Featured Stories

Nancy Davis Kho

20th Annual Solas Awards Bronze Winner in the Funny Travel category

Growing up, it was not uncommon for gatherings with my mom’s extended family to include an assessment of which kids were showing psychic powers, or whether the Magic Eye pendulum had predicted rain for the weekend. My mom’s oldest sister Eunice, whom we called Noonie, was an adherent of Spiritualism, a religion that believes the Spirit world found “beyond the veil” is just another train stop on our ride, and that mediums can help communicate messages back and forth between the living and dead. Read full story

Robert Klose

20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Culture & Ideas category

I have been in Reykjavík for seven days, and rather than rue the weather, I look at the clouds in wonder. They plaster the firmament like icing on a cake. The ceiling is gray and unbroken. There is no movement, only stasis — these are not roving clouds. With due frequency, the sky weeps. Not a downpour, but a dispersed, tentative rain of the smallest drops that makes me question the weather’s true intentions. It is July, in a land where “summer” has dubious meaning. Read full story

Russell Working

20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Adventure Travel category

The weather was hot when it was supposed to be cold, the tinnitus of cicadas drowned out every thought, and the sand on the beach was the wrong color, a pale reddish gold. The birds were too mad or too bright: kookaburras issued jungle cackles unheard in America outside TV cartoons, while rainbow lorikeets in tie-dyed T-shirts fluttered through trees with bluish leaves. And as I spent my first week in Australia at an orientation camp near Sydney, I kept thinking I had made a fatal mistake, leaving home to be an exchange student here. Read full story

Ben Stubenberg

20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Travel & Healing category

It’s our last night in Haiti, and nobody wants to leave. Spicy aromas from Creole lobster, shrimp, and red snapper caught that afternoon waft through the humid air and invite us to dine. We take our seats at the table set for us on the beach at the water’s edge under a black Caribbean sky strewn with a billion stars, bright and sharp in the absence of ambient light. A breeze blows in from the sea, and we let the serenity of the moment settle over us. Dr. John Brusky, an anesthesiologist who has led many of these surgical missions, taps his glass. All eyes look to him. Read full story

Margaret Wagner

20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Sports category

The bull fell to his front knees, then struggled and stood up, shaking his head. I exhaled a soft “oh no.” The animal panted, quivering the banderillas, the two-and-a-half-foot red and white sticks tipped with two-inch barbed hooks which had been stabbed into his back. Wet bands glistened from the top of his spine down hefty flanks, blood darkening mahogany hair. I groaned; my stomach flip-flopped. When I was in a tween in the 1970s, my family visited Spain. We saw flamenco dances in the evening, and no bullfights. Now, in 2025, I was attending one in Madrid, Spain as part of my mission to retrace the seven-month European trip that my mother had taken in 1951. Read full story