Cover Art for A Way Of Doing, rotated 45 degrees clockwise so the tracks can be read.
In 2003, I had a miserable job at a miserable company called Butterfield & Robinson. There were some wonderful people there but the bosses' bosses were useless and I hated it. I lasted 13 months and — after doing a bunch of copy editing that I wasn't paid for — I quit and went back to being a freelance web designer.
Part of the culture at B&R was to have a "Daily Huddle" where the entire company would gather and discuss the previous day's business, as well as what was in the pike. The huddle was run by a different person every day and the company made a big deal out an employee's first huddle, which would come six months into your employment. You had to make it special. Most people did this with catering or special guests. I did it with music.
For my first huddle, I made two mixed CDs, which I called A Way of Doing and A Way of Being Done. I had a friend do the artwork and I made about 75 copies of each and gave them away at the huddle. The friend recently sent me the artwork and I've recreated the playlist for the first disc on Youtube. I'll post disc two in the future. If you're a member of A Tiny Bell, you can listen by playing the video below.
I'll also explain the CD titles and write a bit about my first day at the company, which was awesome and involved lunch with Sidney Pollack and stories about Stanley Kubrick.
Read the full article
Sign up
now to read the full article and get access to all articles for
subscribers only.
This week, a Bell Ringer named Jennifer asked if I could start putting easy-links at the bottom of posts so she could share them on social media. Also, a friend asked if I'd link to her Instagram. It wasn't the first time I've been asked either question so I thought I'd address them in a post and clarify my self-inflicted social media policy.
Each post ends with a way to copy the permalink so you can post wherever you like, but I did remove the Twitter/X and Facebook repost icons from my site before it launched. I also stated in the About section that I'd never link to content on social media. Why? Because I care a great deal about branding and I do not want to associate myself with those brands. I go out of my way in real life to not mindlessly promote things — for instance, I don't wear branded clothing because I feel that they're implied endorsements — and leaving those icons on my site in order to generate views would go against that decision.
This week, Meta decided to make the world a worse place by removing fact-checkers from Facebook and Instagram, and Elon Musk did this:
These are not behaviours I can abide. The truth is that I do not understand how anyone still uses these companies' services with good conscience. The continued use of Meta or Musk products promotes the brands — tacitly, perhaps, but also: undeniably.
During the pandemic, I made a point of cutting myself off from people I felt were going through life making the world a worse place by not behaving consciously. Friends and customers who were "casually" racist, homophobic, sexist, or transphobic were blocked on my phone and ignored completely in real life. Without explanation, I ended several relationships with people I've known for many years, some of them three or four decades. I was done with them. I am done with it.
Shane Drinkwater
One of my favorite working artists is Shane Drinkwater, but I've never linked to his work because it's only viewable on Instagram. Rick Holland, a favorite poet, now operates out of Substack, so — no — same goes for one of my favorite podcasters, Lea Thau, and for Mehdi Hasan, one of the best broadcasters working today. I will not support them because doing so funds their platforms. It puts money in the pockets of people and corporations actively, consciously, and intentionally ruining the good of the world.
2025 and beyond are going to be difficult for good people and glorious for the ignorant, oblivious, or mean-spirited. I do not need bad actors in my life and I will do my best not to put anything out into the world that makes people think that being a bad actor is okay. It may be misguided or arrogant to think that having an easy-to-click X logo on my tiny spot on the web is contributing to the downfall of society, but I honestly do believe that to be the case. You may think this self-righteous, but we must all remember that it truly does take a village. I refuse to be party to being grist for a mill that will crush us all.
In the past two days, fires in and around LA County have destroyed 27,000 acres and counting — sometimes as fast as three football fields every minute. It's an astonishing amount of land to go in such a short time. More than 130,000 lives uprooted. People left with nothing.
My thoughts are with friends in Pacific Palisades, Woodland Hills, Santa Monica, Studio City, Beachwood Canyon, and Lake Hollywood, which are currently on fire or bordering neighborhoods that are burning.
I haven't been to California since 2019, but I've lived in all of those places, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months. I lived in Santa Monica for almost a year... spread over a decade. I know a lot of good people who call those cities and neighborhoods home.
In 2017, I lived on the Beverly Glen-Bel Air border when the Skirball Fire decimated Bel Air, burning 422 acres. It was a terrifying and clarifying place to be.
