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Being An Expat
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You look back over time with something akin to nostalgia. Walking to the train station, hands plunged deep into pockets of a black winter coat, streetlights blinking through the damp mist. City lights reflected in dark canals. Noise spilling like overflowing Hoegaarden out of smoky pubs, a siren call out of the wintery gloom.…
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Shot At Dawn: In Flanders fields the poppies blow
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In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row ……… They blew in May 1915 when Canadian army doctor, John McCrae, wrote these immortal lines. They blow today. Colorful memorials of a war-torn world entrenched in the bloody, muddy fields of France and Flanders. On route to the World War 1 battle…
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El Niño Simplified
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We have heard much about El Niño recently – the much maligned phenomenon responsible for some record warm Christmases from New York to Atlanta on the US East coast. “El Niño is wreaking havoc with our weather” is an ice-breaker (ha ha) from water cooler to cocktail hour across the country. It is also responsible…
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Africa Does Not Exist Anywhere Else
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Africa does not exist anywhere else. You can look at pictures and hear stories but it’s not there. It’s not in the smell of rain on your dusty foothills, though that smell is as synonymous with Africa as any. It’s not in the sound of waves crashing on your craggy coastline – the water…
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Looking at History
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The world’s stage beckons. Sometimes the odds are stacked in our favor, a glittering temple of ambition achieved, enemies vanquished and life preserved. Sometimes – stage right – sirens blare and neon warnings blink and airplanes hover, bomb, hurtle to the moon, Mars, the depths of the Indian Ocean …… The future is bright,…