Always a Traveler, Never a Tourist, Featuring Sudbury Author

Please join the Friends of the Goodnow Library for an intriguing virtual travel adventure with Sudbury author Judy Bloomberg on Wednesday, October 20, 2021, at 7:30 PM. Judy will be sharing her travel adventures and some of the fascinating photos from her book, Always a Traveler, Never a Tourist: In Search of People and Places on the Road Less Traveled. A question and answer period will follow the presentation. The program is free, but registration is required. Registration can be completed at the following link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/always-a-traveler-never-a-tourist-with-judy-bloomberg-tickets-177638360117

Judy Bloomberg has been an intrepid traveler for over 50 years. As the Sudbury resident explains. “I have always had a passion for adventure. Not the kind where you climb Mount Everest to prove to yourself and the world that you have amazing endurance and ability to withstand cold, but the “Around the World in 80 Days” kind of adventure, the kind where you set off for countries whose names you can’t even pronounce, to explore other cultures and other peoples, to learn how we are different and (perhaps even more importantly), how we are the same”.

Beginning in 1970, with a 10 week “no set itinerary” honeymoon based loosely on recommendations found in “Europe on $5 a Day” (the famous budget guidebook of that era), and continuing over the years through such experiences as international homestays, home exchanges, and volunteer activities in some of the world’s poorest countries, Bloomberg continually searched for ways to veer off the beaten path. In 2002, a casual comment to her husband while dining in the French restaurant at Epcot even led to the two of them leaving their jobs and moving to a small village in France for a year!

Judy also has a long-standing love of traditional cultures that has led her to explore tribal communities all over the world. In fact, she sometimes calls herself a “closet anthropologist” At last count, she had visited about 115 countries, on all seven continents. Some of her most memorable experiences include attending a giant gathering of about 200 different tribes in Papua New Guinea, having a random encounter and delightful conversation with the Queen Mother in Bhutan, staying overnight as an honored guest in the yurt of a famous eagle hunter in Mongolia, scaling a mountain in Uganda to spend time with a family of elusive mountain gorillas, and visiting the remote “explorer huts” in Antarctica, which have been left virtually untouched since explorers like Scott and Shackleton abandoned them over 100 years ago.

So what is an intrepid traveler to do when sidelined by COVID? Bloomberg returned from her last trip, to Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, and Qatar in March, 2020, less than a week before the U.S. completely shut down. Stuck at home, she began curating her collection of thousands of travel photos, selecting the ones she considered most interesting and most depictive of life in the less-traveled corners of the world. After a bit of prodding from friends, she finally agreed that the photos would make a compelling book. Her book, Always a Traveler