The next year, I was talking with my friend, Artur, who was bartending at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, when a Malibu resident just displaced by the Woolsey Fire sat next to me. He wore cut-off jeans, flip flops, and a ratty t-shirt, his face and hair grey with soot. "I just ran," he said. His house was gone, his car. He asked to borrow my phone and then just stared at it, realizing he didn't know anyone's number. "Do you have your wallet?" I asked. He nodded and realized why I was asking. He asked Artur about vacancies. So many people were fleeing, it was possible every room was taken — if you looked north over the hotel pool, you could see the smoke above Malibu, which lies just beyond Pacific Palisades. It was that close. Artur picked up the bar phone and within a few seconds was giving the man a thumb's up. The man looked at my drink and asked what it was. "A Two-Legged Dog," I said and motioned for Artur to fix him one, but the man signalled for him to stop. "Just water," he said. "Lots of water."
A few days earlier, I'd accepted an invitation to stay at a friend's loft in DTLA. I wished the stranger luck, said goodbye to Artur, and headed to the Expo. I was at the loft in a little over an hour. My friend had completely forgotten about the invitation and was packed to head north for a few days, along with a mutual friend, documentarian Nirvan Mullick. They were going to document the Camp Fire in Paradise and asked if I'd help. I knew in my bones I couldn't again be close to that kind of devastation. I declined.
In 1974, when I was six, The Who released Quadrophenia. Too young to understand it, I felt it. The album starts with ocean sounds and on one track, Roger Daltrey sings, "I want to drown... in cold water!" It was my first encounter with suicide and I was drawn to it. I didn't know why, but I, too, wanted to drown in cold water.
As a kid in the mid-70s, living in Toronto's Regent ParkCommunity Housing Project, I had no context for this desire. The only water of any depth that I'd been in was the community swimming pool, which I didn't enjoy because my uncle Paul thought throwing me into the deep end would teach me to swim. It didn't. I can still recall the face and red swimsuit of the lifeguard who dragged me to safety. This first drowning was formative: I never fully trusted a man again, and it caused me to mentally distance myself from my family for the first time.
A year later, my mother took my sisters and me to Kew Beach in eastern Toronto. We'd mess around on the sand, and I could go in the water up to my belly button. They were three and five years older, and the middle one could swim unsupervised. My eldest sister was disabled due to a stroke at six months; like me, she could walk in the water up to her waist.
These days, I visit Lake Ontario with my dog almost every day. Toronto beaches are awful when it comes to shoreline care. Driftwood, tree roots, grass, and stones — all where they shouldn't be. I don't remember the mid-seventies shoreline, but one visit, a log bobbed within reach. I straddled it and paddled with my arms. There must have been waves because I started to wobble and tip. I flattened myself to the trunk and embraced it. I quickly found myself on the underside, clutching the bark. Remember, it was summer, 1975. I'd seen Jaws. Everyone had seen Jaws. There was no way I was letting go of that log.
I came to on shore, lying on my back coughing water. My mother was at my feet, my ankles in her hands, and my sisters standing next to her, crying. If I was forced to say what had happened, I would guess that my mother pumped my legs until my stomach gave up the lake water. I'd seen the technique on The Flintstones. Whatever really happened, I've blocked it out. Drowning number two. Water and I weren't getting along.
At 27, I took my first flight. Toronto to Hawaii to Melbourne — 22.5 hours each way, with a month of winter sunshine in between. At Bell's Beach, I discovered the exhilaration of being churned by waves — it was like being ambushed by joy! If the woman I flew to meet hadn't been waiting on the hood of her vintage VW bug, I might not have walked out of that water. We drove 100 km to Bell's because I knew the location from Point Break, and I told her that I didn't know why, but "I just have to see it." Sixteen thousand kilometers for a wonderful woman I knew instantly I wouldn't uproot my life for. I liked her plenty, but I fell in love with the ocean.
My most recent drowning was in January, 2020. Inexplicably, I went into the South Pacific on a stand-up paddle board, also known as a SUP, in water shoes and street clothes. At the time, my uniform was dress shorts and a nice linen shirt. I spent almost four years traveling the world wearing that outfit exclusively.
A not so great photo of the Bay, but the only one I have with the SUP in it. Blue, on the left.
