Back from the U.S. of A.

Susana and I got back home to Carboneras (Almería, Spain) yesterday after nearly a month in the USA (and a few days in Madrid), our first trip back there in nearly four years: Cambridge and Boston MA, for my college reunion; Galisteo and Santa Fe NM to see old friends; Arizona to hang out with my two sons (one in Prescott, the other in Flagstaff), and finally New York, for many personal and business reasons, including a meeting with the editor for our current book-in-progress, a history of architecture and urbanism in Latin America.

So this is just to explain why you hadn't seen anything from me over the past month — we were too busy traveling and had too infrequent and interrupted access to the Internet for me to sit down and write anything interesting. Now we're back in our seaside home and ready to get back to work on projects including:

• first, that book I just mentioned (volume I, the pre-Columbian history, is written; the volume on 20th and 21st centuries is well advanced; we're saving for last what we expect to be the least challenging portion, on the long colonial period and the first post-independence century).
• My new novel, still in early stage.
• More commentary on current events. Next up, an article on Turkey and its protests.

This will keep us busy while everybody else is at the beach. Maybe we'll get to go down to the beach, too, from time to time. It's right outside my window, mighty tempting.