Khadija and I have done something unusual, we haven't traveled internationally in the last two and half months. However, we made it to Chicago to see our daughter Ayan. She showed us many exciting places in the "City of Big Shoulders", including “The Bean” in Millennium Park, where people, green spaces and high-rise buildings reflect off its shiny surface. We’ve been to Chicago many times but it's been a while, last in 2006, the year The Bean was unveiled and not yet iconic public art.

Chicago is the inventor of the skyscraper and home of Frank Lloyd Wright, so it knows something about architecture. I loved the mix of people and mechanical energy bursting between the historic and modern buildings and landmarks.

PHOTOS FROM 2025

This year has been phenomenal for my photography, due to the captivating places we have visited. Every once in a while, I have to pinch myself to verify I’m actually living this charmed life and not in a Matrix simulation.

In January, I went to the Hindu Kumbh Mela, the world’s biggest religious festival. The purpose of this event is for pilgrims to dip into the Triveni Sanga, where the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet the mythical Sarasvati River. After performing this ritual, sins are cleansed and spiritual liberation results. Click here for more photos.

In July, Khadija and I visited the highlands of Papua New Guinea and went to three sings-sings, where tribes display their culture and history through music, dance, and extraordinary costumes. Click here for more photos.

UPCOMING TRIPS

Soon we'll be flying to Dakar, Senegal on a nonstop flight from NYC. We’ll have a few days there and hope to see a wrestling match, an extremely popular sport in the country. Then we fly to Bamako, Mali. We would like to see all regions of the country, but with the tenuous security situation we decided to visit just the capital. The final part of the journey is Guinea where three major rivers - the Niger, the Gambia, and the Senegal – originate in the highlands.

RECENT POSTS

My post Tuvalu – Hidden Gem in the Pacific recounts our visit there in June 2023. The country has fewer than 1,000 tourists each year, as the nation is a remote speck in the vast Pacific Ocean. What’s amazing about Tuvalu, composed of three reef islands and six atolls, is it’s so narrow that on any land mass you can walk across the widest part. Residents have adapted to this geography, such as playing football and volleyball on the runway of the Funafuti International Airport, which has only three flights a week from Fiji.

Tuvalu also has low elevation. With rising sea levels, at a certain point the country will be uninhabitable. Tuvalu might not be around for our immediate descendants and travelers should take advantage of seeing this unique land and culture now. Be sure to check out the Tuvalu photo gallery.

SUBWAY PHOTOGRAPHY:

My beautifully printed black and white “Station to Station: Exploring the New York City Subway” coffee table book is still available. You can see all photos @nycsubwaybook on Instagram and New York Subway Book on Facebook. Click here or email me for a signed copy, not available anywhere else!

SOCIALS:

My website www.ExploringEd.com with detailed posts on our trips.

FB: @Ed.Hotchkiss.3 and @Exploring Ed Travel | IG: @Exploring.Ed.Travel​

RECENT BOOKS​:

“The Dual State – A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship” (1941, 208 pages) by Ernst Frankel is a powerful sociological insight on what happened in Nazi Germany. He had an unusual vantage point, even though he was Jewish, of being able to practice labor law in Nazi Germany for five years because he fought in WWI. He fortunately left just before Kristallnacht and eventually settled in America and taught at the New School of Social Research in New York. His well-presented argument is that Germany under Hitler had two coexisting governing states: the dominant Prerogative (political) State and the Normative (commercial) State.

While the Nazis won only 37% of the vote in the last election of the Weimar Republic, once President Paul Von Hindenburg picked Hitler as Chancellor, it took just 53 days to turn the state into a dictatorship. At that point, the Nazis could do whatever they wanted (such as curtailing free speech and ignoring the legislative branch), first based on executive orders combating communism in the country, then continually expanded by increasingly broader interpretations of maintaining public safety. They mightily expanded their military and police to enforce their policies, including creating the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Sturmabteilung (SA or brownshirts) and the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo).

However, they left commercial laws essentially untouched (except for Jews, other non “blood and soil” minorities and “undesirables” such as gay men, people with disabilities, Jehovah Witnesses and leftists) so businesses could operate normally, while also contributing to the arms buildup. At first, some lower courts ruled against the Nazis but were usually overruled by appellate courts and eventually all courts universally granted the supremacy of the Prerogative State while enforcing commercial laws based on contracts.

DONATE

It’s cliché to say children are our future but we do want them to be prepared as well as possible for whatever our rapidly changing planet and technology will bring. In particular, we should lend a hand whenever possible to those who are disadvantaged in a significant way.

I just contributed to the following organizations which are helping children and young adults learn technical and social skills. Please consider also donating to them.

​YouthBuild partners with youth to build skillsets and mindsets that lead to lifelong learning, livelihood, and leadership. In the United States, youth are young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are out of school and out of work. In many countries outside of the US, this group may include those between 15 and 29 years of age.

​Youth Services Opportunity Project engages high school and college students in meaningful hands-on volunteer work. I have served on the Board of Directors for many years and have seen the organization’s success with students working in food pantries for the needy and engaging in dialogue with senior citizens.

​FosterPride empowers children and youth in foster care and from underserved communities to develop their talents, build self-esteem and reach their potential through mentoring relationships and the arts. This is a vulnerable population as nearly half never graduate high school, two-thirds have been on food stamps and seven out of ten homeless people in New York were once in the foster care system.

Happy Traveling 🌏… Exploring Ed