I'd been living in Vanuatu on Efate Island for months, hired as a caretaker for Coco the dog and two anonymous chickens I called Thing One and Thing Two. The SUP was parked on the beach in front of my cabin, and I'd never touched it. Dragging it down the sand and paddling past the coral before learning to balance on my knees before paddling some more seemed too much the chore. Besides, who wants to be above the water when they can be in it?
But there I was, standing atop Mele Bay, known locally as Paradise Cove. When I turned around to see how far I'd come, I saw that I'd gone considerably farther than expected. I'd covered probably two and a bit kilometers — far! — the cove being about eight and a half wide, shore to shore. It was a gorgeous day, as are most on the island.
Chuffed, I started to paddle back.
Mela Bay (Paradise Cove). I was living at the blue circle near bottom center.
After ten minutes with no progress, I felt like I was now going backwards, towards the far side of the bay. The paddle seemed useless until I lowered myself to my belly and started paddling with my arms like a surfer trying to mount a cresting wave. That was useless. My options were to give up and hope I ended up on the opposite side of the bay; continue paddling; or swim. I chose option three. First, I fastened the paddle to the top of the board via the foot straps, then dove into the water. The SUP was leashed to my ankle and, since it wasn't mine and its value was higher than my nomad-lifestyle could afford, I'd be dragging it home. You're rolling your eyes, but my reasoning was sound, even as my understanding of physics wasn't.
I'd flown to the other side of the planet to get away from the hounding failures of my "real life," only to waste more of it in this heavenly country. When a line from a movie entered my head, I laughed at the absurdity: "I just wanted to leave my apartment, maybe meet a nice girl, and now I gotta die for it?!"
I hadn't checked the tide schedule and was caught in its turning. Exhausted, I climbed onto the board and lay on my back. The water wasn't calm, but I could float. I should have paid more attention. I am weak and inexperienced. I sat up and looked to the opposite side. It was closer, but I wasn't drifting to it. I was being dragged out of the cove to the sea, proper, which made me clear-eyed and decisive. I undid the leash and dove back into the water, heading toward my shore, though directly towards a neighboring property rather than the further distance to my own.
I was making middling progress when I felt a hand on my bicep. In one motion, someone pulled me from the water and turned me around, my feet and hands settling on a ladder as if I'd done it many times before. At the top, I faced a group of pie-eyed tourists. The man who grabbed me said they'd found the SUP, which caused them to search for its owner. "The kid spotted you."
The kid, who looked about 12, was beside his mother and there were half a dozen other adults, all out for a scuba diving lesson I'd definitely ruined. He looked fascinated, confused, and annoyed at the drenched, exhausted man in street clothes. Someone in the crew asked where I was headed and I pointed towards Lakatoro. He called to the driver — "Sal's!" — and the boat swung around and immediately that's where we were going.
"So..." said the kid. "What was the plan?" I realized they might think I was trying to kill myself. Who heads out on the water in street clothes?! "Just..." I said, but didn't finish. The whole thing was so ridiculous. When I'd been taking in water, my overriding thought wasn't, Oh my god, I'm going to drown or What were you thinking? It wasn't even Help! It was, What now?! This probably tells you something about my state of mind.
My rescuer said, "We can't take you to shore due to the coral, but we'll get you close." I nodded and picked up the SUP. The woman next to me pointed to the Angelfish Villas, saying she'd be there a few more days if I wanted company. I caught a Melbourne accent and remembered Biccan, the Aussie I'd lived with for a month in 1995, who'd watched Bell's Beach have its way with me while perched on the hood of her yellow Beetle. I wasn't sure if this woman was offering a lifeline or chatting me up, so I invited her to drop by Lakatoro. As I spoke, I knew she wouldn't. I imagine she still tells scuba stories not of colorful clownfish and coral, but of a rescued well-dressed Canadian who later stood her up.
We got as close to the shore as possible without damaging the coral. I turned and said, "Thanks for saving my life," hopped off the boat onto the SUP, and headed home.
Coco was on shore barking at the boat and then at me as I struggled to drag the board back to its home on the sand. I turned to wave goodbye to the boat, but it was already a distance away.
Coco the dog in Mele Bay.
