Treelines
A few years ago, a family from southeast Asia moved to our neighborhood. When I asked the teenage daughter about her experience coming to the United States for the first time, she mentioned that on arrival she was shocked to see that the landscape was filled with "tall sticks." It was wintertime in Chicago, and the leaves had already dropped from the trees, leaving behind a barren landscape of tall sticks. I've never forgotten that story, and now that it's January, as I walk my dogs around the neighborhood all I can see are tall sticks in every direction. I can't unsee her version of the world. I recently took a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. This wasn't my idea, or even in my top twenty travel destinations, but it was my friend Karen's weird 40th birthday dream, and she somehow persuaded me to be her plus one. One morning on that trip I got up at sunrise to join a group doing Tai Chi on the deck of our boat. The sun was coming up over Ha Long Bay, the la
