Where with World am I?

My father-in-law gave us a subscription to American Spectator magazine some 30 years ago. I ying and yang on my opinion of the magazine; it often seems way too harsh to me. But about 20 years ago it began a feature wherein people could send in photos of themselves reading American Spectator. My favorite was the Army officer sitting in one of Saddam Hussein's thrones following the Gulf War I and reading the magazine.

Laughing that one of my fellow subscribers lived in such opulence, I thought it would be handy to include a home front picture. So I arranged to have my son take my photo reading American Spectator magazine while standing in front of two very long clotheslines. Even housewives read the magazine! (And alas, I can't find that photo now . . . )

The fun, however, of finding an incongruous photo returned when World Magazine began to include a photo of readers with the magazine in unusual spots. I was on it in a flash and have hauled World Magazine to four different continents. It's become a joke in the family: "Where's Mom and her magazine?"

Fellow WorldMagBlog poster Mark Roth and I have commiserated over the years as our photos did not appear. Oh, lots of great ones turned up, but never mine.

I'm about to take another trip and a new edition of the magazine arrived in the mail today. I'll stick it in my carry-on and read through the articles while I fly, but this time I'm NOT going to have my photo taken with it. I already have too many pictures of me and the magazine in far more interesting spots than St. Louis, MO.

I couldn't find them all, but here are a number for your enjoyment:

Here I am trying to show recent events to these guys on the corner of St. Marco's Cathedral in Venice.

I read the magazine while viewing the leaning tower of Pisa.

I also pulled out the magazine to think in Paris.

I can't find the picture of me sitting on the Great Wall of China NOT looking at the view, but perusing the magazine. There's also a missing shot of me standing in Tiannamen Square with Mao looking over my shoulder into an edition from May, 2008

My daughter got into the act at the Rodin Museum. We're missing the fun shot of her giving a statue a close-up, but we do have her in the fits of despair out in the garden, fortunately with something to read . . .

We're also missing the picture of me looking through the magazine on top of Notre Dame, nor do we have a picture of me with it at Loch Ness. We took a picture of me at the Louve showing recent events to a statue of Sargon. I wonder if that photo is in my son's camera?

I was able to find the shot of our stop for Sherlock Holmes and Watson's query at Baker Street's tube station in London.

But perhaps the best two are not of me at all, but show women in Nicaragua, wearing glasses for the first time and getting a taste of the world outside of the Rio San Juan region. Laughing and smiling, but more important, seeing the World through new eyes.