I took a quick shower and put on dry clothes. Though it was mid-afternoon, I poured myself a drink and sat on the patio. Suddenly, a black heron landed a few feet from me. I wondered if I was hallucinating, as I didn't think they were in this part of the world. Did she have a message for me? Or had she flown in to chastise and call me a fool? You are complicit in the conditions you're trying to escape. I reached for my camera, but Coco came barking and the bird took off. The egret gone, I heard a "Hello" and saw an elderly ni-Van walking towards me from the main gate. He asked after Sal and John, and I told him they were in Australia until March. He introduced himself as Brightly and said he'd been down the beach at Geoff and Lorraine's.
He asked, "Did you see the crazy guy on the paddle board?" I nodded. "Is he a guest here? It looked like the boat dropped him off right out front." I told him the man was staying at Paradise Cove, two properties down the beach.
"Lucky you. People with death wishes make terrible customers."
"But great lovers," I said.
He ignored my quip and tossed his chin up. "Were you swimming?"
"I just showered." Though true, he didn't believe me.
"If you see the paddle board man, tell him Brightly says he's reckless."
I told him I'd pass it on.
I saw him eying my whiskey, so I asked if he wanted a drink. He nodded and sat down while I went to fetch a glass and ice. When I returned, he was standing again. He gestured down the beach towards Geoff and Lorraine's. "We were all having a good laugh until we weren't," he said. "Understand?"
I did. He tapped the table with both hands and turned to go. His back to me, I heard him mumble, "Life's more delicate than we think."
I poured his ice into my drink and sat down. I put my coaster on top of my glass and picked up my camera. I waited for the black heron to return with her message, but she never did.
This post is the second one in a series called My Death Inches, where I write about incidents and injuries that may have inched me closer to the end. You can read My Death Inches No. 1 here.
Some of you know I have a canine roommate named Shakedown. That's her, above. I get complimented on her name pretty much every time I tell it to someone. It's always nice to hear, though I'm sure she's sick of me getting the credit. She's always claimed to have whispered it in my ear while I was sleeping.
I love naming things. Not just dogs. And though I'm biased, I think I have a knack for it. That said, I do know two better namers: Bob Mortimer and David Simon. Some of Mortimer's inventions include Top-heavy Ken, Slow Colin, Barbara Lighthouse, Mary Candles, and Mickey the Drink. Some of Simon's are Snot-boogie, Cheese, Bunk, Carver, and Stringer Bell.
Below is my list of quality dog names. (I also have one of horrible dog names, though I won't share it in case your dog's name is on it.)
Lincoln's List of Great Dog Names
Countdown Bardo Fair Play Flowers Finch Flossy Gillan (GILL anne) Grenier (GRAIN-yr) Ogden Brightly Go Compy Kapow!* Pantone Birch Mighty* (small dogs only, please) Ida (I-da, not E-da) Evans Lautrec (La-TREK) Goffin Mox Catch Snake Oil Mon Gateau (aka Monga) Fisty Grapes* Cohen Tez Lap-lap Truce Shimmy Bricko / Bricka Goulash Softy Congo Poplar Eleh (L.A.) Campy Mist Fixer Alef
Here's what I'm proposing: have a dog you need named? Choose one of the names above and, if you can afford it, every year of your dog's life, donate ten bucks of your local currency to a dog shelter. Preferably a no-kill shelter.
Don't know any shelters? I'll suggest Galgo del Sol in Spain. They do great work and focus mostly on Galgos and Podencos (the Spanish and Portuguese equivalent to the American Greyhound). They're also pretty great at naming dogs.
Am I kidding with this? Nope.
I sorta stole this idea from Bob Mortimer, who once proposed it with cat names and the annual donations went to him. Bob's a comedian. I'm not. I just like naming things and helping dogs.
*Not a dog name of my invention, so you should only donate $5 annually for these ones, as someone else did the heavy lifting. I met Grapes in Toronto, Mighty in West Hollywood, and Kapow! is an agility champ.
Trailer for The World According to Allee Willis, "the most interesting woman you've never heard of," according to the Washington Post. Looks great!
In addition to being a prolific and grammy-winning songwriter, Willis ran the Museum of Kitsch, which is how I first heard of her in 2010 (though I'd been of a fan of her music without knowing she'd written it). Willis died in 2019, but her Youtube channel lives on.
Digression Alert
Watching this trailer, I was reminded of Montez, a milliner I met once in LA in summer, 2016. She owned and operated The Milliner's Guild at Crossroads of the World.
