The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

There's a difference between knowing what's on the page in a history book and actually feeling that page have curves and valleys.

Decades ago women suffered through horrifying back-alley abortions. Or they used dangerous methods when they had no other recourse. So when the Republican Party launched an all-out assault on women's health pushing bills to limit access to vital services we had to ask: Why is the GOP trying to send women back... to the back alley?

Here in Silicon Valley I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often innovators with good safe jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.

One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak.

The economy in the Valley will need to grow if students want to come back and work with their specialized degrees. We need to develop more to create more opportunities.

Propaganda must appeal to mankind's better judgment and to the necessary belief in a better future. For this belief the valley of the shadow of death is but a war station on the road to the blessed summit.

Now the restaurants have begun to catch up with the wine-making there are numerous great restaurants in Napa Valley and it's wonderful because the people are there for just that: great food and great wine.

The stones themselves are thick with history and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Men have looked upon the desert as barren land the free holding of whoever chose but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it against aggression.