Musings of a traveling mind..

Greetings, one and all, which at this point is comprised of me. This is my first foray into the blog-writing world, given that I'm 56, horribly inept at most-things cyber and too lazy to learn to boot. That said, I want to give this a whirl, especially since I love to travel and can post many such traveling musings and photos here.

My name is Paul Kandarian, born in Rhode Island, raised and living in Massachusetts. I'm a freelance writer/photographer (more the former, but being the latter helps immeasurably in selling results of being the former) and have been for the past 13 years. For 12 years prior to that, I was an ink-stained wretch, as old journalists like myself like to call old journalists like myself. I toiled in poverty at the Taunton Daily Gazette, leaving in 1997 to freelance full time - and still toil in poverty. Freelancing is freedom. Freelancing is not profitable. Unless I'm doing it totally wrong.

For the last few years, I've taken to travel writing in that I love traveling and love writing (and photographing) and combing all that seemed about right. I've been to the Caribbean a fair amount, and write a lot for the Caribbean portion of about.com, a whopping site, that, in that it's about...everything. Go, see, explore, and check out the Caribbean part (www.gocaribbean.about.com). I also write a lot for the Boston Globe, have for 12 years, and most recently for the Globe's travel section and blog. It's a good paper, was rumored to be dying for a bit there but seems to have righted itself. I also write for Cape Air's inflight magazine, the lovely named Birds Eye View, and it's a fine magazine and terrific airline. They fly nine-seat Cessnas (think they are anyway..nine seats for sure, Cessnas I'm reasonably certain) all over the Caribbean, Florida, they have a route in the Midwest, a bunch from Boston to upstate New York, Vermont, Maine and, if you can believe it, Saipan-Tinian, out that way. Interesting company and it's doing well, so more power to them.

I've traveled a lot with people who say I need a travel blog, so here I am. This blog will be, as stated, musings on my travels; there will be straight travel posts, likely lifted from the publications/sites that ran them originally, but also straight travel musings from a mind as prone to wandering as its body is. I like to muse, I like saying the word 'muse', it's a good word and I'm sticking with it.

There'll be essays here, humorous (hopefully) and perhaps occasionally poignant. For example, I recently took a trip to Stonewater Cove Resort (www.stonewatercoveresort.com) in beautiful southern Missouri (yeah, I said that too.."Missouri?" Trust me, it's beautiful) with my 21-year-old "baby," my son, who's joined the Army and as of today, about to leave for Fort Benning, Georgia. It was a fantastic father-son bonding experience; hell we rode ATVs, did zip lines, shot guns, all great manly-man stuff custom made for fathers and sons. And we had an absolute blast. And I'll write about it. Probably for the Globe, and shamelessly lift it to use here. I'm attempting to put a photo of my son and I here, let's see if this works..


Son of a gun, it worked! The old guy is me, in case you wondered. No idea how I ended up looking that old..oh, yeah, the person to my right, THAT'S how...

But anyway, that's enough for now, I have to figure out how to format this stuff, what to put in, how to start a photo section if possible, all that good stuff. And if anyone knows how to turn blogs into money-making entities, let me know. But not if you're going to ask me for money. I want to be the money-making entity, not you!

Later.