After walking into her shop, which was closed at the time, I immediately felt a connection to her and we began a talk that lasted a few hours where she told me about growing up in Venice and hanging out with Hendrix or Jim Morrison or both. The specifics are vague as it was my first trip after a stroke a few months prior. She'd made hats for Madonna and plenty of other celebrities from the 80s going forward. We stayed in touch digitally for a few years and the last I heard, she'd moved to New Mexico with her husband. I just sent her a message through a probably now-dead channel, but hopefully I'll hear back.
I wonder if she knew Willis. Montez, are you out there?
I've always loved to watch people do their thing when they are expert at their jobs, especially if it's handwork. Though I am not at all skilled with anything artistic with my hands (painting, drawing, sculpting, etc.), I have always been dextrous in my manual labor jobs. For instance, I can check the quality of a vinyl record — something I sell for a living — with unreasonable speed. Within a few seconds, and mostly by touch, I can identify the provenance of the majority of records I handle — their era, the country of origin of the pressing, the flatness and condition of the vinyl, etc. It's one aspect of my work that I still enjoy after almost two decades.
When I lived in Vanuatu in 2019 and 2020, I witnessed two Ni-Vans (natives of the country) do astonishing things with machetes: prior to my arrival, a parcel of land neighbouring the one I was to manage, changed hands, and the purchaser needed to clear it of vines, thick overgrowth, and hundreds of trees. The new owner, a New Zealander, hired a team of men with a backhoe. After a month, barely anything was cleared. The machinery was too cumbersome for the dense forest, and the men, who were more experienced with cement, sand, and steel, were humiliated by the organic material that had thrived there for decades.
When asked how my employer had handled the job on their land, they answered that they had hired Jackson, a local man with a machete. When the new tenant did likewise, the majority of it was completed in a fortnight. I arrived midway through and it was astonishing to see. What is it the Marines say? "One man, one army"? I also witnessed Jackson spearfish from a kayak using only the light of a crescent moon.
The second expert with a machete was a worker on "my" property: Marie. We needed a tall, Y-shaped crutch to prop something up. She grabbed her blade, hopped a chest-high fence in one motion, and disappeared into the forest. In just a few minutes, she reappeared with a nine foot tree about 4 inches around. Carrying both the tree and the machete, she again hopped the fence. While covering the ground between the fence and myself, she chopped the extraneous branches from the trunk, leaving only the two forked limbs we required. A few more swings and the bottom was carved into a perfect spear to stab into the ground. In her real life, Marie is a 44-year old housekeeper:
The wonderful Marie Bo. You can see some of the dense forest on the left.
I think of these things because I've spent some of today watching this video: 15 Jobs That Take a Lifetime to Master, which features some wonderful handwork. It's 3 hours long but each job's segment is only 10 to 15 minutes and they're unrelated, so you can watch in chunks and skip around if one doesn't interest you.
I prefer to experience Canadian winters from afar. Though I did that successfully for many years, it hasn't happened since Covid. Now, with an aging dog I don't want to be apart from, I'm looking at spending another winter here.
As I did last year, I will run weekly screenings for friends in my loft. The sudden drop in temperature has me thinking about what to project this year and I thought readers of A Tiny Bell may be interested in these works as well.
Here's some what I'm considering:
Self-Portrait As A Coffee Pot
d. William Kentridge Streaming on Mubi
This is a 9-part series about art and its creating. Kentridge is a South African artists and made these ~30 minute episodes during Covid. Here's the official description, the trailer, and an overview:
Inspired in part by Charlie Chaplin, Dziga Vertov and the innovative wit of early cinema, pioneering South African artist William Kentridge offers a cinematic experience of the creative process during the plague years of COVID. Interconnected yet distinct episodes introduce us to William and his collaborators in action, inviting us to step inside the intimacy of the studio as shared discoveries about culture, history and politics, and profound truths about the ways we live and think today are uncovered through the making of works of art.
Le Trou
d. Jacques Becker, based on the novel by José Giovanni Streaming on The Criterion Channel
Le Trou is my favorite prison film. I think it's astonishingly good and can't believe Hollywood has never remade it. So, so tense.
A Separation
d. w. Asghar Farhadi Streaming on Hoopla, but I own the blu-ray.
Farhadi has had some controversy the past few years and I don't side with him on it, but this is an all-time favorite of mine and an exceptional way to introduce people to Iranian cinema.
