjamin Button

As an English teacher who has taught The Great Gatsby for 25 years and started an annual Twenties Day where students celebrate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s achievement, my cloche is off to Eric Roth. Accomplishing a rare classics coup, the screenwriter of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button improved upon the canonized author’s 1921 short story.  Granted, an epic almost-three-hour film should be more developed…

Slumdogs and Soulmates

It was good being reminded again that faith can move mountains. To never give up. To concentrate on what’s good while going through what’s awful. That love is redemptive. Slumdogs and soulmates… nothing better than that.