The Tenth Island: Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores

by Diana Marcum

Islands tend to be the go-to symbol for escape. Or maybe for me, it was more the feeling that I was an island, separate and alone.

Saudade.

I’m not decisive enough to throw things, always seeing 1,372 sides to each conundrum.

tourada à corda—bull on a rope. These bullfights are not like the Spanish type, in which the bull is killed and the danger is enclosed in a ring. In Terceira, a bull of an ancient strain, bred to be aggressive, is let loose on the main street in town. Well, almost loose. Seven shepherds—pastores—in white shirts with puffy sleeves and flat, black hats hold a rope attached to the bull.

‘Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today.’ And the Azores way is ‘If you can do it today, you can do it tomorrow. Why not tomorrow?’”

“Here’s to nothing,” he said. “That’s when anything can happen.”

“Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it . . . We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us.”

A team of scientists in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States researching Lab gluttony found that many of his kind have a scrambled version of POMC (proopiomelanocortin), the gene that helps regulate appetite.

when traveling, one should forget constant exploration. Go back to the same spots. You’ll be recognized as a familiar face and you’ll discover more.