Network
d. Sidney Lumet, w. Paddy Chayefski Streaming on Apple TV+
I used to assume most everyone has seen these 70s classic films but last year I screened Dog Day Afternoon and no one who attended had even heard of it before. So, this year it'll be Network. All the acting is incredible — Beatrice Straight's ~5-minute performance earned her an Oscar — and the script is impeccable. There are few films as prophetic as Network. See if it you haven't. It has never been more relevant.
The Graduate
d. Mike Nichols, w. Buck Henry from a novel by Charles Webb Streaming on The Criterion Channel
Another film that I assume most people have seen. However, the people I asked last year seem to only vaguely recall watching it as kids. I think many people dismiss it as a bawdy comedy, but it's a meticulously constructed film. The performances are great, and the direction, camera work, and editing are top-notch. Howard Suber, a film prof at USC, did an audio commentary for the laserdisc years ago. I learned more about storytelling from listening to that then I did in four years of film school.
About Dry Grasses
d. Nuri Bilge Ceylan w. Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
On the fence on this one for two reasons: I have not yet seen it, which means I'd have to watch it twice as I only screen films I've seen, and it's 3 hours and 17 minutes. Certainly looks interesting, however, and the reviews were excellent.
Capernaum
d. Nadine Labaki w. Nadine Labaki, Jihad Hojeily, Michelle Keserwany Stream it for free on Hoopla
A critic in the trailer says, "Prepare to be blown away." That is certainly my experience with this film. I've seen it twice and it's remarkable. The child playing the lead, who was not an actor, but an illiterate Syrian refugee, is mind-bogglingly great. He's now a teenager and thanks to the film was able to relocate to Norway where he attended school for the first time in his life.
Join or Die
d. Pete Davis and Rebecca Davis Stream on Netflix
Recent documentary on Robert Putnam, definer of Social Capital, and author of Bowling Alone, which I, along with everyone else, read in the 2000s.
The Boy and the Heron
d. Hayao Miyazaki Stream it on Netflix
I once had a promising relationship go sour after the woman noticed my utter boredom while watching her favorite film, My Neighbor Totoro. I've pretty much hated Miyazaki films ever since. However, I really like herons and art that explores grief, so gonna give this one a shot.
I'll make new posts in the future listing the screenings so that people can follow along if they wish.
This post is part of a longer project, Distant Diary — Spain. All entries are gathered on this page, along with an explanation and some background.
DAY 8
Freedom.
Mentally untethered to the possibility that my host may eat my beating heart, I wake early and start walking south along the shore. I find myself in Denia, though amazingly do not make it to the mountain I spotted a few days earlier.
In it, he reads his poem Todar Phadraic. It is not my favorite of his works, but its genesis interests me as it's the first I hear of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a mythological race of people who lived in Ireland. Uninterested in battle, they "turned sideways into the light and disappear into the originality of it all." Whyte describes this event as them "no longer wanting to have that conversation." This interests me because I know that if I do not expire on the Mediterranean, I do not wish to return to the place and life that I left behind exactly one week ago.
It is the tedium of modern life that chisels away at me, and it is that which I hope to dance around while tricking it into thinking I'm dancing with.
I recall what Scott Rosenberg taught me in my 20s: give it a name, so I Christen it the time-rich life. Simultaneously, Jim James puts his lips to my ear: "Tryin' gets nothing done."
As always, I walk.
Sardines are cheap at the Super Mercado. A different breakfast for Nina.
I close the day sleeping with the bedroom door open.
52KM.
I wake a few hours later with a full bladder. Raised by women (mother, aunt, sisters, grandmother), I've always peed seated. Tonight's no exception. Sitting there, I feel something soft against my calfs. Blanche sidling by. I bend to stroke her and rise bloodied.
This post is part of a longer project, Distant Diary — Spain. All entries are gathered on this page, along with an explanation and some background.
DAY 7
Joe picks up Arianne. They're off to the airport.
I decide to branch out from the Playa and head to and beyond the city proper. There are orange groves between us and a ton of loud guard dogs, most of which are behind fences. I find a "mountain" with a portion of castle atop it. Looking down from the other side you can get a good look at the whole of Oliva.
Oliva, 2017
I don't yet know the cities beyond, but vow to get out to them.
